Syria

[JimboUK]

It looks like the French are having a change of mind http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/syria-crisis-france-is-no-longer-shouldertoshoulder-with-us-8790541.html

[HeyYou]

Wonder if he got some new intelligence that doesn't paint quite the picture he would like....

 

I really wouldn't be surprised to learn that the rebels gassed their own people to drag the various western powers directly into the war. It would pretty much assure they would win..... and it is a well published 'fact' that use of chemical weapons would annoy the various powers that be.... Assad would have to be flat out suicidal to pull that particular stunt with inspectors a few miles away......

 

In all reality, this is one of those situations where neither side is any better than the other. Assad had the advantage of keeping his terrorists in check in their own neighborhood. I doubt the muslim brotherhood would be quite so considerate.

[Harbringe]

The problem for those who are peddling the story that Assad did this ,is that Assad virtually on the day that the inspectors are arriving would carry out the largest chemical attack of the war in an area that is less than 20 minutes from the balconies of the hotels they are staying in , knowing full well that such an act would be the one thing that would bring the wrath of the west and change the outcome of a war that he is currently winning .This is beyond moronic .

 

And instead of providing some kind of evidence , any kind of evidence , they cite conclusive "secret" intel sources , while at the same time the UN inspectors there on the ground had yet to examine the evidence they had collected on the first day of investigation.Then you tell them to abort the mission . Telling us that its pointless to gather evidence as the gas used 3 days ago would of dissipated . Seriously. So let me get this straight you insisted that UN inspectors go into Syria to collect evidence that Assad used chemical weapons in attacks that happened 3+ months ago but this attack that happened just 3 days ago (at the time they said it) would not be possible to collect any evidence , whatsoever. They (Governments) must think we are dumber than doorknobs.

 

This just screams false flag , but its more than just that , its a power move to change the calculus of war and though those who make such gambits do all they can to hedge their bets , in the end its either your right or your wrong and if your wrong the entire paradigm under which you operate will change.This has the potential to be one of the great miscalculations of history.

 

I've said it before and I'll say it again , this is about a war with Iran and Syria is in the way.

[M48A5]

At least the Brits had the good sense to stay out of any joint operations.

 

The US has absolutely no business being in Middle East for any reason. Let them destroy themselves. Then someone else can go in and pick up the pieces. This whole thing is not about treatment of the civilian population but protecting oil interests. You see how fast the US intervened in Africa when the goverments were doing the ethnic cleansing. We don't have any oil interests there so we let them alone.

 

The news in the paper was that blood and urine samples of alleged victims were send to scattered labs. My first thought was they were looking for a lab that would supply the report the government wanted. I just hope enough senators and representatives have the guts to stand up and say enough is enough. No to Syria and get out of the other countries.

[sukeban]

I was laughing so hard yesterday at Obama after the vote in Parliament, it was simply amazing. The drums of war silenced by... democracy! what a quaint and utterly unthinkable idea from an American perspective. It may or may not be Freudian, but I am having some serious democracy envy for the UK right now.

 

However, said vote doesn't seem to have changed the Obama "I can haz war now!" policy, it simply ensures that his Administration will look like even more rabid, frothing, mad-dog warmongers than they were already poised to. Kerry's supposedly "revamped" appeal for why another war is necessary fell absolutely flat, coming across as the most vile sort of "appeal to the heart" propaganda ("the children... at their school desks!"), offering no new evidence linking the regime to the attacks and distilling down to the same fundamental argument used in 2003: "trust us guys, our intelligence just can't be wrong!" He even closed out with the classic neocon fearmongering cannard of "if we do nothing, sooner or later they'll use their WMDs on us (must be 'cause they hate our freedom...)."

 

In the meantime, American and British citizens oppose any action by a 3:1 margin and the French by 2:1 (not having gone into Iraq, I guess, makes them slightly more eager to bomb), yet somehow this is still on the table and scheduled to happen. As an American, I would pay money for somebody like Rand Paul to begin impeachment proceedings against Obama for this, much as Joe Biden promised to do to Bush in 2007 if the latter had attacked Iran. Obama has gone so seriously rogue on this, to the point where he is looking every bit as irrational and thuggish as the regime that he is considering attacking.

 

But somehow we are supposed to believe that he is so reluctant for this war... so reluctant... bwahaha.

