I've already expressed my opinion that the best thing to do is to allow, or even encourage, the fighting between an anti-American despot and an anti-American militant Islamist group to go on for as long as possible.
However:
What's our threshold for action? Ten thousand dead? A million? Ten million?
Certainly part of our calculus should be that, at the moment, this is our Commander in Chief:
This President has the reverse-Midas touch, turning gold into shit at every opportunity.
And we should certainly factor that in. He's done all he could in the last five years to weaken the US military, and to embolden potential enemies. If he were to initiate any sort of military action, I'd assume that it was for some nefarious purpose, to fluff up his own polling numbers before the midterms, say; or to support the Muslim Brotherhood, whose anti-American, anti-Zionist philosophy aligns pretty well with his own. Chances are, should this educated idiot play at war the way he pulls the levers of the economy, his corpse-man gaffe will seem prescient, and we'll see an array of body bags with our own dead zipped up inside.
And yet....And yet. Shall we sit idle while innocents are slaughtered?
What say you, Comments Home commenters? Convince me that we should stay out of this fight. Or that we shouldn't.
91 comments:
There's Derbyshire on the stay out side.
Belmont Club says Obama is an idiot and anything he's likely to do will blow up in his face.
Keep reading Belmont Club.
You make a good argument for staying out it, militarily.
Whatever happened to the old fashioned benchmark that America only goes to war when its own national security is endangered? How does Syria threaten us?And if the answer is that a destabilized middle east threatens us when has the middle east ever been stable?
But these questions assume the fantasy that Obama is an American president making his decisions with America's safety and wellbeing his highest priority.
I say hope they both lose, but only after killing millions of muzzies. It makes no sense to stop them when they are doing so well at it without our help.
Get Obama another Peace Prize - he is just that good.
We waited 5 years after the Panay was sunk to go after the Japanese, even though they were slaughtering millions of Chinese and the China Lobby then was as strong as the Israel Lobby today.
We went to 'Nam partly because of the atrocities of the VC and we know what happened.
We went to Iraq partly because of the atrocities of Saddam and we know what happened.
If Choom wants his war, let him fight it. His side is Al Qaeda, the other is Vlad's pal, Assad.
Going to war for the poor, suffering people is a noble ambition, but, when a Republican President inherits Choom's war, we know what will happen.
Pasta, you're a good man and I hate the choice as much as anybody, but this is not our fight.
The USA can't win any possible scenario in Syria. The only folks who are ever on are side are the "secular moderates", all fifteen of them, and they're never nasty & vicious enough to out-fight the fascists & Islamists.
We need to smack Assad with some cruise missiles because he did exactly what we told him not to do (i.e. use WMD), and we can't let any 3rd world tinpot get away with stuff like that, especially if we pointedly tell them not to.
But, after that what? The American people are simply not behind another military adventure. Obama knows that another war turns the lefty side of his base against him & his fellow Democrats, and damages their chances for 2014 & 2016. But, without a major boots on the ground campaign, we have no hope of changing the outcome.
As for the suffering of those poor Syrian civilians, what can we do? Now, it's Sunnis dying. But, if the Sunnis win, will it then be Christians, Druze, Alawites, & Shi'a dying? What would really be helpful is if the rebel groups made a public oath that if they win, they will foreswear any vengeance against minorities, and only punish government officials after fair trials. Notice, that what I just proposed is only words, yet it hasn't happened. Gosh, I wonder why?
From the Jerusalem Post with regard to likely action by the Obama administration:
“They haven’t crossed the Rubicon, but they’re in the boats,” says Jeffrey White, a defense fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “They’re clearing away all the obstacles to military action. The question now is what scale it is going to be.”
And from the Times of Israel: Families of Syrian brass ‘fleeing’ ahead of feared US strike
Looks as if a discussion about whether or not to do something may be moot at this point.
We should stay out of any fight that isn't our own unless there is good reason not to.
Haven't heard any good reason for getting involved.
What does Johnny Mccain think? Just find that out, and do the opposite, and we'll be OK.
Derbyshire says that the words "involuntary commitment" suggest themselves in the McCain situation.
We need to smack Assad with some cruise missiles because he did exactly what we told him not to do (i.e. use WMD), and we can't let any 3rd world tinpot get away with stuff like that, especially if we pointedly tell them not to.
But, after that what?
There's not a lot of upside for the USA in this. Yet the downside of doing nothing at this point is not good.
Obama continues to do a decent job in foreign affairs. He's certainly restored my confidence in the government's handling of diplomacy compared with the debacle of the last administration.
Shall we sit idle while innocents are slaughtered?
If you have a plan in mind for US intervention that can rationally be expected to result in fewer innocents being slaughtered, I'm open to hearing it.
