The problem is, the way Obama has handled this makes the US threat of force pretty much null and void. Which, btw, is perfectly fine with me. When we bomb countries in the M.E., we end up looking like vigilantes, at best, and thugs, at worst. But let’s not pretend that the threat of force is something folks there will take seriously going forward. The “international community” won’t do it, the American people don’t want to it, Congress won’t approve it, and Obama isn’t going to go it alone.
This will fall off the news cycle, and Assad can go back to killing his people in a civilized manner. Russia is happy, Assad is happy, the US is happy. Win-win-win!! Oh, except for the Syrian people, but nobody cares about them anyway. This is all about who can claim a “diplomatic victory”.
you mean the agreement between Putin and Obama that the UN resolution will have no teeth? How does that change the situation in Syria again?
well that’s quite a deal for the Syrians. The UN doesn’t recognize that Assad was behind the CW use and nothing will happen if all agreements are ignored.
That actually made me laugh out loud. By Christmas nothing will have changed. Assad will still be killing people and we will be giving arms to terrorists which will probably be used against us like the guns in operation Fast and Furious were and still are. I’ll just give it a name ahead of time and call it Benghazi II, the Reckoning.
Snappy! A bit short on specifics, though. These weapons we have given (or is it *will *be given)? Can you give us a list of the ones that have been given, or are just about to be, and, if you’re not too busy, your source for this information? Or if that’s too much work, perhaps just a list of the weapons they got from us, or may someday get from us, that they cannot get anywhere else?
Your Cassandra-like pronouncements are sufficiently dreadful, you need not embellish them further. But perhaps you could tell us more about this impending train wreck? Like, for instance, what is this train and where is it now? The End Is Near! is a catchy slogan, to be sure, but a bit light on detail.
That’s kinda the problem with “diplomatic victory”, John. It is a bit indistinct, isn’t it, it doesn’t smell like napalm in the morning, or even teen spirit. It smells like the corpses that aren’t there, and aren’t ours. Fragile, yes, uncertain, certainly. Qualities that might well have been avoided if we had followed the Mace Plan. Which was what, again?
I don’ t see us giving arms to anyone, especially now. We don’t want to endanger any CW inspectors and the rebals, even the “good ones”, are being driven more and more into alliances with Islamist fighters.
We need to stop thinking that we have to be involved in everything that happens in the region and that we can somehow shape events to our liking. It’s a terrible tragedy that they are locked in this civil war. I think the best we can do is offer hunanitarian aid and try and do something about the refugee crisis. That’s the under-repoted story of this situation.
Didn’t have one, John. Like I said, my default position is to be opposed to miiitary force, I start there and have to be moved from it. I could even see the use of a bluff of force, so long as its a bluff. Problem being, of course, is not letting them know its a bluff. That’s the only “plan” I had.
I think they improvised, made it up as they went along, which was probably as good a plan as any that might have been thought out in advance. Better, maybe, since it addresses the situation as it is rather than how we might have thought it would be, but it wasn’t.
Is luck a factor, here? Well, of course, but you can’t plan to be lucky just like you can’t plan not to be lucky. Or, at least, its a bad idea. But you can, at least to some degree, plan to be in a position to take advantage of good luck and minimize the threat of bad luck. Which I did, by voting for the smartest guy. You did too, IIRC.
Was he bluffing? I’m gonna guess he was, hoping that he would get enough support from the world at large and the people at home to make his bluff seem more tangible. Bluffs don’t always work, and sometimes you lose. But that doesn’t mean that bluffing is stupid.
It isn’t that improvising and making it up as you go along is such a great idea. Its just that there weren’t any better ones. And my position was not that there was a better plan, only that military intervention was the worst of a bad lot.
Seems to me that you are kinda grumpy about how this is turning out, so that puts you in a position I do not share. I can’t blame Obama for failing if I can’t see any way for him to have succeeded.
Precisely. What is Spain’s plan for Syria*? Why don’t they have one? Maybe they know something we don’t!
*To pick a somewhat random, developed country.
I don’t find much there to disagree with. I think Obama either failed to gauge the opinion of the other world leaders or failed to rally them to his cause. And I’m actually OK with that, as it got us pretty much to where I’d like us to be. Much, much better to fumble towards peace than to fumble to towards war.
You’re entitled to your opinion. Mine is that you are disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing, There isn’t a dime’s width of distance between your position and mine on this matter.
There’s a lot of missing the big picture when dissing Obama’s Syria achievement. The big picture may involve US diplomacy with Iran. This is getting real interesting. The hard core antiwar left will like this. Will the Tea Party Republicans remain in isolationism mode?
The above is from Obama’s Strategy Of Talking To Countries Instead Of Going To War Might Just Be Crazy Enough To Work. By Joshua Hersh, Christina WilkieSep 21, 2013
You, of all people, would understand. My opinions are met with such warm and universal approval I get to craving a bit of disagreement, if only for variety.
