In 2011, the US was in the process of normalizing relations with the assad regime. Obama had appointed a new ambassador the year before. Clinton thought assad was a 'reformer.'
The war broke out for a very simple reason: assad's forces kept shooting peaceful protesters.
Despite assad's violence, the Revolution remained largely peaceful for several months. It became a full-blown war almost a year after it began, when it became clear assad was not interested in reform, much less stopping the killings.
Please clarify how this is possible. I don't see how this narrative can be correct.
First two protesters were killed 18 March 2011 (Hussam Abdel Wali Ayyash and Akram Jawabreh.) Then already in March 23, 2011 two another men who were killed (Sa’er Yahya Merhej and Habeel Anis Dayoub) were part of the Syrian Arab Army and not civilians. It seems that initially peaceful protests turned into violent almost immediately because they were hijacked by organized militants. Armed gunmen were already moving into Syria long before the protests. http://www.innercitypress.com/LASomSyria.pdf
According to the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, 2,569 Syrian government forces were killed by March 2012 while total number of people killed was 5,000.
You should find out how those "peaceful protests" started, and the activities of the US ambassador to Syria just before the protests broke out. It's from the same playbook that was used successfully in Libya and Ukraine, and almost succeeded a few years ago in Cuba.
It's an interesting exercise if you have the time. Venezuela is in the same neighborhood too.
Which serves to infantilize the entire population of every other country in the world. See the GP's belief that apparently a few words by the US Ambassador is more powerful than thousands of years of history and culture, very difficult conflicts between religious sects, clans, and tribes, etc.
So if due to some political agenda there is profit or benefits to be reaped from nudging certain conflicts this or that way, there's a high probability that people in power would try to obtain said benefit. I think it's in that sense that "America puts its nose into every conflict around the world".
Not saying that I agree or disagree with that view, but I do think it's a bit naive to say that America is the root of all evil, as much as it's naive to think that the most powerful nation in the world (for different definitions of most powerful) would have no interest in other countries' conflicts or in influencing them to their benefit.
In other words, if for whatever reason an escalation in the conflicts in Syria or other parts of the Middle East (or the world for that matter) could benefit the US, would it be so far-fetched to think that they would have a vested interest in creating the conditions for that escalation to actually happen?
The reasons behind any particular policy are of course complex. Some may be for good and noble reasons, others for not so good reasons. A few turn out well, many go badly or not at all as intended.
Many people in foreign countries even try to get us to intervene. Often they want us to fund them or to suppress their enemies. Some want us to suppress violence in other countries, just because they think we can - see Darfur. Their motives aren't any cleaner or dirtier than ours are, just saying we aren't uniquely or cartoonishly evil.
I think the important part to remember is that our real ability to change things abroad is very limited indeed and fraught with risk. We can nudge things a bit, sure. If a country is on the verge of civil war, we can maybe nudge them towards it or away from it, but we can't create the war from scratch, or control what the sides are. If they really want to fight, they will, and we can't stop them. If they really have no desire to fight, we can't make them. If we try to nudge, we may just cause the opposite thing to happen instead. It's a mess, and it's likely to continue to be a mess no matter what we do or don't do. There's always the hope that we can encourage things to be a little bit less messy, but that may not be in the cards.
With due respect the United States is a global hegemonic superpower. Sure it isn't all powerful, but to recognize it's influence as punching above the weight of foreign populations isn't to infantilize them.
Nor can the OP be appropriately summarized the way you did. It's really easy to defeat straw men, sure, but the people who contribute to Hacker News are intelligent enough to recognize that straw man for what it is.
Consider Nicaragua -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Nicaragua#Pr...
Countless videos show assad forces shooting at unarmed protesters, in some cases killing and wounding dozens. I do not deny some soldiers were killed in the early stages of the Revolution. Some were killed for refusing to follow orders. Others may have been killed in isolated incidents.
But again, the protests were largely peaceful, and assad forces were (and still are) responsible for the majority of deaths.
Edit: typo
This contributed to destabilising the place and offered a supply of Sunni recruits to ISIS. That's why the furthest extent of ISIS territory was an arc across Syria, Iraq and up to "Kurdistan".
True, Obama came in with a set of foreign policy objectives that were not inline with standing US foreign policy. So he lost that battle.
He was very reluctant to involve the military, especially in the ME. So in Libya, for example, and even in Syria, he was accused of leading from behind.
Even with respect to Russia, recall that he wanted to "reset" relations with that country, but that, too, was not in line with what the military guys, that is, the guys who actually run the country, wanted. So he lost that battle too.
That's because foreign meddling is absurd.
The FSA was organized out of Turkey, with it's high level leadership and intelligence feeding in over the border. The primary branches of al Qaeda and militant groups were funded and supplied by foreign organizations. Special forces in the United States had been perturbing for revolutions and US propaganda operations performing a regional 'blitz'.
Qutar has natural gas.
Europe relies almost solely on Russia for natgas.
The west doesn't like that at all. So they want to build a pipeline from Qutar to the med through Syria.
Assad says absolutely not.
Assad is now enemy number one for denying the pipeline which would've freed Europe from Russia's natgas stranglehold.
This is all about energy folks. It's that simple.
The gas pipelines are a huge reason, for sure. But it's not the only reason. Many different actors have many different reasons why supporting their side of the proxy war makes financial and strategic sense.
No expert on foreign policy, or the middle east I have heard give talks in the last years, considers this to be true. The only people who believe this narrative are naive leftist who don't understand the real situation.
They want to what??? You really need to look at a map before saying things like that.
I just.....
Do you realize Qatar is on the coast? Why would you need to build a pipeline to another coast?
And why go through Syria of all places? There are so many other routes you can take, and you think they want Syria so badly they triggered a war?
The proposed pipeline goes from Qatar, though Saudi Arabia, through Syria, into Turkey and then would provide Natural Gas to Europe.
There's a second proposed pipeline people often don't talk about... it would go from Iran, through Iraq, through Syria to Europe. Guess which one Europe and the United States want.
I get that it's a bit shorter to go through Syria, but a war, just for that?
There's a major station in Doğubeyazıt, you can link to that.
And no, the war is not merely about this pipeline. But it is one of the 'prizes' at stake which has gotten the support of foreign countries spending money and shipping arms into Syria proxy forces (notably, in this case, Qatar).
Take a look at the Center for Strategic and International Studies policy assessment for Gulf Countries during the Syrian Proxy Conflict: https://csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/1...
That's the popular 'opinion' induced by Russian propaganda and they're notorious for ignoring the reality.
Please look at the pipelines and read about the actions and incentives of the Gulf State. In particular, Qatar supported al Qaeda in Syria (Nusra as well as the Islamic State Group in addition to a number of other terrorist factions) with the pipeline project as a key aspect of its strategic calculus, even sabotaging, in a way, relations with Iran that had been started to improve.
The Syrian war, which we have a heavy hand in - before and after it began, started in 2011. That article was written in 2013. And did you check the bio of the author.
It's easy to predict a war after it has started and when you have inside knowledge and a hand in how the war should proceed and end.