Anyway, I think the USA is now set on some kind of military intervention. Probably Obama hopes it can be kept at a minimum bombing campaign. Which a whooping 9% of Americans support (As Syria war escalates, Americans cool to U.S. intervention: Reuters/Ipsos poll). But wouldn’t Obama require Congress approval to bomb the shit out of the Syrians?
In any case Saudi Arabia already have a very competent - or at least well equipped - airforce, with many shining new US toys (US sells $30bn in F-15 jets to Saudi Arabia), and Turkey has one of the largest armies on the world. What is it Obama thinks he can accomplish that those two couldn’t if they had the will? And if the two nations most ardently condemning Assad aren’t willing to stand up, why should the USA or Europe?
The problem is that Obama keeps trying to coerce the Syrians out of their worst excesses and they keep calling his bluffs. Threatening intervention if the Syrian government used chemical weapons on its own people was a reasonable diplomatic tactic and would have worked in many circumstances. The problem is that we’re dealing with crazy, brutal dictators who don’t care what we do, and it’s hard to psych out a psychopath.
Isn’t it Obama’s job to know, “Hey, this one is nuts, so don’t make blustery empty threats because he’ll call your bluff and undermine your credibility”?
Now, I’m not sure how reliable thisis . . . because both links attribute the story to something called the “EU Times,” but the links are dead, and while googling finds several hits for the “EU Times,” they are all dead links, and there is no Wikipedia page for such a publication . . . but if it’s for real . . . :eek:
If it’s for real, Putin threatens to respond to any Western attack on Syria by attacking . . . Saudi Arabia?!
So now Obama seems to think that he can “influence” Assad by launching some missile strikes on him? The whole thing just makes Obama look stupid-and what is next? Suppose Assad says that the USA is now a terrorist regime (murdering Syrian civilians)-what does Obama do then?
Reminds me of “Heart of Darkness”…where the narrator talks about the battleship firing shells at the African coast (while the crew is dying). This makes just as much sense.
It’s easy to get fooled because it gets picked up by more normally reliable news aggregators and probably just through Stopped Clock logic gets things sounding plausibly right. It used to crop up in my Zite and Flipboard feeds until I ‘Thumbs Downed’ it out of existence as a source.
I’d consider the threats against Israel more plausible. If I were Israeli right now, I’d have my diplomat yelling at the American diplomat to stop this stupid, symbolic military action.
Well, here’s Putin sounding entirely too reasonable about the whole thing. I hate it when that happens.
Obama and his red line and the fact that apparently he’s the only one who really, really wants to blow something up in Syria and it’s all based on some “secret” info which apparently is really just some snippets of conversation just like the snippets of conversations er… “secret info” that closed all our embassies in the Middle East.
Nonsense. Israel has already struck against Assad themselves. If he thought it feasible to retaliate against Israel, he has grounds regardless of US action. But Israel has said they are ready for any eventuality, and I reckon Assad knows they mean it.
I suspect their immediate concern is chemical weapons washing around in a volatile and unpredicatable war zone with innumerable players looking for an edge.
In which case, Putin’s initiative means Israel wins.
Who are these moderates, they’re usually just as bad as the other side. The best outcome for Syria unfortunately seems to be the Algeria option, or split the religious and ethnic communities into separate states, which is what should of happened in the first place.
So as soon as they stop fighting each other for a few weeks, Obama wants to train some of them in counter-terrorism so they can start fighting each other again, only better. That’s bound to turn out well.
Now, I’m not sure how reliable