Who the hell advised Trum to bomb Syria?

sculptor

sculptor

Valued Senior Member
Who the hell advised Trum to bomb Syria?
This from Tulsi:
What President Trump did was illegal. Not only did he lack the Congressional authorization to launch a military strike against Syria -- by launching missiles before the United Nations could collect evidence from the site of this week's chemical attacks in Syria, the White House has jeopardized the legitimacy of future attacks on chemical assets or the regime airbases used to deliver them.

Recent history has shown us where poor judgment and a lack of evidence or intelligence can lead in times of crisis. Add your name to my petition to stop illegal airstrikes and compel President Trump to abide by the U.S. Constitution and work with Congress, and our allies in the United Nations.

If President Assad is indeed guilty of this horrible chemical attack on innocent civilians, I will be the first to call for his prosecution, conviction and sentencing by the International Criminal Court. But the successful prosecution and conviction of war criminals in the International Criminal Court hinges on the UN’s ability to collect evidence. President Trump’s unilateral airstrikes inhibits our ability to gather the facts needed to present a legal case against the culprits responsible for the horrific chemical attacks.

The fact is, Trump’s reckless escalation of the regime change war to overthrow the Syrian government will make things worse for the Syrian people, not better. Have we learned nothing from our invasions of Iraq and Libya? The overthrow of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi, brutal dictators who attacked their own people, has resulted in hundreds of thousands more civilians killed, millions more refugees, trillions of dollars wasted, and the strengthening of al-Qaeda, ISIS and other terrorist organizations. We risk the same outcome in Syria if we overthrow the Syrian government. Additionally, this attack on Syria brings the United States and Russia closer to a direct military confrontation.

There is a reason our Constitution is written to require Congressional approval to declare war on an another country -- so the people of our country have a voice and so our nation isn’t heedlessly thrown into war without a clear goal, strategy and endgame.

The stakes of war are too high to allow one individual to unilaterally and rashly make such a grave decision for our entire country.

The chemical attack in Syria is abhorrent and deserves a thorough investigation and prosecution according to international law. Yet we cannot allow this attack to be a rationale to throw aside our Constitution and further escalate the counterproductive regime change war that has already resulted in the deaths of over 400,000 Syrians and created the worst refugee crisis in modern history.

What Donald Trump did was reckless and dangerous. As the neocon hawks beat their war drums, we must drown their voices with our calls for peace.

Aloha,

Tulsi
 
sculptor said:
Who the hell advised Trum to bomb Syria?
This from Tulsi:
What President Trump did was illegal. Not only did he lack the Congressional authorization to launch a military strike against Syria -- by launching missiles before the United Nations could collect evidence from the site of this week's chemical attacks in Syria, the White House has jeopardized the legitimacy of future attacks on chemical assets or the regime airbases used to deliver them.

Recent history has shown us where poor judgment and a lack of evidence or intelligence can lead in times of crisis. Add your name to my petition to stop illegal airstrikes and compel President Trump to abide by the U.S. Constitution and work with Congress, and our allies in the United Nations.

If President Assad is indeed guilty of this horrible chemical attack on innocent civilians, I will be the first to call for his prosecution, conviction and sentencing by the International Criminal Court. But the successful prosecution and conviction of war criminals in the International Criminal Court hinges on the UN’s ability to collect evidence. President Trump’s unilateral airstrikes inhibits our ability to gather the facts needed to present a legal case against the culprits responsible for the horrific chemical attacks.

The fact is, Trump’s reckless escalation of the regime change war to overthrow the Syrian government will make things worse for the Syrian people, not better. Have we learned nothing from our invasions of Iraq and Libya? The overthrow of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi, brutal dictators who attacked their own people, has resulted in hundreds of thousands more civilians killed, millions more refugees, trillions of dollars wasted, and the strengthening of al-Qaeda, ISIS and other terrorist organizations. We risk the same outcome in Syria if we overthrow the Syrian government. Additionally, this attack on Syria brings the United States and Russia closer to a direct military confrontation.

There is a reason our Constitution is written to require Congressional approval to declare war on an another country -- so the people of our country have a voice and so our nation isn’t heedlessly thrown into war without a clear goal, strategy and endgame.

The stakes of war are too high to allow one individual to unilaterally and rashly make such a grave decision for our entire country.

The chemical attack in Syria is abhorrent and deserves a thorough investigation and prosecution according to international law. Yet we cannot allow this attack to be a rationale to throw aside our Constitution and further escalate the counterproductive regime change war that has already resulted in the deaths of over 400,000 Syrians and created the worst refugee crisis in modern history.

