Comparing boulders randomly falling on the population with guided missiles that can be aimed at large military installations is kind of ridiculous.
TL;DR: The President of the United States has just said that he is going to follow the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution by getting Congressional approval to attack another country that is not currently a threat to the US. But at the same time, he did not say that he felt that his power to make war was restrained by the above (as the Libyan intervention demonstrated).
To be fair, so is taking our government at their word in matters like this. âThose who do not learn from historyâ and all that.
The US can kick over the Syrian government. The US has proven that if it can do absolutely nothing else right, if there is an opposition on the ground to be the âbootsâ, the US can utterly destroy the current government with airpower alone. That is all the US population would be willing (and by willing, I mean unwilling, but probably not going to riot over it) to do at this point.
Okay. So the US spends a few billion dollars, generates a bunch of ill will around the world, and kicks over Syria. The rebels take over. The rebels then promptly start fighting themselves (as some are already doing, even as they fail to win). This fighting is done to the backdrop of the Alawites (the minority ruling ethnic group) and the Christians getting genocide by the very pissed off and long oppressed majority Sunni. This goes on for a few years and in the end there is another dictator in power who is now a nasty Sunni theocrat. Oh, and while all this is happening, Lebanon, not always the most stable of nations, is busy getting destabilized by the hordes of refugees and cross border fighting. Syria becomes a fantastic proxy battleground for Iran and the Sunni nations to battle it out. You âdid somethingâ. Do you feel better?
The US should stay out of ethnic conflicts if for absolutely no other reason than that we have proven rather conclusively, that the only thing we are able to do is make them worse. In fact, the US should stay out of the region entirely. Part of the reason why these places have such nasty ethnic conflicts is because the West drew lines on maps and then propped up nasty folks to keep order. These nasty folks kept order, but at the expense of creating an ethnic pressure cooker, such that when these places finally blow up, it is a violent and bloody disaster, rather than a slow and peaceful transition.
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Should we attack?
The only honest answer that I can come up with is that I donât know. Anyone who says they can predict what will happen is misguided at best, and an ideologue at worst. Rawanda or Kosovo, Libya or Iraq; we can make historical references till we run out of breath, but in the end the future in unknowable. We are the most powerful country in the world, and as such have taken our role as hegemon to intervene militarily many times - for good and for bad. I have no CIA briefings to go on, no DoD snakes whispering lies in my ear, no secret footage of Assadâs forces pushing the button or otherwise. How can I know? How can anyone know, the President included?
Donât believe anyone who says they know. Period. Arguments can be made, predictions cast, but there are no good options here, and Obama could have decided to attack or ignore the situation without consulting anyone; such is the ungodly power of the President these days. But he has chosen to honor the principles of the this country as it was founded. Though the rules of war have been violated by Presidents time and time again, he has stuck with the rules of the flag, tattered and torn they may be. Whatever the result, I can only say one thing, as someone who is as proud to be an American citizen as I ever have;
Bravo Mr. President.
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âThe US should stay out of ethnic conflicts if for absolutely no other reason than that we have proven rather conclusively, that the only thing we are able to do is make them worse. In fact, the US should stay out of the region entirely.â
You cannot honestly believe that, can you? I canât imagine you are totally unaware of the exceptions to that history.
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The obvious answer is that the relationship goes both ways.
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âLet the two sides duke it out, and then crush whoeverâs left.â
How humanitarian of you.
Itâs nice to know that we have the interests of the world at heart.
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Yup, and it is about the actual Syrian people, right?
So, I think itâs clear that we have a humanitarian requirement to let the actual Syrian people choose individually from a suite of options.
âBox of explosionsâ shouldnât even be on the table.
It makes more sense if you play M.C. Frontalotâs âSpecial Deliveryâ in the background, Iâve discovered
I tried to go clean from protesting, but Iâm a recidivist.
My government: behaving with unlimited wickedness.
âIn the interest of peaceâ is how a liar wages war
then clamors for more.
I wish we had elections every day,
wave the ballot in the air like a sign when I say
that democracy delivered by the bomb and the gun
is terror elsewhere on the world Iâm from.
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If you want to hide the truth, you obscure the situation and make it confusing. Thatâs why itâs important for people in power to control the messages your see, hear and read.
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But apparently we are all OK with Assad dropping bombs and killing hundreds by conventional means. What is it about a chemical attack that makes things different? At what point is a weapon a WMD? When it can kill 50 at a shot? 100? 1000? Or is the magic number 1400? Is it the rate of killing that people are appalled by? Is it OK if Assad kills 1400 of his own people but just more slowly? What about killing 800,000 people over the course of a couple of weeks? Rwanda anyone? Where were we then?
