I do not care to scorn flexibility even feckless flexibility, bat, bat, bat, bat, save! I admire the diplomatic flexibility in evidence:
"Here's a thought for you."
"Psych! I said, that was just a thought, can't a guy think aloud in public without being taken for a nutter?"
"But that is a good idea. We can do something with that idea. That was a good one."
Hmm, damn, it could give them the advantage. This could turn out poorly. We could be made the fools. More importantly, I could be made the fool. The boss, the communal project, might whimsically contradict me and in flight say the opposite of what I'm saying here. It's happened.
"Check that." We're not going to go through that again. Smells too much like Bush, "Sorry."
"We'll probably go with a strike. That's the thing. A strafing. To make the point that you pay for using those weapons. We're going to Congress. The whoooooole shebang."
Talking about it openly like this and so broadly, strike or no strike, will work to put the fear in Assad. Obama said it will change the calculus and it did. See what happened? Warships repositioned, Congress assembled, UN discussions, conferences between nations, all dragged in staring straight at Assad and a flake could pop off any second. Fear Obama or deride him as too absurd to occupy his position but that is exactly why you must live on edge moment to moment and like Saddam Hussein you will never be comfortable, not for one conscious or unconscious second, you must keep moving. Because now, any moment, voooomp.
See how clever that is? We don't have to assume responsibility for all of it. We're the wild card. The UN really can do it. They can take full responsibility. And if the UN fails, the UN fails, it has nothing to do with us. We did our best. They'll take care of things just fine.
Meanwhile on our side, the United States of America, we bumble it, fumble it, bounce the problem, to Putin, to Congress, to France, to Britain, to Defense, to State, to UN. And we know because we've seen, how the UN comports in live war. They make ludicrous powder blue targets and abruptly close shop and go home. It is not possible to confirm or follow through with anything that is agreed upon. That is the nature of the situation.
But it doesn't matter because blame falls elsewhere, and that is the important thing, we're free of it. Please stop dragging us into these things and go directly to the UN.
Recall Hans Blix. Let's do that again. There is a flexible guy. I recall at least a full year or thereabout of Hans Blix saying he was getting no cooperation whatsoever from Saddam Hussein at the time. The deal was, at the time, cooperate or be smashed. Looking back, this is how I recall Blix's reports: He's not cooperating, he's not cooperating, he's not cooperating with the new thing, he's playing games, he's not cooperating, I'm telling you he's not cooperating, he's jacking me around, we're being made fools of, he's not cooperating, we're just going through motions, he's shifting things around, the gates are locked, I get no cooperation at all, why are you attacking? You Bastard! You weren't supposed to do that! Bush is a war criminal.
33 comments:
(1) Reality is the stuff of fiction. Zeus with a thunderbolt, arbitrary and capricious. Throw a big party. Roast a prized goat or something. Maybe it'll help.
(2) There are many, many gaps in my education. I needs to get me some Dr. Who.
Knock, knock.
Who en-dare-iddit?
(3) Flexibility. I used to think it was just for girls. Can you touch your toes? No. Not even close. Now go away. Please.
Then along came this CrossFit thing. Flexibility counts for as much as strength. It's because of that happy sofa where gymnastics sits right next to Olympic lifting and they don't need a throw pillow between them.
Hey! Check out this hot snatch!
Nice.
Dr Who is like Dr Pepper, he don't get no period 'cause it aint proper or maybe they jes don't want it.
The face is Lady Cassandra. They gathered to view the end of the Earth. They're on platform one five billion years in Rose's future, the year 5.5/apple/26. Earth is vacated and the sun is expanding.
She's the last human, but just a face stretched out on a frame that must be continuously moisturized.
She's a horrible face.
She contrives to sabotage the platform and profit by killing its wealthy guests assembled there with her to observe. She teleports away leaving the station to collapse, but the Doctor fixes it, finds her teleport device and returns Cassandra to the platform where without her moisturizers her face dries and bursts. She screams and agonizes and pleas for her moisturizer and Doctor Who just stand there and goes, "Wut?" That's the climax, her face exploding all over the place. Bits of face flying all kover. Oh dear, I seem to have gone and blown the ending for you. Sorry.
First part sounds like Ritmo wrote it.
I was going to say that THIS always confused the hell out of me.
Dr. Rototiller?
But it seems that "DR" stands for "done right."
Dumb, yes, but at least now I get it.
You look at John Kerry and you know some faces spell STOOPID. Well, I know, and that's all that counts.
As I said yesterday, this will come out fine for the President one way or another, because that's the objective. Even Putin and Assad want it to end up looking good for Obama, so that things can go back to being ignored.
It's really hard for the President to screw it up in terms of optics. It's only bad if it ends up with dead Americans, and he can avoid that easily. If the war continues, and WMDS are never really addressed, well then, at least he kept us out of it. If they get some WMDs, even if most of them are never found, it will be called a huge success.
