Re: [Marxism] Joshua Landis on the US air campaign against ISIL
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On Sep 15, 2014, at 11:53 PM, Louis Proyect l...@panix.com wrote: What a joke. It should be mentioned that Landis has always been for Assadism without Assad. I don't see any evidence that Landis subscribes to Assadism - continued rule by the elites - in the Time magazine article linked to below, written at the outbreak of the current Syrian uprising. The 2005 New York Times article which Louis copied to the list predates it by a full six years (!) well before the revolt and was aimed at the Bush policy of regime change. Landis' 2011 article was written from the standpoint of support for the anti-Assad rebellion, as the following excerpts indicate: Having been brought up in privilege in Damascus, the President has more in common with the capital's elite than he does with the Alawites of the coastal mountains who brought his father to power. When Bashar al-Assad took over after his father's death in 2000, he began liberalizing the economy and society. High culture has boomed. Foreign imports, tourism and arts are being revived. Today, Syria is a wonderful place to be wealthy; life is fun and vibrant for the well-heeled. For the impoverished majority, however, the picture is grim. One-third of the population lives on $2 a day or less. Unemployment is rampant, and four years of drought have reduced Syria's eastern countryside to a wasteland of dusty and destitute towns and cities like Dara'a. The last thing wealthy Aleppines, Homsis and Damascenes want is a revolution that brings to power a new political class based in the rural poor, or for the country to slip into chaos and possible civil war. And: ...the only promised concessions that can be taken to the bank are pay rises for state employees of up to 30%, and the release of all activists arrested in the past weeks. Other reforms, which the regime undertook to study, are job creation, press freedom, permitting the formation of opposition parties and lifting emergency law. Should they be implemented, those changes would be nothing short of revolutionary. But many activists have already dismissed Assad's offer as a stalling tactic to make it through the next few days of funerals and demonstration. The opposition had called for Syrians to assemble in large numbers in mosques for a day of dignity and demonstrations. In order to mount a serious challenge to the regime's iron grip on power, opposition activists will have to move their protest actions beyond Dara'a and its surrounding villages, and extend it to the major cities... Full: http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2061364,00.html Nor is there anything in his latest article which I posted yesterday from Al Jazeera which suggests that the political solution which Landis favours is a perpetuation of the Assad regime without Assad. Moreover, he is clear that the Obama administration has never intended to overthrow Assad, another point of demarcation from those on the left who have seen the uprising as a US-orchestrated operation aimed at regime change. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Joshua Landis on the US air campaign against ISIL
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 9/16/14 6:53 AM, Marv Gandall wrote: Landis' 2011 article was written from the standpoint of support for the anti-Assad rebellion, You obviously are not familiar with what pro-Syrian revolution activists like Robin Yassin-Kassab think of Landis: http://qunfuz.com/2011/05/20/syria-comment/ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Joshua Landis on the US air campaign against ISIL
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 9/16/14 9:01 AM, Marv Gandall wrote: Thanks. I wasn’t familiar with Y-K’s criticism and will keep his “health warning” in mind when reading Landis’ material. But I didn’t see anything in his Al Jazeera piece yesterday which seemed to warrant your description of it as a “joke”. What statement(s) did you regard as over the top? I thought it might have been obvious from what I excerpted in my initial reply: Administration efforts over the past three years to cobble together an effective pro-Western fighting force from fragments of the Syrian opposition and their rival regional sponsors have been spectacular failures. I didn't say much more about these efforts because I thought comrades were familiar with my analysis. Here's a bit of it: http://louisproyect.org/2014/04/08/seymour-hersh-as-dorian-gray/ To start with, he [Seymour Hersh] likens Barack Obama to George W. Bush as if the rhetoric about “red lines” were to be taken seriously. Hersh believes that he was held back by “military leaders who thought that going to war was both unjustified and potentially disastrous.” I often wonder if people like Hersh bother to read the NY Times or—worse—read it and choose to ignore it. In fact there was zero interest in a large-scale intervention in Syria in either civilian or military quarters. All this is documented in a NY Times article from October 22nd 2013, written when the alarums over a looming war with Syria were at their loudest, that stated “from the beginning, Mr. Obama made it clear to his aides that he did not envision an American military intervention, even as public calls mounted that year for a no-fly zone to protect Syrian civilians from bombings.” The article stressed the role of White House Chief of Staff Dennis McDonough, who had frequently clashed with the hawkish Samantha Power. In contrast to Power and others with a more overtly “humanitarian intervention” perspective, McDonough “who had perhaps the closest ties to Mr. Obama, remained skeptical. He questioned how much it was in America’s interest to tamp down the violence in Syria.” In other words, the White House policy was and is allowing the Baathists and the rebels to exhaust each other in an endless war, just as was White House policy during the Iran-Iraq conflict. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Joshua Landis on the US air campaign against ISIL
