It's About To Hit The Fan


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Fergie wrote:
Well, the reasons publicly given for starting a war are usually different then the actual reason.

Ahem. Politicians lie about the proximate causes but the ultimate causes are usually pretty obvious even without hindsight.

In which of those incidents did less than 10% of the population not figure out why the war was really happening? "Its top secret" and "it's what the politicians say it is" aren't the only answers, "examine it with the lens of real politik" doesn't require any insider info and usually turns up the reason pretty quickly.

Just off the top of my head:
Viet Nam - Gulf of Tonkin incident: Dad remembers people saying that was bull

Gulf War I - Iraqi soldiers tossing Kuawaiti babies out of incubators: I'm old enough to remember people walking out of school because that was bull.

Afghanistan - Get the guys who killed themselves crashing planes into towers and Pentagon: ... we were really after...?

Quote:

Gulf War II - WMD.

Everyone knew that was bull.

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Lost Omens, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Would just like to note that the WMD claims were not widely considered lies/nonsense at the time. Powell literally addressed the UN over them, there was skepticism from the some quarters but the reason invoking that lie was such an effective criticism of Bush later in his presidency is *because* so many people believed it at the time.


BigNorseWolf wrote:
Fergie wrote:
Well, the reasons publicly given for starting a war are usually different then the actual reason.

Ahem. Politicians lie about the proximate causes but the ultimate causes are usually pretty obvious even without hindsight.

In which of those incidents did less than 10% of the population not figure out why the war was really happening? "Its top secret" and "it's what the politicians say it is" aren't the only answers, "examine it with the lens of real politik" doesn't require any insider info and usually turns up the reason pretty quickly.

Just off the top of my head:
Viet Nam - Gulf of Tonkin incident: Dad remembers people saying that was bull

Gulf War I - Iraqi soldiers tossing Kuawaiti babies out of incubators: I'm old enough to remember people walking out of school because that was bull.

Afghanistan - Get the guys who killed themselves crashing planes into towers and Pentagon: ... we were really after...?

Quote:
Gulf War II - WMD.
Everyone knew that was bull.

Given that well over 10% of the populace believed Saddam Hussein was involved in 911 even 10 years after the fact, I'm not sure it's quite that obvious.

Obvious to many perhaps, but hardly to vast majorities.
Even here, while I suspect we'd mostly agree those stated reasons were bull, I bet we'd have some arguments over what the actual reasons were.


CrusaderWolf wrote:
Would just like to note that the WMD claims were not widely considered lies/nonsense at the time.

What are you considering widely?

It wasn't just a few people in the government and hackers intercepting top secret information that called the WMD's somewhere between malarky and an excuse. Republicans had plans to invade iraq and carve it up for oil companies since kissinger was in power. Half the US and seemingly 3/4s of the internet were calling it bull.

Fooling half the people is not the same as top secret.


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Oh no. Afghanistan wasn't about getting the 9/11 people. At the time, one of the most repeated reasons was the situation of women there... just like it was the primary reason for Soviet intervention a bit earlier. Good thing both of these wars happened too, otherwise women if Afghanistan would have a truly bad situation today.

Silver Crusade

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Pathfinder Lost Omens, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

There's no need to get defensive. You said, in regards to the WMD in Iraq claims, "Everyone knew that was bull." That's a smidgeon revisionist.

Gallup (March 2003) wrote:
...almost 9 out of 10 Americans believe it is at least somewhat likely that the United States will find conclusive evidence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction or the facilities to develop them.

March 2003 Poll

2/3 of Americans Think Iraq had WMDs (June 2003)

And (about halfway down the question list) "Do you think the Bush administration deliberately misled the American public about whether Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, or not?" The numbers who think it was deliberate lying didn't break 50% until after 2005. Gallup Polls on Iraq

Maybe your internet circles were skeptical the whole time, but most people bought into the WMD thing to one degree or another.


crusader wolf wrote:
There's no need to get defensive

I'm getting annoyed because people aren't reading what i wrote and then getting nit picky about what they read.

33% of the american public, 100 million people, is hardly top secret. (thats even if you make "iraq has WMD'd" and "we're going in for the WMD's not the oil" mutually exclusive catagories)

The general point that our leaders are making broad policy decisions based off of top secret, no one can possibly know information (and the implication that we have to trust them) is bunk. You can lie about a country and what it's doing but you can't hide it.


