Yes, old man is cranky because kids are dying for pointless BS.
General is cranky because they want to run the show. This isn't new
“The President is an idiot…I went to the White House shortly after tea where I found the original gorilla…the President is nothing more than a well meaning baboon…There never was a truer epithet applied to a certain individual than that of the ‘Gorilla.’ “ : McCellan about Lincoln
When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
We are tired of aristocratic explanations in Harvard words.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
I weep for the liberty of my country when I see at this early day of its successful experiment that corruption has been imputed to many members of the House of Representatives, and the rights of the people have been bartered for promises of office.
Andrew Jackson
We're never going to win if washington won't let us fight them everywhere they are. This BLEEEP BLEEP BLEEEEP where they can hide behind a border is going to get us killed: Every soldier ever on Korea, vietnam, and afghanistan.
Neither conscience nor sanity itself suggests that the United States is, should or could be the global gendarme.
Robert McNamara (vietnam era general)
Disrespect for civilian leadership and civilians isn't new.
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Robert McNamara was the civilian Secretary (Minister) of War Department/Department of Defense, a pure political appointee.
He never held any rank in the military, much less having General stars. He was an executive at Ford Motors before the DoD.
If anybody's tired of the Constitution's plainly worded limitation on war as the domain of Congress, they should amend that clause:
(the letters of marque and reprisal reference clearly covers state-sanctioned military actions that may fall short of 'open war', and clearly applies to arming third parties engaged in hostilities)
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I'm leaning pretty heavily towards yes, the US should get involved.
Only in the limited capacity which Obama et al have laid out, i.e. no "boots on the ground".
I think there's a lot of misunderstanding and misapprehension about the plan, as it were. We're not playing kingmaker. We're not trying to tip the balance of power (though we've made no secret of wanting Assad gone). This isn't about US interests abroad. This isn't a humanitarian mission. Hundreds of thousands have already died and likely hundreds of thousands more will before the fighting is at an end. This isn't some imperialist power grab--how can we grab power or resources without an actual invasion?
The ONLY reason we would get involved is in a purely punitive action against the Assad regime. The only thing we can hope to get out of this is to enforce the UN convention against chemical weapons, which the UN has shown itself incapable of doing (thanks, Putin).
War always sucks. The geneva conventions and other agreements are not meant to put a stop to war, but to limit the means of warfare. It's an important moral imperative to protect.
I understand that people are cynical (though some of it here is well into the conspiracy theory area), I understand that people don't trust the government (some just as a general case), and I know that our country is weary of war.
If Obama had not asked for the permission of Congress, I wouldn't be in support of a strike. If Congress turns him down, I'll expect him to abide by their judgment (such as it is), and if he goes ahead anyway I won't support it. Not unreasonable charges of American hypocrisy aside, the use of banned chemical or biological agents is not something we can or should abide.
The prospect of weapons like saran or weaponized smallpox being not only acceptable, but expected, scares the living howdy do out of me more than any conceivable number of stealth bombers or abrams tanks. In a 21st century where the use of these agents, let's be frank, of terrorism, goes unanswered will quickly become one wherein every nation uses them.
I do find it heartening, in a weird way, that such a vast majority of my fellow citizens, both of America and of the world, are against any potential action. I find it disturbing that I find myself on the opposite side of the issue of so many of them (and you).
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I can't say that Assad hasn't used chemical weapons. I can't even say that he didn't use them at Ghouta.
I can say, though, that the Obama plantation's claims of evidence that Assad carried out these attacks is far from conclusive and reminds many of the "case" against Iraq in 2003.
If (and I admit, it's a big "if") it turns out that Obama bombs Syria, and then it turns out that he is pulling a Gulf of Tonkin, I will haunt you left-leaning, hand-wringing, semi-interventionists until I get kicked off of these boards.
Defeat US imperialism through workers revolution!
Vive le Galt!
You're right, the Obama plantation, nor the military establishment, isn't much interested in pushing for a war with Syria. They just want to bomb "punitively" (what a great reason for war).
I am still intrigued by the Luttwak piece that argues that American interests are best served by prolonging a stalemate between the two sides. I am even more intrigued by his claim that the Obama administration's policies reflect this understanding of American interests.
My comparison to the case against Iraq was only meant to compare the Obama admin's presentation of the case against Assad to Colin Powell's performance at the UN. In fact, as some have commented in the blogosphere, Powell's case against Iraq was even more detailed and convincing than Kerry/the Obamabots'.
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I can say, though, that the Obama plantation's claims of evidence that Assad carried out these attacks is far from conclusive and reminds many of the "case" against Iraq in 2003.
