For all this talk of realpolitik, none of you are seeing the elephant hidden in plain sight.
Which is?
Don’t bother with that story: I found a better discussion of the intelligence by peacenik-leaning expert William R Polk. Worth reading. More generally James Fallows’ blog has many entries on the Syrian situation.
I am unsure whether the balance of the evidence indicates a chemical attack ordered by the Assad regime. Advocates of bombing need to address the scenario whereby US military action takes place as a response to a chemical incident that was actually initiated by the rebels either purposefully or accidentally.
Mr. Fallows also has a post on the logic of escalation rhetoric.
Ibn: 1. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on the religious orientation of the Assad regime. Let me reiterate a point from the OP: though I can find Syria on a map, this is not a subject I know a lot about.
- Please consider refraining from engaging with vague and inane commentary. Think about the likelihood and downside of hijacking this thread. I’m not saying don’t do it: just apply a cost/benefit analysis and your best judgment. We came close to going off the rails on page 2.
OK, so we cannot tolerate certain forms of warfare, our common humanity forbids it. I am deeply sympathetic to that argument. I also sympathetic to a slogan, that war never solves anything. I would amend that to “very, very seldom”.
But if we are to punish the Assad regime for its actions, but not forcefully interfere with the war itself…a pragmatic and sensible suggestion, given that…well, its not quite that we don’t have dog in the fight, there are several, but none of them like us very much.
So…we are going to be more like a referee? Twenty yard penalty and a free kick against Assad? Its tough enough being a moderator for a spirited message board, I doubt even our Luminous Ones could moderate a civil war.
If Assad needs bombing, let the French do it. It’s their turn.
This whole thing is so freaking stupid. Obama’s “red line” was stupid. He should have never said such a thing. It reminds me of setting troop withdrawal timetables. STUPID! What SHOULD have happened is once Syria’s regime used chemical weapons and we had proof of it, we should have nailed the fuck out of Assad’s assets in that area without saying a goddamn thing before we did it. We should have just acted on it.
Then, if Russia, China, whomever objected to it, which they would have done, THEN we would come forward and say “YES! We did this in the interest of world security and the basic humanitarian rights of combatants, blah, blah, blah”. We would automatically have had not only the moral high ground but the will and resolve to have acted in a rational manner FIRST without this long, stupid congressional session.
If the evidence is there, it’s fucking there. It could be provided for all interested parties.
But now, with all the hemming and hawing over “red lines” and multiple nations discussing the issue, the advantage is lost. Attacking now after Assad has had lots of time to reposition these so-called “assets” is a big problem. Any attack now will be ineffectual at best and plunge the region into a multi-national conflict at worst.
The time to act was then. It’s too late now. We should do nothing now but swallow our national pride and warn Syria again that their behavior isn’t acceptable. There are no good options now and I could give a fuck about the USA saving face at this point. It was already a humanitarian disaster. Anything we do now will make it worse. The ship has sailed. Do nothing but issue diplomatic warnings at this point, keep a close intelligence eye on them and if they dare to do that shit again, nail them hard and fast before there’s an international response.
But Kerry assured us today that we’re actually better off waiting longer. Don’t you trust him?
I’m sorry if you took it as an insult, because it wasn’t meant to be.
I also wasn’t trying to hijack the thread, embarrass anyone or even showoff.
My point was there’s a strong tendency among westerners, including very smart ones(I’ve heard lots of college professors refer to Saddam Hussein, Syria, Al Fatah, or various other parties as “secular”) to try and reduce conflicts in the Middle East into rather simplistic categories that make sense to westerners and as a result use inappropriate terms that can give people the wrong ideas.
I’d love it if we could easily break down which groups were “secular” which groups were “religious”, which were “fundamentalists”, which were “conservatives” and which were “radicals”, but it’s usually not that simple and doing so usually leads to disaster.
