This was a really expensive attack. Tomahawks cost around a million apiece, and a destroyer or cruiser only has around 90 total missile cells, many of which are used for other types of missile: air defense, antisubmarine, anti-ship. (Attack submarines have a dozen missile tubes.) So we’re possibly talking about 2 or 3 ships firing off their entire load of land-attack missiles.
It would have been cheaper to send in stealth bombers dropping smart bombs, but I guess they didn’t want to risk a pilot getting captured, or the political ramifications of getting shot at/down by Russian air-defense missiles.
Huh? If this was a “false flag” operation, of course they would have waited for an Assad-initiated conventional bombing to release the chemical weapons.
As a pro-interventionist, I think it’s a good thing we do something. So, for me at least, for the first time I can write “a good thing” and “Trump” in the same sentence.
Obviously I’m not naive enough to expect things to turn out well; the country and surrounding region is a mess. But regardless it’s a good line to be added to the script: If you launch chemical attacks against civilian areas there will be repercussions.
The war is far from over. While Assad scored a major victory in winning back the entirety of Aleppo, very few gains have been made since then against the non-ISIL rebels. Assad has some momentum but without a major infusion of even more foreign forces, he doesn’t have the manpower necessary to retake all of Syria.
Given the number of mercenaries and foreign forces that are fighting for Assad, it is unclear what level of operational control he actually has over them. That isn’t really an issue behind the chemical attack here, though, since all indications are that it was a result of munitions dropped from the air, which leaves only the Syrian Air Force and the Russian Air Force as the possible culprits.
Chemical weapons, particularly when used here against civilian targets, are weapons of terror. Just like the barrel bombs dropped by Syrian Air Force helicopters in random urban areas controlled by the rebels.
The cost of a smart bomb is in the tens of thousands, much cheaper than a cruise missile such as the Tomahawk. 25K * 50 bombs = 1.25 million
I don’t know how much the cost of flying a few B2s on a mission is, but Wikipedia say $135,000 per flight hour, so times 3 bombers and let’s say 25 hours is about $10 million. (Edit: also you’d have to add costs for tanker aircraft to refuel them.)
Cost aside, it would potentially take a great many B-2s flying multiple sorties to drop the conventional munitions equivalent of 50 or so cruise missiles. And doing so would require them to subject themselves to the anti-air defenses installed by Russia.
According to CNN there were/are Russians at at least one of the Syrian military installations we hit. I wonder if that means we will get to see whatever blackmail material they supposedly have on trump. I’ll be keeping popcorn on hand just in case.
How many of Assad’s generals does it take to order a chemical weapon attack? Maybe just the commander of that airfield is all that is necessary. Maybe that commander didn’t like the people in the target zone very much. Maybe the guys loading the bombs didn’t like anyone in that part of Syria and switched out a conventional weapons for sarin gas. Maybe the airfield was completely out of all other types of bomb so they loaded up sarin. All “maybe”'s are hypotheticals and are just as good as your baseless theory. Why argue hypotheticals concerning motivtion when you have data:
Assad’s regime has used chemical weapons throughout the civil war without repercussions.
The only aircraft circling that area were Syrian Arab Army.
The bomb came from a plane.
It’s a war and it’s not over until the enemies are all dead or surrendered. This war is far from over. In fact the rebels have mounted a strong offense in Southern Idlib province.
Your conspiracy theorizing is rooted in not really knowing much about the Syrian Civil War your fellow Americans are fighting in. For example, ISIS has no presence in Northern Idlib province so it’s ridiculous to hypothesize they ran a false flag operation.
Idlib is entirely controlled by Al Qaeda and they recent offensive is into Northern Hama. The location of the strike is in Southern Idlib on the border with Hama.
Neither Syria nor Russia is claiming that it was a false flag BTW, they were bombing that location because it was a staging area for the Hama offensive. The claim is that they set off a rebel stockpile of chemical weapons.
I’m not saying I oppose Trump’s actions. The use of chemical weapons is a serious act and bombing a military base could be an appropriate response.
But if feels like there hasn’t been a lot of deliberation here. Has there been a new policy put into effect? Are we planning on following through with further military attacks against the Assad regime? What actions by them will trigger further attacks? Will we bomb other countries that use chemical weapons?
What authority did Trump use to launch this attack? Rand Paul is saying Congress didn’t authorize it. The President is the Commander-in-Chief but he can’t order a military attack against any country he wants to.
A military attack has to be part of a bigger plan.