If it helps, France was very vocal in 2003 against the intervention in Irak because the "case" against Iraq sounded more than flimsy to us. And it cost us a lot to be that openly opposed to the US.
These days, we are very vocal for an intervention in Syria, and that with a socialist government and president. The reason why is that the case against Assad is very clear cut for us.
Infos, that I know of :
- Chemical weapon have been used to kill hundreds of people including obvious civilians
- Apparently, most areas concerned were aligned to the rebels rather than the Assad regime
- The rebels do not have the ability to make this kind of operation
- The Assad regime does
- The movement of Assad's forces seemed coherent with being informed that a chemical weapon was going to be used
And that is not even counting that reports about the use of chemical weapons by Assad's forces have been given before by French war reporters, even when it did not fit with the then non-interventionist stance of our government.
We (and far more of a tragedy, the Syrian civilians) are paying the lies of the Irak "case" and subsequent fiasco. Any talk of intervention these days, even on the best of grounds, just does not sit well with most people in western countries (and especially the US) :-(
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No offense, Citizen Raven, but Comrade le Couard can tell you what I think of French socialists who want to bomb former French colonies.
Possibly because it's easy to be detailed and convincing when you're just making s*+% up?
Possibly. It still doesn't address the holes in the evidence that has been presented by many who do not appear to be mouthpieces for Putin. (I've shied away from RT's reporting on the case for exactly that reason.)
But it's not just that they aren't pushing for a ground war, it's that, until this report of a chemical attack, they weren't even pushing for the punitive bombing.
And if they don't want anything other than that, then what's the point in making up evidence for it? Just because they like blowing stuff up and killing people?
No, because as many have pointed out, the Obama admin appears to be motivated by the prospect of loss of face and the inability to project "deterrence" (shades of Israel's last go-round with Gaza?).
I guess the stalemate argument kind of makes sense, but it's a long stretch.
I can't say whether it's true or not, but it's not like American foreign policy in the region hasn't used that strategy before (Iran/Iraq War). Also, I think it's worth thinking about op-ed pieces in the NYTimes by a guy who's a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
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If it helps, France was very vocal in 2003 against the intervention in Irak because the "case" against Iraq sounded more than flimsy to us. And it cost us a lot to be that openly opposed to the US.
These days, we are very vocal for an intervention in Syria, and that with a socialist government and president. The reason why is that the case against Assad is very clear cut for us.
Then might I suggest that the French themselves intervene? Or are they only vocal in calling for the USA to do such things?
Speaking of which, what's your take on how the French intervention in Mali played out? Better than your expectations? Worse?
I seem to recall you predicting doom on that a while back. :)
Mali has fallen off the radar for many of the sites that I follow, but here's a piece from Counterpunch from the beginning of the month (written, admittedly, by an Earth First!er.)
"As it appears that IBK [Ibrahim Boubacar Keita--who, indeed, won the election Link] will run away with the election in the final round, France hopes that this charming, charismatic populist figure will help maintain ECOWAS under French hegemony, keeping Mali’s uranium out of the hands of the BRICS or Saudis while possibly increasing the amount of land deals in the North and using the military’s iron fist to assure investor protections. This will mean increased patrols, likely coming from the US’s new drone base in Niger over Nigeria and Mali to monitor insurgencies, and long-standing conflicts. Whatever the outcome, peace may be a long time in coming, with food security even further off."
I will have to revisit my "predictions of doom," but that doesn't sound far off from what I remember saying earlier this year.
I do recall speculating that the Human Rights Watch reports would make interesting reading in a couple of months.
That, I hereby admit, was incorrect.
Mali stuff starts with the first J-P Sartre post
Otherwise, there's this.
There may be more that aren't turning up in my cursory searches.
So Obama's motivation for lying about the chemical attacks in Syria is to save face on deterring Assad from using chemical weapons?
That makes no sense. Either Obama's lying about the evidence and Assad has been deterred or he hasn't been deterred and Obama isn't lying.
Those are the only options, huh? Two others that I can think of off the top of my head:
--Obama is being hoodwinked (as I recall, Powell still claims he in good faith believed in his UN presentation when he gave it.)
--Assad hasn't been deterred (even if he isn't using chemical weapons--which I'm not saying he isn't--he's still massacring his own people and would probably win the war if it wasn't for outsiders arming the rebels) and Obama is lying.
I really can't see the conspiracy angle on this. Finagling the middle east revolution to be an eternal never ending fight in which neither side can ever achieve victory is like finagling lake Michigan to be wet.