What Donald Trump did was reckless and dangerous. As the neocon hawks beat their war drums, we must drown their voices with our calls for peace.

Aloha,

Tulsi
Click to expand...
Who or what is Tulsi?
 
sculptor said:
Who the hell advised Trum to bomb Syria?......
What Donald Trump did was reckless and dangerous.
Click to expand...

I agree, but Trump cares nothing for anything except Trump and image of Trump. What he saw was a primitive method of diverting attention from his disastrous performance at home and the opportunity of showing that he can be a big man poking a tyrant in the eye.

He probably had somebody get an atlas to find out where Syria is. Who was it who said that war was God's way of teaching Americans geography?
 
Xelasnave.1947 said:
And Korea and Vietnam perhaps?
I don't understand why USA needs to be in the middle east, is it oil? Is there a simple answer?
Alex
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Below is a quick list of reasons:

1) Reducing terrorism
2) Oil, our trading partners are heavily dependent upon ME oil
3) Mass emigration threatens the stability of our trading partners and allies
4) Humanitarian reasons
5) A stable ME and economically successful ME is less expensive to the US and an economic opportunity for American businesses.

As our technology grows we become more interlinked and interdependent. The days of the Barbary pirates are over. It's a much more difficult state of affairs today. Failed states are like a virus.
 
Xelasnave.1947 said:
And Korea and Vietnam perhaps?
I don't understand why USA needs to be in the middle east, is it oil? Is there a simple answer?
Alex
Click to expand...
(yeh, nam sucked)

as/re oil:
It's complicated
The oil belongs to private companies and there is a global market.
We import about 10,000,000barrels per day
We export about 5,000,000 bpd
(so we're still in the red)
Saudi Arabia and the persian gulf countries are in the mix.

(look into our obligations under the "petro dollar"dept. of state letter of agreement with the Saudis and most of opec)

It is a commonly stated goal from our last 8-9 presidents that we achieve "energy independence"

But, it's complicated.
 
sculptor said:
(yeh, nam sucked)

as/re oil:
It's complicated
The oil belongs to private companies and there is a global market.
We import about 10,000,000barrels per day
We export about 5,000,000 bpd
(so we're still in the red)
Saudi Arabia and the persian gulf countries are in the mix.

(look into our obligations under the "petro dollar"dept. of state letter of agreement with the Saudis and most of opec)

It is a commonly stated goal from our last 8-9 presidents that we achieve "energy independence"

But, it's complicated.
Click to expand...

Well here is the thing, the US imports very little oil from the ME. Most of our oil imports come from Canada, Central and South America.
 
joepistole said:
Well here is the thing, the US imports very little oil from the ME. Most of our oil imports come from Canada, Central and South America.
Click to expand...

Does it really matter where the oil is imported from? The ME controls the world oil price (true?)
 
sculptor said:
(yeh, nam sucked)

as/re oil:
It's complicated
The oil belongs to private companies and there is a global market.
We import about 10,000,000barrels per day
We export about 5,000,000 bpd
(so we're still in the red)
Saudi Arabia and the persian gulf countries are in the mix.

(look into our obligations under the "petro dollar"dept. of state letter of agreement with the Saudis and most of opec)

It is a commonly stated goal from our last 8-9 presidents that we achieve "energy independence"

But, it's complicated.
Click to expand...
Quite. I've never understood the argument about oil. Since there is a global market, and whoever rules these states needs to sell their oil, it will never be unavailable to the world. So I really don't believe access to oil can have much to do with this.

The USA's Middle East involvement probably has more to do with trying to fix the mess made by GW Bush (and Tony Blair) - which was to me an utterly inexplicable and irrational action.
 
sculptor said:
Many(most?) veterans seem to be anti war(or, am I projecting?).
Click to expand...
You are correct, if you are talking about philosophy. About how veterans run their mouths.

Politically, on the other hand, when the rubber hits the road, US veterans have consistently supported - with their money, with their votes, with their public support, often sufficient to swing elections - both Presidents and Congressmen who were warlike and belligerent, who favored building up the US military, who worked to build up the military/industrial complex and increase its influence on US affairs, who readily and preferentially employed military threat and violence in dealings with foreign countries, who undermined and downplayed and screwed up all other ways of enacting US foreign policy or arranging US economic affairs; and so forth.