In the absence of such a plan, invading a country to save the lives of people IN that country is insane.
"Whatever happened to the old fashioned benchmark that America only goes to war when its own national security is endangered?"
...or to prevent genocide, generally.
I have serious issues with "it's in our interest that they all kill each other" as a foreign policy motivation. It's worse even than a utilitarian argument because it expresses desire for that outcome. (Not saying anyone said that exactly, but we've all heard it from time to time.)
In a real sense most of what happens in the world is none of our business. That's the joke of "American World Police". But I think it's wrong, too, to behave capriciously as World Police one day and disinterested observer the next. Without a coherent foreign policy our inaction might be as causative as our action if people are making their decisions even partly based on what we will do... and then we don't do what we've led them to believe.
I don't know ANYTHING about Syria. I couldn't possibly say what I think we should do. (Once we failed to establish a plan for permanent military bases post-war in Iraq a la Germany or Japan we gave up the region by announcing our lack of care or interest or WILL.) What ever should have been done to manage the disruptions across the Arab world be in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt or Syria... we already didn't do it.
As for total deaths... going to war doesn't reduce total deaths. What we can hope for, best case, is that more of the bad guys are killed and fewer of the good guys are killed.
Going to war to stop the killing isn't going to work. Never does. It's not *supposed* to work.
Eventually even a tyrant runs out of people to kill, runs out of opposition... and then it will be over. (Do we hear of Burma anymore? No, we don't.)
Also... Syria is about the size of Washington state? If some outside country really needs to go in there to make sure that the total death toll contains more of the bad guys and fewer of the good guys... there is NO reason it has to be us.
If you want to 'go' by the numbers... or have numbers - "How much of this" - play some kind of role.
The Rwandan Genocide was a genocidal mass slaughter of the Tutsis by the Hutus that took place in 1994 in the East African state of Rwanda. It is considered the most organized genocide of the 20th century.[2] Over the course of approximately 100 days (from the assassination of Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira on April 6 through mid-July) over 500,000 people were killed, according to a Human Rights Watch estimate.[3] Estimates of the death toll have ranged from 500,000–1,000,000,[1] or as much as 20% of the country's total population.
If you 'go' strictly by numbers of dead, Obama's hands off approach is still in good shape.
All things being equal and all that.
"What should we do about Syria?"
Nothing.
Fred Reed's latest about the U.S. military.
Call me whatever name you like, but the U.S. doesn't know what to do in the Middle East. Nobody does.
The myth of the immense superiority of the U.S. military is just that... a myth.
@Lem,
The memories of the Rwandan genocide are no doubt driving much of the behind-the-scenes discussion among the Obamaites. Remember, many of the Obamaites were, in a previous life, Clintonites, and Bill Clinton has publicly stated that his greatest regret from his years as president was that he didn't intervene in Rwanda.
Obama continues to do a decent job in foreign affairs.
Actually, Obama's handling of Syria is a perfect example of bad diplomacy. He violated two of the basic rules:
1. Don't get involved in a conflict unless your nation has a stake in the outcome.
2. Don't make threats you are unwilling or unable to back up with actions.
The first rule was violated by lending verbal support to the rebels and by issuing demands to Assad. The second rule was violated by establishing a "red line" for WMD usage without having a plan or political capital to enforce the red line.
Now the United States is in an impossible position. Either we let Assad get away with openly flaunting our ultimatum (which will make it that much harder to reign in other rogue states via diplomacy), or we get involved in a war that has no possible upside for the United States (and which Americans overwhelmingly oppose).
nothing, were broke, let them kill each other.
or prevent genocide, generally
I wouldn't say that we generally do that. We tried it a couple of times in the 1990s, but that's about it.
If the U.S. should do anything, the administration should have started doing it years ago, when they still could influence events without having to go to war.
At this point, the best they can do is hunker down and take the consequences of their past fecklessness - at least until things clear up so that we can tell what is, or has been, going on.
But I am afraid with these people, they are going to go ahead and do something half-assed and half-hearted, and somehow manage to make the situation worse than ever.
I have no answer for what we should do but I don't see enough attention being given to the Russian component. It is hugely important to Russia to keep Assad in power as they wish to establish a permanent naval presence in the Medterranean.
I don't know if we can prevent that from happening but it certainly should be a consideration.
John Kerry savvies French and there is some residual utility there for that language of diplomacy. I believe he can secure peace for our time.
I'm a stay out of it guy. One, because Obama couldn't be trusted to get involved in a way that helps. Two, because they don't like us already. Do anything, and half the population of the middle east will hate us, whichever side we help.
Moreover, America steps in and will instantly be held to the standard of perfection, a standard no other nation is held to. Wars can never live up to that threshold. So whatever help we can give would only result in emphasizing the added "evil" we caused.
