I wasn’t alive during the Korean “conflict”, but I was during Vietnam. I don’t recall anyone being shy about calling it a war. Anyone saying it wasn’t a war would’ve been laughed off he planet. (That is not to saying anyone didn’t try, but they wouldn’t have been taken seriously on the matter.) Same thing with Iraq (both I and II), and again in Afghanistan.
I know you think Assad is being set up/blameless (and not an ‘insane murderous dictator’, though hard to believe anyone can believe that) for the previous ‘gas attack’(s), but you’d think the fact that one hasn’t happened again since the US bombed that Syrian airbase would be a good indication that you might want to rethink your premise. I mean, when tensions were at their highest there, THAT would have been the time for ISIS or AQ or whoever it is you think has gas to do another attack…not wait until things have calmed down in the region and the focus has shifted to North Korea.
Occam’s Razor seems to indicate that the guy responsible is, in fact, Assad, that the Syrian military did the deed and that there haven’t been any further use because Assad et al are worried that the US will strike them again if they use the stuff. I’m sure none of this will convince you, however, but hard to let a CT comment like yours just go without some attempt at sanity.
As for the OP, I think war is possible, but I don’t think Trump et al are planning one or preparing for one. I don’t think Trump et al could plan a free beer event at a red neck picnic effectively. IF we go to war it will be because Trump and his administration have boxed themselves and the US into a corner by using threats and bluster and someone (Kimmy, Assad the supposed non-murderous non-dictator, maybe Putin) calls him on it…or does something particularly stupid (Assad and Kimmy being the best candidates for this). Trump won’t back down like Obama did with his red line and will lash out and things will degenerate from there.
I would be more inclined to take your predictions seriously if you knew how military procurement worked. You don’t buy “brand new” tanks or personnel carriers in anticipation of starting a war the next month. These things are specialized equipment, which are built in tiny volumes with long lead times. We don’t have tank or aircraft factories sitting around just waiting to spring into action. The assembly lines are either open, or they are closed. The plant that refurbishes the Abrams tank (we haven’t bought any new ones since the mid-90s) can turn out two refurbished tanks a day. With a few years’ notice they could start building new ones again - at a rate of two or three a week, maybe.
Reservists transfer equipment this time of year all over the country for their two weeks’ active duty exercises. Not to mention, active duty military transfers equipment around the country quite often for various reasons. Just for one example, when I was in the Army we transported a whole brigade at this time of year from Ft. Riley, KS to the National Training Center (NTC) in the Mojave desert by train. This was something all Army brigades had to do once every three years, I seem to recall.
I don’t doubt that Trump is itching for a war, because it is a proven method for gaining political support in the short term and making people forget about all those scandals and coverups. But I don’t believe your observations demonstrate any such thing.
The Army moves. That’s what it does, and that’s what it trains to do all year in peace and war. Sometimes they get new equipment, but I doubt you could tell because they usually keep it clean and in working order, and it’s not like this year’s humvee model looks any different from last year’s.
Not to mention everyone else’s nitpick that we’ve been at war for a generation now, at least. But I think you are talking about a traditional boots-on-ground invasion, and seeing clean tanks on trains just isn’t evidence of that.
Stuff like that are signals of nothing at all. The fact that you think so speaks volumes of your predictions.
As someone said up thread, do you think the Trump administration put in the “order” for more tanks and trucks, like last week, and they are being delivered now? Do you really believe that’s how procurement in DoD works?
Trump has effectively handed foreign policy to Mattis and McMaster - he doesn’t want the problems, its way, way, way too much work. Esp. at weekends.
There won’t be a war; occasionally a bout of wind and piss, a few random missiles landing in the sea or a field but Trump doesn’t have the balls, the interest or much he even cares about in a political sense.
So, you would agree that if another ‘gas attack’ were to be reported, in the near future, that this would be mightily fishy?
Well, yes and no.
The Supreme Court has never (to my knowledge) ruled on when the Congress must “declare war”. The only early cases touching the subject make it clear that a) the President doesn’t have to await a declaration to repel an attack (the Bey of Tripoli), and b) a state of war can exist based solely upon the actions of the President, at least if the war starts while Congress is not in session (the Civil War). But none of those cases involved a situation where the United States initiated hostilities against an opposing nation state. The Court scrupulously avoided the issue during Vietnam and the Reagan years, denying cert. to all attempts to appeal Circuit Court dismissals on the basis of the political question doctrine.
The War Powers Act created an uneasy truce between the Executive and the Legislative branches as to how war was to be waged. If you want to take everything done in that regard since that Act as determining a “common law” of the power to “declare war”, I suppose we can agree with your assertion that things like the AUMF of 2001 act as declarations of war. However I point out that declaring war was something that had specific consequences and limitations in international law, and it’s unclear the extent to which those continue to exist under something like the AUMF (see Guantánamo Bay).
Would depend on circumstances, but yeah…if one happened in the near future (as opposed to, say, a year or two down the road) it would be worthy of at least a closer look. The ones that have happened in the past have been pretty obviously Assad/Syrian military in origin, but with Syria actually on notice now that the US will almost certainly strike it would be a bit suspicious if out of the blue there was another gas attack (they were real gas attacks btw, regardless of who you think did them) that seemed to frame Assad et al.