I'd hesitate to call it a conspiracy. If it was, I'd imagine that Luttwalk is getting a lot of heat for spilling the beans in the NYT op-ed section.
Regardless, it took Israel quite a while to figure out whose victory they feared the most (The west and its allies cynically bleed Syria to weaken Iran: "Having hedged its bets, Israel has now started to make clear it regards the prospect of Islamist and jihadist groups taking over from the Assad regime as less threatening than the existing "Syria-Iran-Hezbollah axis", as the Israeli defence ministry official Amos Gilad put it recently.") and I don't see why the Americans can't have the same ambivalent attitude. In fact, I'd argue they do.
Looking for that Milne article in The Guardian found me this page with recent news stories about the German press claiming Assad didn't order the attack, the Brits supplying Assad with chemical weapons, and all kind of other goodies.
Also, fun piece on Al-Jazeera about the idiocy of Obama's handling of the chemical weapons attack, even if, for the sake of argument, we take the administration at its word.
So, there's lots of stuff that's going on in this thread, and I haven't been able to read it all due to reasons of time restraints and narcissism.
But I saw the Balkans getting discussed earlier, and digging through my archives (narcissism again) reminded me of that time Comrade Jeff suckerpunched me with Kosovo while I was debating American imperialism and humanitarian interventionism with Comrade Meatrace a whiles back.
I know some (Citizen K(e)rensky, for one) don't approve of Counterpunch, and I have no idea who Dr. Grossman is, but an interesting article I thought: The Myth of Humanitarian Interventions: Why Kosovo Is (and Isn’t) a Precedent for Syria by ZOLTAN GROSSMAN
And another one, for fun:
The Grand Narrative for War: Manufacturing Consent on Syria
by ANTHONY DiMAGGIO
For more fun, propaganda from my Britishiznoid and Swedish comrades that I, um, haven't read yet.
Also, fun piece on Al-Jazeera about the idiocy of Obama's handling of the chemical weapons attack, even if, for the sake of argument, we take the administration at its word.
Yeah. I get it. I totally understand the perspective espoused by that piece. But I also think I understand Obama's strategy. Again, this isn't about helping Syria, not in the least. They're totally buggered. This is all political theater to ensure that all other nations know that the use of chemical (and by extension other forbidden weapons like biological) weapons won't go unanswered.
Assad may not care, but the next guy might. Syria is just an example to the others. He's setting a foreign policy precedent.
And it's an enormous gamble. He's telegraphing his punches like an amateur. But, again, this is not about Syria. Congress could just up and say "nope" and America would be exposed as the wishy-washy republic we are at heart. We've no stomach for policing the world, and I think Obama knows that. The UN are the appropriate police in this instance, but when 911 is a joke in Syria, sometimes there needs to be a citizen's arrest.
I'd also point out that, unlike Iraq where we had some pretty obviously falsified orbital photography with pictures of nothing in particular. Have you honestly not seen the footage of the victims of this attack? It's harrowing and would be exceedingly difficult to fake.
There's always someone around who will tell you that X or Y horrific event is a "false flag" orchestrated by the CIA. It behooves us to recognize that it is the luxury of those safe from harm to make such claims.
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The problems with the claim of a cia false flag operation are
1) there's no evidence for it
2) You can't really expect the lack of evidence for it to be convincing since its .. you know, the cia
3) I don't think we want to be in this mess that much.
The US is evil and is responsible for everything bad is almost as bad as the US is the good guy who would never do anything wrong.
I'm opposed to Obama's plan on multiple levels.
Strategically I think it's half-assed. He's trying to nudge too many things too slightly and in the end he'll achieve none of it.
It's not dealing with the actual international problem in all this, Russian obstinance and contrariness under Putin.
I loathe the concept of precision bombing and how it's portrayed. Not just to the public, but how it's hyped to our leaders. It can be really good, but it's still also often inaccurate and kills civilians. Also, history shows us that the most powerful effect of air campaigns is to stiffen the resolve of the people under attack. No one's will has ever been broken by a bombing campaign.
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Also, history shows us that the most powerful effect of air campaigns is to stiffen the resolve of the people under attack. No one's will has ever been broken by a bombing campaign.
I think Israels preemptive neutering of the egyptian air force right before the 6 day war was one of the reasons it WAS a six day war.
Nato's air campaign was moderately successful for doing what nato set out to do with it.
Does Hiroshima/Nagasaki count as a bombing campaign?
EDIT: Regardless, we're not trying to break Assad's will. We're trying to show the world that we're not dicking around about our commitment to the conventions against chemical weapons.