Three, at a certain point peoples need to become exhausted with war.
Fourth, the more war Syria wages with itself the less there's going to be attempts to attack/blame Israel.
Fifth, there's no benefit and lots of loss. Humanitarian help? America has done its part in the Middle East.
Sixth, there's no clear victory. The best we could hope for will be for Assad to be tossed out, then Americans have to fill the power vacuum, hated by every side.
The WSJ says that articles will now require a pop-up enabled browser.
'Bye WSJ.
nothing, were broke, let them kill each other.
Tight Ass, sometimes you are a sage mofo!
It also saddens me to say that if Iraq taught us anything, it's that warring factions within a civil war just don't seem to want to make the concessions necessary for a brokered peace until they've had their bellyful of murdering & being murdered.
Syria just doesn't seem to be at the bellyful stage yet.
Drone the chinless one.
Remember the derision of George Bush when the WMDs couldn't be found in Iraq? They were moved to Syria, and now have been used on the Syrian people. The supply has not been exhausted. There are more WMDs which Assad says he will fire into Israel if the US bombs Syria.
Who are the bad guys in this mess? Both sides, but the anti-Assad forces are the AQ, which Obama supports because, shit, he's one of them. And they are in the Dept of State and the NSC.
If our Nobel Peace Prize recipient president and anti-war Secretary of State decide to bomb Syria, they'll do so without Congressional authorization and without UN approval.
And if they do, Putin will intervene on behalf of the other side, and Iraq will launch an attack on Israel. But say Obama goes ahead regardless - who is the putative replacement for Assad? Anyone? No one? The administration has no idea.
The best option is to do nothing, but Obama has said repeatedly that he will intervene if an undefined red line is crossed. We're fucked.
By the way, have you seen Kerry on television lately? His bloated face says one thing: alcohol problem.
John F Kerry (who also served in Vietnam) will get us out of this with our chin up high.
On Sunday, The Guardian's Europe editor wrote: "Barack Obama is unlikely to have much trouble mustering a Nato coalition of the willing if Washington opts for military intervention in Syria in response to the alleged chemical weapons atrocities by the Assad regime."
Note that they did not put the term coalition of the willing in scare quotes, as I recall they always did during the Bush years when talking about Iraq.
God love the left -- it has absolutely no shame in its hypocrisy.
One other thing to remember. The Choom Gang has done its dead level best to destroy the US military the last 5 years.
We've got homosexuals in firebases lining up dates on Craigslist.
We've got women expected to do a man's work in combat arms whether they can do it or not.
They've sacked the best commanders because they want ones that will obey orders to fire on Americans.
We've sustained 3 times as many casualties in A-stan in 4 years under this moron than we did under Dubya in 8.
One question that needs to be asked is, if we shouldn't have gone to Iraq because we were short of men because of A-stan, are we in any better shape to go to Syria?
And, as to this chemical attack, I'll say what I've said a couple of times before - which one of the Choom Gang said to Little Zero, "It's a slam dunk, Mr President"?
Synova said...
Once we failed to establish a plan for permanent military bases post-war in Iraq a la Germany or Japan we gave up the region by announcing our lack of care or interest or WILL.
And that was no one's doing but Choom's. He couldn't wait to go because we had won there, even though the Iraqis wanted us to stay, but it was the campaign he opposed (his Iraq policy was pretty much, "I was against it fi-i-irst! I was against it fi-i-irst!") so he was going to be seen as "right" about something.
Lem said...
If you want to 'go' by the numbers... or have numbers - "How much of this" - play some kind of role.
The Rwandan Genocide was a genocidal mass slaughter of the Tutsis by the Hutus that took place in 1994 in the East African state of Rwanda. It is considered the most organized genocide of the 20th century
And who was the arbiter of that policy?
The woman who gave us the Choom Gang's talking points on Benghazi - Susan Rice.
That was one where we could have gone in, but the Ozark Mafia was gunshy after Mogadishu - where they really screwed up and didn't want to louse up Willie's "peace and prosperity" propaganda.
These people are always wrong.
PS I have to give props to Titus. When he decided to get serious, he said something worthwhile.
I said, about going to war... "or prevent genocide, generally"
"I wouldn't say that we generally do that. We tried it a couple of times in the 1990s, but that's about it."
I made no claims about successes.
Also, as we know, everyone fusses about a genocide until the US steps in and then it all goes down the memory hole because the reality of war is unpleasant.
Too many people want to declare their moral loftiness by opposing evil *and* keep their clean hands.
This President has the reverse-Midas touch, turning gold into shit at every opportunity.
