Mosul dam engineers warn it could fail at any time, killing 1M people
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
I'm surprised it's not blown yet, I was constantly worried someone would bomb it somehow, but 7 years later, it's still standing, so I'm unsure about any estimates given now - the Iraqis were fairly liberal in their estimates in 2006 (it'll fall by 2007) and the same predictions followed every year. Of course, they wanted vast quantities of money to fix it (and skim off the top for themselves) so there was some bias.
Check out the Haditha Dam too. Another large body of water held back by aging infrastructure further destroyed by looters who dismantled huge pieces of machinery to sell as scrap for $0.05/lb.
Would you prefer to be paved in gold or bombs?
Big Engineering like that might as well be politics. And this makes me think of the St. Francis Dam.
"It's Chinatown, Jake."
What movie are you talking about?
Don't forget the fact that Feinstein's husband was head of a doc at Bechtel Corp and she was on the Military construction Appropriations committee, they funneled a lot of money through that incestuous relationship.
She left that committee in 2008, which was plenty of time for graft.
I doubt that this was an innocent failure on their part. There was a huge financial incentive for these firms to find some way to validate this project.
Successive foreign consultants warned about the risk of building this dam on water-soluble bedrock. The risk was not subtle.
The planning documents for this dam should be scrutinized very closely for evidence of omission or manipulation of data, and the firms involved should be investigated. And if they are found culpable, they should participate in the costs of shoring up the dam. They have played a part in this mess.
This happened 30 years ago, some people might not even be alive..
I think it's pretty much a given that Sadaam Hussein, even back then, was a dictator who wouldn't necessarily put the safety of his people first.
Probably, he did not want to destroy Mosul and all its people. And even if this did not worry him, taking into account that he was doing this for publicity (either internal or international), he would not have wanted the dam to fail and kill thousands of people.
Bad does not equal stupid.
From : http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/05/tales-of...
Dictators are violent, not stupid. They understand risks, and make decisions like any other leader.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Census_%281937%29
I think it would have been a foolishly courageous engineer who told Saddam that his dam project wasn't going to work...
That isn't how it works. You don't just walk up to the dictator and troll him/her in the face about their project.
You discuss engineering merits/demerits, risks/advantages make a brief conclusion and leave it there. You leave the decision to the them. Its a totally different thing for them to neglect all of that and continue with their will.
But a good engineer would talk on the project's merit instead of talking about the dictators foolishness on the project.
> Samarai had detailed evidence to back up his views—photographs, news reports, numbers. The Iraqis could expect nothing more than swift defeat, and the threat that Iran would take advantage of their weakness by invading from the north.
And Saddam's response?
>To Samarai's surprise, Saddam did not seem angry with him for delivering this bad news. In fact, he acted appreciative that Samarai had given it to him straight. "I trust you, and that's your opinion," he said. "You are a trustworthy person, an honorable person."
Saddam didn't listen to him, but he also certainly didn't punish him for giving him the truth.
Certainly the census you're referring to is a sad example of political denial, but it doesn't say anyone was killed (just imprisoned, and while prison isn't a lot of fun, it's a far cry from execution) and my guess would be that the article glosses over a lot of detail, like meetings with Stalin where he said "Hmm, I don't think these results are gonna work, they're very politically inconvenient and must not represent reality. Fix it. Let me know if you can't, and I'll find someone who can." The statisticians failed to "fix" it and failed to inform Stalin that he needed to find someone else to conduct the manipulation he sought.
I understand that statisticians with integrity would decline the responsibility to change the numbers (though statisticians with a sense of self-preservation would resign rather than release accurate details), but numbers on paper are a much different ballgame than "this structure will literally fall apart and kill millions of people when it does".
Reports and studies are manipulated to fit an agenda constantly because they're so easy to manipulate. This happens all the time now and surely it happened all the time in the past. The nice thing about construction is that you can't manipulate the outcome. Something either stands or it doesn't, regardless of human opinion, threats, or insistence.
Step 1: Randomly select a large portion of the assembled party as enemies of the state / party.
Step 2: Enlist the remaining party members to execute the first.
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit!
It's a formula even more twisted than Hitler and Stalin.
Nine minutes: https://youtu.be/CR1X3zV6X5Y
I'm not suggesting science is apolitical, but I feel like there's some merit to "We wanted to build a broken dam because {political considerations}, but the {science branch} vetoed it."
Kind of like a Supreme Court, except informed by scientific knowledge rather than law.
Here's an excerpt from the "Martian Constitution" in the accompanying book "The Martians": """All laws passed by the congress shall also be subject to review by the constitutional and environmental courts, and a veto by these courts cannot be overridden, but shall be grounds for rewriting the law if the congress sees fit, after which the process of passing the law shall begin again."""
