But this time I'm Really Really telling the truth.
The Syrian "Revolution": A Farce from Beginning to End
- Thread starter ExposingAmericanLies
- Start date
But this time I'm Really Really telling the truth.
Hussein also had WMDs in the first Persian Gulf War.
Which you will conversely support, no matter what that is.
But this time I'm Really Really telling the truth.
The Americans can't back down now, either. The strikes have to go ahead, or Obama looks like a pussy, and he won't do that. Power diplomacy: love it or Hellfire missile.
This morning, I admired Obama's cautious stance but if I'm thinking as a war strategist, has the US taken too much time to "respond?" Has the US' hesitancy afforded Assad too much time to restructure and reposition? It's tantamount to being a boxer and warning your opponent that a right hook is coming...think your "opponent" might be ready? :/
Like Bells my initial response is justifiable outrage as I watched Syrians writhing in excrutiating pain and torment. Just try to imagine your own children not being able to comprehend, why? What did we do? That is, if they were lucky enough to survive the sarin gas. Revenge is my knee-jerk reaction, I want revenge for those innocent civilians and then I start asking the hard questions as an American. What if anything will an American military strike solve?
If we are not going to take out Assad who may have given the direct order to gas his people, then what will it accomplish? In reality if nothing is accomplished but Obama having to back up his words with a few air strikes, then I say no for the show. As Geoff pointed out there is no winning no matter which way America decides this.
If there were some kind of way to weed out psychopaths before they were ever given the reigns of power! Just so heartbreaking and so, so sad. What to do? What to do?
If we are not going to take out Assad who may have given the direct order to gas his people, then what will it accomplish? In reality if nothing is accomplished but Obama having to back up his words with a few air strikes, then I say no for the show. As Geoff pointed out there is no winning no matter which way America decides this.
If there were some kind of way to weed out psychopaths before they were ever given the reigns of power! Just so heartbreaking and so, so sad. What to do? What to do?
Gage
Registered Senior Member
Assad is no psychopath. Hes fighting for his life. The situation right now has already been played out, whats happening now are moves that every one involved made and calculated months ago. The only winner in this situation will be Al-Qaeda.
psychopaths fight ONLY for their own lives.
I found myself agreeing with everything you said, here...
It is a horrble dilemma. The US cannot make a 'right' decision...either way...will seem wrong.
It is heartbreaking indeed, as to the atrocities still being committed by dictatorships. The needless suffering that goes on ...I will never understand this.
Bells
Staff member
So let me see if I have this correctly.
A despotic leader uses chemical weapons against his own civilian population (which is illegal under international law) and we should do nothing because 'they are going to hate us anyway'?
Would the answer be different if the civilian population were Christian or Jewish?
Gage
Registered Senior Member
Armed civilian population that is considered part of Al-Qaeda.
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
The French did a surprisingly good job in Mali. (A lot better than I expected.)
Yeah, Syria was a French colony for a few decades, between world wars one and two.
There may be a hint of that with Obama and his people. Some of them are definitely idealists, a bit unworldly and unrealistic perhaps, with a moralistic and at times judgemental sense of right and wrong. (Isn't that one of the things that the Europeans loved about Obama a few short years ago?)
Part of it is that Assad has violated Obama's sense of right and wrong. (Gassing your own people is wrong. It needs to be punished.)
Part of it is the fact that Obama boxed himself into a corner when he spoke of a red-line that Assad mustn't cross. Assad called his bluff, so now Obama has to take some action or else appear feckless and weak.
And part of it is Iran. Many of Obama's advisors are reportedly reminding him that he hasn't just drawn a red-line for Assad, he's drawn one for Iran too. If Assad can safely thumb his nose at Obama, then the Iranian Mullahs will get the message that Obama's red-line concering Iranian nuclear weapons is meaningless too. So the advisors are telling Obama that he has to take forceful action on Syria, so as to send a message to Tehran.
That's definitely part of it. I think that Saudi Arabia has quite a bit of influence in Washington. At the very least, they are perceived as a force for stability in the Persian Gulf and as a counter-weight to Iran. The Saudis are very concerned about Iranian ambitions and want the US to be strong in confronting them.
My own view is that the Iranian argument is overrated. If Obama does nothing in Syria, the Iranians will continue working on a nuclear weapon. If Obama acts forcefully in Syria, the Iranians won't be intimidated into stopping their nuclear weapons program. They will probably just double-down on it, seeing our ability to have our way with Syria as proof that Tehran must have a nuclear deterrent as soon as possible.
So I don't think that it really matters very much to the Iranian equation what Obama does in Syria. Iran will do what they want to do regardless. The only thing that matters with Iran is whether or not America is willing to go to war with them. If we aren't willing to do that, and do it soon, the Iranian Islamic revolution will have the bomb in maybe 12 more months.
I supported the last several wars that America engaged in. I even supported W.Bush when everyone else thought he was the devil. Why didn't Bush find the chemical weapons in Iraq? Maybe because they got shipped off to Syria. Anyway, I think we should sit this war out. Our troops need down time, our coffers are filled with IOU's, and I don't see any possible good that could come from attacking Syria. Nobody supports this war, except the French. The last time we were involved with France, in a war, was Vietnam, and look how that turned out.
