While I somewhat agree with you, unless they use something on the order of fuel-air explosives, hitting chemical weapons storage facilities won’t do anything but form clouds of chemical agents. Kind of pointless.
Oh, they can be aimed all right. However , as many an olympic athlete has learned, aiming is not sufficient. You actually have to hit.
Also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._bombing_of_the_Chinese_embassy_in_Belgrade.
Though guess that can be explained with “they actually hit what they were aiming for”.
2 Likes
It’s called covering your ass. Though I doubt that it will help much if the thing backfires and Fox conveniently forget that Republican congressmen okay’ed it.
1 Like
Here is the TL;DR, It’s not about how clever you are. In fact, it’s not about you at all. Just as an experiment try not having an opinion about this for a day and track how much difference it makes in the rest of the world. Sobering, isn’t it.
For the first time ever, I actually agree with Sarah Palin who said, “let Allah sort it out.”
“Liberating” Iraq from Saddam cost that poor country hundreds of thousands of live, deaths that are morally on OUR heads. We should worry about fixing the very serious problems and inequities here at home instead of throwing our weight around where we are not wanted.
2 Likes
But not if he’s just shooting them?
5 Likes
This is like a blustering parent and a troublesome kid. The parent drew a line and made a big threat. “Three cookies! No more, or I’m smashing all your toys!” So the kid took 4 while watching over his shoulder to see what happens. Will his toys get smashed? Will the more lenient parent intervene: “Oh, it’s just one more.” or “Just put his toys away for a while”? Or will he get away with it completely?
I would say it’s an unenviable position for Obama, except this is an action for the U.N. to take, not the U.S. alone, simple as that. And the U.N. has evidence the rebels are the ones using sarin gas. If the U.S drops ordinance it’s because they want to, not because it’s necessary…
3 Likes
If you are referring to Germany and Japan, those were conflicts of an entirely different sort. And, incidentally, the US stayed out for over half of that war, then took credit for all of it.
Global world wars are a different thing. We are talking about a “minimal” engagement with Syria - barely even doing anything at all. Unless you have a (coherent) plan with actual goals and a total commitment to achieving them, it is best to stay out of all conflicts.
By using the word “Coherent” that basically excludes the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan - the plans for which were based on pure fantasy. By total commitment I mean a willingness to do absolutely whatever is necessary - in a war the side most willing to be horrifically brutal to the enemy tends to win, especially in a sectarian war.
1 Like
Have you tried contacting your local sovereign?
Exactly. The binary frame is designed to present only two possibilities while eliminating all other possibilities and one of them is a position that nobody wants to side with given the “opposing” arguement. This is how we are manipulated and controlled. Make no mistake – this is intentional deception and we should not trust anyone who has devised a binary frame.
4 Likes
From that page:
“Established in the spring of 1997, the Project for the New American Century is a non-profit, educational organization whose goal is to promote American global leadership.”
PNAC has a very weird and twisted definition of the word “leadership.” Apparently free markets, hard work and ingenuity are insufficient modes for becoming a world leader. Violence and subterfuge is necessary. I guess that kind of puts the lie to the thinking that capitalism will win out of its own accord due to its intrinsically superior nature.
1 Like
They devise all sorts of clever-sounding ideas to justify self-enrichment at someone else’s expense.
1 Like
Word.
There are dozens of options, including actually focusing on the refugees that we’re allegedly supposed to care about.
‘Box of explosions’ should never even be on the table.
3 Likes
Actually, I referenced the siege of Sarajevo, not the war in Kosovo, which happened later. I am not an expert on the former Yugoslavia. However, the siege of Sarajevo went on for four years, and, in a trial of one of the Bosnian Serbs who was involved, a prosecutor said about it:
The siege of Sarajevo, as it came to be popularly known, was an episode of such notoriety in the conflict in the former Yugoslavia that one must go back to World War II to find a parallel in European history. Not since then had a professional army conducted a campaign of unrelenting violence against the inhabitants of a European city so as to reduce them to a state of medieval deprivation in which they were in constant fear of death. In the period covered in this Indictment, there was nowhere safe for a Sarajevan, not at home, at school, in a hospital, from deliberate attack. (Source)Obviously there are huge differences between the siege of Sarajevo and what's happening in Syria. However, the big question is, are we just going to stand by for years and watch as civilians get indiscriminately killed?
(Regarding your arguments about Kosovo, I disagree that NATO’s military intervention “forced a violent confrontation.” There already was a violent confrontation between the Serbs and the Albanians, else NATO wouldn’t have gotten involved. As in Sarajevo, there had to be a “galvanizing event” (a massacre) that pushed NATO to stop pussy-footing around and get serious. Saying that “significant popular opposition” to Milosevic was “suppressed for years” by NATO’s actions is debatable. This is a guy who assassinated and harassed his political enemies and whipped up ethnic fervor in order to stay in power, but it wasn’t long after the war in Kosovo was over before he fell.)
Hopefully something more constructive than hurling a bunch of grenades over the fence to “send a message.”
5 Likes
No it’s not. it’s like three (at least) well-armed power-blocs contesting a strategically important country with fossil fuel reserves. At least one of those power blocs has been supported by the West (and significantly by the US), when they’re not the Russians’ darlings, since the early sixties on and off. Another of them is sometimes the Baddies in the ‘War on Terror’, with its myriad ludicrous battlefields. Comparing it to a childish tantrum cheapens the debate and makes light of the very real people who are dying helpless in the crossfire created by these cynical fucks.
2 Likes
The UK finally paid off its debt to America’s lend/lease programme in my daughter’s lifetime. My grandmother was seven in 1939.
Ethnic cleansing? I agree that some of the things Israel is doing are not acceptable, but ethnic cleansing? When you use hyperbole it weakens your point. Would you call actions of the Arabs against Israel ethnic cleansing?