I found the rest here: http://pastebin.com/YeR74Yyb
(Of course, in the book, they've discovered a genetic repair mechanism that effectively makes people immortal, so I suppose it's still self interest)
> Because the dam was constructed on a foundation of soluble gypsum, the engineers recommended the implementation of a grout curtain within the foundation before the superstructure was built. Instead, to speed construction of the dam, engineers installed a grouting gallery that would allow continuous grouting of the dam's foundation in order to promote stability.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosul_Dam#Instability_and_reme...
So I get that it was not the choice one would use in hindsight, I can also see how people at the time weren't thinking "Well what happens if the government is overthrown and we're in civil war and can't do the grouting?" No, doubt if that came up someone said "Well if that happens we'll have worse problems than keeping this dam fixed! har har har." (as you can tell I really dislike it when people use that as an excuse for allowing technical debt to be created)
"Well what happens if we get invaded?"
"Not going to happen while we're U.S.'s best buddies."
"What about a rebellion?"
"With Saddam Hussein? Impossible. Iraq is a stable country."
That's quite an exaggeration. Iraq and the United States didn't even have diplomatic relations from 1967 to 1983. The U.S. did help Iraq when it looked like it was going to lose the war it started with Iran, but it was mostly intelligence aid since Congress refused to lift the arms embargo against Iraq.
ex: A spent fuel pool is actually really simple and 'safe' just add water and keep cool. That does not mean you can walk away and not touch one for a year and expect everything to be ok. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_fuel_pool
During my libertarian days, I used to mock the folks that suggested tariffs and favoring local companies in infrastructure projects were good ideas. I now regret giving so little thought to their arguments.
Now there's a name I haven't heard in a very long time...
edit: wiki link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosul_Dam, to save you the effort of googling :)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shasta_Lake#/media/File%3A65...
such an opportunity lost to call it SadDam
http://i.imgur.com/Fg847Xe.jpg
And for the size, even when you see the whole Mediterranean, the lake is still visible (on the right)!
http://i.imgur.com/5ktcQEr.jpg
The areas affected in Mosul, the location of other cities that are affected and the structure of the dam are successfully presented in the Guardian's article:
https://interactive.guim.co.uk/uploader/embed/2016/03/mosuld...
for example, clinton's iraq sanctions were one of osama bin ladens stated justifications:
UNICEF: 500,000 children (including sanctions, collateral effects of war). "[As of 1999] [c]hildren under 5 years of age are dying at more than twice the rate they were ten years ago." (As is customary, this report was based on a survey conducted in cooperation with the Iraqi government and by local authorities in the provinces not controlled by the Iraqi government)[35]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iraq#Effects...
Try to keep in mind that the average civil engineer has the same amount of integrity as you do. Maybe more because lives are at stake. How construction projects get green lit in third world countries often follows an unorthodox set of practices far removed from the engineers who are told to "just make it work". Sound familiar?
The professors game out 5 catastrophic failures. They range from a wall of water 25m high that would eventually cover over 50% of Mosul city (high) to a mere 34% of the city (best case.) Maximal water levels would be reached within 6 hours. Reading between the lines, I get the sense there is no serious and/or realistic evacuation plan. Not to mention I think Mosul is ruled by ISIS, so coordination with the Iraqi government and/or external dam repair personnel is presumably limited.
edit: with much of Baghdad itself under 4m water within 3 days after collapse. Which probably allows time for evacuation at least, though that's small comfort.
It will be the lasting legacy of ISIS.
Surely this is a factor in the timing of the US-led effort currently underway to retake Mosul from ISIS, backed by the Iraqi Army.
Just a guess, really, but on an international level, we'll know the truth. But, I'm guessing this dam(n) failure will be yet another successful recruiting tool for ISIS and the like.
Anyone with a head for middle-eastern politics and terrorist recruiting tactics around to respond?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpzvaqypav8
No politician gets to cut a ribbon with a giant pair of scissors when they fund routine maintenance. So why bother.
> At 10:39 P.M., a massive landslide of about 260,000,000 cubic metres (340,000,000 cu yd) of forest, earth, and rock fell into the reservoir at up to 110 kilometres per hour (68 mph), completely filling the narrow reservoir behind the dam. The landslide was complete in just 45 seconds, much faster than predicted, and the resulting displacement of water caused 50,000,000 cubic metres (65,000,000 cu yd) of water to overtop the dam in a 250-metre (820 ft) high wave.
> This event occurred when the company and the Italian government dismissed evidence and concealed reports describing the geological instability of Monte Toc on the southern side of the basin, and other early warning signs reported prior to the disaster.