First, we have to be sure it was actually the Syrians who used the weapons. Was it? The Americans officially say so, but their officials say that, unofficially, it's not certain: not a "slam dunk". Whereas for the Iraq War, it was a "slam dunk" that the Iraqis had WMDs. (They had parts and pieces and old stuff, anyway; it had the scent of truth but not the meat.) That's not confidence-inspiring. There's no external points of reference that would allow you to be sure that Assad's government was indeed the guilty party and I have painfully learned not to take the American intelligence services at face value any more. Actually I never really did take them at face value completely, but I did give them far too much credit. Mea culpa: and yes, I said it.
Actually, in a real sense, it certainly would be different if the civilian population were anything but Muslim, and the actors in this civil war (even those that the Americans are allegedly trying to help) anything but Muslim Brotherhood/al Qaeda. Because of those actors, whatever the US does or does not do, it'll be portrayed as not enough or too much. As I was saying, if they bomb, there will be civilian casualties. Inevitably. What will happen is that these casualties will be trumped up by the MB/AQ (win or lose) as more 'evidence' of the degradation/immorality of Americans/Westerners/whatever once that becomes politically more useful. ('War is deceit', as they say.) This will be true even if they're doing so to assist said MB/AQ, which actually is the case: the NYT reported that there was essentially no secular opposition to Assad a couple months back. The Syrians themselves (Assad's side that is) will loudly protest civilian casualties now - and who will care? The Russians, and whatever allies they can muster - but not the American press. They will become interested only later on, when the MB/AQ want to later decry the US - probably within the span of a year or so. (Byline: 'The hidden cost of the war', and so on.)
So actually if it were anything but a Muslim population, I think this would be less likely: but essentially because the MB/AQ are major actors (possibly the principal ones) in this conflict against Assad. As such, they'll happily let the Americans airstrike him, and then wail loudly about civilian deaths after Assad is gone. The Great Satan, briefly friendly to their cause, will be revealed once more as that Great Satan he always was. In the case of Christian, Jewish, Hindu or other non-Muslim populations, you don't have this constant societal lashing out provoked by the above bodies (or similar) and so in fact it would actually be easier to drop bombs on them, or "intervene" as various neo-interventionists would put it (how times do change) simply because no such body exists with such civilisational antipathy to the US and it's assorted cousins. So in a perverse way: yes, the answer would certainly be different. There are other factors, of course, but I cynically predict the above outcome.
Heh - some of them still may. The British have soured a little on him, possibly because of some of his political cuntery vis-a-vis old Blighty.
That's disgustingly cynical and quite possibly true. It's certainly within the range of pessimistic possibilities. America is now backing Sunni/Wahhabi Islamists against the Shi'te/Alawite connection? Say it ain't so, Joe.
Bells
Staff member
Yes, Assad would have bombed the area where the chemical weapons were used and then waited 5 days before allowing the UN inspectors in if it was the rebels or others who had used them. Sounds plausible to you?
The rebels have attack planes and helicopters which were used to deliver the bombs?
*Yawn*
Talk about giving the run around.
My question was simple. Would it be different if the victims of the attack were Christian or Jewish?
To which, through that contortion of answer, you would say yes, it would be different if the victims were not Muslim.
Which I think lies at the root of the world's response to this issue. People don't want the West to intervene and use a few missiles because Assad's opposition are Muslims.
It's about what they would say, although I don't recall their formally denying it before. Odds are they're lying, although how would we know?
Apparently the American evidence is communications among Syrian military brass. It's the most nebulous of evidence, but I wouldn't mind seeing it. Maybe the outcome of intelligence decisions should be voted on by an American above the IQ line, since inevitably their calls put everyone else's balls in the fire.
I'm just hoping the threat of force makes Assad see sense and take a look at a political solution.
I don't know how the bombs were delivered, but I think the delay is in fact one of the salient points against Assad. I don't think the moustachioed dentist could well explain it. That being said, we've been down this road before, haven't we? And it has further implications, doesn't it? If we go by that standard, then Iran must utterly be producing nuclear weapons, given how many times they've kicked out inspectors. In that instance I would still want further confirmation before acting on Iran (although the Israelis, being closer, have a much lower threshold).
Oh, heavens above, I'm sorry - do I bore you with my clear and well-thought-out dialectic on this point? Well by all means, don't read the response then and particularly don't absorb the context. Just simplify it down into the point you want to make and repost that, then. Look, twit - what's going to happen is another Egypt. And it's not certain that the Syrians actually did it. This WP article alleges that the Americans watched the entire process unfold, all via radio intercepts apparently. My question is why they didn't act then. A phonecall to Assad might have halted the entire thing. And there's no external confirmation. This Reuters article alleges as many as fourteen chemical attack incidents under investigation previously. This one isn't the first atrocity in this war but is the largest and it is now that the Americans get involved, since Syria has crossed Obama's 'red line'. War crimes up to that line were okay.
The idea that Assad didn't do it because it would be stupid doesn't stack up.
Since when did leaders, of any variety, not do something because it was stupid?
Since when did leaders, of any variety, not do something because it was stupid?