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 9/15/14 11:29 PM, Marv Gandall via Marxism wrote: Administration efforts over the past three years to cobble together an effective pro-Western fighting force from fragments of the Syrian opposition and their rival regional sponsors have been spectacular failures What a joke. It should be mentioned that Landis has always been for Assadism without Assad. For Mr. Assad to help the United States, he must have sufficient backing from Washington to put greater restrictions and pressure on the Sunni majority. New York Times Op-Ed September 17, 2005 Don't Push Syria Away By JOSHUA LANDIS Damascus, Syria BASHAR AL-ASSAD would have been the first Syrian president in 40 years to visit the United States had he attended the United Nations summit meeting in New York this week as planned. And it could have been an opportunity for two countries that have notably tense relations to talk. Instead, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice delayed his visa, excluded him from a meeting of foreign ministers to discuss Lebanon and Syria, and had a United Nations investigator arrive in Damascus at the time of his departure. Boxed in, Mr. Assad canceled his plans. Ms. Rice's actions were in keeping with what Bush administration officials say their goal is toward Syria, to continue trying to isolate it. Many in Washington argue that Syria is the low-hanging fruit in the Middle East, and that the United States should send it down the path to creative instability, resulting in more democracy in the region and greater stability in Iraq. But this is a dangerous fantasy that will end up hurting American goals. Mr. Assad's regime is certainly no paragon of democracy, but even its most hard-bitten enemies here do not want to see it collapse. Why? Because authoritarian culture extends into the deepest corners of Syrian life, into families, classrooms and mosques. Damascus's small liberal opposition groups readily confess that they are not prepared to govern. Though they welcome American pressure, like most Syrians, they fear the deep religious animosities and ethnic hatreds that could so easily tear the country apart if the government falls. Nonetheless, Washington seems to be pursuing a policy of regime change on the cheap in Syria. The United States has halved Syria's economic growth by stopping Iraqi oil exports through Syria's pipeline, imposing strict economic sanctions and blocking European trade agreements. Regular reports that the United States is considering bombing Syria, and freezing transactions by the central bank have driven investors away. Next week, United Nations investigators will begin interviewing top officials in Damascus about the bombing death of the anti-Syrian politician Rafik Hariri in Lebanon, a matter that many expect the United States will bring before the Security Council. Politicians and businessmen alike here are convinced that Washington wants to bring down the regime, not merely change its behavior. Nonetheless, the two countries have much to talk about: both are trying to solve their Iraq problems. They share a common interest in subduing jihadism and helping Iraq build stability. But instead of helping Syria help the United States, Washington prefers to make demands. The Bush administration believes it will be an easy matter for Mr. Assad to crack down on the Syrian Sunnis, who are giving comfort and assistance to mostly Arab fighters traveling though Syria. On the contrary, it would be extremely costly for Mr. Assad. Sunni Arabs make up 65 percent of the population and keeping them content is crucial for any Syrian leader. Syria has already taken the easy steps. It has built a large sand wall and placed thousands of extra troops along its 350-mile border with Iraq. Foreign diplomats here dismiss the American claims that the Syrian government is helping jihadists infiltrate Iraq. All the same, Syria has not undertaken the more painful internal measures required to stop jihadists before they get to the border, nor has it openly backed America's occupation of Iraq. Nor is Mr. Assad - who inherited his job from his father, Hafez, in 2000 - willing to make a wholesale change in his authoritarian policies. But he has worked hard to repair sectarian relations in Syria. He has freed most political prisoners. He has tolerated a much greater level of criticism than his father did. The religious tolerance enforced by the government has made Syria one of the safest countries in the region. Washington is asking Mr. Assad to jeopardize this domestic peace. Worse, if Mr. Assad's government collapsed, chances are the ethnic turmoil that would result would bring to power militant Sunnis who would actively aid the jihadists in