Bought and paid Congressional agents of the US military/industrial complex can always count on the veteran vote.

So we see that Nixon, Reagan, HW, W, and now Trump, all received significant majorities of the veteran vote. So did the Republican Party, with its close collaborations and collusions. So did the Congressmen who supported promulgation of war, military industry, and the military/industrial State.

And we see that anyone standing for high political office in the US who opposed that pattern and trend - regardless of personal military experience, support of veteran's supposed preferences and issues, common sense in all other issues, etc - lost the veteran vote.

How strange is this? If Tulsi Gabbard were to run against Sarah Palin for high office, she would probably lose the veteran vote (doubt that? Look at Al Gore, John Kerry, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton. Think it's red/blue? Look at Wellstone, Mondale, and Franken vs Norm Coleman in Minnesota).

As far as Syria, everything about it that is evil and illegitimately violent due to US action - from the refugees to the jihadists, from the foreign policy to the wholesale Constitutional violations - traces primarily to W&Cheney and the horrible disaster of that administration. W&Cheney were not just voted for, but enthusiastically supported and celebrated and cheered and praised, by overwhelming majorities of the US veterans and military.

Twice. Four years apart.

The second time after - months after, not before - the nature of the Iraq invasion had become completely obvious. After Gitmo. After Abu Ghraib. After WMD lying exposure. After the civilian body counts had become public information.

If the evil of this kind of US behavior is to be reduced, even, the likelihood is that some way must be found of reducing the vote and political contribution of military veterans in the US.
sculptor said:
The oil belongs to private companies and there is a global market.
Click to expand...
The oil in most places belongs to Nation States. The transfer to private marketing hands is an interesting one - it happens differently in different Nations.
 
DrKrettin said:
Does it really matter where the oil is imported from? The ME controls the world oil price (true?)
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Whether it matters depends on the issue.

If we are talking about price, two important factors: supply and demand. The problem for oil producers is OPEC no longer has the power it once had to control price. OPEC has entered into an agreement with Russia to limit production. How long that lasts remains to be seen.

The US is producing more and more oil and natural gas. The US has been exporting oil and natural gas. That's good news for the US and bad news for other oil exporting states.
 
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exchemist said:
Quite. I've never understood the argument about oil. Since there is a global market, and whoever rules these states needs to sell their oil, it will never be unavailable to the world. So I really don't believe access to oil can have much to do with this.
Click to expand...

I guess you were born after the Arab Oil Embargo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis

The Arab Oil Embargo inflicted much damage on the world economy and the US economy in particular. I remember waiting in long lines for gasoline. Gasoline was rationed. Arab oil producers did refuse to sell oil and it caused big problems for the US economy for decades to come. It caused interest rates and inflation to soar into the double digits. Mortgage rates hit 18+%. The embargo didn't last long, but the adverse impacts endured for decades. That's why it matters. Even a short disruption can have significant long term adverse economic effects.

exchemist said:
The USA's Middle East involvement probably has more to do with trying to fix the mess made by GW Bush (and Tony Blair) - which was to me an utterly inexplicable and irrational action.
Click to expand...

That's a part of it to be sure, but there is more to it than that.
 
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exchemist said:
Quite. I've never understood the argument about oil. Since there is a global market, and whoever rules these states needs to sell their oil, it will never be unavailable to the world. So I really don't believe access to oil can have much to do with this.
Click to expand...
You can't see the difference between

Saddam Hussein controlling the world's market with Iraq's (and his neighbors's) light, sweet, cheaply shallow, and abundant oil - on his terms and in his chosen currency, for his profit and power, and hostile to Western oil companies;

and Exxon, Chevron, etc, controlling Iraq's market-setting oil on their terms and in dollars, for their profit and power, under a friendly government.

Seriously: you can't see any difference there?
The USA's Middle East involvement probably has more to do with trying to fix the mess made by GW Bush (and Tony Blair) - which was to me an utterly inexplicable and irrational action.
Click to expand...
Perhaps if you took a closer look at W's biography, political backing, administration officials, and cabinet (in particular: count the oil and military/industrial company executives in major roles - starting with President, Vice President, and Secretary of State);
and researched the Project For a New American Century, a fossil fuel industry / military contractor funded, wingnut libertarian capitalist assembled (Ayn Rand and Leo Strauss inspired), political influence organization that backed W and gained major power with his election;

you would be less puzzled.

US military invasion of Iraq was something the PNAC had been pushing for a long time. It was a major part of their agenda in working for W's election.
 
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