As Putin has claimed the whole inspection-instead-of-airstrikes is his idea, he will lose face if Assad drags his feet. I don’t think we need to be afraid of a USSR veto then.
I have Never suggested the threat of pinprick strikes was what caused Putin to fear losing his port. Putin has long feared losing that port. The point is that Putin has everyhing to lose and Obama has nothing to lose in a Putin vs Obama sense because Putin’s camp in Syria is a minority sect dictatorship that now has a reputation for killing its own people with chemical weapons.
I have said the missile attack Obama proposed are not intended to drive Russia out of their port. The intent was to punish Assad and degrade the ability to use CW and that is mist of it.
Please go back and review my writing. You have incorrectly stated my position.
Go back and read chronologically read the flow of the posting. I have careful to avoid bringing up anything to do with Bush 2003 and Iraq.
But I do and will respond when others bring it up. And it is appropriate to respond when comparisons are made to inspections of 2003 to speculation about new inspections in Syria.
Do you have comments on the OP. There are some very intelligent posts here. I’m quite pleased to see them.
Putin’s proposal for inspections could have come years or months ago. Will the Putin-Spanked-Obama crowd ask themselves what Putin was waiting for? Why did he wait until the redline of gassing children was crossed before making this offer?
Was this a win for Putin? I don’t know- at least we are working with Russia rather than butting heads and threatening each other. That makes the world a better place.
How important is Syria to Russia? I don’t know much about this relationship, so if anyone can flesh it out or provide a link, it’d be ignorance fought.
But, if Syria matters at all to Russia, I think they’d rather we not bomb them. Can Russia stand on the world stage and defend the use of chemical weapons? No, they can only assert that we have it wrong, it was the rebels who set off the gas. Who knows for sure?
But the US was either totally convinced or didn’t care- we were going to bomb. My whole view hinges on what we think happens after that. Personally, I don’t think the US can bomb a WMD-armed country and walk away. I don’t care how many times Obama says “we will not put boots on the ground”- once we commit acts of war we are at war, and I don’t think that can end until the WMDs are seized. Bomb #1 means we are going to basically destroy Syria to get the WMDs by military means.
Will this cause tensions with Iran? Russia? Maybe. If it doesn’t, I don’t see how it can be in Russia’s interest to see their partner bombed into oblivion. If it does, well what? Does Russia want to fight WWIII against the US to defend Syria’s use of WMDs? I don’t think so.
Clearly a dangerous global situation is defused by getting Assad to cough up his WMDs. I don’t know if that would happen due to US pressure alone, but with Russian pressure it looks like it will happen. If Assad screws around and causes the UN to pass a resolution, I think the US would take that as permission to bomb them, regardless of whether Russia blocks it.
So how could this turn out better? The warm water port could only be worth so much in a ruined country. I don’t know what Russia’s arms sales to Syria are worth, but all sides avoid a nasty and potentially ruinous, world-destabilizing confrontation.
I’ve seen some bitter comments about the civil war in Syria, but no suggestions on how we could fix that mess. What are we supposed to do about that? I dunno, but getting the WMDs out of there seems mandatory. With Russia’s help, we might achieve that peacefully. That’s great!
No, this time he really means it. He really really means it. How the Iranians must be trembling.
I just stumbled upon Romney’s comment on Syria from June 2012.
Perhaps the victims of the CW attacks should have been wearing sun screen.
A good source on the importance of the port to Putin.
See my preceding post:
Turkey is a member of NATO. Ruusia’s Navy is boxed in by a NATO member. An attack on one is an attack on all.
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Tartus is not Russia’s only warm water port. It has warm water ports in the far East, Murmansk on the Kola peninsula, and on the Black Sea.
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Turkey does not block Russian warships from using the Bosporus Strait.
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The naval base at Tartus is mostly a refueling depot, it is not important because of being a warm water port, but important because it lets Russian ships refuel without having to sail all the way up through the Bosporus and into a Russian Black Sea port.
I’ve already commented before I made my post about your side track. I did not say you started the discussion about the 2003 Iraq War, but you’re the one who obviously expanded it into a lengthy non sequitur about inspections and a bunch of other stuff that hasn’t been relevant in 10 years.
My reply to your first paragraph is that it brought to mind the great fumblerooski play.
That is why I see your football analogy as not fair. In the diplomacy world the whole game is not played in the open and where we spectators can’t see all that goes on in secret.
There are no secrets during a football game.
I’m speculating that Obama had a good deal of certainty beforehand that Putin’s response was the one we got after Obama decided to get Congress to Ok the strikes.
That might be dirty politics getting Republicans on record agsinst, but it was no fumble. It was a fumble-rooskie.
This would have something to do with the issue if Mitt Romney’s opinions mattered, which they do not.
Why doesn’t Mitt Romney’s opinion matter?
I have heard Romney’s name mentioned by his supporters according to the right wing narrative going around that ‘Putin spanked Obama’ means that Romney is vindicated for calling Russia our greatest geopolitical foe,
I also believe Rommney’s comments are a significant way to expose Republican hypocrisy for berating Obama’s handling of the CW situation in Syria.
I can see why Republicans don’t want things Romney said brought up now.
Like this one:
Because he has nothing to do with setting policy and has absolutely no influence over this matter. Does he even have a job?
His opinions mattered a year ago. Now they don’t. IF your standard for the Administration’s “masterly” performance on this file is comparing them to a retired election loser who people are already forgetting, your standard is damned low.
It was actually a cleverly laid plan - Romney wanted Kerry to notify Putin to push Obama to pressure Assad to stop resisting something he used to not want to prevent anyone from doing. And it worked.
Regards,
Shodan
I am not comparing Obama to Romney. I am taking what Romney said on the topic to expose right winger hypocrisy. Their standard bearer last election would put troops on the ground in Syria to stop the spread and threat of CW.
Magiver says candidates should not say such a thing if they don’t know it will be supported.
If what you say is true there should be no reference to Obama’s Red Line comment during the campaign but there is. It is relevant that the Republican candidate about the same time would put US boots on the ground in Syria.
If they are implying that Russia will seize the chemicals and hored them for possibly using against us or any other country, I might point out that chemicals are easy to make … as long as you have a modern infrastructure to do it with [which oddly enough the US seems to have…] so the “threat” of Russia having a bunch of random dangerous chemicals is pretty nominal.
Is Murmansk a “warm water” port? I thought the term was created specifically to discount Murmansk and St. Petersberg.
Maybe Barry Goldwater would have, too!
Barack Obama is the President of the United States of America. His opinions matter. His track record matters. What he has said in the past, to varying degrees depending on relevance, matters. The consistency of his policies and positions matter.
Mitt Romney does not matter, and trotting him out in an effort to make Obama look okay in comparison is pathetic.