> Numerous warnings, signs of danger, and negative appraisals had been disregarded, and the eventual attempt to safely control the landslide into the lake by lowering its level came when the landslide was almost imminent and was too late to prevent it.
and also
> On 12 February 2008, while launching the International Year of Planet Earth, UNESCO cited the Vajont Dam tragedy as one of five "cautionary tales", caused by "the failure of engineers and geologists".
Any other response is either unrealistically expensive/complicated or reckless.
Sure, the Italian company could maintain it if they aren't attacked by ISIS, but that is a big if when failure is immanent.
The spillway of the Mosul dam is made of concrete the problem with it appears to be that it allows too high a water level for the dam in its current shape even when fully open.
http://www.physicscentral.com/experiment/askaphysicist/physi...
Also what you're describing is literally how all siphons must work--you can't siphon to a higher elevation.
"Here we report an experiment of a siphon operating at sea level at a height of 15 m, well above 10 m. Prior degassing of the water prevented cavitation. This experiment provides conclusive evidence that siphons operate through gravity and molecular cohesion."
"""Extrapolating these results from even the most conservative experimental measurements of the tension under which cavitation occurs it is possible that the cohesive strength of fully degassed water is able to support a continuous vertical column greater than several hundred meters. While the experiment performed here did not reach anywhere near the absolute limit predicted it does shed light on the stability of flowing water under tensile stress and the possibility of constructing apparatus of suitable dimensions to test such a limit. (...) In view of the many anomalies of bulk water, it would be interesting to explore the physical properties of water in the negative pressure regime of a siphon above 10 m."""
So, as long as we don't break the water column by bubbles (or other impurities in the water that will lead to formations of bubbles on their surface) we could empty the Mosul dam via a siphon.
That's a fascinating result! We only have to remove the rocks, the fish and put the dam under high-vacuum for outgassing for a few weeks ;-). If we don't do that, the old atmospheric pressure model holds, and the siphon will be limited to 10 metres, 30 ft.
As long as you are below the limit, you can still claim that the "two sides" of your siphon are held together by the pressure extorted on both sides by our atmosphere. And only as you exceed this limit you'll require the water to resist actively to be "pulled apart".
Unfortunately this interesting property is pretty irrelevant in real-life situations where water you'd like to siphon contains dirt, rocks, crockodiles... And these impurities will make your "water cable" break as soon as (or probably just a little later when...) you reach vacuum on the top, at 10m.
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(1+atmospheres)+%2F+(d...
1. I didn't make a claim. I asked a question.
2. According to the experts, the clock is currently ticking down on a million lives with no idea of how much time is left, so your implied suggestion of doing nothing (which is the implied suggestion when you summarily dismiss a line of thought while providing nothing in its place) is... well, how exactly would you describe the suggestion of just letting a million people die, had it come from someone else?
Second, one would normally expect the force required to break the dam to be orders of magnitude larger than that required to open a sluice gate. Obviously this isn't a normal situation, but then, what are the figures? If a stick of dynamite isn't the appropriate tool, exactly what would it take to open the gates?
Third, if you could say 'we are going to try this at such and such a time, everyone be prepared' that would be far better than having it fail at an unknown time.
Fourth, now that I think of it, even deliberately blowing up the dam at a known time would be better than letting it fail at an unknown time.
Fifth, I'm sure there is some relevant idea or consideration I haven't thought of, that someone else could think of if they put their mind to doing so.
The main fear here is that if the dam reaches its design head, the water will tunnel underneath and around the dam through the water soluble rocks. The dam can't exceed the design head because of the spillway that is visible to the south east of the dam.
So explosives could well be used to force open the sluice gates.
This would make for a great Michael Bay movie, but real life doesn't work that way.
The article says only one of two gates has problems, but they cannot open only one because of the asymmetry that would introduce. So, to solve the problem with dynamite, it would be necessary to make very good calculations to be sure you make exactly the hole you want, then actually do it with a very high precision (for an explosion).
I do not think opening that gate is as much a technical problem as a problem of initiative and responsibility.
Easy to say when the sluice gates are stuck and the dam represents more than 10% of the country's already way under demand electricity production.
If it is, then shutting it down would cut off an enemy's economic resources and force them to choose between an angry population and attacking a fortified position against air superiority.
Yes, being without electricity does great harm to the civilian population, but less harm than a massacre-by-flood.
The circumstances of the failure are themselves instructive. Poor planning, poor design, ignored engineering warnings (and banishment of the engineer in question), inadequate safety presentations, a true monster of a storm (over 1 meter of water in 24 hours), miscommunications, failed communications, no downstream warning system, the inevitable dam failure, and a further cascade of additional dam failures, including many of which were blasted open with artillery.
