On the one hand, America is NOT the world’s police force and needs to stop acting like we are. For too long we’ve interfered in the strife of other countries and whenever we do we wind up getting more innocent people killed and messing up the situation even more. There are already enough people in this world who hate us.
On the other hand, it’s awfully self-centered to sit by and let innocent people suffer and die because we’re concerned about our image.
I believe that we should not interfere, but as I said, it’s tearing me up inside.
It appears at this point that Obama wants to pick the worst option available - intervene by killing some Syrians, but not in a way that will materially affect the outcome. That way, we waste an effort, kill people randomly, gain no credibility, and do nothing to ensure that the eventual winners in Syria will do anything but hate us.
I really dislike the logic of “well, Obama took action over here, so why isn’t he taking action over there?” America has been involved in policing actions for a very long time, but usually in conjunction with others. Drone and missile strikes aren’t a problem for me. What IS a problem for me is that of late we don’t seem to have hard evidence that warrants intervention on that scale. Iraq was a total clusterfuck, and nobody wants to repeat that mistake. If someone in the Assad government would confess to being personally involved in gassing its citizens, then I could probably get behind the plan to strike. That said, we’ve stood by while he has slaughtered his citizens. All death by violence is horrible, but for some reason poison gas has become a tipping point for POTUS.
Not a huge fan of John McCain, but on Leno last night, his suggestion was to simply bomb the airstrips of the regime, and supply arms to the rebels. No troops sent in.
That sounds like the beginnings of at least a fair fight - assuming there is such a thing.
In every war, there are civilian casualties - but I think randomly tossing poison gas onto the populace is really above and beyond the scope of containing civilian unrest.
If that were me, and my family and friends, getting poison gas dumped into my neighborhood - you can damned well be sure I would be looking for some support from world powers to stop it!
I’d like to see the US align itself more with the UN. And if the US doesn’t like the veto rule, then they (the UN) need to put their heads together and figure out a new rule.
Or they could just kick Russia out of the special permanent five club.
Unless the U.S. is attacked, or our allies are attacked, we should butt out and let the UN handle it. Suppose your next door neighbour has abused his wife. You don’t go over and smite the guy. You leave punitive action to the agency responsible for it. If you witness an attack in progress (analogous to someone attacking an ally), then go over and pull the guy off of her. After the fact, you have no business getting physical.
What if there’s a serial killer in your town? By all means, do everything you can to apprehend him. Be ready to strike, if there is no other alternative. Otherwise, provide the support you can to law enforcement. Don’t hunt him down and kill him yourself. You have absolute proof who he is? You know where he is, and are looking at him through a telescopic sight right now? You still can’t take the shot. There are Rules, and it’s not your call. All societies are socialist to some degree. There are things that are in the purview of the government. Let the government handle it. Does the government make mistakes? Does it suffer from inefficiencies? Yes. But it’s better than vigilantism. The UN isn’t perfect. It has failed on several occasions in its peacekeeping role. But it’s the body responsible for this sort of thing.
Maybe I’m suffering from ‘politics fatigue’. I start to feel like, ‘You know what? I’ve offered suggestions, and I’ve offered help. If you don’t want it, then sort it out for yourself.’ Do I think it’s horrible that thousands of innocents are murdered in Darfur or Rwanda or Syria? Of course I do. Should an international coalition get between the warring parties and make them stop? Yes, it should. Should the U.S. unilaterally punish violators of international law, especially given our track record? No. If the UN tells us not to, then we should abide by their decision. If it turns out that we were right and they were wrong, then we should graciously do what we can do/are asked to do without saying ‘I told you so.’
It hits the regime right in the place where it would hurt the most: their shiny battle toys. Tyrants dote on weapons far more than they can ever value their citizenry. Blow up some missile launchers, and it’s like you’ve goomphed 'em in the nuts.
So the idea is to soften up the place so Al Qaeda can win? We can arm a group of people who hate us just as much, or more, than the evil dictator does. Great plan! Maybe they will love us and create a democracy of freedom and understanding in the wake of their victory. Or monkeys could fly out of my butt.
All weapons are chemical in nature. There are bombs that combine chemicals and explode, killing indiscriminant numbers of people, and there are those that simply bypass the explosion part and kill large numbers of people.
Where is the moral distinction in that? Chemical weapons are the boogie man of today. In spite of the rhetoric they do not present a real security threat to the US.
I think a lot of things, sure…but they mostly felt and sounded unbearably smug when I typed them out.
Which just feels increasingly appropriate for the whole situation. *
*See? See that? That’s what I’m talking about. Smug self-satisfaction, honest to god, wasn’t even trying, there. I feel like I should start playing the douchey acoustic guitar, or something.
You know, we’re either going to eradicate Al Qaeda like the Mongols did the Assasins, or we’re going to learn to deal with people who are at least tinged with Al Qaedaism, as we did with former Mau Mau terrorists after Kenyan independence. Which expectation is more realistic, if not palatable? As it is, every Arab hand we’re willing to shake has itself shaken hands with Al Qaeda.
I am as conflicted as the OP. I just recall (does anyone else?) that the Taliban were brought to Afghanistan by the US, to fight the Russians. While it might be good to bomb out their military, it is probably meaningless. And Russia will supply new toys.
Honestly, here is what I think is going on in Washington. Obama realizes that whatever he does will be heavily criticized by the Republicans. And he is probably less enthusiastic than he was a week ago about doing anything. So he trying to get the refusal of congress to authorize military action as political cover. It is certainly what I would do in his place. And if congress does authorize military action? Well, he will, but minimally, maybe as McCain suggests.
U.S. should let Syrians sort their own issues out. No need for a war-by-proxies or half-assed bombings. Seriously. We’ve meddled in Iraq and Afganistan already, and look where it got us.
Listening to Senator McCain rave on about how we “need” to attack Syria just made me realize-this guy is stuck in 1964? America is now bankrupt, drowning in debt…it’s not like the USA that JFK was president of. The fact is, we are like the UK in 1956 (Suez)-we have formidable military power, but what if an attack on Syria sends the dollar tumbling? The UK found out just how impotent they were , when PM Anthony Eden had to stage a humiliating retreat from Suez. Face it, the American people have finally seen though this sham…and we are not going to make the same mistake twice.
Are we bothered that they’re using chemical weapons? This seems to be the case, given the news bits of late. But maybe we shouldn’t be, given that they never signed on.
Are we bothered that they’re deliberately killing non-combatant civilians? It sounds like they were doing that via conventional means well before they started using chems, in which case our moral outrage is awfully slow to spin up.
This is what frustrates me about the Obama administration. They seem to have a huge mental block that prevents them from realizing that the rebels aren’t anybody we want to be supporting. It’s no secret that the rebels are being supported by al-Qaida. We’ve known it all along. It wasn’t any secret that the rebels in Libya were being supported by them, but we supported them anyway, and got bitten on the ass when they bombed our embassy and killed our ambassador. Now it’s happening Syria, it’s still no secret that the rebels are being supported by al-Qaida, and we’re still backing the rebels anyways, and we’ll still get bitten on ass again sometime in the future.
Plus, like others have said, why exactly were we OK with sitting back and letting Assad massacre civilians as long as he didn’t gas them? “We don’t give a shit that people are being blown up and shot full of holes, but poisoned? That cannot be tolerated.”
*