There is no other hypothetical endgame for the limited strikes proposed by the Obama administration.
A bombing campaign is dicking around.
An invasion is showing the world that you're not.
I respectfully disagree. I don't think that an invasion is the appropriate action. A ground invasion would quickly turn into a clusterf@$&. At least with the proposed precision strikes, there's the hope and possibility of destroying Assad's chemical weapons production/stockpile without getting embroiled in the conflict bodily.
That said, if it turned out that the rebels were also using similar methods (chemical/bio weapons) I would expect the same sort of reprisal against them, or at least a discontinuation of our military support for them.
Personally, I think Obama is silently hoping for a no vote from congress so he can wash his hands of the situation.
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I respectfully disagree. I don't think that an invasion is the appropriate action. A ground invasion would quickly turn into a clusterf+#+. At least with the proposed precision strikes, there's the hope and possibility of destroying Assad's chemical weapons production/stockpile without getting embroiled in the conflict bodily.
That said, if it turned out that the rebels were also using similar methods (chemical/bio weapons) I would expect the same sort of reprisal against them, or at least a discontinuation of our military support for them.
Personally, I think Obama is silently hoping for a no vote from congress so he can wash his hands of the situation.
I disagree. Look at how lousy was the operation 'Merciful Angel' on Serbia (then Yugoslavia). Most of the stuff you hit were decoys. And most military installations were emptied within the first week of the operation.
Also, AFAIK, NATO was getting ready to give up and if our former president didn't cave, the operation was going to be called off.The biggest beef i have with that is that the operation began a day before i was to take a math test that i studied really diligently for. Wasted effort. :D
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I respectfully disagree. I don't think that an invasion is the appropriate action. A ground invasion would quickly turn into a clusterf+@!. At least with the proposed precision strikes, there's the hope and possibility of destroying Assad's chemical weapons production/stockpile without getting embroiled in the conflict bodily.
That said, if it turned out that the rebels were also using similar methods (chemical/bio weapons) I would expect the same sort of reprisal against them, or at least a discontinuation of our military support for them.
Personally, I think Obama is silently hoping for a no vote from congress so he can wash his hands of the situation.
I didn't say I WANTED a ground invasion.
But anything short of a ground invasion will not accomplish what you think it will accomplish. A bombing campaign is half-assed and will achieve nothing. It won't fix anything and it won't deter anyone else. A desperate dictator will always use whatever means they have at their disposal. You don't get to be a despot by being rational and nice to people.
The stated goal of the bombing campaign will not be achieved by it. It could be achieved by a ground invasion, or as you pointed out, leveling a city with a nuclear strike, with the promise of further strikes if Assad doesn't immediately surrender all of his chemical weapons to the UN. Neither of which are palatable options by the American people or the broader global community.
The bombing campaign, if approved, is really a similar thing to the no vote, as you suggest. It's so we can say "we tried" and appear to still be the big boys on the block.
Why be in favor of a half-assed measure that achieves nothing, but will cost us money and kill innocent people?
It's like a car with two flat tires, and he's proposing we just fix one of them, and then see how it goes.
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At least with the proposed precision strikes, there's the hope and possibility of destroying Assad's chemical weapons production/stockpile without getting embroiled in the conflict bodily.
Are you kidding? The chemical weapons are dispersed, especially now. Even US government sources say they don't know where they all are.
Look at Yugoslav/Kosovo campaign, NATO could not accurately target ground forces, they were left bombing factories and bridges because they couldn't hit any more military targets. The Yugoslav Army was barely degraded by the bombing campaign.And you know what Assad has said about the CW? They won't use them UNLESS OUTSIDE COUNTRIES INTERVENE.
So there you have a clear reason to believe that a bombing campaign would lead to USE of CW by Assad, because WTF NOT,
if NATO is assaulting them on the assumption they already did use it, lack of evidence aside?
You really will call yourself a humanitarian in clear conscience if US/FR bombing triggers widespread CW use just as warned in Assad's "redline"?
That said, if it turned out that the rebels were also using similar methods (chemical/bio weapons) I would expect the same sort of reprisal against them, or at least a discontinuation of our military support for them.
You would expect so from some neutal, non-involved party who is solely intervening on humanitarian/CW grounds. But does that describe any of the parties on board the illegal aggression against Syria? Clearly not. And there have been plenty of reports attributing CW usage to rebels, which the US and friends have shrugged off, not even not 100% believing them factually proved but quite simply expressing zero concern they were used by rebels or ever expressing the idea that rebels would be subject to bombing or any retribution if they used CW. Obama's "redline" was only ever mentioned in regards to Assad, never was it suggested to be relevant to the rebels. This despite several instances of "chlorine smelling gas attacks", when rebels control the only chlorine factory in Syria and chlorine is not a 'conventional' CW which is already in Syrian Army's CW stores.