Lol. Yep. I remember when Obama rubbed that magic lamp and made Bashar al Assad magically appear, take over Syria (rather than inheriting it in the usual manner from Dad), and turn into the same murderous tyrant that seems to run in the family.
It wasn't the revolution that caused the crackdown, it was Obama. Anyone who's heard differently is being fooled.
The best option is to do nothing, but Obama has said repeatedly that he will intervene if an undefined red line is crossed.
The best option is to do nothing, but I thought he said the red line would've been chemical weapons. Which I thought it was reported they might've already used.
Whatever.
The "red line" comment by Obama last year was off the cuff, not using a teleprompter. He fucked up saying that. This is now about more than Syria. I agree, we have no business going in there. But, if our country's leader draws a red line, and we then do nothing, we will pay badly, w/ other bigger regional problems, in the near future. Middle Easterners only understand strength. Drawing a line, and then backing down, invites all hell upon us. The red line comment may be the biggest blunder since the Korean war. That war started when we issued a statement signaling South Korea was not recognized by the US.
Haz, I thought booze or steroids when I saw him the other day. Kerry and Hagel, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.
Me: "Once we failed to establish a plan for permanent military bases post-war in Iraq a la Germany or Japan we gave up the region by announcing our lack of care or interest or WILL."
"And that was no one's doing but Choom's. He couldn't wait to go because we had won there, even though the Iraqis wanted us to stay,"
I don't know how much that is Obama's fault. The fact is that I'm the only one I've ever heard say that this should have been our plan from the start. No one I ever heard was suggesting we build an Iraqi Ramstein Air Base. Certainly not Bush.
Either Bush was entirely invested in avoiding the appearance of planning an "occupation" or he knew he didn't have the political currency to put those long term plans in motion or he felt he didn't have the right to make plans beyond the scope of his administration. (Which his father was blatantly guilty of concerning Somalia.)
Obama continues to do a decent job in foreign affairs. He's certainly restored my confidence in the government's handling of diplomacy
I'm shocked.
And stunned. Stunned and shocked.
Synova said...
Once we failed to establish a plan for permanent military bases post-war in Iraq a la Germany or Japan we gave up the region by announcing our lack of care or interest or WILL.
And that was no one's doing but Choom's. He couldn't wait to go because we had won there, even though the Iraqis wanted us to stay,
I don't know how much that is Obama's fault. The fact is that I'm the only one I've ever heard say that this should have been our plan from the start. No one I ever heard was suggesting we build an Iraqi Ramstein Air Base. Certainly not Bush.
Either Bush was entirely invested in avoiding the appearance of planning an "occupation" or he knew he didn't have the political currency to put those long term plans in motion or he felt he didn't have the right to make plans beyond the scope of his administration. (Which his father was blatantly guilty of concerning Somalia.)
We weren't going to have another King Khalid Military City in Iraq for several reasons, but the intention was to stay as long as we were welcome. And what were we occupying? That was over when the surge worked. More to the point, 10 divisions only stretches so far.
If you mean a colonial presence for 200 years like the limeys in Inja, we're going to need a lot more men and a big change in attitude.
The Iraqis wanted some status of forces agreement on the US forces, but Choom wasn't interested. Another time when he was on the links when he should have been working.
As far as Somalia, Willie wanted to show he was a tough guy and thought Mog was the place, so he changed the scope of the mission. How does Bush 41 end up responsible for that?
In Syria, who do you want winning? Assad, Hezbollah (Iran), or Al Qaeda? Those are the choices. And each will happily murder thousands of the other....and continue to hate us.
ST said...
The myth of the immense superiority of the U.S. military is just that... a myth.
Bullshit. Wars are fought by Lieutenant Colonels and below, not generals. What is a myth today is the quality of the leadership above the rank of Colonel. There is none. Pentagon Rangers all.
Only the US Military can win every last fucking battle and still lose a war. That is the flag ranks, the senior executive civilians, the foreign service acolytes, doing that, not the actual fighting military to itself.
We let Rwandans die by the hundreds of thousands when it would have taken a company of marines to send those machete hacking murderers packing. That was on Bill Clinton's watch.
Syria is way different. Both sides are ruthless and both are bad. We gain nothing interfering other than potential casualties. If throwing a few cruise missiles helps...I do not see how. More than that will just be messy.
The only think I would support is a carefully planned attack to take out WMD sites and that is all (and that by drones or cruise missiles). Beyond that stay out other than to contain it from spilling over to Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, and Turkey.
Maybe John Kerry can broker some sort of parley between the bad guys.
Obama needs to show up on ESPN to prop up his creds with his thug base. That's about all he's got left what with his "decent enough" foreign policy. Fucking hilarious.
Shambles is the perfect word to describe O's ME policy, especially in it's archaic, original meaning—slaughterhouse.
