Ah, Go North, Turn West, Let's Take Out Syria While We're In The Neighborrhood

Great Debates
1

Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,5944-645911,00.html

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19197-2003Apr13.html

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/04/13/sprj.irq.bush.syria/index.html

Well, we have the military forces already in place (or close to it), the US is feeling invincible right now, the Bush cheerleading squad is still all pumped up, and the anti-Syrian rhetoric appears to be on the front burner (notice how the accusations towards Syria mirror the ones against Iraq in the months before the war?).

Is Bush itching to continue a battle plan into Syria? If his rhetoric has any meaning behind it, is it prudent to scale back our forces only to bring them back for another fight a few months down the road? Even if we take the rhetoric at face value, it Syria worth a war now? Later? Keeping the electorate on a war footing thousands of miles away from home might be a good feint for their dismal economic policies back home. As long as we are kept with eyes to the sky watching the hawks, we won’t be looking at the ground at all the turkeys on our home turf.

Or, perhaps, the media, gungho from their embedded positions within the US military, are feeling let down the war went too fast and too smoothly for their editors and ad revenue. Perhaps they want a war with Syria for their own ends? Yeah, yeah, this last one is a bit of a stretch, but is the thought that far-fetched?

2

After living through this kind of talk at the end of last year, when I thought it was fantastic bluster in regards to Iraq, I have no doubt that these are serious statements and not just trial balloons. The question is not whether Bush and Rumsfeld and others will press this as far as they can, including an attack on Syria, but how many people will line up behind them on this one too.

I fervently pray that the Democrats in Congress at least will show up and will not rubber stamp this one before thinking about it. I hope that more people will give this one greater consideration before swallowing the party line.

I have no sense that reason will win out. Not with these guys.

3

I do not think the USA can seriously consider attacking another country without realising the very grave consequences it would have. I believe the international consequences would be overwhelming. Iraq has created a very strong worldwide opposition. Syria would mean the rest of the world would seriously think the USA (or it’s president at least) has really lost it and is a very serious threat to world peace and stability.

In fact, the whole world knows this and this detracts from the capacity of the US to act which means countries can get away with more.

4

I feel a little uneasy reading those articles because the same thing happened with Iraq. Bush brought up the topic and said, “Don’t worry, as long as Iraq co-operates with us everything will be fine”. And of course, regardless if they were to co-operate or not Bush already had his mind up, he just put it down real easy to make it sound like it would be Iraq’s fault if we had to go to war. I don’t know if Bush already has his mind made up with Syria (or maybe that he’s had Syria in our little “road trip” all along), but if he has, this is absolutely a sign, if not the sign.

5

Both China and Russia have said during the last few days that they will be significantly increasing their military spending. As a consequence other countries in the region will follow, no doubt. This is raising military tensions around the globe.

If the USA were to attack Syria I would expect serious, worldwide, opposition. It would be pretty much the USA against the rest of the world. I hope not even the UK would support that. Then entire world would be outraged.

6

When all of this started back in the Fall I looked at a map and said “Hmmm…”
It’s the Che Guevara/Osama Bin Laden theory of revolution.
Che chose Bolivia because it’s a landlocked country smack in the middle of Latin America, and if he would have succeeded there, he would be able to use it as a base for the rest of the continent.
Osama wound up in Afghanistan, a landlocked country surrounded by Islamic countries in which to foment his Islamic Fundamentalist revolution.
Iraq is nearly landlocked, and has substantial borders with two big troublemakers for the U.S.: Iran and Syria. We can now pressure Iran from two sides, since we also are in Afghanistan.
But they’re liking that Syrian border better.
Personally, I think this has always been a part of the plan. The next few months will tell us if this is truly so.

7

Do the Bushites in the White House seriously believe that they have the constitutional authority to attack Syria without Congressional approval? If they do, it is clearly the end of our system of checks and balances. And shame on the Congress if they roll over on this one.:frowning:

8

Why wouldn’t Bush have that authority? The President is clearly made the Commander-in-Chief in the Constitution, and as far as I know the Supreme Court has never ruled on this. The only argument you would have would be the War Powers Act, which could be struck down by the Court.

And besides, how is this the end of checks and balances? Congress controls the purse strings, after all. They could cut money to the military. Congress has impeachment authority–I don’t know if it’d work, but they might be able to barrel it through.