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BigNorseWolf wrote:

33% of the american public, 100 million people, is hardly top secret.

The general point that our leaders are making broad policy decisions based off of top secret, no one can possibly know information (and the implication that we have to trust them) is bunk. You can lie about a country and what it's doing but you can't hide it.

Well, it's theoretically possible they were lying but actually had top secret reasons, which we still wouldn't know because top secret.

Not bloody likely, but tearing down the lie doesn't show it.

And even less likely in Trump's case, since he pretty much ignores intelligence briefings anyways and has already made at least one major claim that many pretended just must be sourced in secret intelligence, which all the intelligence agencies have denied.


Bush gave a bunch of reasons why we should invade Iraq. It's revisionism to pretend WMDs were THE reason. Furthermore, Saddam had already PROVED he had WMDs by using gas on the Kurds.


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whew wrote:
Bush gave a bunch of reasons why we should invade Iraq. It's revisionism to pretend WMDs were THE reason. Furthermore, Saddam had already PROVED he had WMDs by using gas on the Kurds.

More than a decade and years of inspections earlier.


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whew wrote:
Bush gave a bunch of reasons why we should invade Iraq. It's revisionism to pretend WMDs were THE reason. Furthermore, Saddam had already PROVED he had WMDs by using gas on the Kurds.

In 1988 Yes. 15 years before the 2003 invasion. Before the first iraq war. He had checmical weapons. We know that because we still have the receipt: we gave him those weapons to fight iran. The idea that we were suddenly going to invade him for having chemical weapons at that point was rightly panned as "seriously?" by a good chunk of the population.

So without going all double secret probation, whats up with the missile strikes?

1) We genuinely don't like it when people use chemical weapons on civilians.

2) We really don't like people having chemical weapons because they're effective against our armies in ways that traditional forces aren't.

3) We don't like russia, russia likes assaad, therefore we don't like assaad by default.

4) If you can't use chemical weapons there's no point in making them. If you don't make them, you don't leave them around for Al queda, isil (al qeuda 2.0), or whatever al queda 3.0 crops up after isil goes under. (and al queda 3.0 is an inevitability)

5)We don't like chemical weapons because they destabalize the region and world, and we like how the world looks from the top.

1) might be enough for action on it's own: the world has changed since 1988. We're more interconnected. That alone might be reason enough to intervene. Or it could be that we don't like 1 enough to intervene when it's someone elses strongman.


6) Trump is incredibly impulsive, and the actual footage of people dying from sarin gas moved him in ways a simple report never would have.

Whether he even lashed out at the right target is entirely up in the air.

Edit: Always keep in mind that Trump is a man who has access to the Pentagon, the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, and other intelligence agencies, and his preferred sources of "intel" are still Breitbart and Infowars.


Zhangar wrote:
6) Trump is incredibly impulsive, and the actual footage of people dying from sarin gas moved him in ways a simple report never would have.

Incredibly impulsive would have been asaads palace.

Quote:
Whether he even lashed out at the right target is entirely up in the air.

They could be lying, but apparently they have footage of the plane in question in the area right before the attack and

Quote:
Edit: Always keep in mind that Trump is a man who has access to the Pentagon, the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, and other intelligence agencies, and his preferred sources of "intel" are still Breitbart and Infowars.

None of those, IIRC, are for intervention. They're heavily american first and isolationist.


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1) I really doubt Trump cares about civilians. These are the same people he thinks far to dangerous to allow in as refugees. Leave them there to die. The quotes from him denouncing Obama's threatened attack back in 2013 are all over the net today.

2) As I understand it, they're far more effective on civilians (and poorly equipped rebel or jihadi irregulars) than on modern armies. Air power and armor ignore them. Ground forces are annoyed by them since they have to use the protective gear.

3) OTOH: war with Assad risks war with Russia, which is bad. Really, really bad. OTGH, he warned Russia and Russia may have warned Syria. Makes me suspicious about all this.

6) What better than an attack on a Russian pawn to counter the accusations of Russian influence?


How about:
1) This event gives as an opportunity to start down the road to full intervention in Syria, which we would like to do so that a government more amenable to establishing a very important pipeline can be put in place. At the moment, that Assad has almost won his civil war, but perhaps we'll be able to steer events our way after all. And as a bonus, we seem like we care about people being gassed to death, even if we or our allies in the region have far more motive for carrying out the chemical attack than Russia and Assad.

