Looking at pictures of Bosnian women on Google, they look like very pretty white people dressed in Muslim garb.
Obama going to Congress for approval is correct thing to do, though, I think even he continually underestimates how much the Legislative Branch loathes him. On the other hand, this frees Obama from any responsibility. If and when the situation on the ground in Syria gets worse, intensifies,or, God forbid, more chemical weapons are used, Congressional Republicans will look the fool.
[QUOTE=Terr]
What “race” are Syrians?
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It doesn’t matter what “race” the Syrians are. What matters to the majority of country is whether the victims of the massacre look like them. I assure you, my friend, if the President of one of these Scandinavian gassed >1400 men, women,and children, the U.S would be whistling an entirely different tune. You see, the likelihood of U.S intervention for human rights is directly proportional to how much the victims look like Natalie Holloway and Terry Shiavo. Indeed, imagine the American outrage if the corpses no longer were of gassed brown people, but of gassed white people. Stop. You don’t need to imagine, the U.S response toward the Holocaust was of first disgust then action. Same with Bosnia. This was not a coincidence, though I won’t look at you differently you disagree with that point.
[QUOTE=Grumman]
But no, in Honestyland the people who don’t want to drop anti-tank missiles on any more brown children are the real racists.
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Not true. There are many valid reasons for opposing Syrian intervention, I pass no judgment on people whose opinion differs from mine. I’m merely stating an observation.
No. It wasn’t. It was putting every obstacle in the book to prevent Jews from immigrating to the US, trying to sweep information about the Holocaust under the rug, and not doing anything much about it when they couldn’t hide the info completely.
On this day, the first Sunday of Football Season, the American People must not tolerate the moving of goalposts. Prepare to be bombed.
Besides, Libya and Syria are in the same ballpark wrt oil production. Link. Even before the Libyan Civil War, it was still a bit player in the oil world.
Please don’t try again. Remember the first rule of holes.
As Kerry prepares to persuade Congress to vote for this AUMF, perhaps he can remind them of his historic vote for the AUMF preceding the (first) Gulf War. Oops… that might not be such a good idea after all.
OK, let’s go to a time when Kerry did vote for military action, as he did in 2003. He courageously supported an opposition president. Hmmm… maybe not such a good idea, either.
Secretary Kerry: You were a courageous young man when you jumped into politics as an anti-war vet. Now, you’re just an entrenched power broker pleading for the establishment. Shame on you!
That transition happened as soon as he became a politician. Was it Kennedy who said that moral courage is rarer than physical courage? Kerry is living proof.
I don’t think race has a thing to do with it. If a European leader started gassing their population, the West would freak because there are close relations between European countries, the US and the world overall.
Syria OTOH has hardly any friends, the ones they have are places like Iran, and the country is one big disaster that nobody can fix. People don’t want to get involved not because they think Syrians are brown Arab people, but because they don’t want to see a bunch of red, white and blue-draped caskets coming back from a place they don’t care about.
As for Libya’s oil, I could be wrong but I thought they had some of the best undeveloped deposits in the world, which Khadaffi just never got around to developing?
Remember that 10% of Syrians are Christian. Not that Christian deaths are worse than Muslim deaths, but I can easily see a wave of ethnic cleansing if the rebels start winning. Especially since Christians have generally been allied with Assad in exchange for protection from the Sunni majority.
Just heard on CNN that Saudi Arabia fully supports a US strike on Syria. With that bastion of Democracy and Human Rights on our side, we’ve definitely got the moral high ground here. And how nice of them to endorse our taking care of a problem with one of their enemies in their own back yard!
This civil war is going to be worse than what we saw Iraq. At least in Iraq you had US and coalition forces there to keep some semblance of order. If the US stays out of it, plenty of “foreign fighters” will be more than happy to help the opposition. As far as I see it, we’re either in or we’re out. And if we’re out, we need to be OUT, not kinda-sorta-in.
Our fingerprints shouldn’t on this unless we are going to be all in, with a goal of making this civil war a little less worse than it might otherwise be. Success being defined as “something like Iraq”, but allied with Saudi Arabia instead of Iran. Now, who here wants that?
Kerry is fibbing. Saudi Arabia fully supports what Kerry calls the “G-20 side statement” (which is a fib by itself, since only 11 countries signed it). But that statement says nothing about supporting a military strike on Syria.
BTW - I would love to see Saudis committing their technically superior (to Syria) air force to strike Syria. Themselves. US can help them with tactical/reconnaissance support I am sure. For once they should put their air force where their mouth is.
I would prefer that we stay out of this altogether. Let them have their civil war, as they are going to have at some point. When there are no good options, sometimes the best thing to do is nothing. And I think this is one of those times.
But I’ll tell you one thing I absolutely wouldn’t do, and that’s lightly poke a rabid dog when it’s backed into a corner in a crowded room.
If I may, I’d like to query you back – like you, no snark meant. Why would the US get involved in a civil war where neither side threatens the US in the least…but by the same token, neither one is amiable to US interests? In fact, a good case can be made for the “evil that you know…” vs radical jihadists – whom, let’s face it – we have no idea what they’d like to do with Libya if you put them in charge. Mind you, by all accounts they make-up the strongest revolutionary forces Assad faces. And they are mostly war-worn foreigners.
In short, what is wrong with the US staying off the whole mess and letting the UN determine how to deal with the conflict? Not like a few “shots across the bow” are going to do anything to solve the war but rather radicalize (even more) the whole Muslim world. I simply don’t get how breaking UN resolutions on one side to enforce them on the other makes any sense at all.
Also, as I’ve mentioned before, isn’t it just a tad hypocritical to raise bloody hell when both, Assad and the rebels have already killed +/- 100,000 Syrians in this conflict by conventional means? Never mind the US’s use of Napalm, Agent Orange in 'nam & White Phosphorus in Fallujah respectively – add Israel’s use of (WP) in Gaza and I never saw the US’s Gov outrage. Was anyone in charge “punished” for that? Not that I know of…