Only a relatively small number of the deaths were direcectly precipitated by the flooding. Many resulted from disease and starvation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam?wprov=sfla1
The Mosul Dam could potentially dwarf this tragedy.
That's the first time I've seen rain measured in metres instead of millimetres.
Thank god the US military isn't competent then.
Again, the concept that "war is hell" doesn't seem to hit home for some people.
This is very murky territory no matter how you swing it
That dam generates a lot of electricity. In war, power plants are strategic targets. It would be an obvious potential target to weaken the Iraqi military and war machine.
So, the U.S. military studies the potential effects of destroying the dam. In the end, it does not destroy the dam.
Fast forward a few years, and people like you are condemning the U.S. military for...what? Figuring out that doing so would have resulted in many deaths, and not doing so?
You're saying that they shouldn't have even studied the issue? What if the enemy starts using it as a base of operations because they don't think it will be attacked? Like people have said, war is hell, it's unpredictable. Something unexpected could happen, something undesirable could become necessary. Without having information like this already available, sound strategic decisions can't be made. Then people like you would be complaining that they acted rashly without studying the issue first.
If you're saying that the very act of studying the issue is wrong, that's simply thoughtcrime, as well as incredibly naive.
And--perhaps ironically, from your point of view--the data and conclusions from the military study of the dam probably lends weight to the urgency of repairing it, thereby actually contributing to saving lives.
You've also neglected to consider that the dam could be attacked by anyone, including terrorists, competing regional forces, and (perhaps in Desert Storm) the Iraqis themselves. Imagine if Saddam Hussein had threatened to destroy the dam and kill millions of people unless the invading armies left.
Without knowing what would happen, it would not be possible to make a sound strategic decision, prepare for relief and evacuation, etc. It's better for everyone to know what would happen if the dam were attacked.
What you're advocating is naive ignorance.
Killing such a number of people in such a short time has been absolutely impractical until the last century. Only China, Japan, Russia, and the United States have been able to carry out such destruction and none have been able to do so in such a short period of time except for nuclear weapons in WWII.
People seem to act as if it means that you can call something "war" and suspend all ethics. Maybe if I feel like punching someone in the face, I could say "Hey man, getting punched in the face is hell. What are you gonna do?"
Maybe that's the blasé part of it that you were referring to.
There are people in the Pentagon considering all kinds of crazy scenarios all the time, so that when crazy actually happens the leaders can make a quick decision based on a briefing book that took a while to put together. It sounds ominous in the press, but it's really innocuous.
https://www.google.de/search?q=world+targets+in+megadeaths&t...
(read the title on the spine of the book)
[0] https://www.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v2_cha_chapter13...
[1] https://www.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v2_cou_us_rule42
The military considers a lot of things.
http://web.mst.edu/~rogersda/hoover_dam/Grout%20Curtain%20Fa...
AFAIK you can abandon the Hoover dam and it will still be there in 500 years. It looks like the Mosul dam engineers couldn't achieve remotely the same result given the soil it's built on, but there must have been overwhelming reasons to build it despite the risks...
https://web.archive.org/web/20140219214451/http://www.shafaa...
The whole thing is an utter clusterfuck. An American civil engineering prof is saying the sole possible solution is a cutoff wall that, by the way, has to not only be 800 ft below the embankment but is significantly deeper than any other such cutoff wall ever built. And it must be constructed in the middle of Iraq under a dam in serious danger of collapsing.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/03/will-italy-be-able-to-fi...
And finally another interesting article; the alternative to a cutoff wall is building a second $2B dam downstream. There's a good graphic half way down the article of the problems with the Mosul dam. Of course, that's not just $2B but at minimum several years away...
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/02/mosul-dam-engin...
> A second structure, the Badush dam, was started 20km downstream, to prevent a catastrophe in the event of the Mosul dam’s failure. But work on Badush halted in the 1990s because of the pressure of sanctions, leaving it only 40% complete.
EDIT: Your last link is the same as the submission.
Yes, Hoover dam is quite the civil engineering and project management feat. It's structural lifespan in the absence of maintenance (the turbines will go inoperative in months to years in the absence of maintenance) is estimated in the thousands of years range. [1]
http://zidbits.com/2013/05/how-long-will-the-hoover-dam-last...
If you wanted to know why it's so dangerous, it still doesn't help comparing the dangerous one with your favorite and safe dam.
Earlier news give more context, the Iraq and US official warning, now the former engineers are even more worried than Iraq and US officials who did make explicit warnings, which certainly means it's really critical:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/29/iraq-us-issue-w...
And the "explanation" is, the decision to build it was from the start political, not guided by the safety concerns:
"The dam, the largest in Iraq, has had structural problems since its construction in the 1980s. The Saddam Hussein regime pressed on with it in the face of warnings from geologists that it was being built on weak, water-soluble rock such as gypsum and anhydrite.