Something like that?


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As I said, we're all quite certain everyone is lying about the real motives, but have very different ideas about what's really going on.

Dark Archive

The US is still part of NATO, so if it ever where to go to war with Russia, its all of NATO that goes to war. Which would be very bad indeed.

Sovereign Court

We still don't know that it was al-Assad's forces that launched the chemical attack, or indeed, if it was actually a chemical attack in the first place. I remember hearing that the last attack might have been carried out by militants and this one, as al-Assad's forces are coming close to finishing off the resistance, does seem really suspect. Obama may have seen something in intelligence briefings to lead him to dial down the war talk but Trump doesn't seem to be waiting too long here before reacting. I'm no fan of al-Assad but the timing of this does seem fishy.


ulgulanoth wrote:
The US is still part of NATO, so if it ever where to go to war with Russia, its all of NATO that goes to war. Which would be very bad indeed.

I'm not sure NATO vs Russia is noticeably worse than the US vs Russia.

And theoretically, NATO is only bound to help us, if we are attacked. If we attack Russia, they are not bound to join in. That's likely moot though.


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Guy Humual wrote:
We still don't know that it was al-Assad's forces that launched the chemical attack, or indeed, if it was actually a chemical attack in the first place. I remember hearing that the last attack might have been carried out by militants and this one, as al-Assad's forces are coming close to finishing off the resistance, does seem really suspect. Obama may have seen something in intelligence briefings to lead him to dial down the war talk but Trump doesn't seem to be waiting too long here before reacting. I'm no fan of al-Assad but the timing of this does seem fishy.

Pick your favorite conspiracy theory and disprove BNW's hypothesis that it's obvious why the war is really happening. :)

Sovereign Court

It's entirely possible that someone in al-Assad's side is responsible, but the timing is really strange, and regime change has been on the table in Syria for a long time now. I have heard that a pipeline from Saudi Arabia to the Mediterranean has been the goal for some time, and such a pipeline would need to go through Syria. Naturally Russia and al-Assad aren't interested and so much of this war is likely being funded by the Saudis. This would explain the willingness of the US to getting pulled into this war despite the fact that Syria itself doesn't have any natural resources for the US to exploit.

So that's my favorite conspiracy theory

Liberty's Edge

The Kremlin's response to this was remarkably, almost unbelievably tepid.


thejeff wrote:

Pick your favorite conspiracy theory and disprove BNW's hypothesis that it's obvious why the war is really happening. :)

That would work if the different reasons were mutually exclusive rather than a volatile interacting chemical mixture.


Shisumo wrote:
The Kremlin's response to this was remarkably, almost unbelievably tepid.

They don't like chemical weapons for most of the same reasons we don't.


thejeff wrote:
1) I really doubt Trump cares about civilians. These are the same people he thinks far to dangerous to allow in as refugees. Leave them there to die. The quotes from him denouncing Obama's threatened attack back in 2013 are all over the net today.

It's very hard to separate what trump is saying that's at complete odds with what he's thinking, from what trump is thinking that is at complete odds with what trump is thinking. It's like he's running on cognitive dissonance.

It may be damnation by faint praise, but it takes a certain level of sociopathy not to feel for kids dying from chemical warfare that I don't think he has. His monkeysphere may not be able to process the fact that "10,000 refugees" are in fact 10,000 individual people with hopes and dreams and how hard it is to live in a rapidly desertifying warzone, but I think he can get that kids dying from chemical warfare is bad.

2) As I understand it, they're far more effective on civilians (and poorly equipped rebel or jihadi irregulars) than on modern armies. Air power and armor ignore them. Ground forces are annoyed by them since they have to use the protective gear.

That they are more effective on civilians than military is a different evaluation of whether they are more effective on an army than standard warfare.

We really should know by now that you can take a country with air and armor but you cannot hold a country with air and armor. You need people. Even if a tank crew is nerve gas resistant (anyone with military experience want to fill in that blank?) the crews you need to fuel, repair, drive, and maintain them are not. You can't stay in the protective gear forever. Yes, an army would win, but it would also wrack up enough casualties to cost your support. You don't need to kill the other army to win you just need them to leave.