Obama had to shoot off his mouth and say that chemical attacks were a line in the sand. And so, here we are, letting Syria call the shots by gassing their own people in order to goad us intoâŚsomething.
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I have yet to experience anything that actually resembles evidence that Assad used chemical weapons. There appears to be evidence that chemical weapons were used, yet these obviously could have been used by anyone, honestly. However, given the long and detailed history of state-sanctioned acts of terror created, maintained, and perpetuated by the American, British, and French governments, Iâm more reasonably inclined to presume that any chemical weapons used in Syria came via one of these outside agencies.
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There are certainly options other than passivity or military intervention.
You reference the Kosovo War. Opponents of intervention argued at the time that it would massively escalate the situation, and in fact most of the ethnic violence occurred after the NATO military intervention. While most Kosovar Albanians favored independence, it wasnât clear how many supported the KLA and an armed struggle for independence; the USâs move to overt support for the KLA legitimized it, played right into the Milosevicâs political narrative, and forced a violent confrontation. There was significant popular opposition to Milosevic within Serbia; NATOâs intervention meant it was suppressed for years.
The breakup of Yugoslavia was certainly complex, but the US-led armed intervention made the situation much worse.
In the case of Syria, it looks to me as if the US has been trying to destabilize the government for years, so if thereâs an ugly civil war brewing, the US is not innocent of responsibility for that. And I think we must be suspicious of an argument that there is only one opposition force with which we should be concerned, and that military intervention is the only way to intervene in the conflict, or the best.
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The innocent civilians killed each year in Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan beg to differ.
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There is no credible evidence that chemical weapons were used by the Syrian government. The US and its allies always come up with lies like this to justify military actions they have already decided to launch.
Remember:
- The lies about WMDs in Iraq.
- The lies about a âgenocideâ in Kosovo.
- The lies that Qaddafi had slaughtered 6000 people in Tripoli in a single massacre
Contrast this with
- US support for the Rwanda Kagame regime which has engaged in genocide and slavery in the Congo.
- US support for ethnic cleansing and military aggression by Israel
- The mass slaughter resulting from the US invasions and attacks against Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries.
- Ethnic cleansing and massacres by head-chopping US-supported jihadi fanatics in Libya.
- Ethnic cleansing and massacres by head-chopping US-supported jihadi fanatics in Syria.
There is no evidence US interventions ever produce anything but more dead bodies and destruction. Only a barbarian sees war as the first and fundamental instrument of international policy. US intervention, obstructionism and support for the Al Qaeda-affiliated ârebelsâ has destroyed any possibility of a political solution in Syria. The US government could care less about Syrian civilians. Itâs sole objective is the destruction of Syria as a viable state and its reduction to a sectarian failed state at war with itself like Iraq and Libya.
Obushma should be impeached and tried for the war criminal he is.
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An arabic friend mentioned yesterday that the US attacks âhad already startedâ, based on social media reporting. I just hope that is not Assad again bombing is own people, later claiming the damage is collateral damage from the US attack.
Another trick to watch out for is when weâre presented with two alternate accounts: one frames the situation as a simple binary opposition; the other insists the situation is too complicated for us to understand. The latter argument is really meant to drive all discussion back to the former; any suggestion that the situation is more complex than a binary opposition, that there are other possibilities to consider, is treated as the âopposingâ argument, and gets a response of, âAh, youâre just arguing for inaction, when people are dying.â
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US decides it wants to go to war. US invents a reason to sell to the public. Public rallies out of âpatriotismâ. War ensues.
This has been going on for decades. If you donât see it for what it is, youâre part of the problem. A real patriot would demand honesty from their government.
There is not a single thinking person in this country that thinks the Iraq war was about nuclear weapons.
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If you canât do anything about a problem its no good worrying about it.
First, citizens have a duty to consider constitutionality of the War Powers Resolution of 1973 (50 U.S.C. 1541-1548).
Then they might consider whether Article 2, Section 4 Article 51 of the U.N. Charter might apply in the case of a sovereign UN member (& its allies-by-defensive-treaty) in a state of civil war & entitle it (or them) to military preemptive self-defense.
Then they should decide whether their country has a duty to seek authorization by the UN Security Council.
Then they should consider how they might feel if their loved oneâs were in the military & tasked to go to war & whether the risk to life & limb was worthy of their sacrifice, whether the cause is just & in the vital interests of the country.
As the President has correctly decided to seek Congressional approval, citizens should then contact their representatives to inform them of their opinion on the matter & support any PAC that represents their ideals & will lobby on their behalf. http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/
Then they should consider being thankful for the freedom they have to engage in all of the above.
Its called civic duty. It may not seem to matter in light of the grand chess game or public indifference, but in the end Congress is still elected & has the power of the purse & we the people are responsible for & bear consequences for our nationâs folly & success. Keep on twerkin 'Murca.
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