- Apparently, most areas concerned were aligned to the rebels rather than the Assad regime
- The rebels do not have the ability to make this kind of operation
- The Assad regime does
Is there a reason you don't believe the rebels when they say they have the ability, or rebels or known rebel collaborators like al-Nusra are arrested with sarin and other CW? Or when the CIA and other sources say the same thing?
There is still no solid data on what happened in Ghouta, independent of who did it, despite that the actual chemical tracers are certainly a relevant clue. Why the rush and insistence an attack doesn't need to wait for the results of an investigation? Why were the war-backers supporting UN investigations into previous alleged CW incidents, but now don't care about those, and in fact the UN team didn't end up investigating the other incidents they planned to, because they pulled out after Ghouta with the US expressing hostility to their work.
- The movement of Assad's forces seemed coherent with being informed that a chemical weapon was going to be used
The US government admits it can't track movement of CW owned by the Syrian Army. Up until last year (while the rebel-cheerleader western press kept believing the PR that the rebels were on the verge of victory) a theory entertained by the western press and sources in government was that a "rogue officer" might be likely to use CW against orders. Up til then they recognized the obvious rationale self-interest in Assad not using CW and providing justification for outside intervention, now that the rebels are losing and need even more outside intervention just to "maintain the balance", suddenly Assad is MORE likely to use CW himself and nobody can remember anything about "rogue officers". Now, we know the legal standard of culpability applied to top military and political leaders when a low-ranking subordinate commits a war crime that the top command can disavow themself of the culpability (only the subordinate is punished), yet the US doesn't seem to apply that standard here, to the extent they now acknowledge the "rogue officer" theory. "In effect, [State Dept. Spokesman] Harf was left arguing that because no one else could have carried out the attack, it must have been the Syrian government."
But what is a "rogue officer"? An ultra-extreme loyalist? Or a plant by rebels? In fact, the rebels themselves brag of having infitrated the Syrian regime, so that is far from a discountable possibility. (And to repeat, the US/FR 'dossiers' depend on wholly discounting any other possibilities to make their flimsy evidence appear sufficient that Assad culpability is the ONLY realistic possibility)
The supposed Israeli-sourced intercepted phone call is acknowledged to reflect panic on the part of the commander of the CW unit as he had not ordered the attack, suggesting the attack was not planned by the regime. That supposed intercept is still not released, even though the public revelation of it's EXISTENCE really reveals the same useful details in terms of revealing the US/Israel's intercept capability... to the extent the intercept is true, the people who spoke in that conversation are well aware of what they said, publicizing the recording doesn't reveal new information to THEM.
Incidentally Israel has a history of manipulating or doctoring recordings to lead to a conclusion, splicing in 'more incriminating' sound bites into their supposed recording of ship-to-ship communications with the Avi Marmara (delivering aid to Gaza contra to Israeli blockade). In that case people discovered the forgery, with the 'extra bad' sound bites lacking the ambient noise on all other transmissions from the ship. As well, not providing the recording means that 'liberties' may be taken in the translation which skew the picture.
We (and far more of a tragedy, the Syrian civilians) are paying the lies of the Irak "case" and subsequent fiasco.
The Syrian people, the majority of which have been killed by rebels and jihadis?
The latest PR spin from the US is "Kerry says west must not be 'silent spectators to the slaughter'".Arming and training violent groups is not being a 'spectator'. The US and France and Saudis and Qataris have openly escalated arms shipments (including talk of SAMs despite rebel threats to target civil airliners) NOT in responce to CW, but because the rebels were losing. Whether they truly want the rebels to win, or simply stretch out the fighting is unclear, but both seem equally repugnant and illegal.
Incidentally, that action itself runs into rather serious Constitutional issues in the US.
[The Congress shall have Power...] To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
The "letters of marque and reprisal" reference is in the context of the practice of governments to sponsor "privateers"/pirates, and clearly covers state-sanctioned military actions that may fall short of 'open war'. That clause should thus clearly appliesy to arming third parties engaged in hostilities like Afghan Mujahedin, Nicaraguan Contras, or Syrian 'Rebels'.
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But anything short of a ground invasion will not accomplish what you think it will accomplish. A bombing campaign is half-assed and will achieve nothing.
