If the idea is to overthrow the regime, I think the Saudis would like to do that, but don’t have the ability.
If the idea is to damage military gear – say, parked tanks – to the extent that Assad will think continued use of poison gas isn’t a net plus – I think the Saudis can do that. They just don’t want to.
Note to any Syrian diplomat lurking here: Pres. Obama may not now have the votes in Congress needed for an attack. But if you guys keep using gas, he will get them.
It was stupid enough to use it in the first place. I am pretty sure they will not compound the stupidity by using it again BEFORE the vote. After the vote, though, what will Obama do - call for another vote?
But more to the point, the Saudis don’t want to do it. No lacking in ability, just a lacking in will.
I don’t know about you guys, but I just sent off an e-mail to my Congresscritter and both Senators saying pretty much what I’ve been saying on this MB. No military action in Syria!!
Nope. You can imagine that if you like, but I didn’t say it.
Thirty years of history is on my side, with a failed M.E. policy too dependent on military force. What’s on your side? Hope? Well, that was Obama’s campaign slogan. Some of us weren’t fooled by it.
Hard to say because it is dependent on unpredictable future events. Maybe if the administration sees it is going to lose the vote, it will change the language to get some kind of condemnation that could be used to justify brief bombing if gas use continues. Also, if gas use continues, or something else equally disturbing occurs in the area, public opinion will shift, making a vote politically unnecessary or easily won.
AFAIK the brief Israeli attacks on Iraqi (1981) and Syrian (2007) reactors were reasonably successful, as was NATO bombing in the Balkans in 1995 and 1999. American/French punitive bombing in retaliation for poison gas use would be much more like those than like, say, the attempt to modernize Afghanistan.
Israelis didn’t telegraph their attacks for weeks (months) in advance, did they? If they did, you can be sure they wouldn’t have been successful.
Neither of those were American military actions in the Middle East. Israel has an strong, existential concern in that region. We do not.
And the bombing of the Balkans had the full support of NATO, and lasted about 3 months. Obama doesn’t have the support of NATO and is not proposing a 3 month bombing campaign. I hope.
I’m pretty sure, that even if Congress says “NO” to any action involving Syria, Obama will still go ahead with his “moral choice”, damn the consequence. Thing I can’t figure out, is he isn’t running for re-election, and most of the country is against him, but he is going to do whatever he feels like.
I normally don’t involve myself in the political nonsense, since it is mostly nonsense, and the US Congress is completely broken, but I am SERIOUSLY ticked off that Obama wanted to get the “peoples view”, and has now decided to screw the people, and “lobby congress” to get what he wants.
Sorry, but we need to get out of the middle east. Actually, I personally believe that we need to pull all of our troops home, and use them to, uh, wow… Defend the USA. If another country decides to attack us, fine, we go to war, but we should NOT be starting (strikethrough, dunno how to do that here) one (end strikethrough) another.
You said you were not fooled by Obama. That is beyond disagreeing with Obama. Obama must be a fool to you to think what he thinks about why Syria must be punished.
What thirty years of history in the M.E. was too dependent on military force?
You must think Gulf War I was wrong and a failure.
Significant use of American military force was applied damn near totally and mistlynagainst Iraq since 1991 for NFZ enforcement until Lil Dubby went nuts on Iraq in 2003 when he abandoned peaceful disarming of Iraq. Then we had Libya two years ago, and now if it happens it will be limited against Syria.
Invading Iraq when peaceful disarming was in full progress was a horrific amoral use of force and a doomed to fail policy, but are you certain Libya was a failure of use force by a plenty broad coalition?
Is it wrong to arm Israel?
Is it wrong to continue supporting the Egyptian military?
What in the past thirty years of M.E. history resembles the use of chemical weapons as had occurred in Syria?
Broad and general statements about 30 years of history resolvesor clarifies nothing about what just happened last month.
If you think the Arab Spring is the result of US military policy in the M.E., I’d like an explanation of how that works.
I think that expecting ANY ME policy to be successful is expecting much. It would be like expecting a successful European policy pre-WWII. Our relationship with Europe from the country’s founding to 1945 was dependent on military force. Because the region was unstable and rather uncivilized.
Boy, you got him, Terr! I bet he’s just rubbing his hands and cackling with malicious glee thinking about the 150 German jihadists in Syria. Talk about a power base!
I hate to bring race into this, but damn it, when those blue-eyed children were being massacred in Bosnia, the U.S went forward with Operation Deliberate Force; when those blue-eyed children were being massacred in concentration camps in Germany, the U.S made clear to Germany that the country would be “held accountable for these crimes”.
Though, unfortunately, when brown-eyed people are massacred or treated badly, the inaction and silence from the U.S government becomes deafening. Indeed, the U.S does has a long record of not protecting brown-eyed people from injustice, whether it be in their own country (Native Americans, Jim Crow, “Separate but Equal”, et al), or Rwanda, or South Africa, or Sudan, or Syria.
The good news (for you) is that there’s very little chance Congress will approve military action against Syria. There’s way too many people there who want to see Obama fail for that to occur. Congress would rather mime another sequel to “Showdown or Shutdown: DebtLimitRepealObamaCareKeyStonePipeline” for the umpteenth time. The world may have been ready for a black President but Legislative Branch (clearly) is not.
What was the Congressional vote for that action? Hint: There wan’t any. If you’re looking for hypocrisy, you’re barking up the wrong tree, because I was firmly against that action, too. I’m not sure how common blue eyes are in Bosnia, but that Republic is largely Muslim. So, yes, you should hate to play the race card here.
Obama claims to have the constitutional authority to act w/o Congressional approval. If he went ahead, as he did in Libya, he’d get a bit of grief form Congress (as is SOP), but he could claim his moral high ground. Going to Congress is a recipe for inaction.
What “race” are Syrians?
You forgot a few. Like the Pakistani and Yemeni children killed by the CIA on Obama’s watch. Or the USAF veteran who was put on the no-fly list just because he was brown and Muslim. Twice. Or Anwar Al-Awlaki and his son, executed without trial for constitutionally protected speech on Obama’s orders.
But no, in Honestyland the people who don’t want to drop anti-tank missiles on any more brown children are the real racists. :rolleyes:
Well, it is somewhat debatable how effective that operation was in terms of saving lives of civilians.
Operation Deliberate Force was in August and September of 1995. Most of the killings of Bosnian civilians took place in summer of 1992 and throughout 1993.
By 1995, things got stabilized & settled somewhat in terms of civilian deaths and world news media started pushing the idea of “all sides did terrible things”.
In short, bad example for any racist theory of US involvement.
It is pretty common. Mine are actually green and my two kids have sky-blue eyes and both have blonde hair. However, his point fails on a totally different basis.
America doesn’t disdain people for being brown. We disdain people who don’t have anything we want.
Still, this has been an eye-opening experience, especially for a DFH peacenik like myself. I had no idea my positions were so enthusiastically endorsed by people I never would have expected to! Grumman and Terr, walking arm in arm to the anti-war demonstration, singing “Give Peace a Chance”. You guys need any tie-dye shirts or tear-gas masks? Gotta bunch up in the attic.
'Course, gonna have to work at stifling the notion that you guys aren’t so much anti-war as anti-Obama. Gonna be kinda tough, truth be known. But other than that?
Groovy.