3) OTOH: war with Assad risks war with Russia, which is bad. Really, really bad. OTGH, he warned Russia and Russia may have warned Syria. Makes me suspicious about all this.

I'm pretty sure whether russia warned syria or not, all of the russian guys sweeping up their poker chips and leaving the air base or all getting into the one building was probably a dead give away. Neither would strike me as suspicious. This was a whap on the nose, if it comes without deaths then so be it.

6) What better than an attack on a Russian pawn to counter the accusations of Russian influence?

Its a long way from Trump would take advantage of the situation to do that than someone false flagged the attack to do that. Like i said, that isn't mutually exclusive with anything else.


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BigNorseWolf wrote:
3) OTOH: war with Assad risks war with Russia, which is bad. Really, really bad. OTGH, he warned Russia and Russia may have warned Syria. Makes me suspicious about...

It's all the Moties' fault


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BigNorseWolf wrote:
thejeff wrote:
1) I really doubt Trump cares about civilians. These are the same people he thinks far to dangerous to allow in as refugees. Leave them there to die. The quotes from him denouncing Obama's threatened attack back in 2013 are all over the net today.

It's very hard to separate what trump is saying that's at complete odds with what he's thinking, from what trump is thinking that is at complete odds with what trump is thinking. It's like he's running on cognitive dissonance.

It may be damnation by faint praise, but it takes a certain level of sociopathy not to feel for kids dying from chemical warfare that I don't think he has. His monkeysphere may not be able to process the fact that "10,000 refugees" are in fact 10,000 individual people with hopes and dreams and how hard it is to live in a rapidly desertifying warzone, but I think he can get that kids dying from chemical warfare is bad.

But kids dying from bombs are too dangerous to be allowed in as refugees. So are the ones at risk of chemical attack for that matter. And none of this bothered him back the last time Assad used gas and he bloviated about how dumb it would be for Obama to attack Syria.

Of course it's possible he didn't see the pictures of children last time and did this time and the visuals made the difference. Of course, there's also that tweet about poll numbers Pan quoted above.

BigNorseWolf wrote:
thejeff wrote:
2) As I understand it, they're far more effective on civilians (and poorly equipped rebel or jihadi irregulars) than on modern armies. Air power and armor ignore them. Ground forces are annoyed by them since they have to use the protective gear.

That they are more effective on civilians than military is a different evaluation of whether they are more effective on an army than standard warfare.

We really should know by now that you can take a country with air and armor but you cannot hold a country with air and armor. You need people. Even if a tank crew is nerve gas resistant (anyone with military experience want to fill in that blank?) the crews you need to fuel, repair, drive, and maintain them are not. You can't stay in the protective gear forever. Yes, an army would win, but it would also wrack up enough casualties to cost your support. You don't need to kill the other army to win you just need them to leave.

All true, but maybe irrelevant. If we actually go in to take and hold Syria, we'll do it in a couple days and mostly with air and armor. By the time we're trying to occupy it, Assad will be gone or in hiding and his forces will essentially just be one more insurgent group. They won't have access to much if any of his chemical stocks and certainly won't have an airforce to deliver them. Not really a useful weapon for insurgents against modern troops.

All assuming Russia isn't willing to commit to supporting Assad if we attack, which is a far, far scarier option than any chemical weapons he might have.


thejeff wrote:
Of course it's possible he didn't see the pictures of children last time and did this time and the visuals made the difference. Of course, there's also that tweet about poll numbers Pan quoted above.

Doesn't have to be an or option.

Quote:
But kids dying from bombs are too dangerous to be allowed in as refugees.

Or I need to make people scared and angry about something because i don't have any policies. what do i make them scared and angry aboud. Immigrants? Muslims? HAH! Muslim immigrants! You don't need to hate your convinient scapecoat to use them.

Quote:
All true, but maybe irrelevant. If we actually go in to take and hold Syria, we'll do it in a couple days and mostly with air and armor.

Well thats the thing. Are you going to run in and take something you can't hold? Even with what happened last time? Thats how we wound up with Isil in the first place.