[HeyYou]

Reading in the news today, the latest poll shows only 9% (that's right, nine percent) of americans support military action in Syria. But, as Obama has already stuck his foot in it, pretty much flatly stating that we are going to 'do something'...... he is stuck. He can either pull a George Bush, and attack unilaterally, and piss off most of the world..... or, he can back off, and Syria can giggle and point, and claim that american threats are hollow, and meaningless.

 

Quite frankly, I think it would be good for him to eat a little crow. Beats the crap out of the alternative.

 

Kerry NEEDS to appeal to the emotional angle at this point, because he sure as hell isn't going to convince anyone with logic or reason. Both of which seem to be in excessively short supply of late.

[JimboUK]

The problem for those who are peddling the story that Assad did this ,is that Assad virtually on the day that the inspectors are arriving would carry out the largest chemical attack of the war in an area that is less than 20 minutes from the balconies of the hotels they are staying in , knowing full well that such an act would be the one thing that would bring the wrath of the west and change the outcome of a war that he is currently winning .This is beyond moronic .

 

And instead of providing some kind of evidence , any kind of evidence , they cite conclusive "secret" intel sources , while at the same time the UN inspectors there on the ground had yet to examine the evidence they had collected on the first day of investigation.Then you tell them to abort the mission . Telling us that its pointless to gather evidence as the gas used 3 days ago would have dissipated . Seriously. So let me get this straight you insisted that UN inspectors go into Syria to collect evidence that Assad used chemical weapons in attacks that happened 3+ months ago but this attack that happened just 3 days ago (at the time they said it) would not be possible to collect any evidence , whatsoever. They (Governments) must think we are dumber than doorknobs.

 

This just screams false flag , but its more than just that , its a power move to change the calculus of war and though those who make such gambits do all they can to hedge their bets , in the end its either your right or your wrong and if your wrong the entire paradigm under which you operate will change.This has the potential to be one of the great miscalculations of history.

 

I've said it before and I'll say it again , this is about a war with Iran and Syria is in the way.

 

This is where Cameron fell down, he couldn't produce any solid evidence. He kept talking about making "judgement calls" in the place of evidence, no one in their right mind is going to go to war without solid evidence. When asked why would Assad do it when he's winning and there are weapons inspectors just up the road he couldn't answer, he came up with some dumb line about the strange minds of dictators. Cameron misjudged things badly, polls suggested the people would not support action even with proof, we've had enough. He seemed to be under the impression that if parliament backed it so would the people, parliament knew better and slapped him down.

 

I don't know the ins and outs of the American system, is there any way to stop Obama? can U.S representatives be recalled? surely there is a way of holding the executive to account.

[Lisnpuppy]

The President is the Commander-in-Chief of the military. However only congress can "declare war." What happens is the President goes and uses that power to do whatever military action he wishes...then has to go and cry to Congress after 30 days to get them to declare war or continue to fund money into whatever he is doing. They can, effectively, cut off the money after a short time.

 

The problem is if war if really what is wanted...and not some..and I am afraid to even use this term...surgical strike...then they just have to get enough crap stirred up and get into a quagmire that Congress gets stuck having to do something to continue it.

 

Now....all this aside. Even if Assad did this (and maybe he isn't so stupid to do it as he has gotten by with many, many things before and not been held accountable) the hypocrisy is truly rich. Tons of countries have all out genocide and we just shake our finger at them. Tons of African nations. North Korea starves and treats its people brutally...and we don't do anything about that. Why? They got nothing but kimchi. But lets put that aside also. The U.S., even if totally right...even if completely justified...can NOT AFFORD another military action. They just going to go and continue to deflate the dollar and print off some more? We just got our "credit" rating put down. We have debt out the eyeballs. Jobs have not recovered and the infrastructure in this country is deplorable and in some instances down-right dangerous. You want to take care of everyone else you have to take care of yourself first.

 

The people of this country should protest and revolt en mass but we are too busy watching Honey BooBoo and shoving McDonalds in our faces. Most Americans can't even find Syria on a map much less understand the political nuances of this situation. I have no doubt most American's will be too tired from fighting the currents in the bathtub to do anything about any of this at all. If the public does get riled up all the government has to do is toss out some crap about guns, abortion, prayer in schools or gay rights and it will walk happily away to bomb whoever while everyone else starts fighting and forgets all about it.