I agree that it will serve humanity well if the end result that comes to fruition from all that has transpired the past two weeks is what XT defines as the “important point here” that the Assad regime never again uses chemical weapons on the Syrian people and that those weapons do not spread to any other parts of the region or the rest of the world. It has become quite clear however that if John Mace’s steadfast principled requirement for his own personal happiness that the USA does not bomb anyone were to be strictly applied to the President of the United States in the Syria case, there would be no start of dismantling the Syrian regimes arsenal of CW and it would be much more likely that the regime, if not confronted by the U.S. and many other nations, would kill again using chemical weapons.
But what is troubling to me within John Mace’s Post #019 is that Mace early on piled on Kerry’s comment and Obama’s handling of the gassing of men women and children in Syria. Mace joined raucously in the hysterical and politically right wing anti-Obama biased “The world is laughing at us” circus.
If the intelligent world were ever indeed truly ‘laughing at us’ which is doubtful where it counts and devoid of political fanaticism and ideology, then it is good to see that they are not laughing at us anymore.
And I’ll keep bringing up diplomatic overtures with regard to Iran’s new president etc., as part of something bigger. It will be difficult for the American right to back-off their longstanding call for military action against Iran’s nuclear program after what just transpired regarding Syria and how diplomacy has won over the use of force.
Does everyone recall how the overwhelming majority on the right shake their bomb bomb bomb Iran bellies laughing away at Obama whenever he suggests that diplomacy with Iran is the better way forward? My God, didn’t Obama suggest during the '08 campaign that he would ‘talk’ to the Iranian leaders.
Mace should rethink the need for having the power to use or threaten the use of force in a president’s back pocket and what it can do to force diplomatic progress. Its just a president must be wise enough to know when diplomacy and international cooperation such as UN inspections is the better way to go.
Hopefully even if a President uses the threat of an unbelievably small ‘effort’ in an attempt to get something done in the world involving our national security, Mace will not be so quick to pile on in ridicule of a president who has been entrusted to sometimes do what may not appear to be popular at the time.
John Mace isn’t the one who needs to rethink anything.
Obama does not have the use of force in his back pocket. He gave that up, essentially, by asking permission from all and sundry and being refused (except by the French). No one who refused to join in before is going to join in the use of force after Assad violates the agreement, whatever it is. And the UN isn’t going to do anything either.
So there is no real threat of force. It’s a bluff. And everybody knows it.
Obama could have bombed Syria after Assad used WMD. He did not need permission from anybody to do so - that’s not how it works. But Obama was looking for consensus. He didn’t get it, and now has to deal with the fact that there is no credibility to his “red line”. He said he would do something, couldn’t get anyone to agree with him to do it, and now Russia has stepped in to work out some kind of deal so there is legitimacy to Russia providing conventional arms to Syria, Putin has enhanced prestige, Assad gets to stay in power and kill lots of people with conventional bombs and bullets, and Obama is left on the sidelines whimpering “I meant to do this all along. Really!”
“Bad news, Mr. President. You’ve lost the support of Shodan.”
“Did I ever have it?”
“No, sir. But now you have absolutely, positively, for sure for sure, lost his support.”
“Devastating.”
“Barry. Sarcasm isn’t very nice. Here, have some water.”
“Yes, dear.”
“Even worse news is you never had the support of Elucidator on this one.” “We talked about this before”. “Wen playing with your big boy crayons use the GRAY one to draw lines and make them really wide so nobody knows where the edges are”.
“Oh, and the technician said your teleprompter was fixed so try to use that in the future”.
You have some very serious problems with your argument in Post#474. The most serious of which is coming through in your own words. They are *“Obama could have bombed Syria after Assad used WMD. He did not need permission from anybody to do so …” * And that is because even now to this very minute that you are reading this, It is still “after Assad used WMD” except that now we have stronger confirmation that the CW attack came from Syrian Government Forces.
There is no timeline or qualifications on the Commander in Chief to begin ‘needing permission’ to bomb what he considers to be a matter of national security or enforcing international norms. There just is not. If you can cite something please do.
But I have dismissed yours and other similar arguments earlier on this thread:
Does anyone think the Joint Chiefs will not carry out strikes if the Commander in Chief orders them? -NotfooledbyW Post #200 W 09-12-2013 08:46 AM Syrdrive255a0846
No one has responded to that point although as you are doing above Shodan, you are arguing that essentially there is no threat in Obama’s back pocket which would only be the case if **and only if **the Joint Chiefs refused to carry it out.
So why do you continue to make an argument that you yourself admit that Obama does not need permission to order the strikes in the first place?
Is there a reason why you can’t use quotes correctly?
And you’re hatching eggs that were never laid. Obama painted himself into a corner by asking Congress. Without a yes vote he will be attacking a country that didn’t attack us in any way. It would be like attacking Mexico. So yes, I’d say a no vote from Congress would put any orders he gives in jeopardy of being carried out. Military allegiance is not to the President. It’s to the Constitution.
I’m sure you would say that. Who else would say that?
Frankly, I don’t know if he expected the support of Congress or not. Absent your display of a Certificate of Telepathy, I don’t think you do either. It isn’t your position that is absurd, it is your certainty.