Quote:
By the time we're trying to occupy it, Assad will be gone or in hiding and his forces will essentially just be one more insurgent group. They won't have access to much if any of his chemical stocks and certainly won't have an airforce to deliver them. Not really a useful weapon for insurgents against modern troops.

you don't deliver them by air you put them in mortars, suicide trucks or, hell, a water balloon with a slingshot. Or you go full on king aerys on your way out. Ot threaten to as a deterent. Or give it to al queda and tell them to have fun with it. That last in particular was cited by the obama administration last time around for why they took it easy on Aassaad, and made a deal with the russians to get the chemical stockpiles out.

They're worth keeping around, which is why its worth it for us to make them NOT worth keeping around.

Quote:
All assuming Russia isn't willing to commit to supporting Assad if we attack, which is a far, far scarier option than any chemical weapons he might have.

I'm 99% sure this is just going to be Syria and or the russians putting a toe over the line to see what happens. If i'm wrong you can tweet me with an actual bird, as the internet will be gone..


BigNorseWolf wrote:
thejeff wrote:
Of course it's possible he didn't see the pictures of children last time and did this time and the visuals made the difference. Of course, there's also that tweet about poll numbers Pan quoted above.

Doesn't have to be an or option.

Quote:
But kids dying from bombs are too dangerous to be allowed in as refugees.

Or I need to make people scared and angry about something because i don't have any policies. what do i make them scared and angry aboud. Immigrants? Muslims? HAH! Muslim immigrants! You don't need to hate your convinient scapecoat to use them.

Quote:
All true, but maybe irrelevant. If we actually go in to take and hold Syria, we'll do it in a couple days and mostly with air and armor.

Well thats the thing. Are you going to run in and take something you can't hold? Even with what happened last time? Thats how we wound up with Isil in the first place.

Quote:
By the time we're trying to occupy it, Assad will be gone or in hiding and his forces will essentially just be one more insurgent group. They won't have access to much if any of his chemical stocks and certainly won't have an airforce to deliver them. Not really a useful weapon for insurgents against modern troops.

you don't deliver them by air you put them in mortars, suicide trucks or, hell, a water balloon with a slingshot. Or you go full on king aerys on your way out. Ot threaten to as a deterent. Or give it to al queda and tell them to have fun with it. That last in particular was cited by the obama administration last time around for why they took it easy on Aassaad, and made a deal with the russians to get the chemical stockpiles out.

They're worth keeping around, which is why its worth it for us to make them NOT worth keeping around.

Quote:
All assuming Russia isn't willing to commit to supporting Assad if we attack, which is a far, far scarier option than any chemical weapons he might have.
I'm 99% sure this is just going to be Syria and or...

I've got basically no idea what's going to happen here: From basically nothing to a full on occupation of Syria to Nuclear holocaust.

But yeah, barring Russia interfering, we might well run in and take something we can't hold. We've done it before. I see no reason to think Trump's learned anything from past failures. Chemical weapons won't make any difference really, since we can't hold it anyway.

Assad's at war with Al Qaeda/Daesh. He's not going to turn over weapons to them. He could slaughter a whole bunch of Syrians on his way out, though it's harder to do with out airpower. You have to deploy more slowly and in smaller doses. After we move in, his surviving forces will be in disarray and trying to regroup for an insurgency. They'll have a hard time keeping control of the chemical weapons while doing so.
They could do some damage. It's not the serious military threat. That's the chance of conflict with Russia.


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Apparently the attack wasn't very effective.

Maybe all a big symbolic gesture?


whew wrote:
Bush gave a bunch of reasons why we should invade Iraq. It's revisionism to pretend WMDs were THE reason.

It was the reason most heavily emphasized for justification, but you are correct, there were other reasons as well. One of those reasons was that Saddam Hussein supported terrorists.

Of course by invading and occupying Iraq, Bush succeeded in creating even more terrorists as the next generation of Iraqis grew up watching their family members get slaughtered. Some of them are now part of ISIS.

Another reason to invade Iraq was to get access to cheap oil. Considering the trillions of dollars the war has cost us so far, it would have been far, far cheaper to sign a deal with Saddam buying all of his oil in perpetuity at five times market value.

Scarab Sages

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thejeff wrote:

Pick your favorite conspiracy theory and disprove BNW's hypothesis that it's obvious why the war is really happening. :)

Friends, Romans, and Countrymen: There is no such thing as a "conspiracy theory."

There are "conspiracy hypotheses" (i.e. "the CIA murdered JFK" - there's very good reason to suspect it because of other things we know, but nowhere near enough direct hard evidence to be certain).