 

This is no longer post-WWII when American had a growing economy and was mostly the world's darling. We need to...as my Father says...keep out shovel in out own buckets and let other folks figure it out. We need to do this for all kinds of reasons but mostly because The U.S. needs to take care of the U.S.

[Aonghus]

Traditionally, (at least up until the latter part of the 20th Century,) Congressional approval was required to deploy the Army, but the Navy and the Marines belonged to the President. The War Powers Act of 1973 changed the equation, but even that gives the President a lot of wiggle room.

What troubles me about all of the war talk coming out Washington is what I haven't heard. I've heard talk of striking Syrian Air Force units and Airports, but nothing of taking out the Chemical weapons dumps and factories. True, these potential targets carry a fairly high risk of collateral damage, but use of thermal or incendiary weapons can go a long way towards mitigating that danger. When I was in the Marines, my specialty was NBC Defense (What we call WMDs today,) and that was the SOP for destroying (then Soviet) chemical weapons facilities. The main problem with chemical weapons is that they do a poor job of disabling or destroying military units, but they do a great job at taking out civilian populations. (Hence their outlawing in 1935.)

I sympathize with Lisnpuppy’s sentiment that we should just let them stew in their own juice. History, however, shows how short sighted that attitude really is. As part of a mod I’m trying to put together, I’ve been digging through The Internet Archive (www.Archive.org . It’s a great site, well worth checking out.) One of my finds was a collection of radio news report from WWII. As part of a news broadcast from March of 1938 discussing the Nazi’s seizure of Austria, there was an interview with Senator Lewis B. Schwellenbach, then the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. In that interview he made a statement to the effect that those events were happening half a world away, and despite the fact that international law and treaties had been violated, this was not our concern. He stated that the US had bleed for Europe twenty years before and we needed to stay out of the coming war, because it didn’t make a difference and we needed to “care for our own.”

Less than four years later, axis bombs were falling on US territory.

Teddy Roosevelt, “Don’t hit at all if you don’t have to, but if you have to hit, never hit softly”, summed up the danger in a situation like this. A token strike on a Syrian target not directly linked to the attack would be worse than useless.

[Lisnpuppy]

Being a student of history I understand your point and I doubt that the US can completely remove itself from the world stage...but we can not keep up doing this all ourselves. I am not saying go back to an isolationist state and though it is natural to compare this to any other military action or war..it is not. It is short-sited to kill your cow to eat it when you get more nourishment and for longer when you leave the cow alive. Hopefully you get the analogy.

 

The world was happy to put their heads in the sand with Hitler (though how they didn't know what he was up to when a wrote a BOOK TELLING THEM..I will never know.) Things aren't so clear now. I doubt they were clear then despite the joke I made. Looking back on history it is pretty easy to play armchair quarterback. Once the US got into the war it was after we had been attacked. The enemies were very clear at that point, even if who our friends were was not.

 

The fact is this. If we do not stop trying to police the world and fix our own issues, the US won't be in a position to help anyone anymore. Kind of like when you are a parent you know you have to take care of yourself so you can care for your kids...if you are sick and tired then they will ultimately suffer. How short sighted is that? I don't see the other nations standing up. Assad for whatever he is and whatever he may or may not have done...has ruled with relative peace for a long time. It is not clear at all what type of government would take his place should he fall. And the U.S. sucks at nation building. Sometimes you have to pick your battles and sometimes...yes even when bad things happen...it is better the devil you know.

 

What is happening there and by whom is not very clear. There is truth, lies, misinformation and just general confusion. What happens if we go in...again...and throw yet another nation into turmoil and increase the instability into the region. Where are the Saudi? The Turks? The Israeli? What of the Arab League that is always so demanding about policing their own? Assad isn't invading other countries. He isn't crossing borders with impunity the way Hitler was. I don't think this situation is in any way comparable at this time.

 

So yeah...on he short-term I think we need to worry about concerns at home and not jump to the military option. Why not put some pressure on Arab nations (who really don't want to see this kinda thing happen) to get Assad to step down? We may rely on those nations for oil but they rely on us for a great deal also. Turning the screws right now wouldn't be a bad thing.

 

I am not a pacifist. I don't look for war but sometimes I know you have speak softly and carry a big stick. I just don't think now is one of those times. We should be there because it isn't the thing to do...and we shouldn't impoverish ourselves to do it.