Fucking moron doesn't know what to do when there's no clear-cut "identity victim" whose ass he can shove his righteous nose up. He thinks well there all Arabs ain't they and they rightfully hate us, so what's the problem?
One other point about Iraq, FWIW.
Dubya's ultimate intent was to try to establish a Western-style democracy in the Middle East with the idea of showing the region there was another way to live, not the sort of thing usually started by an occupation.
Whether it would have worked is fairly moot now.
I was going to weigh in here with my PhD in International Relations to give y'all the advantage of my profound thoughts, but y'all have pretty much covered the proverbial waterfront. I'm poppin' popcorn..
OT - Miley cyrus needs to brush her tongue
"I wouldn't say that we generally do that. We tried it a couple of times in the 1990s, but that's about it."
I made no claims about successes.
I'm not talking about success, I'm talking about trying in the first place. If you look at a list of the major genocides and democides of the 20th century, the US attempted to stop very few of them. Even the Holocaust is something the Allies stopped largely by accident -- we were already at war with Germany for unrelated reasons.
The myth of the immense superiority of the U.S. military is just that... a myth.
I'm not sure who Fred Reed is, but he certainly comes across as a nut.
In any event the superiority of the US military is anything but a myth. The problem is that we wind up using it as a police force instead of a military force.
Also I'm not a fan of publishing pictures of political enemies out of context to inflame the passions of their enemies.
Someone who is doing that is being manipulative. Drudge does that a lot. They play that on Huff Po often, too.
Wow - some of you guys are waaay into this Choom Gang jargon to claim you're thinking for yourselves.
If there's one area where Obama appears to understand The Big Picture - as laid down brilliantly by George W. Bush - it's The War On Terror and re-shaping The Middle East.
It's happening, before our eyes.
Successfully. Ask Saddam, or Ghaddafi, or Mubarak, who I'm glad is still alive but out of power. Real Politic.
When and whether do we intervene? When and if events dictate. It is in our interest, as The New World, the rest are free to come with us. Assad's a fucking snake, there's no downside to taking him on. Letting the English take the lead seems to be the right move as well. They can handle him. Leaves us and Israel free to deal with Iran if they decide to get froggy.
As far as can we do it? Yes. Don't fool yourselves:
Our military is mindblowingly awesome in strength, size, and scope, and if we - the civilians - would just grow up about the world and our place in it, people outside of these shores would like us a hell of a lot more.
Yeah, even those guys.
"As far as Somalia, Willie wanted to show he was a tough guy and thought Mog was the place, so he changed the scope of the mission. How does Bush 41 end up responsible for that?"
By passing the buck.
I don't recall if he'd already lost the election or not, but our "plan" in Somalia (as far as I could tell anyhow) was to distribute food and wait for Clinton to decide what to do.
Clinton decided badly, but Bush the First decided not-at-all.
There were fat, old cops of an earlier generation who claimed that the best way to handle a bar fight was to drive slowly and arrest the winners. There's some wisdom to that, but I don't fully support such cynicism. I think we should offer as much logistical support to France as she needs to straighten out this complicated situation........Syria used to be a French colony. Here's an interesting historical note. When Syria was French colony, Arab nationalists claimed that Damascus was the third most holy site in Islam.
Full scale war, no. And certainly not under this President.
But no pushback against Russia? There's the important thing.
Perhaps it should become very difficult to maintain and build port infrastructure in Syria now.
I'm getting too old in emotional years for this bullshit.
My whole life I've been hearing
1) ask not what your country can do for you, rather, ask what you can do for your country.
The first time I heard that as a lad took a while to figure out. I'm convinced Democrats do not understand, feel this, or care.
2) I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
3) walk softly but carry a big stick.
As a literalist-lad, I had a good deal of difficulty with this. But I did get it. I don't think Obama even heard it.
Is there something specific about the Democratic Party, something inherent, that all statements lauded by their idolized leadership come with an unstated (not really) attached?
No?
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And I interrupt and say, "Yes, you make a very good point there. That is true. I see it now. That is the same as Republicans in that respect, they are ideals to aim for, not a description of our sorry present state. Very well, will you give them the same break?
No.
Why not?
There is winning involved.
Oh! Misheard.
Walk softly and carry a big schtick.
The President did not get an agreement to keep troops in Iraq because he would not agree to U.S. soldiers being under the jurisdiction of Iraqi laws if they committed a crime. I can just imagine the howls of outrage from those who think he has done nothing right, if he had agreed to the Iraqis demand. Give the man some credit. Although he opposed Bush's War on Terror policies, once he got into office and was confronted with reality, he kept most of the policies and even expanded them! Charges that he supports the Muslim Brotherhood or Al Queda are just too childish to even take seriously.