There are "conspiracy FACTS" (i.e. The Manhattan Project/GM's maleficent takeover of Los Angeles's public transportation system/a surprise birthday party - these unequivocally happened, a group hatched a plan and carried it out in secret, but if anyone said so at the time, it would have been denied up and down and they would have been called crazy).

There are "Big Lie NON-conspiracies" (i.e. Bush stealing the 2000 and 2004 elections - they didn't even TRY to keep what they did a secret, the trail of what happened is all right there, they just smeared anybody who called attention to it).

There are "conspiracy rumors" (i.e. "the WTC towers were destroyed by controlled demolitions and not airplanes" - somebody said something one time that's sort of believable if you don't have the right kind of specialized prior knowledge, but it blew up into a collective 'thing' there isn't even any POINT in anyone believing).

There are "conspiracy smears" (i.e. "Pizzagate" - the forces of malice and deception turn some meaningless small detail into a huge pearl of falsehood).

There is "conspiracy gossip" (i.e. "the moon landings were a hoax"/"Satanists are running around sacrificing Christian children" - scuttlebutt and the insecurities of the common people turn into a massive hivemind effect).

There are "conspiracy LIES" (i.e. The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion/"China made up global warming to hurt American business" - I won't bother to elaborate).

There are "conspiracy fish stories" (i.e. "7-foot alien lizardmen" - the very notion that there are people who believe this is itself silly gossip; there may be a tiny subset sick enough to believe it, but it's probably mostly people having fun).

A "theory" is a model of reality that has been tested over and over against various conditions and come out repeatedly validated, if not perfectly moreso than any other explanation yet to be offered (i.e. evolution/gravity). That doesn't work with "conspiracies." There are no "conspiracy theories."


I'm Hiding In Your Closet wrote:
thejeff wrote:

Pick your favorite conspiracy theory and disprove BNW's hypothesis that it's obvious why the war is really happening. :)

Friends, Romans, and Countrymen: There is no such thing as a "conspiracy theory."

There are "conspiracy hypotheses" (i.e. "the CIA murdered JFK" - there's very good reason to suspect it because of other things we know, but not enough direct hard evidence).

There are "conspiracy FACTS" (i.e. The Manhattan Project/GM's maleficent takeover of Los Angeles's public transportation system/a surprise birthday party - these unequivocally happened, a group hatched a plan and carried out in secret, but if anyone said so at the time, it would have been denied up and down and they would have been called crazy).

There are "Big Lie NON-conspiracies" (i.e. Bush stealing the 2000 and 2004 elections - they didn't even TRY to keep what they did a secret, the trail of what happened is all right there, they just smeared anybody who called attention to it).

There are "conspiracy rumors" (i.e. "the WTC towers were destroyed by controlled demolitions and not airplanes" - somebody said something one time that's sort of believable if you don't have the right kind of specialized prior knowledge, but it blew up into a collective 'thing' there isn't even any POINT in anyone believing).

There are "conspiracy smears" (i.e. "Pizzagate" - the forces of malice and deception turn some meaningless small detail into a huge pearl of falsehood).

There is "conspiracy gossip" (i.e. "the moon landings were a hoax"/"Satanists are running around sacrificing Christian children" - scuttlebutt and the insecurities of the common people turn into a massive hivemind effect).

There are "conspiracy LIES" (i.e. The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion/"China made up global warming to hurt American business" - I won't bother to elaborate).

There are "conspiracy fish stories" (i.e. "7-foot alien lizardmen" - the very notion that there are people who believe this is itself...

There are, however, more than enough Conspiracy Hypotheses out there, correct? ;)

Scarab Sages

Hitdice wrote:
There are, however, more than enough Conspiracy Hypotheses out there, correct? ;)

There's a couple, sure.


I'm Hiding In Your Closet wrote:
thejeff wrote:

Pick your favorite conspiracy theory and disprove BNW's hypothesis that it's obvious why the war is really happening. :)

Friends, Romans, and Countrymen: There is no such thing as a "conspiracy theory."

That was a truly epic rant. A pity it has no connection to reality, even in theory.

From the OED:

Quote:


theory, n.

[...]

6. a. An explanation of a phenomenon arrived at through examination and contemplation of the relevant facts; a statement of one or more laws or principles which are generally held as describing an essential property of something.

