Why the Arabs don’t want us in Syria
April 30, 2016 10:33 AM   Subscribe

Robert Kennedy, Jr. brings some light to the subject: "They don’t hate ‘our freedoms.’ They hate that we’ve betrayed our ideals in their own countries — for oil."
posted by BentFranklin (32 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Poster's Request -- taz



 
Damn. That article does a very good job articulating a feeling I have had for years. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.
posted by seasparrow at 10:58 AM on April 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


An important issue, it's a shame the messenger is a nutty anti-vax conspiracy theorist.
posted by Justinian at 11:03 AM on April 30, 2016 [7 favorites]


Robert Kennedy, Jr.

Please.

Anti-vaxxer.
Writes an essay about oil, the U.S., Arabs and Syria.

Fails to understand that a) Syria is a tiny oil exporter (Ohio is probably a bigger producer now), b) doesn't really export to the U.S., c) has been ruled by Alawites for the past 50 years, who are hardly Arabs and certainly not Sunnis.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 11:05 AM on April 30, 2016 [15 favorites]


RFK Jr. says he's pro-vaccine - http://www.robertfkennedyjr.com/vaccines.html
posted by TMezz at 11:06 AM on April 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


Cool Papa Bell - does that mean everything is wrong? is he right about the CIA and the 50's? he's referencing other sources. Legacy of Ashes, by CIA historian Tim Weiner for instance.
posted by TMezz at 11:07 AM on April 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


I doubt it's been much different for any empire, but man Americans do double-down on ignorance-of-what's-being-done-in-our-name. Perhaps, it's that so many Americans are in denial of even being an empire that makes it so egregious.
posted by philip-random at 11:08 AM on April 30, 2016 [12 favorites]


Cool Papa Bell - does that mean everything is wrong?

It means that he's missing only the most important point. The Sunni-Shia/Alawite split is central point of the entire conflict. It's the reason ISIS exists in the first place.

And to imply the Syrian problem is at all related to Syrian oil exports to the U.S. is not just wrong. It's a fucking lie.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 11:15 AM on April 30, 2016 [10 favorites]


Except what the article talks about is a pipeline through Syria to transport gas from the USG's Gulf allies, not Syrian oil.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 11:23 AM on April 30, 2016 [8 favorites]


RFK Jr. says he's pro-vaccine - http://www.robertfkennedyjr.com/vaccines.html

Did you read that link ? He says he's pro-vaccine and goes on a rant about thimerosal.
posted by Pendragon at 11:27 AM on April 30, 2016 [5 favorites]


Alawites [...] are hardly Arabs

I'm not an expert, but I don't think you are correct that Syrian Alawites are not considered Arabs.
posted by threeants at 11:51 AM on April 30, 2016 [4 favorites]


If RFK Jr. missed some important details about Syria, that's one thing. His opinions on vaccines don't seem relevant.
posted by tobascodagama at 11:52 AM on April 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


From his Wikipedia page: "In April 2015, Kennedy promoted a film, Trace Amounts, which links autism to vaccinations. Kennedy discussed issues on April 24's Real Time with Bill Maher. At a screening in Sacramento, California, Kennedy described the alleged incidents of vaccinations causing autism as a holocaust."

I think it matters what he thinks about vaccines and autism because it reveals him as an irrational, uncareful thinker. I'm not inclined to take anything he talks about seriously because he has zero credibility.
posted by feste at 12:12 PM on April 30, 2016 [11 favorites]


Alawites [...] are hardly Arabs

I'm not an expert, but I don't think you are correct that Syrian Alawites are not considered Arabs.


If I remember correctly, there was a theory that most of those who are today members of the sect are the descendants of pre-Conquest Levantine populations. Wikipedia mentions this as a theory held "in the 19th and 20th centuries, so maybe its been disproved?

Fails to understand that a) Syria is a tiny oil exporter (Ohio is probably a bigger producer now)

The article doesn't present Syria as an oil producer - the pipelines in question would have been sending Iranian natural gas to the Mediterranean ports:

Qatar proposed to construct a $10 billion, 1,500 kilometer pipeline through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey. Qatar shares with Iran the South Pars/North Dome gas field, the world’s richest natural gas repository

Assad further enraged the Gulf’s Sunni monarchs by endorsing a Russian-approved “Islamic pipeline” running from Iran’s side of the gas field through Syria and to the ports of Lebanon

-----

It means that he's missing only the most important point. The Sunni-Shia/Alawite split is central point of the entire conflict. It's the reason ISIS exists in the first place.

That split has been there for centuries. As was the Sunni/Shiite split in Iraq, for that matter. And the Muslim/Catholic/Orthodox split in Yugoslavia, for that matter. If your contention is that the religious question is the reason for the conflict, it's worth putting forward a hypothesis for why that conflict ignited at a specific moment in time.

And to imply the Syrian problem is at all related to Syrian oil exports to the U.S. is not just wrong. It's a fucking lie.

