And yet, even in the absence coherent rebuttal, you feel a need to be heard, Patrick.

US foreign policy in the middle east since the 1950′s is for chaos to reign. So they can then install brutal puppet dictators (the Shah of Iran, Mubarak etc) who share the very same countries assets with US corporations. Assad won’t play ball so US corporations instructed their puppets in the US Government to remove Assad. Even Obama acknowledged that the US installed the brutal Shah of Iran by removing it’s democratically elected President via a CIA engineered coup. It’s no secret as it’s all openly done.

Any rebuttal (or reply), no matter how incoherent (or pointless) should be responded to with either acceptance or refutation lest silence be misconstrued as conceding a point.

Really?

You must be exhausted from all of that typing.

@Kevin

Firstly that has nothing to do with UNICEF calling on the international community to save the lives of innocent children.

In any case since you took the time to reply I will respond.
You are almost completely right. From the 1950s onward the US competed with the Soviet Union for influence in various regions around the world. Their policy wasn’t for chaos to reign, but rather to install puppet governments with loyalty to them and opposition to soviet influence as well as absolute and authoritarian rule over their citizens. To achieve this they often carried out despicable actions to interfere in the internal affairs of nations and install truly some truly corrupt and evil regimes such as Iran which you correctly pointed out. These actions rightly deserve condemnation.

However, the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war changed the foreign policy of the US. Now instead of authoritarian regimes that are opposed to Soviet influence they want stable nations in the region to ensure the security of oil production and a stable world economy. Their ability to support stable democratic governments is severely limited by their deserved reputation of underhanded meddling in internal affairs for their own benefit.

On a side note, I’m not sure the US had much influence in Syria. The regime there was closely allied with the Soviet Union.

The US wants nothing of the sort. The have zero influence in Syria and they are doing everything they can to change that. US General Wesley Clarke revealed US plans to remove Assad as far back as 2003. It’s no secret!

Im sure a huge military active in many regions like the US has plans and strategies of how to remove a lot of regimes or combat any potential enemy.

The removal of Assad’s regime and the replacing with a stable democratic government was and is desirable. It wasn’t and isn’t realistic however as the Assad regime still receives support from Russia and wasn’t a rogue state (though it is in danger of becoming one). During the Arab spring his regime launched a brutal crackdown against popular opposition launching a civil war. The civil war attracted Jihadists wishing to install their own form of tyranny over the Syrian people. What is left is an unfortunate situation where support for popular democratic opposition risks allowing the Islamic fundamentalists seizing power and perhaps creating an even more unstable, brutal theocracy. It is a difficult situation that will haunt the region and the world if nothing is done to protect, care for and educate the younger generation and refugees.

Firstly Patrick, Popular opposition is misinformation given to you, the Arab Spring in Syria was the equivalent of a few hundred hardcore unionists crossing the border and going on a rampage in Letterkenny attacking civil services and servants.
Secondly, that the US has stopped meddling with sovereign nations in and around the old Soviet bloc/Caucasus regions is pure tripe, I suggest you look up the CIAs Operation Gladio for Soviet era subversiveness and Gladio B for the same post Soviet era.

@Golden Arms

Your first point is ill informed and a ludicrous comparison

Your second point however is much more interesting and something I was indeed unaware of. I should have said that are undoubtedly still foreign policies being pursued by the US that are reprehensible and self serving. I’m not team America either. As with any super power they require close monitoring but in middle east it is in their interest to have stable democratic governments, not authoritarian regimes that require their assistance to suppress their populations which always leads to instability. This is also desirable for the global community and the citizens of the region. We have to assess each of their policies based on the benefit for the local population ie. regime change in Syria and be wary of their polices that only serve their interests and not the people of these regions.

Patrick my first point is how they say nail on the head, I would chance and say I’m far better informed than you about the conflict in Syria, it is your good self who is ill informed I’m afraid and it is quite an accurate comparison, D’araa being a small border gateway town to Jordan, where the death squads have come from.
With regards the American Governments foreign policy it is in their interest not to have authoritarian regimes? How about Saudi Arabia & Bahrain to name but two, Bahrain being of particular noteworthiness, being by percentage of population the most popular uprising of the Arab Spring, brutally crushed yet completely ignored by the American Government..
On the other hand how about Libya? or Iraq? Afghanistan, all in complete tatters after their ‘liberation’ from such oppressive regimes..they coin it like that so that people believe them when god only knows what their real game is.