I far from think that a bombing campaign can achieve 'nothing', even if it may not achieve what some people drawn in by the humanitarian/CW story might think such a pure, moral action should achieve. A bombing campaign, as well as the escalation of arms supply to "rebels" and foreign fighters, could certainly weaken the Assad forces, strengthening the rebels who have been losing of late. Strengthened rebels combined with bombing perhaps could turn the tide against Assad, or just drag out a stalemate, or eventually lead to the "rebels" negotiating from a "stronger position" with the Assad regime. I'm not sure how any of those pass a test for moral action, although the idea of more Arabs killing each other and destroying their own infrastructure may well appeal to Israel.
One has to look at historical US geostrategy. US National Security Council strategists are on record as stating it is not realistic to achieve direct global control, but preventing in particular the "Eurasian Continent" from becoming a solid peaceful block which is not dependent on the US should be the strategy pursued, and that can be achieved simply by ensuring "chaos" which prevents any other orders from emerging. The reason the US engineered the Afghan War was not because they believed they could take it over and control it. The reason was that an interminable civil war prevented the USSR from controlling it, or more accurately force them to commit massive forces in an unresolvable guerrila war (Afghanistan was merely 'non-aligned' with good relations with both USSR and NATO previous to US intervention whose goal was to trigger Soviet counter-coup and involvement in guerrila war, i.e. USSR's Vietnam).If an interminable civil war is just killing Arabs, and the US can at minimal cost just keep it going, it prevents that country from acting directly or indirectly contrary to US interests as dealing with the proxy guerrilla war is all it can manage.
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Also, AFAIK, NATO was getting ready to give up and if our former president didn't cave, the operation was going to be called off.
The biggest beef i have with that is that the operation began a day before i was to take a math test that i studied really diligently for. Wasted effort. :D
But he did cave, so it did work, so you're calling it a failure because.. It almost didn't work? Or did i miss something here.
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His point is that the original goal was not fulfilled, the JNA Army was never destroyed or defeated, the only "success" can be claimed if you change the goal posts from the originally professed goals, which weren't "regime change". The illegal NATO attack on Yugoslavia did not destroy the Yugoslav military forces, or prevent their combat vs. the KLA/UCK (previously officially listed as terrorist by the US, until convenient to drop that listing). The Yugoslav army was wholly intact, and if they had CW, nothing NATO did would have prevented the JNA from using them.
The goal to stop/destroy JNA ability to continue war vs. KLA was never met, the only thing achieved was the political result of regime change... JNA units in fact increased intensity of operations vs KLA after NATO bombing started, which also hugely increased the number of Kosovo refugees (refugees from fighting in Kosovo were part of justification for intervention there). Since we're going there, before the bombing, NATO issued an ultimatum that it KNEW would be unacceptable, i.e. total Yugoslav submission including the right of NATO forces to go anywhere they want to at any time even in Serbia proper. The only reason they issued that was to appear reasonable to the rest of the world, and place the blame on Yugoslavia for not accepting a peaceful resolution, but that resolution was never realistic in the first place.
So you can view the NATO operation as either a failure at it's stated goals, or a success if you consider regime change was the real goal and the publicly stated goals were just a lie.
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I won't read walls of text so I'm probably missing important things.
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I read on another thread that my dear friend the Goblin wished to discuss this issue, so here we go.
Talking points:
1. Should President Obama have committed forces without consulting Congress, such has been done in most conflicts since World War II?
2. Should the United States intervene on the basis of the alleged use of Chemical Weapons?
3. Does the lack of international support impact the validity of United States pending intervention?
Discuss.
1. No. This is a tough call that is not an immediate threat, so it should go through congress.
2. Intervene, probably. The issue is what the impact is. Here are the issues as I see them mitigating for.
a. We don't want to set a precedent that using Chemical Weapons will be in your interests. We need to deter. So having something negative happen if you use them that is worse than the benefit of using them is important.
b. We don't want to be seen as supporting someone who uses chemical weapons, particularly if they may lose and the winner comes to power looking at us as complicit.
c. If we don't act, our bluff was called and in the future threats will seem hollow...even when they aren't/
There isn't really a side we want to win that could actually win and hold power. The likely final outcomes are either Assad winning with an iron fist or genocide. This is likely to be far worse than Bosnia in the long run, and it is already spilling into regional conflict.
3. It sucks, but it is what we get for showing we will go it alone in Iraq in Afghanistan, which was the big screw up of the last Administration.
Our allies are calling our bluff that we won't act so they can leave the mess to us.
