{"id":37796,"date":"2018-09-15T07:18:17","date_gmt":"2018-09-15T12:18:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=37796"},"modified":"2018-09-15T07:18:17","modified_gmt":"2018-09-15T12:18:17","slug":"four-reasons-why-interventionism-in-syria-is-crazy-and-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=37796","title":{"rendered":"Four Reasons Why Interventionism In Syria Is Crazy And Stupid"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"entry-title eltd-post-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/caitlinjohnstone.com\/2018\/09\/13\/four-reasons-why-interventionism-in-syria-is-crazy-and-stupid\/\">Four Reasons Why Interventionism In Syria Is Crazy And Stupid<\/a><\/h3>\n<article id=\"post-5253\" class=\"post-5253 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-article category-news tag-bret-stephens tag-idlib tag-new-york-times tag-syria tag-war\">\n<div class=\"eltd-post-content\">\n<div class=\"eltd-post-image-area\">\n<div class=\"eltd-post-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"attachment-newsroom_elated_post_feature_image size-newsroom_elated_post_feature_image wp-post-image\" src=\"https:\/\/caitlinjohnstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Screen-Shot-2018-09-14-at-8.48.05-AM.jpg?189db0&amp;189db0\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 880px) 100vw, 880px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/caitlinjohnstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Screen-Shot-2018-09-14-at-8.48.05-AM.jpg 880w, https:\/\/caitlinjohnstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Screen-Shot-2018-09-14-at-8.48.05-AM-300x189.jpg 300w, https:\/\/caitlinjohnstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Screen-Shot-2018-09-14-at-8.48.05-AM-768x483.jpg 768w\" alt=\"\" width=\"880\" height=\"554\" \/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"eltd-post-text\">\n<div class=\"eltd-post-text-inner clearfix\">\n<p>As tensions continue to mount around the Al-Qaeda-held province of Idlib in Syria, the <em>New York Times<\/em> has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/09\/13\/opinion\/trump-syria-idlib-assad.html\">published an op-ed<\/a> by virulent <a href=\"http:\/\/rightweb.irc-online.org\/profile\/stephens_bret\/\">neoconservative war whore<\/a> Bret Stephens explaining that the US should intervene militarily in order to thwart the geopolitical agendas of Iran. He argues that any movement to recapture Idlib should be met with a full-scale assault on the Syrian government, crippling its air force and attacking Bashar al-Assad\u2019s presidential palaces. Stephens says this must be done to prevent Tehran from \u201cconsolidating a Shiite crescent stretching from Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon.\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">NYT op-ed says that when the Syrian army tries to reclaim the jihadi-led city of <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Idlib?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#Idlib<\/a>, the US should treat that as a red line and destroy the military and go after Assad\ud83e\udd26\u200d\u2642\ufe0f  <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/0ZSACvxyW7\">https:\/\/t.co\/0ZSACvxyW7<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MaxAbrahms\/status\/1040184530152448002?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 13, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Sometimes all you can do is laugh. These propagandists keep giving us all these different, unrelated reasons why the US and its allies should definitely totally intervene in Syria and overthrow its government. It\u2019s because the Syrian people want freedom and democracy. Wait, no, it\u2019s because Assad is violating international law by using chemical weapons. Actually, it\u2019s to thwart Putin\u2019s agendas. Scratch that, it\u2019s to stop Iran. We\u2019re being given all these different stories about why a regime change intervention in Iraq\u2019s next-door neighbor Syria is needed, and the only thing those stories seem to have in common is that they all require a large amount of expensive weaponry being discharged upon the human beings who back the Syrian government. Maybe, just maybe, taking out the Syrian government has always been the real goal, and they\u2019re just making up different excuses to see what sticks?<\/p>\n<p>They\u2019re having a very hard time getting anything to stick with much conviction, though, so I figured I should give them a little assistance in seeing why that might be. Here are a few of the things which prevent interventionism in Syria from being a sane and appropriate thing for the US and its allies to do:<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Four Reasons Why Interventionism In Syria Is Crazy And Stupid As tensions continue to mount around the Al-Qaeda-held province of Idlib in Syria, the New York Times has published an op-ed by virulent neoconservative war whore Bret Stephens explaining that the US should intervene militarily in order to thwart the geopolitical agendas of Iran. He [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[23,21662,17039,2127,4194,1921,776,827],"class_list":["post-37796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-al-qaeda","tag-bret-stephens","tag-caitlin-johnstone","tag-interventionism","tag-military-intervention","tag-new-york-times","tag-syria","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37796"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37797,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37796\/revisions\/37797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}