9

Asterion, inpeachment is out of the question. For better or worse, the repulicans there will never allow the neccessary 2/3 majority there. A few may defect on that issue, but not enough to impeach.

Best Bet: purse strings issue.

Though I thought the war against Hussien & Co was a fundementally good thing (Whether or not Dub had his heart set on it is irrelevant if The Mustache was unwilling to cooperate anyway…), I think we should seriously limit whatever adventures are planned for Syria to finding Saddam (If we have reason to belive he’s there), and any remaining Chemical Weps caches (which do no good for anyone, including Syria herself), and stay the hell out of Iran alltogether.

10

Is Bush planning to invade Syria? Of course! He invaded Iraq based on the claims that Iraq was collaborating with Al Queda and storing weapons of mass destruction, neither of which he’s presented any evidence for. And he found that seventy percent of the American public believes that it’s ok to attack a country in order to get rid of their WMD’s, even if they don’t have any. Now he’s just accused Syria of having WMD’s, and backed up that claim with exactly the same amount of evidence that he did in the case of Iraq. Why on Earth would he make such an outrageous claim if he didn’t intend to start a war? It’s not like there’s any advantage that he’d get by pissing off the Syrian leadership with slander like that if he had any intention of staying at peace.

Look at it this way. If Bush wants to win his election in 2004, he either needs to pull the economy up or else have a potential war that he can use to distract the country from his disasterous economic record. Now you don’t honestly believe that he honestly believes that he’s going to rescue the economy by repeatedly plunking down tens of billions of dollars of our tax money into the hands of his biggest campaign contributors, do you? Obviously he’s not going to stake his hopes on the economy. And that leaves, from his perspective, only one other option. Keep those “War is not the answer” bumper stickers around, 'cause you’re going to be needing them again really soon.

11

After we mow down Syria, Iran, and North Korea, let’s go bitchslap those punks in Grenada again…no reason, just for the hell of it.

12

Just wanted to put in my two cents. This is a sad development. I don’t see how anyone could support further military action in the region. But I’m sure the states will bombard the world (especially its own citizens) with a few months of stories about how the Syrian government are tyranical dictators who torture children and bite the heads of chickens, and then the sheep will all fall in line.

This is not to say Saddam wasn’t bad. But so what… dictators aren’t nice and fuzzy people. That’s not an excuse for war in my humble opinion.

13

OTOH, this is the man who called North Korea part of an “Axis of Evil,” and we aren’t even talking about attacking them yet…

14

Okay, lets look at this situation from the viewpoint of what’s possible now, first.

Will the public support war? I am not in a good position to tell, but the public is against a war in Syria now sigh, but who know after the accusations start to fly. WMD! Syria! Baath Party! Syria! Hezbolla! Terrorism! Evil! WMD! Evil! Syria! Assad! Fermez la Bouche!

So, I guess you could say the matter of getting the American Public to go along probably wouldn’t be difficult if all of the other factors weren’t involved.

The military: We don’t have enough troops in Iraq now for an invasion, considering how we barely have enough to stabilize Iraq. Also, I don’t think it would be good for troop morale. They were told that the road home was through Baghdad, not damascus, cairo, tehran… Secondly, we don’t have the intelligence on syria that we had on Iraq IMHO, nor are their defenses weakened like they were from the No Fly Zone in Iraq.

Political difficulties:

Firstly, he would need to get congressional approval, as the first resolution only covered Iraq. If he doesn’t do this, GWB could kiss a second term goodbye. There’ll be a bunch of pissed off Dems, plus several Republicans. Fox News would be supportive still.

Geopolitical difficulties:
Attacking syria would actually stir up the “Muslim Street” that was supposed to go into anarchy for this war. Not to mention problems the Iraqis would have with it. It wouldn’t be good for the future of any Iraqi state. Who knows what kind of terrorism would occur, because every arab country would be really upset

15

ON THE OTHER HAND…

This is the ideal time to pressure Syria WITHOUT having to go to war. The best chance to get Syria into line without military conflict is to threaten them right after you’ve shown exactly what you’re willing to do and capable of doing.

I think this is just hardball politics. The U.S. also fired a couple of threats across Iran’s bow, and now it looks like Iran wants to re-open diplomatic channels that have been closed for 20 years. They’re getting the message. I’ll bet Syria does too.

