You don’t think you look more of a chump believing what the ‘White House’ says?
It’s such a damn stupid situation. You can’t sit and crow about how terrible chemical weapons are and how you just absolutely won’t tolerate them no matter what, and then say in response, “Well it seems you’ve used some chemical weapons. We’re going to send some arms to the people who don’t like you now.” It’s a chicken-shit sort of response. If you’re going to stand on your principles, then by God, stand on them. I don’t see how arming the rebels is going to do anything to harden our stance on not tolerating other nations using chemical weapons on their own people.
At this point it may be prudent to reasses our position and say something like, “well we don’t like it when chemical weapons are used in other countries against their own citizens but it’s not our place in the world to police that sort of thing and to stop it.” Either do that or for God’s sake go all in and face the consequences. This arming the rebels thing, arming people who most likely actively despise us, our culture, and our allies (Israel) is definitely NOT the right thing to do. If you don’t wanna put boots on the ground then fine. Bomb Assad into submission with our billion dollar B-52’s or something.
If the USA, Israel, the UK or Narnia intervene in a distant Civil War you can be pretty sure they think it is in their self-interest.
They’re wrong in this case. We shouldn’t care what bunch of murdering religious nutcases runs these places.
Quite. At this point I would want to see unequivocal, independently tested and verified, irrefutable evidence. I have seen none. Too right that after being lied into one war we should not accept anything less.
Fool me once etc etc.
No, not unless you wish to redefine self-interest in a no-such-thing-as-a-selfless-act way, and claim everything we do is selfish.
Various world leaders, to one extent or another, actually have geopolitical goals beyond what directly affects their own population. And those goals are not just to make a quick buck. Obama can follow his convictions/conscience/whatever now he doesn’t need to concern himself with reelection.
If this seems far-fetched to some, note how contrived the various explanations for US involvement (and why they stalled for so long) have been.
Frankly, to the US, Syria’s economic and strategic value is somewhere between fuck and all. It’s very hard to come up with a scenario where the US directly makes a net gain from this.
Not so distant for some of us.
If you are talking about Libya, which is the only ‘war’ that Obama et al got us into, I’d say it worked out pretty well all things considered. I don’t remember him lying about it either, but MMV I suppose.
It looks like a lesson from arming Mujahedeen to fight Russians in Afghanistan or attacking and breaking down Iraq has not sunk in yet but, in the spirit of Bill Maher, how about a new rule: If the guys opposing some petty dictator are a bunch of radical religious freaks who openly promise even worse society than the one currently in place, maybe you should sit this one out?
Which only tells me that there’s something more important, some mysterious and obscure US interest invisible to anyone that calls for making the same mistake for who knows what time. If only NSA collecting your communication data is the biggest issue :o
The reason for this response is quite simple and not at all secret: the US had hoped to deter the use of chemical weapons through threats (the “red line”); chemical weapons were nonetheless used; therefore, the US now has no choice but to do something, or any future threats it sees fit to issue will lose credibility.
The notion that Obama, the US, Israel, etc. have some sort of deep-seated motive for the US getting itself into this situation is silly. They are all scratching their heads as much as everyone else over how to make the situation less bad. There are no “good” options here, and my bet is that the US “intervention” will be minimal - as little as they can do, and reasonably claim to be doing something.
Oh, man :rolleyes:
Let me see… could this be a result of one’s own analysis or is this just a copy-pasting event of an official “explanation”?
Hmmm… this one perplexes the mind into knots.
The so called “red line” is BS like any other BS used before as the possibility of a conclusive proof is beyond anyone’s ability to demonstrate unambiguously that such event has occurred. Sort of like “red line” in Iran’s nuclear program euphemistically called “point of no return”.
Further to that, more than 95K people already died and the regime seems to be holding out quite well so using a chemical weapons makes no sense from tactical or strategic perspective.
On top of that, recent gains by Russian-supported thugs in Syria have put the whole situation in a state of imbalance and to restore the state of perpetual war, one side may need a nudge or two.
I have no idea what you are claiming. That such use can’t be “unambiguously proved”? Irrelevant. This is not a court of law. The point is that other countries now more or less believe it is true.
The US taking your position and says that it needs “conclusive proof” which is “beyond anyone’s ability to demonstrate” [your words] is the same thing as the US saying ‘when we issued that threat about “Red Lines”, it was totally meaningless’.
Meaning that the next time the US issues a threat, it will not be taken seriously.
Do not get me wrong: I do not regard this as a good outcome. But the mistake isn’t taking action now (though I believe that action will be minimal), the mistake was making the threat in the first place.
To sum up: do not make threats where carrying out the threat is not something you are willing to do.
People and countries believe what it suits them to believe.
As we all know, the USA has embarrassing previous on this claim. This claim looks a whole lot like Colin Powell at the UN, and man was that an embarrassing shambles of a presentation.
Besides, who in hell talks in terms of “red lines” - what is this some kind of my-lady’s-honor-has-been-impuned jousting match?
Perhaps a “red line” as in invading Poland. 
You just crossed the red-line of argument Godwinization 
Ugh. Not this bullshit again. It’s no secret that the rebels are allied with Al Qaida. Why do we want to help them set up another Islamic fundamentalist state? I don’t see anyone who can remotely be considered a “good guy” here, so let’s just stay the fuck out of this.
SOME of the rebel factions are aligned with AQ.
The US is going to be embarrased no matter what it does. It will be embarrased if it acts and it will be embarrased if it doesn’t.
The difference is, if it does nothing or hides behind the ‘no-one can really prove nothing’ line, it will look a lot like its mouth was signing checks its butt cannot cash. Which is worse in realpolitik terms than simply being embarrased because they are quick to pull the trigger, because it means that, in future, when it issues a threat it will not be convincing.
That’s why I say the mistake was in making the threat in the first place. What you see now isn’t the mistake - the mistake happened earlier. The mistake was in saying that if country Y did action X, the US would take action.
As I said before, this looks like the final break up of Syria. Should be stay out? Yes.
the next artificial nation/state to go will be Turkey…the cracks are already growing.
Even the rebels that aren’t (openly) allied with AQ tend to be people who are not likely to be friendly to us after the fighting stops. Look at Libya or Egypt for relevant examples of how these situations have turned out. Why do we want that sort of government in Syria?
ETA: both of those states are dangerously close to being Islamic fundamentalist states, to the great detriment of non-Muslim minorities, and really pretty much any minority population.
Wait, what?!