A report by a panel of Iraqi and Swedish geologists and engineers last year described it as “the most dangerous dam in the world”, saying its very construction was a “mystery” in view of the unfavourable geology. Before it was built, the report said, “all the studies expressed a clear concern on the fact that this region suffers from extensive presence of soluble rock formations that might undermine the safety of a high dam of a large reservoir such as Mosul dam.”"
And the safety-increasing project was started even 20 years ago, but the sanctions and the wars were stronger:
"A second structure, the Badush dam, was started 20km downstream, to prevent a catastrophe in the event of the Mosul dam’s failure. But work on Badush halted in the 1990s because of the pressure of sanctions, leaving it only 40% complete."
http://web.mst.edu/~rogersda/hoover_dam/Grout%20Curtain%20Fa...
and that that lasted 12 years.
Now imagine that there wasn't peace at that time but that people couldn't even get enough food and medicine, and that at the time this should have been finished some 500,000 kids died, like in Iraq:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omnskeu-puE
There was an attempt by Iraqis to somehow fix this (building the second dam) but as said, there were worse things happening.
I still believe that learning about everything that happened around the dam is more illuminating than the comparison with the Hoover.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7069109.stm
Salgernon posted the link documenting how much the US engaged (hint: minimally, compared to what was needed to fix the issue):
http://the-reaction.blogspot.com/2007/10/god-really-doesnt-l...
EDIT: Retrospectively, my comment is not necessarily appropriate. As much as the Dutch are good at building dams, it's obvious that the situation is dire and has more to do with security and military conflict. My apologies for being insensitive.
Oh :)
Not a cultural/religious phenomena. That is just a sarcastic way to ignore someone. This way of passive resistance is kinder (and safer in context) than to outright say "piss off". Everything is considered will of God in Islam anyways - from someone moving a finger to celestial events.
When an Arab tells you "if it's the will of God" or "tomorrow" you are most likely on your own, nothing is going to get done. True for most of the muslims; more true for most of the Arabs. Source: a muslim.
It seems pointless to continually fix a dam with such design flaws and needing constant repair.
And these people back in 2003 were asking for the USA-led coalition to invade their own country, topple the government, wreck the country's infrastructure, and leave a power-vacuum in its place? A vacuum filled in by local warlords and ethnic-cleansing militias?
I dispute the idea that we in the West have no responsibility here to help.
However, since we made such a mess of it before, what makes you think we're going to do any better with another invasion and setting up another unpopular government? The people in that region don't like the government we set up because the Shias are too powerful; they want a government like what they had before, where the Sunnis have all the power, and the Shias and Kurds get stomped on. Are you willing to give them that government? If not, you're not going to get their support, and ISIS (or similar) is.
You may claim that the West has a responsibility to help, but I claim that the West cannot help, and that there is no way for us, a bunch of outsiders, to make the situation better. Only the people there can fix the problem for themselves. We cannot do it for them. If we try, we will fail, and they will not appreciate it or agree with our methods.
And they didn't like all those borders we drew for them.
Ungrateful lot, I say.
Yes, a lot of this mess is due to the way the British drew the borders there in the wake of WWI. However, has there been any effort to redraw those borders? Hell no. The Kurds would certainly like to see the borders redrawn; it's obvious to anyone with a brain and some idea of the situation there that the borders are making the problems worse, but no one with power wants to change the borders. There's too many vested interests who want to keep their borders: Turkey doesn't want to cede any land to the Kurds (it has oil on it IIRC). Iraq doesn't want to cede any land to the Kurds (oil again). The Sunnis in Iraq don't want to lose control of the country because their portion has no oil. The Shias in Iraq would be happy to separate from the Sunnis because they do have oil. Saudi Arabia doesn't want the Shias to take control of the oil-rich areas and leave the Sunnis with a bunch of sand, because the Saudis are also Sunni and hate Shias. It's just a total mess, and pushing ourselves on the place yet again to try to fix it is going to be just as successful as the last time we tried. The only way to really fix it is to invade the whole region, take it ALL over (including SA and Iran and Turkey too, even though this could start a war with Europe, might as well throw in Egypt and Israel while we're at it), then redraw all the borders and set up all new governments run by dictators for a while. Obviously that's not going to happen, so the only sane alternative is to just stay out of it, except maybe for lending a little assistance here and there to deal with really awful groups like ISIS where pretty much everyone (including Russia) agrees that they need to go.
Russia doesn't care about ISIS - Russian soldiers shot down a commercial airliner.
> the only sane alternative is to just stay out of it
"Stay" implies that we're out and not going in. Cutting and running would be closer to the truth in this case...