Obviously, this signals Arizona’s plan to annex New Mexico. Be very afraid.
The real sign of war came home to me yesterday - the docs’ lounge was out of bananas. Could it be that the entire crop has been commandeered to feed our troops during the upcoming invasion of Iran? :eek:
You obviously uncovered evidence of our new cloned human-gorilla-hybrid army!
Pay attention to the things you’re being shown. The AUMF was five months before the invasion; I have provided you with undeniable evidence that the war was clearly in the works long BEFORE the AUMF. What the heck do you think they were voting on in October of 2002?
God, we’d been talking about it for months. It is a matter of historical fact that he Bush administration was talking about invading Iraq the week after 9/11, and American and British forces were being increased in the region throughout 2002. More pertinently, the U.S. government waged a disinformation campaign to convince its own people and the world that Iraq had strategic WMD capability - notably the “Alumininum tubes” and “Yellowcake uranium” lies - up to and including lying to most of the Senate that Iraq could strike the eastern United States with chemical weapons. This stuff was all over the news.
Do a search of any major newspaper in 2002; the war was being discussed more than a year before it started. It was sadly apparent before the AUMF vote was taken that Bush had no intention of accepting a diplomatic resolution. When was your brilliant insight into this thing people saw coming six to twelve months in advance?
I am in fact a former military intelligence professional and find this claim laughable. It is, maybe, one thousandth the evidence I would need to convince a decision-maker that war was imminent. “I saw a train with military vehicles on it going from one place to another in the United States” is a meaningless data point without a huge about of corroborating evidence, because that happens all the time, whether war is afoot or not.
If you want strategic indicators of impending war, as has been poionted out, that is a very dumb one; the USA cannot simply summon up brand new vehicles as if building them in “Command and Conquer.” Signs of war in Korea would be a great many indicators of the staging of greatly increased American and Allied military presence in the region:
- Thousands more troops, in divisional to corps strength, restaged to Korea and Japan
- Deployment of two or more carrier groups to the area
- Deployment of a greatly increased number of air assets of all types to Korea, Japan, and other bases within strategic range
- Substantial callup of reserve troops
- Quick-construction of staging areas in the ROK, preceding by the summoning of engineer assets
- Creation of a order of battle for Allied forces in Korea, featuring some top commanders leaving their current posts and assuming new posts there
Have these things happened?
Of course, I am sure Trump is more than stupid enough to order a quick missile strike on North Korea, but I am sure he’s stupid enough to launch a missile strike on Belgium, too.
But back in 2002 there was broad bipartisan support for invading Iraq under the thesis that the still fresh “War On Terror” was the nation’s leading crisis. (And amazing as it seems, despite the contentious election and vote count scandal in 2000, Republicans and Democrats could still work together on certain issues of common interest.)
By “open conflict” I mean essentially Congressionally-approved essentially unrestrained conventional military action in contrast to individual strikes authorized exclusively by executive order, covert action by CIA/JSOC , or joint military action under the auspices of UN control.
Stranger
OK. Yes, sadly true. About half the Democratic Senators voted for the AUMF. I just wanted to contrast that to the situation now where the GOP is a majority in both houses. But…
…there is very little support for “boots on the ground” type of warfare by either party now. We’ve gotten used to conflicts waged by air with little chance of American casualties, but even when we do have limited numbers of “boots on the ground” the pols are careful to call them advisers or trainers. I’m not seeing that the country has any taste for conventional warfare at present. Not by the majority of the American people and not by the majority in Congress. I’m more than open to being corrected on that point if I’m wrong.
I am so glad to see that so many have 0 idea how this stuff works, No matter Devil/Angel Demon/Saint Moron/Genius sits in the big highchair.
@the OP
You do realize, at the time you say you were supposedly “warning” us in 2002?
you were already terrible late to the party, everybody already long knew what was going on.
No one knew how difficult it was to prepare for war!
We’ve been in a constant ongoing state of war in some form or other for well over a decade. For this prediction to mean something, it would have to be more than just a typical airstrike or launch of cruise missiles etc.
“Typical airstrike or launch of cruise missiles”—you’re claiming that the US launches cruise missiles on some sort of routine basis?
RickJay covered the quality of analysis.
Even with a weak analysis you made a prediction. Let’s clarify how we measure whether you were right in 6 months. If you leave that measure vague it’s not really a prediction since just about anything can be classed as being accurate. We’ve already been engaging Islamic State on the ground and from the air inside Syria for about a year and a half. In a sense you could claim you were right every day since the election, even when Obama was still President. What increased level of engagement in Syria do you see being necessary to certify your prediction as correct?
- A maneuver Brigade Combat Team, or greater, deployed to attack IS?
- A minimum increase in troop levels deployed inside Syria?
- A certain increase in the number of air sorties flown against IS?
- Something else?
I miss when I lived near the Navy train for the supply base. I always knew when we were gearing up for a major conflict as the train would go from running less than once per day to many times a day for many days.