I’m starting to get really tired of the “OMG! OBAMA IS STARTING THE NEXT IRAQ WAR!!!” posters. :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
If america cared, it could have prevented most of the 110,000 deaths that have happened so far just by asking its lapdog saudi arabia to not arm the rebels.
edit: that sort of intervention would have been welcome by world community.
Other than 1) doing nothing or 2) trying to prevent use of chemical weapons via the “red line” strategy, what were the other options available? Sure, lots of people are dying in Syria. All you people who think the US is ridiculous for complaining about chemical weapons but not other weapons - what do you propose? Should we just bomb everyone until they agree to play nice?
Seriously - it’s all very well to say “he shouldn’t have done the thing he did” but what alternative are you realistically suggesting we do? You’re all smart people, so I’m sure you can come up with something better.
I think you misunderstand who is on which end of the leash in that relationship.
Lets not get into that. I am reasonably sure if America had emphasized it properly to Saudi king, he would have fallen in line. America is 10 times more powerful and is a friendly country to Saudis but it didn’t use its influence for not arming the rebels.
I respectfully disagree with your assessment of the outcome of the hypothetical.
Among the reasons the gassing of thousands is considered worse than the shooting of tens of thousands is that it is indiscriminate. Kids, grandmas, combatant and non-combatant alike are deliberately killed.
So the now cliche “but why didn’t you care about the others” is really missing the point of this particular international norm.
Even that’s just a rationalization. The thing is that we DO care about them; we just can’t do anything about it. Chemical weapons, we might be able to stop. Ain’t never gonna stop the bullets short of killing everyone ourselves.
At least this time the USA didn’t give the bad guy the chemical weapons in the first place - progress, right? Just giving one side normal weapons. Oh, and not bombing only becasue the President got handed his arse by the UK Parliament:
http://therealrevo.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Rumsfeld-Saddam.jpg
Either when Syria attacks the US, or when the UN allows the use of force. There’s no acceptable reason for the US to play “world policeman” when the actual world police don’t feel it necessary.
The UN is not the world police. It’s the world PTA.