The Syria War?

[jordan179]

As I write this, Obama appears about to take America into another war -- probably a small one, though it might wind up bigger than the Lightworkers expects it to be.  His stated plan is to launch limited cruise missile strikes, targeting the individual military units he judges "guilty" of launching chemiical weapons strikes.  He is explicitly not

Comments

[x_eleven]

Cliff Notes™ version: O has not the foggiest idea what he's doing.

[jordan179]

Indeed ... he has never studied military strategy nor military history, he regards these as socially-inferior and contemptible disciplines, he's not interested in their conclusions; and he despises those who have studied them, so he will not listen to them, but instead will go with his instincts that it can't be all that hard. With the predictable consequences.

[kalance]

Never mind that Russia has promised to honor their alliance with Syria if the US does anything that isn't specifically green-lit by the UN Security Council. A council that Russia is on.

At this moment, good terms with Russia are pretty vital to a lot of our interests. One being the ISS. If Obama does something that Russia doesn't approve of, we basically lose the space station.

China has also been showing reluctance to support any actions against Syria; and they're another power that is in a good position to retaliate against unilateral US military action without resorting to direct force as well. Being on the receiving end of economic sanctions from them would hurt us quite a bit in the short term I think.

The bottom line: From the POV of the US; no good can come from a strike of any sort against Syria. No matter how much Assad may deserve it.

[x_eleven]

China has also been showing reluctance to support any actions against Syria; and they're another power that is in a good position to retaliate against unilateral US military action without resorting to direct force as well.

Let's not forget that it's China who's been buying all of Uncle Sam's paper. You owe the bank $1000, they own your soul. You owe the bank $10E9, you own the bank's soul.

A Chinese threat to call in Unk's debt will be the end of any US threat to Syria.

Assad may have nothing to fear anyway, given O's ineptitude. We'd be better off if he went on a four year long golf vacation and left the country's business to the grown-ups. It would be well worth it to continue paying him his salary for doing absolutely nothing.

[eta_ta]

what do you mean "to call Unk's debt"? how do you picture the event? they can't demand payment before the payment is due and as far as we fulfill our contractual obligations for repayment they have no influence in our affairs

[kalance]

The kind of loans that the US takes out from other nations/banks isn't necessarily like a mortgage or car loan. There's not always a payment plan on an international scale; more of an "IOU" marker that can often merely be called in.

Mostly because the other countries don't actually want their debtors to actually pay off the debt. Not entirely anyway. As long as the US owes Chin money; we owe them interest. Which is basically a cash cow that will never die so long as we owe them money. As it stands, something like an eighth of the money the US spends every year goes exclusively to paying off the interest of our current debts; with little to nothing paying off the loans themselves

[typewriterking]

Your very most important line is the one about Mr Assad perhaps deciding to continue the war that Mr Obama is starting.

Too many people seem to believe that sleeper agents are just an urban legend. We can't be sure just how much of a presence Hezbollah has in America, but it could be substantial. We have an understanding that the group has the full support of two state sponsors, Syrian and Iran, which means two different diplomatic pouches supplying them in New York City, thanks to their UN membership.

Thanks to fallout with Russia, there's a potential third diplomatic pouch supplying sleepers. Mr Putin, of course, wouldn't want to leave Russian fingerprints behind, but there's the possibility of Russian sleepers operating under the Hezbollah aegis.

All of this on top of what you pointed out about Syria's conventional forces reaching our assets in the region.

[jordan179]

I don't think the Russians would be willing to risk war with America by launching or even too directly-aiding covert strikes on the United States of America. However, the possibility can't be discounted. The Iranians are of course insane, and Syria directly involved in this, so their involvement is much more likely.

Obama's fundamental flaw is that he seems to imagine that he is the only actor with any initiative in this confrontation; that he can choose not only when to start the war but when to end it. I would wager that he doesn't even grasp that this is "war" -- he probably thinks of it by some euphemism and imagines that the change in terminology changes the fundamental nature of his actions.

He probably despises the Syrians so greatly that he assumes that they can't strike back. While the Syrians are, in fact, despicable in many ways, they are still human beings and as such may have their own strategies.

[xiphias]

The world as a whole has an interest in punishing the use of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. There is a developing, fragile, not-yet-a-consensus-but-going-in-that-direction that other states have a responsibility to smack states that use NBC weapons.