Our guy may still blow it, and I expect this to end up bad in reality, but in the short term optics, it's gonna come out looking somewhere between not bad and wonderful.
Obama, Putin, and Assad will all come out smelling better, even statesmen-like, and possibly as great peacemakers. It's their plan, and on this they actually all share the same interest.
Of course the WMDs will still be available to Assad, and all three men will continue to kill people at will, and the 100K shot and gassed will still be dead. Winning!
Sorry, it already looks bad for Little Zero.
When you've lost MoDo and Joe Klein, there's no going back.
The US was never going to fix Syria or the Syrian problem. As I understood it the Administration's stated goal was to neutralize Assad's ability to access chem weapons. Russia is now the agent responsible for seeing that it is immediately so. There's no need for US and western countries to NOT be aggressive in their use of the inspections teams. Putin will not allow Assad to embarrass him in his role as guarantor. Some of you think it's Obama who can't stand to be shown up on the world stage. My money says the man with ego is Mr. Superbowl Ring: V. Putin. While he doesn't care about bourgeois niceties like keeping your word, he couldn't abide having someone like Assad show him up in his new diplomatic role.
Who's to say, it might actually be a very good thing to have Putin entangled in this affair working towards mutual goals with the west.
We said specifically we wanted to neutralize Assad's chem weapons without influencing the balance of power between Assad and the rebels. Maybe that's what we got.
Thank God we have a KGB guy fixing the problem because our affirmative action President has no idea what to do.
I am glad that phx is putting his trust in Putin. Nice.
Доверяй, но проверяй
Is that you KGB code name?
Putin is not interested in looking nice. He knows that's unrealistic, since occasionally he needs to murder his opponents, and he's not giving that up. He's interested in embedding Russian influence and control in the Middle East. With that he can actually strike at the United States interests safely and with plausible deniability for years to come. He can distract us, charge us penalties, and put a knife to our back when the need arises. He's thinking long term and it all makes him more popular at home at our expense.
While our President is busy looking for a way to save face, Putin is preparing the field of battle.
The new cold war is on. We have superior hardware, but inferior leadership, and not just Obama.
It's hysterical that phx doesn't get it that Obama has the same concern for "bourgeois niceties like keeping your word" as Putin, exactly zero concern.
I should have said Putin doesn't need to look tough (rather than "nice"). Everybody knows the man is cold-blooded and goal oriented. Nobody would ever accuse him of getting soft. Everyone knows such a thing would be part of a plan, a head fake before the counterstrike.
I believe Putin would let Assad spit in his face if it furthered his interest. That's what makes him so dangerous. For example, is how he greeted Obama at the G-20 like a doorman. He acted weak, meekly raising the bet, knowing damned well he was holding the ace.
Even the Guardian has noticed -- Vladimir Putin: arch manipulator with a mission to check US will
Some of the comments are priceless, like this one: "There has been no 'Russian Diplomacy', what there has been is a damage-limitation exercise after their puppet overstepped the mark. Kerry offered them a way out of their dilemma, and they took it."
Got it -- we saved Putin's hide, not the other way around.
Not to worry. Hillary, the over-hyped democrat with a vagina, has a closet full of gently used re-set buttons.
Well, Kerry did offer Assad a way out, but he did it by accident, the administration walked it back before walking it out again, and most importantly it doesn't make sense to give Assad a way out if we want him gone. The only context in which it makes sense for us is face saving, and that only works on the low info observer.
Sergei Lavrov can hardly contain himself.
Meanwhile, Assad government hails 'victory' in arms deal, troops attack
It really is astounding that no one here seems to understand the concept of mutual interest.
I believe Putin would let Assad spit in his face if it furthered his interest.
Well I can't think of a realistic scenario where Putin allows Assad to use the chemical weapons at this point. Assad would then have to blame the rebels but good luck with that.
phx:
"As I understood it the Administration's stated goal was to neutralize Assad's ability to access chem weapons."
From "was," I assume you mean the strikes were meant to limit Assad's access to his weapons.
How is that possible?
bagoh20:
Well, Kerry did offer Assad a way out, but he did it by accident, the administration walked it back before walking it out again, and most importantly it doesn't make sense to give Assad a way out if we want him gone. The only context in which it makes sense for us is face saving, and that only works on the low info observer.
I have a very hard time believing this wasn't in the works. How can you cobble together an agreement between Putin and Assad so quickly?
I also do not understand why it would be in Putin's interest to say he is going to negotiate removal of the weapons without doing it. It would be same old same old. If Putin wants more influence on the world's stage, getting rid of the weapons will help to achieve that.
It also means Assad would stay in power. But without the chemical weapons, and having them out of the hands of terrorists, what's not to like?