[6] b. More generally: a hypothesis or set of ideas about something.
Often implying that the given ideas are purely speculative in nature.

The existence of definition 6a does not preclude the existence and use of definition 6b.


Orf, it would have killed you to say, "Even hypothetically?" :P

Paizo Employee Sales Associate

Removed some unnecessary back and forth. Please drop the ad hominem attacks and keep it civil.


I'm Hiding In Your Closet wrote:
Orfamay Quest, it's one thing to look things up and read what's on the page. It's another thing to be able to think about and understand what one is reading. If an "actual lexicographer" shows up, they and I can talk; you, however, are somehow not impressing me.

Can we lose the semantic derail?

"Conspiracy theory" is the accepted term in English. Phrases do not always mean the logical sum of their parts. If we were discussing "theory" by itself in a scientific context, I'd agree with you, but if you just want to be pedantic about casual usage of the term, I could care less.

Mind you, the original post was amusing, but we're well past that now.

Silver Crusade

There are no good players in the Syria mess except the Kurds. The US and Turkey need to sit down with the Kurds and come to an agreement to establish a Kurdish state the Kurds in return need to give up any territorial claims in Turkey. In return for this the Kurds would be armed and with the Turks destroy ISIS al Nusra and the other Sunni insurgent groups. After this is done replace Assad with another Alawite leader and from 3 states the Kurdish state, the Alawite state and the Sunni state[ you could also form a forth state for the Shia minority that is left.

Convince the Russians to back this by giving them iron clad guaranties that they get to keep their base and be the backers of the Alawite state.

This would be ideal but very hard to accomplish because the Sunni's like nothing better to kill any Shia that they feel is in their territory and vis a versa. Both Sunni and Shia hate the Alawites because they both consider them apostates.

The Arab Sunni have the best chance to get along with the Kurds as they share common religious beliefs though they are not of the same ethnicity.

All in all we have to understand the US for being a superpower is only a small player in Syria. We should concentrate our efforts IMO in saving the Christian and Yeziddi refugees and crush ISIS and AQ in Syria and help those left rebuild in a limited fashion.

The Exchange

BigNorseWolf wrote:
Lord Snow wrote:

Couple of things:

1) We (the Paizo community) are responding to a military event that happened in the middle eastern theatre of war, but that is also a strategic move the U.S made on the global scale - mainly due to the presence of Russia in the area. Thus, we can assume that the reasoning behind the move takes into account absurdly confidential knowledge that we naturally cannot access. Therefore, any attempt we make at rationalizing the attack or debunking said rational is bound to be woefully far from the actual truth of the matter.

Even hundreds of years of declassification later, when is the last time that a war was fought for secret reasons? (without going all reptiilian overlords) Politicians lie about the proximate causes but the ultimate causes are usually pretty obvious even without hindsight.

Basically most older wars were fought because of personal considerations relevent to the various monarchs who lead their peoples, but the reasons given back then must have been yammerings about honor and the greatness of our nations and hey the other sides sucks, have you seen what kind of food they eat?

There are some more serious examples. If westerners meddling in the middle east is our theme of choice, consider the crusades. Rest assured they weren't really about killing infidels in the name of God - but a political tool that the church could use for various purposes.

In the past wars were smaller and dumber, international ties between powers were much weaker due to lack of communication technologies, and strategy could be played on a much smaller scale. In modern times, the picture that a U.S president must consider before making an offensive move anywhere on Earth (let alone in a contest warzone involving Russia) is much bigger than it used to be. The same goes for all the other players in this particular game - they all have dozens of conflicting motivations, most of them not public knowledge. In these circumstances, it seems absurd to take the public story at face value. Assad uses chemical weapons on civilians for no apparent reason? The U.S all of a sudden deciding that *this* is the red line? An all but unprecedented missile attack on a strategic target? Something's up, and it's not the official news story.

You may disagree, which is reasonable, because not you nor I or anyone else here has anywhere near all the information they need. Whereas I look at the revealed facts and scoff, to you they seem more acceptable. We can both just sort of accept that there's a disagreement here, I think.


Lord Snow wrote:

[

Basically most older wars were fought because of personal considerations relevent to the various monarchs who lead their peoples, but the reasons given back then must have been yammerings about honor and the greatness of our nations and hey the other sides sucks, have you seen what kind of food they eat?