If I were president, I'm not sure what I would do on this one.
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But anything short of a ground invasion will not accomplish what you think it will accomplish. A bombing campaign is half-assed and will achieve nothing.I far from think that a bombing campaign can achieve 'nothing', even if it may not achieve what some people drawn in by the humanitarian/CW story might think such a pure, moral action should achieve. A bombing campaign, as well as the escalation of arms supply to "rebels" and foreign fighters, could certainly weaken the Assad forces, strengthening the rebels who have been losing of late. Strengthened rebels combined with bombing perhaps could turn the tide against Assad, or just drag out a stalemate, or eventually lead to the "rebels" negotiating from a "stronger position" with the Assad regime. I'm not sure how any of those pass a test for moral action, although the idea of more Arabs killing each other and destroying their own infrastructure may well appeal to Israel.
One has to look at historical US geostrategy. US National Security Council strategists are on record as stating it is not realistic to achieve direct global control, but preventing in particular the "Eurasian Continent" from becoming a solid peaceful block which is not dependent on the US should be the strategy pursued, and that can be achieved simply by ensuring "chaos" which prevents any other orders from emerging. The reason the US engineered the Afghan War was not because they believed they could take it over and control it. The reason was that an interminable civil war prevented the USSR from controlling it, or more accurately force them to commit massive forces in an unresolvable guerrila war (Afghanistan was merely 'non-aligned' with good relations with both USSR and NATO previous to US intervention whose goal was to trigger Soviet counter-coup and involvement in guerrila war, i.e. USSR's Vietnam).If an interminable civil war is just killing Arabs, and the US can at minimal cost just keep it going, it prevents that country from acting directly or...
I'm not sure what your point is. There's a lot of information there, and I don't necessarily disagree with the information or facts. I'm just confused what your conclusion is.
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People were posting as if US/FR/Saudi/Qatari actions could only be understood based on whether one narrow goal is plausibly successful or not, and thus, their actions should only be interpreted as pursuing said singular goal, succesful or not. That leaves out a whole range of other motivations. History shows that publically stated purposes may not be actual purposes, and achieving publically stated goals is tangential to achieving other goals. The idea of quickly destroying CW capability of the regime is a fantasy, and if Assad does exactly what he has warned he would do in response to outside (direct) intervention, he would in fact unleash the CW arsenal. I don't particularly believe he would actually do that, because it wouldn't really change the picture for him and probably only spur more intervention, but that's what he's said he would do... And there is no realistic way to stop that if he decided to do so.
I understand that reading alot of text takes more effort, but I believe I at least make it as pleasant as possible with half-decent grammar and paragraph breaks and so on. At the very least, I'm disappointed when people continue to post things like "Assad must have done it, the rebels couldn't have" when the VERY FIRST LINE of one of my posts quotes the rebels saying they have CW capabilities and can use them when they want to, with a link providing a source for that. Or when I directly quote a particular poster and speak to the subject they were addressing, that section is blown off (regardless if the poster wants to ignore walls of text in response to other posters).
One or two line posts are very easy when one assumes the reference of information peddled thru mainstream media. If everything the mainstream media says or assumes isn't actually true, then it requires more words to demonstrate that falsity, often times demonstrable thru the mainstream media' OWN PREVIOUS WRITINGS which don't conform to the lastest updated propaganda cartoon. Sure, propaganda cartoons are easier on the brain then actually consistently sourcing real information. I just happen to prefer information to cartoons, when the cartoonists are continuously proven inaccurate or lying.
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Also, AFAIK, NATO was getting ready to give up and if our former president didn't cave, the operation was going to be called off.
The biggest beef i have with that is that the operation began a day before i was to take a math test that i studied really diligently for. Wasted effort. :DBut he did cave, so it did work, so you're calling it a failure because.. It almost didn't work? Or did i miss something here.
No. I'm calling it a horrible track record. They almost failed. Just like they almost failed in Afghanistan and Iraq.
What's worse is that they almost failed against countries with mostly pre-fall soviet stuff. Yeah, 20-30 years old tech. And the JNA actually downed an F-117 and several F-16s.
And let's not even start about what would have happened to the troops if they actually commenced with the land invasion.
That is why they were willing to call it off. And i call that a fail. They didn't succeed. They won by forfeit.
@Quandary Actually, the regime change was facilitated by the people who've had enough. Not that much has changed in the past 15 years. I say thing are actually getting worse even though we're months away from negotiations about membership in the EU.
People were posting as if US/FR/Saudi/Qatari actions could only be understood based on whether one narrow goal is plausibly successful or not, and thus, their actions should only be interpreted as pursuing said singular goal, succesful or not. That leaves out a whole range of other motivations.