Strikes on Assad presumably would weaken him, prolonging the war, making it more, not less likely rebel forces or Al Qaeda forces could get access to the chemical weapons.
I still do not understand the purpose of the strikes, except within the context the US flexed its muscles, Putin gets to do something cool, and Obama gets to say "See, I'm not a wuss."
Given (was it Lois Lerner) IRS planting of questions in an audience, I wouldn't put the question of what would it take to not strike Syria, and Kerry's "offhand" remark to have been completely coordinated.
In any event, I'm waiting for someone to explain to me how strikes on Syria are in the US interest, in Syrian interest (it seems to me it would only help Islamic Terrorist types, and cause more suffering by prolonging the civil war).
But I'm open to trying to make some kind of sense out of this, because it simply doesn't make sense.
Dante: I gather to act as a deterrent which would in effect curb their ability to use those weapons. The current plan seems even more certain to prevent Assad's use of those weapons.
Of course short of a full-scale invasion as we did in Iraq, there is no fool-proof way to ensure those weapons will never be used.
What do you think we should have done or should do, Dante?
What do you think we should have done or should do, Dante?
You didn't answer my questions, but I'll provide you some of my own thoughts.
We should turn Iraq into a democratic Beacon for the ME. We should not have withdrawn our troops. There is a good stick thing in there, like Gadaffi gave up his WMD program. Then we killed him.
Meanwhile, we ought to approach as many really good Islamic studies professors, and find all the cracks between the various sects, and exploit the cracks to get the sects to focus inward on destroying each other. This is the holding pattern.
Concurrently we ought to develop our own oil resources, which are vast. Let Europe know we will be exiting our role as policeman of the ME, and they are welcome to it. If they don't want it, then perhaps the Chinese will. If radical muslims hating each other isn't enough, perhaps hating the Chinese will be good enough.
Drain the value of the resources over there by overproducing our own oil resources, to reduce the ability of terrorists to raise capital, and to get them further focused on their religion.
Ban further immigration of Muslims into the US. Ban visas for Muslim visitors, except for extreme conditions. Shut down the southern border.
If we are attacked with any WMD, or any further terror attacks like 9/11, go in with a scorched earth policy. I read an article in the Christian Science monitor years ago, that went something like this. Kid throws rock at soldier, Israel bulldozes Palestinian town. I kind of like the leftist guilt by association. Bad apples over there that screw us up causes everyone over their to suffer, and puts pressure on good innocent people to clean up the act of the bad apples.
See, I'm incredibly lazy when it comes to the ME and Islam. It's complicated and screwed up. I don't want to have to know about it. Our values are immiscible. And given we have such vast quantities of oil resources in the US we do not need them, I should not need to know about them. Anymore than I need to know about Africa.
We are wasting a lot of treasure and getting little in return for it. What's the point?
I like it Dante. Get out of the Middle East and let the people who need the oil fight it out. No blood for oil.
Frack the shit out of our own resources and jail any environmentalist assholes who get in the way like they posted a youtube video.
Frack the shit out of our own resources and jail any environmentalist assholes who get in the way like they posted a youtube video.
Yeah, it's a good time to do this. Buy happenstance, the IPCC is having some problems explaining their failed models. So the arguments in the past (which make so little sense anyway), that the US having its own oil supply is bad because CO2 is bad, are chilling.
You didn't answer my questions, but I'll provide you some of my own thoughts.
Thanks for your answer. I thought I answered you.
phx:
Dante: I gather to act as a deterrent which would in effect curb their ability to use those weapons.
A) This is different than what you said before, which was to access the weapons. You didn't answer that question.
B) Regarding deterring the use of the weapons, I'm having a hard time seeing the deterrent. Increasing the power of the rebels will add pressure to use chemical weapons in a very coordinated way, all at once, to finally eradicate them. Given how we have treated every other dictator who we toppled in the ME, what is to be lost?
C) And I don't know why we want the rebels to win anyway. Why not support Assad. Is he any worse or better than the rebels? Or better yet, like, there aren't any right answers except that a faster resolution to the war is desirable.
Of course, there do seem to be some other things going on. If Kerry is to be believed, Saudi Arabia was willing to fund a boots on the ground war. Why is that? And why, with Iran threatening Israel, and with Iranian influence in Syria with rebels, would Israel want to cripple Assad and his ability to respond?
These are the problems I have. With Afghanistan and Iraq, I had a pretty good understanding what was at stake. Here, it seems the US is puppeteer to other regimes, because I can't see the compelling US interest.
I don't understand it. No one has explained it to me satisfactorily. With the Iraq war, the obvious answer was to stabilize the oil flow, by stabilizing the ME. With Syria, it seems to be to add chaos, and make more enemies.
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