Your argument is that we should just walk away from the mess we've created because it looks hard to solve. "Whups, pouring gasoline on it didn't put it out, let's take off and grab a beer."
None of these "leave the area to solve its own problems" ever include actually leaving, just continuing our meddling from a distance. It'd do a lot of good if we simply stopped backing the wrong side. We give Turkey a fair bit of assistance in keeping the kurdish areas under control, not the least of which is calling Kurdish independence movements terrorists.
> However, has there been any effort to redraw those borders? Hell no.
Well actually, yes. You know the Kurds - they've been trying to redraw them since the ink was wet. Something about genocide...
WTF does that have to do with ISIS? That was in Ukraine.
Russia didn't mean to shoot down a commercial airliner. They thought it was a Ukrainian military cargo plane. Of course, when they found out it wasn't, they tried to cover it up because they were claiming the Russian army wasn't in Ukraine to begin with and that those were Ukrainian "rebels". But it's not like they actually meant to shoot down a passenger plane.
As for ISIS, yes they do care about ISIS. Russia backs the Assad regime, because they want access to Syria's port on the Mediterranian Sea. ISIS threatens the Assad regime, so ISIS is their natural enemy, along with anyone else who threatens the Assad regime.
And honestly, we should be backing the Assad regime too (or at least now working against it). It's the best hope that country has for stability. All the rebel groups are Islamists, so they're worse for stability and worse for human rights and worse for minority group rights. This happens every time we topple some "evil dictator" over there: it turns out the dictator was actually very tolerant of religious or ethnic minorities, as long as they didn't try to overthrow him (case in point: the Yazidis in Iraq). But then we topple the dictator, some "democratic" government gets installed that's mostly Islamists, and the minorities get stomped on. Nations in that region need dictators, not democracy.
>"Stay" implies that we're out and not going in. Cutting and running would be closer to the truth in this case...
Any why is that wrong? We're not willing to improve the situation there, we're only willing to make it worse. Proof: that's all we've done.
>It'd do a lot of good if we simply stopped backing the wrong side.
Yeah, and it'd do a lot of good if humans stopped having wars, and stopped being selfish. I don't see that happening any time soon.
>We give Turkey a fair bit of assistance in keeping the kurdish areas under control, not the least of which is calling Kurdish independence movements terrorists.
Exactly. So how do we change that? Simple: we don't, because we're not willing to change that. The politics are too complicated (Turkey is a NATO member after all), so we're not willing to directly oppose Turkey and ally ourselves with the Kurds and promote independence there.
As I see it, we have options: 1) stop backing the wrong side as you say, and start working to improve things there, or 2) get out. Well, we're obviously not willing to do #1, we've been doing the opposite of #1 for decades now, no matter who gets elected President, so that only leaves one choice, #2.
>Well actually, yes. You know the Kurds
They've been trying to redraw borders, yes; what I meant was, has there been any effort by Western powers to redraw those borders (since the complaint here is how we screwed up in how we (after WWI) drew those borders to begin with. And the answer there is no. The western powers have done absolutely nothing to try to redraw the borders. Some groups there would like new borders, but other groups don't (the ones who want new borders usually sit on valuable resources that the other ones want to maintain control of), and we back the wrong sides consistently, so we don't.
But when they were found to have done it, it was covered up. And yes, because it would have interfered with another lie of theirs, not that it's a defense.
> Russia backs the Assad regime, because they want access to Syria's port on the Mediterranian Sea. ISIS threatens the Assad regime
As I said. Russia doesn't care about ISIS, Russia cares about a handy puppet state. If ISIS turned back-around into Iraq Russia would stop fighting them. If Russia kills more people than ISIS in freeing the country they won't care at all.
> we should be backing the Assad regime too
Hmmm, yeah. No. Shooting ISIS is awesome, helping a dictator is not. If we actually collaborate to help Assad hold the Syrians hostage, we're as bad as ISIS.
> Exactly. So how do we change that? Simple: we don't, because we're not willing to
Because you're far enough from the problem that blowback rarely hits you. If you actually faced even a small percentage of the problems you caused from it you wouldn't be able to lose interest so often.
The truth is that ISIS isn't a big issue to the USA as long as oil flows. You're not willing to - for the cost/benefit in this case.
> has there been any effort by Western powers to redraw those borders
No, in fact Western powers sold Iraq poison gas to avoid the issue.
But the fact of the matter is that isolationism doesn't work. Terrorists will bring the war to you, especially if you're perceived as having meddled.
Commit to fixing it, or expect to paying for more over time as you continually half-fix it.
You were trying to claim that Russia intentionally shot down a passenger plane, when it's obvious that they didn't.