The strike Obama's discussing isn't really about the civil war at all. On the whole, I think most people like the rebels more than we like Assad, but realize that there's not a damn thing the United States can do that's likely to help. The Israelis I know are "neutral, in the sense that no matter who wins, it's gonna suck for Israel."

What Obama wants to do is to send a message that, "If you use NBC, other people will smack you." Not just to Assad, but to anybody, anywhere, who considers using NBC.

It's not about the civil war; it's not even primarily about Assad. It's about setting up a direct punishment for use of NBC, to discourage other people from doing it.

[ford_prefect42]

What's so special about nbcs? What is it that you imagine makes "everyone" want to oppose their use?

Eta:
Oh, i personally dislike al waeda WaaY more than i dislike assad. Assad us an asshat, al qaeda is our most bitter enemy.

[xiphias]

Logical or not, the idea that NBCs are worse than conventional weapons is part of current international policy throughout the world. Not everyone, not every regime, agrees with the idea, but it's somehow become something of a litmus test in telling the bad guys from the even worse guys. Indeed, governments seem to deliberately fudge the lines between WMDs and NBCs deliberately, for rhetorical points. (For example, hand grenades and IEDs are WMDs for purposes of anti-terror laws.)

I'm not sure that your last sentence really means much useful. Assad is a person. Al Qaeda is a movement, really even a philosophy at this point, of an unknown number of loosely-connected groups who have some combination of anti-American, anti-Israel, and some version of pro-'umah or at least pro-Islamisct ideas. I don't know if you can compare a person with a philosophy.

[ford_prefect42]

So, basically, your entire point comes down to "cause i said so"? If there's nothing fundamentally different, then there's no real reason to use nbc use as a litmus.

Aq is an orginazation. The assad regime is a n organization. Aq is more hostile to us interests than the assad regime.

[lostboy_lj]

The thing to mention is, there's no telling if Assad's Syrian Baaths were the chemical bombers here. Sure, their Iraq branch had a history of this, but it was against a tribal fringe group, considered alien to both the majority Sunni and Shia in central and southern Iraq.

My question boils down to "Qui bono?" Assad gains nothing by using chem weapons right now; the West was answered years of crackdowns and revolutionary combat with a collective yawn, and there's been no indication that the rebels have mounted a game-changing offensive gained a foothold recently. In fact, you could argue the opposite is true.

And when you factor in the sort of fighters who've been draw into this rebellion - namely, the flagging, discredited remnants of Al Qaeda in Iraq and similar Islamist hydra heads that have been regenerating since the premature U.S. pullout, it sounds pretty clear to me who benefits from a chem strike. For God's sake, they now have the French - the f@$#ing French! - talking about military action. If The One lobs a few dozen

[jordan179]

Indeed -- what makes this truly absurd is that we don't even have very firm evidence that any crossbows were fired at knights ... I mean that any chemical weapons were used against Syrian civilians (or revels, for that matter).

And even if Assad was the mad chem bomber, what do we get if the other side wins? The murder, rape and religious oppression of whatever Syrian polity survives, along with another intransigent "ally" in a benighted region who will still view us as the Great Satan - a thing to be manipulated until it can be destroyed.

If we were doing this with the intention of letting Assad go down so that we could lure the jihadists to gather together in the cities, the better to take them all out with massive airstrikes, I'd be totally on-board with it. As it is, it looks as if Obama will be caught by complete surprise when the new Syrian regime fails to sing Kumbayah with him.

[lostboy_lj]

Just as in Egypt, with the Muslim Brotherhood. Unless the "Manchurian Candidate" wing of the conspiracy crowd was right, and the rise to power of those comically evil and incompetent Islamists was the administration's desired outcome all along. But I tend to agree with you that think these people are (for the most part) just intellectual lightweights, whose misguided ideals and total ignorance of reality means they can't hear the train until it's running over their heads. Every time I see Obama, Kerry or Hagel on my screen I hear the Three Stooges theme song play. Putin is just licking his chops.

[ford_prefect42]

I am curious why you would consider AQ "flagging and discredited", they have been taking impressive strides lately, including freeing the population of Abu Ghraib prison, and multiple other prisons across the middle east, which has restored their numbers to near record highs, the muslim brotherhood, which is a closely linked organization has taken over literal governance of several nations, etcetera.

No, AQ is beaten only in Obama's delusions.