Good thing he doesn't say that, then. Ever. Insofar as oil is involved, it is due to the role oil-producing Gulf states (Qatar and Saudi Arabia especially) have in influencing our policy towards states they're concerned about or invested in - including Syria.
posted by AdamCSnider at 12:27 PM on April 30, 2016 [8 favorites]


People. You don't need to go to RFK Jr. to demonstrate that these things happened. There's plenty of documentation out there about how the US has screwed with democracies in the Middle East, particularly Iran. Please let's not shoot the message because of the messenger.
posted by gusandrews at 12:44 PM on April 30, 2016 [11 favorites]


It looks like there's plenty to back this up in the references for the Wikipedia page on the CIA and Syria, for example.
posted by gusandrews at 12:50 PM on April 30, 2016


Wanted: Better Messenger. Please do not apply via Politico (which doesn't rank high as a reliable source on its best day).
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:52 PM on April 30, 2016 [7 favorites]


There's plenty of documentation out there about how the US has screwed with democracies in the Middle East, particularly Iran. Please let's not shoot the message because of the messenger.

Then you can use a better messenger. Having it be stated by a credulous idiot calls the message into question.
posted by happyroach at 1:11 PM on April 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


Hello BentFranklin! Congratulations on your first post, and thanks very much for your contribution to Metafilter!

I would apologize for the immediate and ongoing threadshitting it's receiving, but you've been a member since 2012 so I'm guessing you've seen it before. Still, way to jump into the deep end!
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 1:25 PM on April 30, 2016 [13 favorites]


I think we've established our opinion of the messenger. Can we actually discuss the message, maybe?
posted by AdamCSnider at 1:29 PM on April 30, 2016 [7 favorites]


Please let's not shoot the message because of the messenger.

Let's shoot him for the message then.

Having spent some time on the ground in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Tunisia - and as I speak enough Turkish and Arabic to get by - I feel confident in pointing out one significant flaw in his premise:

In general "they" don't hate "us." Yes, there is anger at US policy for talking about freedom but backing dictatorships, but we are not the center focus of 'their' world. We are not even close to being at the center. Almost all the violence we see is directed at other Middle Eastern parties; the anti American or anti Western violence captures the headlines here, but it is a small portion of the violence.

For the most part what people would tell me was that the US did not understand the Middle East, and that even when we tried to do good we didn't understand the impacts of our actions, and that we never wanted to deal with the fall out and repurcussions.

As for Syria, I never met anyone who thought the US wanted to intervene because of oil. That doesn't mean they don't exist, mind you. However, I met many people who thought that we weren't intervening because Syria didn't have major oil supplies, and that we would care more about the crisis if they did.
posted by kanewai at 1:49 PM on April 30, 2016 [17 favorites]


How much of the various Kennedy family trusts are invested in oil and gas companies, besides the ones the family owns outright?
WaPo 1979 story
NYT 2009
posted by Ideefixe at 1:49 PM on April 30, 2016


Wow. So many experts channeling George HRH Bush saying "It's not about oil." Can any of you explain why we've been actively fucking up the ME for the last 60 years, while generally ignoring, say, Africa?
posted by Kirth Gerson at 2:25 PM on April 30, 2016 [5 favorites]


If your contention is that the religious question is the reason for the conflict, it's worth putting forward a hypothesis for why that conflict ignited at a specific moment in time.


The best hypothesis I've heard is that we are still watching the fallout from the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. In historical terms, it wasn't that long ago. Considering that before the Ottomans the area was under Byzantine/Roman control, the Arab countries haven't been independent in a couple thousand years.

Personally, I also question how much the conflicts are about religion, and how much religion is being used as an excuse for ethnic conflict or as a smoke screen to cover organized crime.

Side: who's channeling Bush?
posted by kanewai at 3:23 PM on April 30, 2016 [3 favorites]


As I'm sure you know Kanewai, They Hate Us for our Freedom, was used because it's a George W Bush quote, not because THEY hate us.
posted by evilDoug at 3:48 PM on April 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yes, there is anger at US policy for talking about freedom but backing dictatorships, but we are not the center focus of 'their' world.

So true this, but the article is written by Americans, for Americans, and people are always concerned about how they look, and what people think of them.

It's the same everywhere. When I am talking to people in a new country, they don't ask about where I am from, they hold up a mirror. "How do you like our food?" "Have you seen our _____?" "Do people where you are from know about / like our _____?" Americans aren't special, they aren't different. But because Americans have their fingers in all the pies, people from elsewhere actually do know something about them, often direct firsthand experience of Americans coming in and fucking things up.
posted by Meatbomb at 5:31 PM on April 30, 2016 [3 favorites]


There's a lot here, thanks for posting. Clearly well-researched and documented, a bit of a long read but clearly meaningful. And unfortunately it rings very true.
posted by emmet at 5:40 PM on April 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


Gotta love the juking and jiving taking place here that allows people to ignore or downplay the horrific consequences of our actions in the general Middle East since we took over from the British and French post WWII.