Right, we’ll assume we have both read up on the subject and have arrived at different conclusions about the legitimacy of the protests and the appropriateness of the response from the regime.

You are right, it is not in the interests of the US or any country to support the Saudi regime. Authoritarian regimes are doomed to fail and when the people finally try to end the corruption and abuses and the regime tries to maintain its vice grip through violence we get a bloody civil war like Syria which is bad for everyone. Like I said I condemn the US and any other nation for supporting the these regimes and cosying up to them for the economic benefits. The Bahraini uprising was woefully under-covered and the popular uprising was abandoned to it’s fate by their neighbors and the international community and is also worthy of condemnation

Like I said I am not team america but similarly I am not virulently opposed to their intervention in situations, especially where it benefits the people of the region and the international community. (But i’m no fool they are not just intervening out of concern for the ordinary people, they have their own agendas as well)

As to the last part of your comment.

The international intervention in Libya was to remove a rogue regime and tyrant on the verge of crushing rebel forces which came from his brutal crackdown on popular protests during the Arab spring.

The international intervention in Afghanistan is an ongoing attempt to remove the Taliban, an authoritarian murderous theocratic regime which harbored international terrorists who attacked the US.

The invasion of Iraq whilst its legality is debatable, was in my view a necessary removal of a genocidal tyrant and a rogue regime which threatened the security of the region and the world in it’s attempt to procure nuclear weapons. Inaction in Iraq would have led to continued evasion of UN resolutions by Saddam, A nuclear armed regime and a nuclear border between Iran and Iraq thousands of time more volatile than the next most dangerous (India/Pakistan), the inevitable result of which would have been nuclear war. While I would have preferred explicit authorization from the UN , I still think the end result was good.

At the same time I am not blindly following the US, they have carried out many reprehensible actions during the war and likely war crimes. e.g. (extraordianry rendition, the attack on fallujah etc.). They will have to held accountable for these actions.

However, I think the people of these countries now have a chance to build a stable and fair society, something they have never had before. They will no doubt struggle which is why they will need support form the international community to achieve this.

On a side note I am not sure how I got sidetracked from the importance of supporting UNICEF’s plea to US foreign policy. I suppose it is inevitable when discussing the middle east.

@Patrick – The US has zero interest in spreading democratic values anywhere let alone in the middle east. They only support brutal dictators who share the goodies with US corporations. UNICEF should cut to the chase and call on the countries financing the conflict in Syria to cease and desist from doing so and let the Syrian people sort out their own problems.

@ Patrick – You say “Afghanistan was harboring terrorists who attacked the US” care to substantiate that claim? I take it you are referencing 9/11 and OBL? If so even the US has accepted that there never was and to this day no evidence exists that links them.

Kevin I believe you are confusing the dubious claim that Al Qaeda was in Iraq with the certifiable fact that the Taliban were harboring Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and that Osama Bin Laden had almost his own state where they were training what could be described as an army of terrorists to carry out attacks on the US and other western countries.

Patrick, Al-Qaeda is a CIA asset, a proxy army for the US government..

Golden,

I thought you had one or two fair points in your previous arguments and you do seem to know a lot about the Middle East, but “Al-Qaeda being a CIA asset proxy army for the US government”? You can not be serious. I think I’m going to call it a night for this discussion.

Patrick – I never mentioned Iraq so I don’t know how you think I’m confused? On Afghanistan – In the absence of a UN resolution what right did the US have to remove its Government? As bad as the Taleban are they are no worse than the Saudi’s or Bahrain’s brutal dictators whom just happen to be US allies. On the OBL issue the Taleban, rightly, offered to extradite him if the US made an application and provided evidence that he was involved in the attacks of 9/11, which OBL denied, the US refused to avail of this international normal protocol for dealing with criminal and terrorist suspects and went on to admit that they had zero evidence linking OBL to 9/11. They decided totally illegally to invaded the country anyway. 13 years on and Afghanistan is a basket case. Looking at the facts of the situation one can only, regrettably, conclude that the US is a rogue state and that it has become the biggest threat to world peace in my lifetime.

I am sorry you are so dismissive of this Patrick, really is a shame because you seem light a bright young fella. Perhaps you are purposely staying ignorant of plain facts like many commenters on here or maybe you have been conditioned to be in outright denial of such conspiracies.