The Arab world is in shock right now. They had bought into the belief that the U.S. was a paper tiger without a stomach for conflict. Saddam was their big hero - the guy who had been thumbing his nose at the U.S. for over a decade with impugnity. So countries like Syria and Yemen knew they were far down on the ‘hit’ list, and not likely to come under attack if Saddam wasn’t.

Well, guess what? Saddam is gone. There’s no more ‘worst guy’ on the block to hide behind. Now none of these countries know if they might be in the U.S.'s gunsights. That’s a pretty good time to put the diplomatic screws to them.

16

I love the smell of realpolitik in the morning.:cool:

17

Sam Stone: A question, if you don’t mind…

Over in my thread, you said basically that insufficient information existed to make a delcaration of whether you’d advocate pushing on to other countries. And I completely understand that, although certainly enough claims have been tossed around about what various countries are supposed to be doing.

Now today, there’s been a huge blitz of accusations against Syria. You say that this is just tough talk to scare them into cooperating, and that may very well be. But what if, as others here claim, this talk is “preparing” us and the world for an invasion of Syria that the Bush Administration has already decided they’re going to do(I’m curious as to why you think they’re incorrect)? Considering the content and substance of the Administration’s claims so far, would you support going to war with Syria on the basis of what claims have already been publically announced? If so, within how much time?

(Granted, this may just be asking “Do you think Syria really is hiding Iraq’s WMDs” in another form, but I’ll ask it anyway.)

A situation like this is why I posted my earlier thread, y’see.

18

What, like this is a surprise to anyone? This is just the next step in the Neoconservatives’ plan to assert American military power and entrench the new pax Americana in the Middle East.

I’d like to say that this damn fool scheme won’t have a chance of succeeding, but I dunno – Bush has already shown that he doesn’t give a moment’s thoughts to public opinion, either at home or abroad. And with a Republican-controlled Judiciary and Republican-controlled Congress, I don’t hold out much hope for a check-and-balance to stop him, either. About the only thing that might give Bush pause would be if Tony Blair withdraws UK support for a Syrian campaign, but I don’t think Bush cares about that, either.

Damn, where’s a presidential election when you need one?

19

I haven’t seen the Bush administration ‘prepare’ anyone for a Syrian invasion. I see the Bush administration doing exactly what it should do - use its present strong position in the Middle East to turn up the heat on Syria and Iran.

There is a fundamental misunderstanding between some anti-war people and people like myself. I do not favor war in any form. But I recognize the maxim that if you desire peace, you should prepare for war.

Had the world stood behind the U.S. in demanding that Saddam disarm, we might have avoided a war in Iraq. But tyrants only understand power. Saddam saw weakness in the U.S., and it caused him to miscalculate American resolve. War resulted.

Syria has been in the same position. If Saddam was gettting away with it, why shouldn’t Syria? So it treated American threats and demands with contempt. When such an atmosphere exists, the only alternative becomes war itself.

But now, it’s different. The Iraq war was an earthquake in the Arab world. The extremists in the Middle East have come to believe a fantasy - that the U.S. can be defeated just by being tougher, meaner, and willing to kill enough Americans. They believed that America had no stomach for violence. This BREEDS violence. Edmund Burke said, “For evil to triumph, good men have to do nothing.” The laudable desire for peace, when voiced too strongly, becomes a demonstration of weakness to those who would do violence to us.

So I believe in taking a tough stance in the world. I believe you need to stand up to tyrants, including threatening war if they continue their tyrannical ways. I believe that when good appeases evil, evil always wins.

I also believe we need to smash the twisted culture of death in the middle east. The best way to do that is to make it clear that it doesn’t work. Terrorists are willing to die gloriously for a cause, taking many hated enemy with them. They’re less willing to die pointlessly in a hail of machine gun fire from a gum-chewing American soldier. It has to be made clear that the only way to achieve a peaceful existance and a good life for your children is to eschew violence and work to build a just society.

I’m rambling a bit here, but the bottom line is that if the administration sees a threat in Syria, or sees Syria harboring Ba’athists or weapons of mass destruction, then our duty is to stand up and tell them to stop, or else. The ‘or else’ doesn’t have to be war. It can be sanctions. It can be limited military strikes. It can be targeted executions. It can be lots of things.

Whether I would advocate an actual war against Syria will depend on whether I think all diplomatic angles have been exhausted, and/or whether there is a threat there that can not be managed in any other way. As of now, I have no real information about that one way or the other. I would have to be convinced.

20

Uh-oh.