To give a personal example, growing up in the 80s you have no idea how often I heard from people, including people who’d lived in the Middle East who the Shi’ites were “the crazies”(due to Iran and the Hezbollah) in sharp contrast to “the Sunnis” which led lots of people to grossly overlook things they shouldn’t have in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.
Reducing complex issues down to soundbites is very easy to do and something we’ve all done and probably will continue to do so, but it’s something we should try to avoid.
Most significantly, pushing for “secular” governments in the Middle East is pretty much of a loser for a variety of reasons, amongst others that so many have been abused by governments that told westerners or Russians that they were “secular”.
That doesn’t mean that Iran or Saudi Arabia are the only viable substitutes, but just as we can have Christian democracies without clear separation of government and religion, which dot throughout Europe, we can have Muslim democracies with some interwining in the Middle East.
Obama in Stockholm: “I didn’t set the red line.”
(My prediction - this the beginning of Obama’s end - let’s wait a year or two and see.)
And then, Obama gets a lecture on the proper process from no less than a PM from a country that awarded him a Nobel Peace Prize.
Irony that writes itself …
Yep. This is the break the Romney campaign has been waiting for!
A few days ago I posted something to the effect that you really don’t want t o be poking around the MENA region about now – and much less, poke the Russian Bear at the risk of igniting the whole region if not the world. I was told to “calm down” as Putin wouldn’t dare do much of anything.
Well here is good read in order to calm down:
Putin says Russia will assist Syria if attacked
Seems to me, Putin has also “painted himself into a corner,” as I doubt he’ll back-down either.
I really don’t like the way things are going…
Is Dekafiles reliable at all? I know they are run run by a former department head of the Mossad for 20 years Gioria Shamis and his wife Diane Shalem. Other than that are they in tinfoil-hat territory? I ask because I just read this on their site:
A Chinese landing craft with 1,000 marines for Syria – reports DEBKAfile
Well what’s your solution? Russia’s credibility is at stake. If the US and Russia don’t initiate a full scale nuclear exchange, nobody will believe they will ever use military force again!
wiki on DEBKA: Debkafile - Wikipedia
It’s a conservative website that traffics in rumors. I’ve heard worse criticisms: they may have stopped short of tin foil territory. Or not.
That said, in early August the People’s Daily Online announced that the good ship Jinggangshan was being mobilized to Somalian waters on an escort mission.
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90786/8358214.html
If they are now observing US and Russian actions near Syria, it would be unsurprising. In short, the Debka story might be misleading. One of our military folks might be able to tell us what China could possibly do in the region with such hardware.
I don’t think anyone is stupid enough to start a war with the US over Syria, and that includes the Syrians. We might get to find out for sure though …
If they said the sky was blue I’d double check.
Fair enough. But based on what? Can you provide some evidence they are a “loony site.”
TBH, upon reading that, I want them to be. But some confirmation would be appreciated.
You don’t even have to fire a single bullet in this war between Syria (re: Russia, China and Iran) and American forces already in position to strike Syria’s Russian supplied military, with US congressional approval still waiting for a vote.
Someone, meaning the USA or the USSR could make a submarine surface for getting too close to the fleet steaming off shore of Syria. The submarine could be either country Russian or USN, doesn’t matter.
This would be the cause of a war in or of itself. If it is an American submarine we lose face … if it is a Russian submarine they go home disgraced and in line for transfer to shore duty for life.
I don’t think it will lead to WWIII, but too many men, too many ships, too many ways for an accident to lead to _________________. (fill in the blanks)
Someone is going to back down to their everlasting shame. The rest is just a guess 
@Mr Quattro, that’s just my point. How this this become a game of “nuclear chicken”? It’s absurd. No winning such a stand-off.
I’m hardly a big expert on them and have only glanced at them a few times but they seem to pass off rumors which suit their political agenda as the truth.
They strike me as an Israeli version of the Drudge report that doesn’t care about celebrities and is even more partisan.
A quick google search reveals they also partnered up with World Net Daily which in America is nicknamed World Nut Daily.