The Syrian civil war would have been a non event if the U.S. and its Arab allies hadn't created a training and logistics corridor into Syria via Turkey. Assad would have crushed the revolt in about 6 months max. Not the best outcome really, but orders of magnitude better that what has transpired over the course of the war. In fact, ISIS would probably not exist in its current form if our intelligence agencies hadn't basically created it by causing yet another power vacuum in the Middle East.
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 5:46 PM on April 30, 2016 [14 favorites]


But because Americans have their fingers in all the pies, people from elsewhere actually do know something about them, often direct firsthand experience of Americans coming in and fucking things up.

That's a good point. I still worry that too often most Americans move beyond what you describe, to thinking that we are the central cause of everything that happens in the world, and I saw echoes of that in the essay, and definitely see it in this thread. For those on the left everything bad is our fault, for those on the Reagan-era right* everything good is to our credit. Both are painfully simplistic and narcissistic views. We've backed dictators, and we've backed Camp David. There's good and bad. There are good things that turned out fucked, and bad things that somehow worked out.

And shocking as this may seem, a lot of Arab people were glad that we helped take out Saddam and Quadafi, and were disappointed that Assad wasn't next. These were brutal men. On my part, I opposed the US Iraq War, and was arrested a couple times during demonstrations against it - and was horrified to discover that the war was more popular in Jordan than in San Francisco.

When I read essays like this, it feels as if the history is being selected to back a foregone ideological conclusion. It's all true, but it also all one-sided and horribly incomplete. It reduces a complex situation to a simple narrative.

*Hell if I know what the current right-wing thinks. If they think.
posted by kanewai at 2:33 AM on May 1, 2016 [5 favorites]


Cool papa bell,

Correction on the oil and gas production:

Ohio is producing roughly 39,000 barrels per day; Syria, at pre war production rates was producing 582,000 barrels per day on a reserve base of over 2.5 billion barrels. They also were producing 5.3 billion cubic meters of gas per day.

Then there were the pipelines.

Not top shabby; infact good enough that there were at least a couple of IOCs operating in country.
posted by zia at 3:24 AM on May 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


Of course, Syria's production is tiny compared to Saudi; but Saudi is the largest producer in world. Infact, just one field in Saudi, is the largest producer in the world...
posted by zia at 3:28 AM on May 1, 2016


For those on the left everything bad is our fault, for those on the Reagan-era right* everything good is to our credit. Both are painfully simplistic and narcissistic views.

This response to criticism of American atrocities has always bugged me. No one in this thread, or even the fpp, seems to be claiming the absolutes that your straw man response asserts. I think the main idea is that we as a country need to take responsibility for the things that we do. Also, that we should be doing less direct and covert military intervention given the body count that usually follows in the wake of such actions.
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 10:08 AM on May 1, 2016 [4 favorites]


AN ARAB KILLED MY FATHER

Seriously, that's what he led with?

Can any of you explain why we've been actively fucking up the ME for the last 60 years, while generally ignoring, say, Africa?

Fundamentally, it's because oil imports were tremendously important to the USA until quite recently and the ME was the largest producer. Also, you need to cross the ME to get from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean.

The British Empire basically collapsed after WW2, just when the USA was emerging from its semi-isolationist period. The USA sought to capture two strategic components of the British Empire: control of the Suez Canal, and its client-state relationship with the major ME oil producers. I think the USA's entire ME strategy can be explained along those lines.

The Suez Canal was until recently a strategic lifeline and bottle-neck that can facilitate or constrict communication between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. After WW2, Egypt's revolutionary government was no longer willing to accept a subordinate role in the management of what it considered to be an Egyptian asset. This precipitated (effectively was) the Suez Crisis. I believe it's significant that the USA's firmest allies in the ME are Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel. People think that Saudi Arabia is all about oil, and it may be, but what about Jordan and Israel? Look at a map: those three countries constitute the shortest possible overland path from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean.

Anyway, the British Empire was a classic colonialist power, literally using gunboats to force native rulers into submission. The USA stepped in at a time when that technique was deprecated and ME countries were becoming too powerful to be directed that way. So if you look at the USA's actions in the ME, I think you can find a consistent pattern: the USA simultaneously supported and constrained its "allies": it shipped arms to Israel, but forced it to retreat before making decisive victories; it forced Israel to withdraw from Sinai, but didn't let Egypt exercise full sovereignty there; it defeated Saddam Hussein (in Gulf War I) but didn't force him from power, thereby maintaining a threat to Saudi Arabia. That's the essence of "fucking up the ME"; it kept its allies dependent in order to keep its position at the top.

That being said, Obama seems to have been doing his best to fuck Africa up too, so there's that.
posted by Joe in Australia at 8:41 PM on May 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


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