As for poor Syria, if I believed we could actually help save lives, I would support a limited intervention. Unfortunately, I do not have confidence in our intelligence capabilities. I just do not think we know enough about what is going on there. We unintentionally caused great harm to Iraq because of our failure to really understand the country's different factions and simmering conflicts that Saddam Hussein's oppressive state had kept in check.
"We unintentionally caused great harm to Iraq because of our failure to really understand the country's different factions and simmering conflicts that Saddam Hussein's oppressive state had kept in check."
While Saddam caused a great deal of harm on purpose including attempted genocide of Marsh Arabs and the use of chemical weapons on Kurds. We forget so easily.
"International Experts estimated 300,000 victims could in these mass graves alone. The mass graves mostly included the remains of Shia Muslims and ethnic Kurds killed for opposing the regime between 1983 and 1991,"
That's... "simmering conflicts that Saddam Hussein's oppressive state had kept in check?"
Well... I suppose so. But I think that I may well prefer someone who kills me on accident while trying to help me over one who kills me on purpose, with malice, and buries me in a mass grave because I was Shia or a Sunni Kurd or a Marsh Arab.
According to one Kurdish blog around the time of the first elections in Iraq those Kurds voting were overwhelmingly women... because the men were dead.
We forget... and we angst over our small sins and we decide that, well, at least Saddam kept the different groups from squabbling, even if he was rather harsher than we're comfortable with... after all... it's a different culture over there.
If there are reasons we shouldn't have gone, our unintentional harm doesn't begin to make the list.
Andrew Roberts has a good piece in the Wall St. Journal (unfortunately, behind the paywall) -- Syria's Gas Attack on Civilization: It takes a barbarian to employ poison gas. Assad joins the ranks of Mussolini, Hitler and Saddam Hussein -- discussing just why chemical weapons are "a particular terror in the public imagination". Here's some of it:
In 1987 and 1988, Saddam Hussein launched attacks on no fewer than 40 Kurdish villages in northern Iraq, using new mixtures of mustard gas and various nerve agents such as Sarin, Tabun and VX. (Ten milligrams of VX on the skin can kill a man, while a single raindrop weighs eighty milligrams.) The worst attack came on March 16, 1988, in Halabja.
Iraqi troops methodically divided the town into grids, in order to determine the number and location of the dead and the extent of injuries, thereby enabling them scientifically to gauge the efficacy of various different types of gases and nerve agents. One of the first war correspondents to enter the town afterward, the late Richard Beeston of the Times of London, reported that "Like figures unearthed in Pompeii, the victims of Halabja were killed so quickly that their corpses remained in suspended animation. There was a plump baby whose face, frozen in a scream, stuck out from under the protective arm of a man, away from the open door of a house that he never reached."
Between 4,000 and 5,000 civilians, many of them women and children, died within a few hours at Halabja, through asphyxiation, skin burns and progressive respiratory shutdown. However, a further 10,000 were "blinded, maimed, disfigured, or otherwise severely and irreversibly debilitated," according to a report by the University of Liverpool's Christine Gosden.
These victims later suffered neurological disorders, convulsions, comas and digestive shutdown. In the years to come, thousands more, the State Department noted, were to suffer from "horrific complications, debilitating diseases, and birth defects" such as lymphoma, leukemia, colon, breast, skin and other cancers, miscarriages, infertility and congenital malformations, leading to many more deaths.
vza said...
The President did not get an agreement to keep troops in Iraq because he would not agree to U.S. soldiers being under the jurisdiction of Iraqi laws if they committed a crime.
I can just imagine the howls of outrage from those who think he has done nothing right, if he had agreed to the Iraqis demand.
No, he wasn't interested in negotiating. When the Iraqis initially proposed it, he just walked away.
And we have Status of Forces Agreements with South Korea and Japan.
Nice try.
Give the man some credit.
No, I won't.
Although he opposed Bush's War on Terror policies, once he got into office and was confronted with reality, he kept most of the policies and even expanded them!
And screwed up egregiously. His drone policy has allowed Al Qaeda to reconstitute itself.
Charges that he supports the Muslim Brotherhood or Al Queda are just too childish to even take seriously.
And yet he's overthrown governments to make sure Da Broz are in power.
When life gives you genotypes, make genocide.
For those who think that sending drones or cruise missiles would be a way to stop the killing of innocent civilians is a fool. There will be more collateral damage done to civilians by our bombs than all of the so-called, let me repeat that, so-called casualties from any WMD. By the way, where did Syria get WMDs?
"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line."
--President Bill Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998
"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."
--President Bill Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998
Allen S - The leftwing media/ democrat party has assured us that Bush was lying about WMDs (and the world intelligence community and congress too) (no no - scratch that.. just evil BUSH!)
