Page 221 - Proxy War News Today

Centuries is between the shia and the sunni. we take the sunni side in this war. we took the shia side in the iraq war. were irrelevant except for providing guns. its not our war. >> listen, youre arguing my points here. im simply identifying that youve got to show that there is a problem and a solution. my contention is that were going to make this worse, not better. i was one of three votes against giving the president the power to arm the rebels in the foreign relations committee against 15 o...

The russians and the iranians, but we would be effectively fighting them on the ground. second, he has not ruled out a no-fly zone which would put american lives at risk because youre talking about having to take out very complicated russian-built air defense systems. lastly, this isnt a six-month engage. this isnt a one-year engagement. even if you are successful at toppling bashar al assad, which i have doubts about, you then would own this government and the reconstruction of syria for perhap...

Weapons. its not clear to me what the mission was here or that they understand is it strictly humanitarian, does the united states have a vested interest in the outcome and are we in fact potentially involved in some kind of proxy war with the soviets or russians who are supporting assad. i think its important that assad go down. i think my instinct would have been to support the opposition sooner. if you care about it, if it was in the national interest. you had an opportunity sooner to provide...

This is a proxy war going on and the united states is arriving too late to the game to make a difference. >> to that point, this idea that there is a proxy war. reading your wonderful piece in the new york times, we know over 90,000 syrians have been killed. there are innocent syrian people stuck in the middle of what is now become a war where on the one side, youve got hezbollah and iran and russia. on the other youve got the united states and some of our allies, sort of unclear what theyre wil...

Political element. its tried to keep the military element at arms length. its now going to begin to resemble a proxy war like weve seen during the cold war. you have assad, russia, china, iran, hezbollah on one side. you have the opposition supported by countries in the region and supported by the west on the other side. obviously thats one of key decisions to be made going forward is how can you increase the capability and effectiveness of the syrian opposition without pushing escalating this t...

Then there was no action. now hes going to divert some light arms and some -- do some weapons training for some of these al qaeda muslim brotherhood rebels. at this point, im not sure, its kind of pointless. so, look, youve got a dynamic here where we could argue that, in fact, the obama adminiing these folks all along. there are reports that this is what benghazi was all about, that benghazi was a central depot where they were trying to mop up some of the weapons that we provided to al qaeda an...

And say, whoa, listen, we need to be a little bit more careful about this because syria is more complicated in a lot of ways than iraq or afghanistan were. and this is a proxy wartimes ten. its a proxy war with russia, iran, the kurds, the sunnis, the shias. this is not something you come in and out of in six months or a year. this is, perhaps, a decade and we could lose a lot in terms of both treasure and reputation if we get this wrong. >> let me ask you this question. there is talk about a no...

Massive amounts of of the population into the rural areas and the peripheral areas of the cities. these are things that cause this conflict. if we refuse to see it that way and see it as only sectarian, well only talk to the people who arbitrate in the middle east. >> at this point, that point is completely lost. again, as you say. now it is a proxy war. now it feels more like the united states and russia in particular at logger heads and it is unclear, a, what the end game really is. and b, how...

Because ultimately thats the stated u.s. objective. thats what the opposition wants. but as a result of what the u.s. is doing, thats being met by other countries. russia, china, iran and now hezbollah are sending their weapons, fighters and supply to the syrian regime and youre having a proxy war. >> thinking about, i mean, thinking about hezbollah-trained fighters and obviously the syrian formal military, plus the support, as you describe, from russia and china and from iran, if thats the forc...

Of the united states government, including lethal aid to oust bashir assad. that in turn leads to the idea of a proxy war. there are already iranian elements in syria. theyre supporting assad. the russians are on the coast, maybe on the inside, so this is a very, very powerful step. but its also a step that opens the way to diplomacy. assad has completely forfeited any claim to morally remain in power by the use of those chemical weapons. thats simply inadmissible in the 21st century. even in th...