I understand that reading alot of text takes more effort, but I believe I at least make it as pleasant as possible with half-decent grammar and paragraph breaks and so on. At the very least, I'm disappointed when people continue to post things like "Assad must have done it, the rebels couldn't have" when the VERY FIRST LINE of one of my posts quotes the rebels saying they have CW capabilities and can use them when they want to, with a link providing a source for that. Or when I directly quote a particular poster and speak to the subject they were addressing, that section is blown off (regardless if the poster wants to ignore walls of text in response to other posters).
One or two line posts are very easy when one assumes the reference of information peddled thru mainstream media. If everything the mainstream media says or assumes isn't actually true, then it requires more words to demonstrate that falsity, often times demonstrable thru the mainstream media' OWN PREVIOUS WRITINGS which don't conform to the lastest updated propaganda cartoon. Sure, propaganda cartoons are easier on the brain then actually consistently sourcing real information. I just happen to prefer information to cartoons, when the cartoonists are continuously proven inaccurate or lying.
I don't mind the wall of text. What I would find useful is a clearly worded summation of your stance and goal of why you wrote what you wrote. Right now, I'm still guessing on what exactly your thoughts are on this. I have what I think is a good guess, but there's no single sentence I can point at and say "there, he says what he's thinking right there".
I'm not sure what the point of your walls of text is for.
I agree with your information and the analysis of it, I'm still unclear what the purpose is. Are you trying to convince me of something? Or someone else? Are you trying to correct something I said? Or someone else?
No. I'm calling it a horrible track record. They almost failed. Just like they almost failed in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I can't make any sense of this. Three almost failures= three successes= a 100% batting average.
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Sure. The world just needs more successes like Afghanistan.
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i loved the timing of obama trying to binary narrow option the spin: bomb syria or we have no other option and should not pass resolutions against gassing your own people. at the same time the figurehead of an actual democracy, Sweden, said they will open their doors to all syrians who want out or are already refugees.
the entire young generation of syria can be stuck in camps or can reignite the EU economy once they benefit from free world class education and worldclass healthcare... i wonder if some americans will start forging syrian refugee papers soon...
the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago, the second best time is right now.
What else is kinda not funny but sad in an ironic way is not two weeks ago somebody accused me of reductionism and said chidingly, "It's okay; we understand.....mostly Americans do this reductionism thing..."In all fairness to Madame Sissyl and all other non-Americans, this somebody was an American.
Aye gar. He's no true Scotsman!
This is a clusterf*!+.
The only winner here is Putin.
Carry on, and God save us all.
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There are layers of geopolitical, domestic political, economic, militaristic, humanistic and nationalistic motivations and/or consequences to get through in this onion.
But at the end of the day, this is all an issue because the President of the United States went off his teleprompter at a press conference and was too proud and arrogant to backtrack on a comment that essentially gave his enemies an opportunity to make him their puppet, at least on this one issue.
And they yanked the strings. And are still yanking. Obama is reeling right now and clearly has no idea what he should, or shouldn't do. His initial reaction is to dissimilate embarrassingly as he did yesterday with his attempt to say "I did not say that thing I said last year that got me into this mess." It is quite embarrassing as a citizen of the USA to watch our President make such an utter fool of himself.
But at least Obama seems to recognize in this case that immediatley sending burning, fiery death from the skies on potential innocents isn't a very good way to salve his ego.
The brutal truth here is that there isn't a good path for the USA to take in this affair because none of the paths lead either to a clear humanitarian solution, nor to any advancement of US interests.
I will be very interested in what Obama has to say tomorrow. I suspect very strongly that as I write this, Obama himself has no idea what he's going to say.
And that says a lot.
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There is one thing I don't get in situations like this. Considering that a) someone feels a need to punish Syria for doing Bad Stuff (tm), and b) you can't really kill Assad, since it's hard to know where he is... Why not simply bomb every piece of his palace into rubble? THAT is no secret. THAT would put it into personal perspective for him. Keep it up with all the pretty little prestige projects that all dictators seem to feel the need to spend money on. Triumph arches, statues of him, monuments... If these things are so important to build, they should feel pretty harsh to lose. You want to hit him personally in a way that hurts, do that.
Yeah, I get it. "How can you equate loss of civilian lives with bombed monuments, Sissyl?" To which I say: It's apparently the worst thing you can do personally to him, including what consequences would come of invasion. Remember that it took a very long time to find Saddam despite invading Iraq.