I think we should intervene for humanitarian reasons.
No wait. The only thing that matters is protecting Obama and the democrats from fallout and criticism. So, I doubt we will do anything other than a strongly worded threat.
Did you happen to solicit the opinion of any Cambodians?
Cambodians? No, never thought of that. How about we get the opinion and approval of the Burmese?
Look at this from WaPo. Who are we, God?
"President Obama is weighing a military strike against Syria that would be of limited scope and duration, designed to serve as punishment for Syria’s use of chemical weapons and as a deterrent, while keeping the United States out of deeper involvement in that country’s civil war, according to senior administration officials."
I say keep out. The situation will be more stabilized for Syria and its diverse, cosmopolitan community than a bunch of MB ready to swoop in and install Sharia.
We are on the wrong side of history, and our support should not be for the nutty Sunnis. But noooo, let's purposely continue our policy of turning brother against brother.
If the 'finding' comes back that Assad used chemical warfare, I will not believe it, no matter who conducted the analysis. Even if he actually did it (which, why would he, he was winning) we'll never know for sure.
Synova:
"Well... I suppose so. But I think that I may well prefer someone who kills me on accident while trying to help me over one who kills me on purpose, with malice, and buries me in a mass grave because I was Shia or a Sunni Kurd or a Marsh Arab"
The vast majority of Iraqi deaths in our war in Iraq were caused by SECTARIAN violence... an unintended consequence of our war of liberation for which we were shamefully unprepared. Some of our decisions during the the occupation (Because of our ignorance!) helped fuel that violence. That was my point. I do not need a refresher course on the murderous Saddam Hussein since in no way did I state or imply that he was responsible for fewer or less horrible deaths. He kept a lid on sectarian conflict. That is a fact. It will be up to the people of Iraq to decide whether or not our invasion was worth it.
My concern is that we not get involved in Syria without the intelligence and knowledge necessary to make informed decisions. If we are relying on the Free Syrian Army faction for our intelligence, we are making the same fatal mistakes we made with Iraq when we listened to Chalabi and his gang of charlatans.
I'm starting to wish our Little Zero had even a passing knowledge of history.
From what Vlad and the Red Chinese are saying, I'm getting the feeling it's 1914.
Or '39.
deborah said...
Look at this from WaPo. Who are we, God?
No, but they think he is.
If the 'finding' comes back that Assad used chemical warfare, I will not believe it, no matter who conducted the analysis. Even if he actually did it (which, why would he, he was winning) we'll never know for sure.
He clearly has had them for 10 years, ever since the Russkies trucked them in from Iraq, so his willingness to use them once things got rough would be something he learned at Daddy's knee.
Why can't we just let a good old middle eastern country destroy itself without our messing it up?
My concern is that we not get involved in Syria without the intelligence and knowledge necessary to make informed decisions. If we are relying on the Free Syrian Army faction for our intelligence, we are making the same fatal mistakes we made with Iraq when we listened to Chalabi and his gang of charlatans.
Hopefully we won't be going in to occupy. Get in, break a few things, and get out.
phx said...
Hopefully we won't be going in to occupy. Get in, break a few things, and get out.
We tried that in Labia.
Worked out swell, didn't it?
Hopefully we won't be going in to occupy. Get in, break a few things, and get out.
What exactly should we break?
Hopefully we won't be going in to occupy. Get in, break a few things, and get out.
Absolutely NO.
First of all, what is the point of going into Syria and breaking a few things? What do you think would be accomplished.
If you are going to drag a country and its military young men and women into WAR, where they WILL die, then you'd better have some clear goals, definitive purpose and plan to WIN.
Just going in, dancing around, counting coup and throwing away lives is not the answer. This is what we have done for the last 50 years since WWII.
WIN or don't go at all.
AllenS said...
Hopefully we won't be going in to occupy. Get in, break a few things, and get out.
What exactly should we break?
My guess is that we are going in to break the S 300s that Assad got from Russia. Israel considers them a threat but they also know that they can't continue striking on their own without provoking a grater confrontation. I think we may have orchestrated this whole thing as a pretext for missile strikes. It looks questionable as to whether that will work as a ruse, however.
I wish I could agree with those who say we should stay out of it all- that would be my natural inclination. I don't think it's that simple though. If Russia and Iran and North Korea are all arming one side, isolationism on our part would be foolish, possibly for our own sake and certainly for Israel's. The biggest problem of course is that there are no good guys for us to back.
The biggest problem of course is that there are no good guys for us to back.
No truer words have been spoken. Those words are also why we shouldn't do anything. So we take out Assad, then what? What if the people replacing him are even worse? Should we bomb them some more? Obama's foreign policy decisions have been a disaster. This case for war is no different.