>As I said. Russia doesn't care about ISIS, Russia cares about a handy puppet state. If ISIS turned back-around into Iraq Russia would stop fighting them. If Russia kills more people than ISIS in freeing the country they won't care at all.
So, yes, Russia DOES care about ISIS. If ISIS magically teleported to the Moon and turned into pink unicorns, then Russia would stop caring about them, but that's about as likely as ISIS turning around and staying in Iraq, so it's pointless to discuss such possibilities.
>Hmmm, yeah. No. Shooting ISIS is awesome, helping a dictator is not. If we actually collaborate to help Assad hold the Syrians hostage, we're as bad as ISIS.
And you're as clueless as George W Bush. How do you propose to deal with the power vacuum when you get rid of ISIS and Assad? Just let the other Islamist groups like Al Nusra take over? Great plan! Or no, I know, let's have elections and set up a democracy!! Yeah, that worked so great in Egypt, where they elected the Muslim Brotherhood!
And how are the Syrians being "held hostage" anyway? A large chunk of the Syrian population wants the Assad regime, just like a large chunk of the Iraqi population was happy with the Saddam regime.
You have three choices: back a dictator, help Islamists overthrow the dictator, or stay out of it. I don't see how #2, your choice, is at all morally defensible.
>Commit to fixing it, or expect to paying for more over time as you continually half-fix it.
You haven't actually come up with any kind of viable plan to "fix" the problem, other than putting more people like ISIS and Al Qaeda in charge.
I know what I'm trying. And you're wrong. I'm not claiming Putin wanted an airliner shot down. I'm saying that when Putin's forces shot down an airliner he kept supporting them.
In other words, Russia doesn't care.
> So, yes, Russia DOES care about ISIS.
No. Because if ISIS wandered off into Iraq, they'd be done.
>> If we actually collaborate > How do you propose to deal with the power vacuum
You want to plug it with a dictator? Brilliant.
> how are the Syrians being "held hostage" anyway?
Their dictator has ordered his security forces to fire on civilians.
> A large chunk of the Syrian population wants the Assad regime
Got a fair vote that shows that? And see below.
> just like a large chunk of the Iraqi population was happy with the Saddam regime.
Yeah, those in his good books, whose power came from him.
But it's irrelevant anyways because even popular support for an illegal government (ie, not recognizing human rights) doesn't legitimize it.
> You haven't actually come up with any kind of viable plan to "fix" the problem
Move the goalposts much? It's not the job of the guy who says "Stop throwing gas on the fire" to have the entire roadmap planned out.
You're the one who proposes we take an active stance - to shift our alliances and protect a dictator we'd previously told to leave power. You want to commit military resources. The burden of proof is on you.
Every nation gets the government it deserves.
This is a somewhat radical stance. When an armed group seizes the control of a city, the citizens don't always have the ability to fight back.
There are plenty of people who are risking their lives and have lost it in ISIS control territory, telling them they "deserved" it is really rash.
Let's reverse the point of view and let's take 1M of Americans. Do you think I will find 1M Obama supporter?
You have basically the ISIS stance, if you are living in the West, Muslim or not, you are an enemy and thus you deserve to be blown up.
Now with Mosul, we're talking about 1M people. That's far, far more than the number of active ISIS fighters and other staff in the city. Have you never heard of guerilla warfare? If a population revolts, there isn't much a poorly-led and ill-trained military force can do to stop them. The people there are not revolting, so they're either cowards or complicit (and likely both). The people always have the ability to fight back, even if it has to be done as a war of attrition (use makeshift weapons to ambush small numbers of ISIS troops). Even in Nazi Germany and occupied France, there were resistance efforts from the local populations. Ever hear of the Maquis? ISIS doesn't have anywhere remotely near the resources and training that the Wehrmacht had in occupied France.
Anyway, sure, if 1M Americans were threatened by a failing dam, and Obama refused to fix the dam and instead took actions to prevent fixing it or worse, somehow aggravate the situation, then no, I doubt many of those 1M would be supporters of his. However, Obama is also not a religious leader. Throw fundamentalist religion in there and that changes the equation entirely. Just look at all the Americans who resolutely believe that climate change is a "hoax", or worse, that evolution is (and that the earth is 6000 years old), because their religious leaders tell them this. That's likely what's going on in ISIS-land. So we could try my leafleting campaign to educate the populace there as to the reality and direness of their situation, but I kinda doubt they'd believe it. Not only do you have a bunch of religious leaders telling them otherwise, but there's also a human tendency to circle wagons around their own people/leaders (no matter how awful) and fight against any outsiders.
And "religious flamewars"? All I did was point out the reality of religion.