Which part of that are you alleging has changed.

Quote:
they all have dozens of conflicting motivations, most of them not public knowledge.

The evidence of this is...?

I mean, i don't think i'm being unreasonable here. This seems like a fairly simple hypothesis to test. What war was there where no one knew what was really going on except a small cadre of insider individuals? I don't think it's unreasonable that history would eventually turn the motives up.

this.. doesn't happen. The proffered examples are the government lying and half the people saying "pull the other one"

Quote:
. Assad uses chemical weapons on civilians for no apparent reason?

quell the resistance with a threat.

Test to see if the west is going to let him go for a larger scale operation.

Evil dictator. It kinda comes with the territory.

Scarab Sages

I'm Hiding In Your Closet wrote:
thejeff wrote:

Pick your favorite conspiracy theory and disprove BNW's hypothesis that it's obvious why the war is really happening. :)

Friends, Romans, and Countrymen: There is no such thing as a "conspiracy theory."

There are "conspiracy hypotheses" (i.e. "the CIA murdered JFK" - there's very good reason to suspect it because of other things we know, but nowhere near enough direct hard evidence to be certain).

There are "conspiracy FACTS" (i.e. The Manhattan Project/GM's maleficent takeover of Los Angeles's public transportation system/a surprise birthday party - these unequivocally happened, a group hatched a plan and carried it out in secret, but if anyone said so at the time, it would have been denied up and down and they would have been called crazy).

There are "Big Lie NON-conspiracies" (i.e. Bush stealing the 2000 and 2004 elections - they didn't even TRY to keep what they did a secret, the trail of what happened is all right there, they just smeared anybody who called attention to it).

There are "conspiracy rumors" (i.e. "the WTC towers were destroyed by controlled demolitions and not airplanes" - somebody said something one time that's sort of believable if you don't have the right kind of specialized prior knowledge, but it blew up into a collective 'thing' there isn't even any POINT in anyone believing).

There are "conspiracy smears" (i.e. "Pizzagate" - the forces of malice and deception turn some meaningless small detail into a huge pearl of falsehood).

There is "conspiracy gossip" (i.e. "the moon landings were a hoax"/"Satanists are running around sacrificing Christian children" - scuttlebutt and the insecurities of the common people turn into a massive hivemind effect).

There are "conspiracy LIES" (i.e. The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion/"China made up global warming to hurt American business" - I won't bother to elaborate).

There are "conspiracy fish stories" (i.e. "7-foot alien lizardmen" - the very notion that there are people who...

The word 'theory' isn't a 'scientific exclusive term' though...;-)


Lord Snow wrote:


Basically most older wars were fought because of personal considerations relevent to the various monarchs who lead their peoples, but the reasons given back then must have been yammerings about honor and the greatness of our nations and hey the other sides sucks, have you seen what kind of food they eat?

There are some more serious examples. If westerners meddling in the middle east is our theme of choice, consider the crusades. Rest assured they weren't really about killing infidels in the name of God - but a political tool that the church could use for various purposes.

In the past wars were smaller and dumber, international ties between powers were much weaker due to lack of communication technologies, and strategy could be played on a much smaller scale. In modern times, the picture that a U.S president must consider before making an offensive move anywhere on Earth (let alone in a contest warzone involving Russia) is much bigger than it used to be. The same goes for all the other players in this particular game - they all have dozens of conflicting motivations, most of them not public knowledge. In these circumstances, it seems absurd to take the public story at face value. Assad uses chemical weapons on civilians for no apparent reason? The U.S all of a sudden deciding that *this* is the red line? An all but unprecedented missile attack on a strategic target? Something's up, and it's not the official news story.

You may disagree, which is reasonable, because not you nor I or anyone else here has anywhere near all the information they need. Whereas I look at the revealed facts and scoff, to you they seem more acceptable. We can both just sort of accept that there's a disagreement here, I think.

I'm not sure what you're really suggesting. There are certainly other motivations beyond the stated and beyond the revealed facts, but I'm not sure what kind of classified information you're suspecting? Here or in other recent wars?


It will be fine... (relatively).... if Syria get delsuional and start lobbing missiles at US boats, then they'll be spanked ASAP and the Russians have no interest in getting involved either

In the bigger scheme of things.... a short lived storm in a tea cup.

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