What if the goal is not to take Assad out, though, but rather to limit the extent to which Russia can leverage its alliance with him? That seems to make some sense to me and to perhaps be our least bad option.
If other countries want to ally with Russia or purchase weapons from them, should be bomb all of those countries as well?
Defensive weapons, no. But a system that seems designed and strageically placed to violate Israel's airspace and ability to defend itself, seems a bit different.
Not unlike the Cuban missile crisis, really, except with our ally in the crosshairs instead of our own soil. Of course if there is a diplomatic means of avoiding a military strike, that would be ideal. Not sure the leaders on either side are capable of it though.
If Israel feels threatened, let them take out the missiles. They are very capable people.
Well I'm not necessarily advocating that we do this, but rather considering what I believe may be happening. And Israel has struck several times- three or four strikes this year, to take out some of these weapons. The effect has been more and more threats from Syria, with Russia not far behind, and I do think the US administration is worried that the powderkeg is going to blow. I'm just wondering if this ruse was created in order for us to carry out the deed with plausible deniability.
Let's back up a moment. Why do we assume that Assad's side of this civil war used Sarin? He has nothing to gain by it. He seems to be winning the war.
Maybe that other side, AQ, used the Sarin weapons as a means to draw the US into this civil war. AQ behaved in a manner that would draw Obama's intervention into the war, and on AQ's side. Obama's intervention would help AQ, right? So they used Sarin on other Syrians.
America is being duped, again. And Obama seems determined to send cruise missiles into Syria, an act of war. And he will do it without Congressional approval, because he's Barack Obama and he don't need no stinkin' constitution.
The dumb bastard is going to start WW3. On purpose.
I'll proffer this: Obama has been the instigator in all of this Arab spring bullshit. The Moslem Brotherhood thought that they had a Muzzie bro in Obama, and when he stepped into the position, he said as much. The MB has been pro-active, and nothing good has come of it. Obama was backing everyone up when he helped remove the leaders of Egypt and Libya, and the MB tried to fill the void. Nothing good has come of Obama's foreign adventures. He's a fucking idiot. I've said this before, and I'll say it again, and again, and again, Obama is the poster child for everything that is so wrong with affirmative action.
Let's back up a moment. Why do we assume that Assad's side of this civil war used Sarin? He has nothing to gain by it. He seems to be winning the war.
Well back in May, there were allegations of a Sarin attack and our govt says that Assad was responsible while the UN inspectors said it was the rebels. In a dispute between this administration and the UN, who do you believe? Damned if I know.
Yes, Carla Del Ponte of the UN stated back in May that the concrete evidence that she had seen indicated the rebels had used sarin gas. Naturally, the US disputes that. Naturally, the Russian government (and probably the Chinese) believe it.
So if we attack the Assad forces now, that will be seen by a large portion of the world as us acting in SUPPORT of the use of chemical weapons on civilians.
So score another big win for President Peace Prize and the morons that voted for him.
PS Note that phx speaks of the US "breaking things" in Syria, as though we wouldn't be killing people. Murdering them, really, as the people killed will have done far less to any of us than Saint Trayvon did to George Zimmerman, which was the crime of the millennium according to every Democrat in the country.
If killing is necessary, so be it. But pretending that isn't what is being done is morally repugnant. And oh-so-typical of Obama supporters, who have to appear to be above moral reproach even when making repellant arguments.
Icepick, takes an icepick, and shoves it into the back of phx's neck.
I usually aim for an ear hole.
Dust Bunny Queen said:
"The middle east is a mess. What we really need to do is to STOP giving everyone arms and ammo. We must stop Iran and others from getting nuclear weaponry. THAT is something that will be a worldwide disaster"
Amen. We (The U.S.)are part of the problem!
Defying International Concerns, US To Sell Cluster Bombs To Saudi Arabia
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/us-to-sell-cluster-bombs-to-saudi-arabia-2013-8#ixzz2dD0cJZNF
Yeah, cluster bombs to the Saudis, that'll be another great piece of US foreign Relations.
And technically, Troop, the Aye-rabs didn't have anything to do with the Boston Marathon. Those were nice boys from the Caucasus.
Hopefully we won't be going in to occupy. Get in, break a few things, and get out.
Who is "we", phx? Are you hiking down to the recruitment office tomorrow? Guys who aren't in the military, and aren't going to be in the military are awfully cavalier about sending other people into harm's way, especially if there's no real purpose or plan.
Why get technical. All Muslims are suspect. Why take a chance. Let them kill each other and let Allah sort them out.
Let them use guns, bombs, poison gas or poisoned falafel. Who gives a fuck. Everyone dead one is one less fuck we have to worry about.
Lets sit back and have some waffles.
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