My post was civil enough, I called his comment stupid because I misunderstood it. Another poster, far more helpful than yourself, pointed out my error to me.
> Nice that you don't allow different opinions
Half the people who break the rules here resort to that self-flattering defense (the other half simply correct their behavior), and one needn't read much of HN to see how false it is.
> All I did was point out the reality of religion.
That's what every religious flamewarrer says. You can't do it here.
I don't see that he's 'blaming a million people for their own prospective drowning,' but rather blaming a million people for their current government, which is something very different.
I don't particularly agree with either his argument or his style of expression, but I believe that he's very much within the norms of HN, and certainly doesn't deserve to be banned for it.
That's because the comment has been edited.
The answer is - no, they are not basically supporters of ISIS. A few certainly are, but not many. They're people trapped under the tyrannical rule of strongmen who came to power in a vacuum because ... the people did not have the government they deserve.
If you're not willing to stand up and fight when a tiny number of people is oppressing you, then why do you deserve anything better? Who else is supposed to liberate you? Do you think that you're entitled to having a bunch of foreigners come risk their lives to liberate you from your own people (ISIS is headed by people who are native to the area, they're not foreigners, though many of their fighters are). That sounds like a pretty big entitlement mentality to me.
The power vacuum you talk of only existed because the people in that area allowed it to exist.
And yes, I do believe that a significant part of the population of their territory supports their actions. And no, their ruls is not "pseudo-Islamic", it's Islamic in the truest sense. Go read the Islamic holy books: they're following them to the letter. They're doing Islam correctly, just like every fundamentalist does their religion correctly; everyone else just cherry-picks the parts they like and ignores or whitewashes the really horrible parts.
Most successful resistance by populations against the government have had the resisting part of the population overlapping the military. (Conversely, most popular resistance where this has not been the case has failed.)
So this is, generally, already the case, but in a sense somewhat less significant than is implied.
I suppose if you have an entirely automated and tamper-proof, self-maintaining and reproducing, military with the senior government decision makers as the only humans in the loop the situation becomes a bit different and there becomes a qualitative difference where popular resistance can no longer spread to include the military.
I challenge you to show me any example of a government which was absolutely hated by its people and somehow managed to hold onto power. I don't think there is any. Every government gets popular support from somewhere, or else they wouldn't have an army to maintain their rule with. With occupations, it comes from the occupying nation. With places like Saddam's Iraq, it came from one powerful portion of the population that happily stomped on the other portions. With places like North Korea, it comes from a population that's been brainwashed into thinking the Dear Leader is basically a demigod.
Do they really have snow worth to speak of in Iraq?
"There is no permanent solution except building another dam,” Ansari said. A second structure, the Badush dam, was started 20km downstream, to prevent a catastrophe in the event of the Mosul dam’s failure. But work on Badush halted in the 1990s because of the pressure of sanctions, leaving it only 40% complete."
Since the US was effectively for years in charge there, since 2003, theoretically, there was certainly enough time and money to finish the second dam.
http://the-reaction.blogspot.com/2007/10/god-really-doesnt-like-bush-much.html
I don't have time for fun conspiracy theories, but I'm sure lines can be traced all around construction of the dam, through the bush family, back to infrastructure, etc.
Therefore not surprising, from the 2007 article behind your link:
"In a report published on Tuesday, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) said US-funded "short-term solutions" had yet to significantly solve the dam's problems."
To compare:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-war-anniversary-idUSB...
"Iraq war costs U.S. more than $2 trillion"
If I calculate correctly, enough for 74,000 such "aid" fixes.
That's why the info about WMD was faked, both by the US and the UK. The UK was extreme, doing copy paste of the works of students from the internet. It's an interesting read.
The UK articles from 2003(!):
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2003/jun/08/media.openup
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-159314/No-10-admits-...
"The Government was accused of attempting to mislead Parliament and the general public after it emerged a dossier of evidence against Saddam Hussein was largely lifted from a Californian postgraduate student's outdated thesis."
Those guys are crazy. Not very competent, but crazy.
One of the most interesting things IMO was how they used angled lights under the planes - shone onto the surface of the reservoir to make sure they were at the correct altitude to drop the bomb (incorrect height and it wouldn't skip)
Edit: fair enough, it might not be as simple as just hiring some engineers to fix it; I hadn't considered the location. But still: when the news event that happened yesterday is that some engineers were hired to fix the dam, I think it's a bit disingenuous to therefore run a story with a headline saying "dam on brink of collapse, may kill one million."
It seems quite against their self-interests to stop the work, but you never know with this level of crazy.
Shells tend to have a negative effect on structural stability.
On the the other hand obviously while they were holding the dam it was apparently free for all machinery looting season, which is not to clever if you plan to establish your headquarter downstream.