Where did I come up with that? I came up with that based on observable facts that are now accepted matters of the historical record.
The Congressional vote on the war happened in October of 2002, FIVE MONTHS before the war started. That vote was not a midnight surprise; the matter had been debated, with the Bush administration planting bullshit WMD evidence in the media, for months beforehand. It was obvious by that point the Iraq War was going to happen.
Still don’t believe me? Why don’t you do a search of the Straight Dope Message Board?
These are three of perhaps 60 threads I found discussing the forthcoming war in Iraq that were started at least three months before the war took place. A rather depressing number of SDMB posters were quite enthusiastic about the idiotic enterprise, with many of the more cheerful optimists disappearing from the SDMB after it was discovered there were no WMDs. If you read through the threads, whether the war was going to happen or not was about a 50-50 debate as early as the summer of 2002, and the AUMF vote made it pretty much 100% “yup, this war will happen.”
The impending war was so obvious it was the stuff of late night talk show gags.
Trump has nothing to do with this.
The aim is (and has been since the 1990’s) to destroy the secular state of Syria.
I would expect another ‘gas attack’ sometime soon. After which there willl be swift action by the US, to protect the Syrian people from their insane murderous dictator,of course.
Your “intel” having to do with trains carrying new equipment and planes flying in a different direction is clearly an indication of . . .well of nothing.
Think what you will of the current Administration, but you really don’t think that an FA-18 flying north instead of south is an indication of anything, do you?
Well, Russia is supporting hardline nationalists all over Europe and the US is propping up socialist revolutionaries in the Middle East, both sending “advisors” and using underhanded means but never committing to overt action.
No war. Police actions, drone strikes, air strikes, advisers, arms supply, boots on the ground, intelligence operations, nation building, regime changes, and many other war related activities will continue as normal, but not war. Maybe not war.
If you mean to present a foreign ambassador with a diplomatic letter stating “Our countries are in a state of war,” that’s true.
However, in U.S. legal terms, Congress authorizing war is what makes war legal; the AUMF, Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and the like are legally the same thing in regards to what he Constitution demands within the U.S. legal framework. The quaint notion that it’s only a war if you hand a stuffy letter to a diplomat the way they did in a limited period of history is just that, a quaint notion. It would be silly to characterize wars as not being wars because a letter wasn’t handed from one guy to another guy.
Just to be clear, the Democrats had a majority in the Senate when the Iraq War AUMF was voted on. A lot of folks seem to forget that. But when Congress starts debating a new AUMF, we can put ourselves in that position again. As for your prediction, I notice you used “open conflict” as opposed to “war”. We’re in “open conflict” in any number of places right now-- have been for years. Care to be more specific?
Frankly, I’d say we’re already at war in Syria. We’ve been bombing the shit out of certain areas of that country for over 2 years now-- before Trump even started his campaign for president. And when did the Afghan War end???
He was responding to my post in which I wanted to make that point. Congressional authorization, or even Presidential action without approval is war. When the bomb falls on your head your last thought isn’t “Well at least I didn’t die in a war because the US Congress didn’t declare one”.
Yeah, but it does become tricky what with the US doing all sorts of things along the spectrum. Some folks will claim that we are (or were) at war in Syria over what Trump did (despite the fact that we’ve been bombing there for years). It certainly was “an act of war”, but in my book if you take a limited action that is not designed to conquer territory or defeat an enemy, and especially if the other side doesn’t fire back, then it’s not war.
We’re bombing Da-esh in Syria, and they are fighting back and we’re trying to deny them territory, so I’d say we are at war with them in Syria. But then it comes down so whether Da-esh counts as an entity you can be at war with, not being a state. For me, it quacks enough like a duck. YMMV.
So we’re in a perpetual state of war. Any country or even political just a political faction that doesn’t do what we want gets hit. We could call it ‘protection’ like the mob does, it amounts to the same thing. “Nice country or occupied territory you have here. You wouldn’t want anything to happen to it would you?”
The observation was made longer than 5 months before the invasion. Congress wasn’t even debating the issue at the time. The first Gulf War took at least 6 months of preparation and they were working round-the-clock on the planning. All the war simulations at the time focused on Iran. The Pentagon had to switch gears.
Hope you are not doing intel. Stuff like that are signals that something is up.
I’m not sure if you’re agreeing or disagreeing with me. Absolutely, we have been in a perpetual state of war since 2001. In Afghanistan, if nowhere else. But I’m just trying to differentiate being “at war” with taking actions that fall short of being “at war”, even if they could be considered “acts of war” (that is, acts that could trigger a war but don’t necessarily end up doing so). Some folks prefer not to make that distinction, and I’m sympathetic to that position. I just think that lumping together everything from Trump’s one day strike against Syria to our 17-year-long romp in Afghanistan into the same bucket isn’t very useful when discussing US actions abroad. Is there any other country that even compares to that? We seem to have this idea that he world is our playground, and everyone has to play by our rules, or else ka-boom!!
In 1950 calling our involvement in Korea a non-war didn’t sound so absurd. In the 60s saying Nam wasn’t a war was a bit hokey but we gave it another shot. Since the we’ve been involved in so many non-war acts of war that it’s just utter nonsense to make that kind of distinction. The one strike against Syria was an act of war and that scumbag Assad hasn’t responded in kind because he can’t. I’m not simply unsympathetic to that distinction, I consider it 1984 Newspeak. So we seem to be in agreement on everything but how dishonest it is for some folks to argue the duck walking and quacking thing isn’t a duck. I don’t think every act of war we’ve committed was wrong, but I do consider it wrong to make war and pretend it’s something else.