Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/04/06/trump-war-on-syria.html
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How is this reality?
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I really don’t know. ‘Because a few bad ones can slip in’? ‘Because they’re a sudden glut on a workforce that already has unemployment issues’? Pick an excuse.
Thing is America is a big s hell country. We’re big enough to take ALL of them in and integrate them no sweat. We don’t because ‘dem durty brown people.’ Which I find the most unamerican attitude of all.
We don’t reach out to help because we’re ‘afraid the wrong ones will sneak in’ then guess what folks. THE FUCKING TERRORISTS WIN! We might as well metaphorically chop off our metaphorical balls and hand them to IS/L/S and go ‘here mister terorrist person. You Win. I’m terrified.’
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What is it about this that seems unbelievable to you? The US has been bombing the middle east for decades. The only difference now is that the reason for bombing are actually true.
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Surprise level: zero.
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During the first big immigration wave in 2015, Austria took in about 100.000 (population ~8 million), Germany took in about a million (population ~80 million). So WTF is your PROBLEM, Mr President?
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This is an actual Trump quote:
The weather – a friend of mine lives in Minnesota. And he calls me, he says can you imagine? It’s 130 degrees in Syria and now they want to send some up to Minnesota where it’s 30 degrees. Well, these people are gonna be very, very unhappy. its cold and beautiful but its cold.
So there you go. We can’t take in refugees because they won’t like our climate.
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Minnesota is rather fertile. Some African countries who suffer from a years-long drought are not. Gee, could there be reason why some people want to get out of there?
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All this from the man who so vehemently opposed direct action in Syria very publicly:
And now he’s starting to fracture his base:
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Awww…
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Can’t say the schadenfreude pie isn’t especially delicious.
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Yeah I…well, as someone who is interested in realpolitik, this doesn’t seem particularly surprising, nor do I completely oppose it other than a general stance of ‘we probably shouldn’t get into any war ever’. This doesn’t equate to support for our orange-skinned president either, for what that’s worth.
If chemical weapons were used it’s a major problem and the sort of thing that an extremely fast retaliatory strike like this could possibly send a clear message on. I don’t really know if that works but I at least see the reasoning for it.
I dunno. I don’t know if Hillary would have done differently, either.
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Deleted. Am I imagining things, or did Janet completely change her comment?
Even if you wanted to justify bombing Assad for the latest chemical attack, it’s difficult to believe that the Trump admin’s reasoning is trustworthy, or thought out beyond the strike. There have been ongoing chemical attacks in Syria since 2013, this is just the latest of many.
Obama has bombed the ME under the aegis of the 2001 AUMF (which has issues, but it is what it is). Except Libya, where he just blew it, overstepped his bounds badly, and lived to regret it. When Assad used chemical weapons, Obama went to Congress to try to get authorization to strike Assad. Perhaps you don’t remember:
The GOP worked overtime to block this, and the voices now joining in the war chants to praise bombing were once histrionically opposed to the same action against the same actor for the same reason. For example, Ted Cruz, who is now suddenly interested in humanitarian crises involving the brutality and chemical weapons against Syrians by their gov’t was completely flippant and dismissive in 2013:
Virtually every other current GOP supporter was wringing their hands when the Pres. belonged to the wrong political party (and had the audacity to be black to boot).
Trump himself is the Platonic Form of hypocrisy:
et al.
Many of their reasons were because they were callous cretins who didn’t believe Syrians were human beings. Some justifications were the valid fear that supporting Assad’s overthrow would leave a power vacuum that might not be filled by anything better. And some of their reasoning was concerns over strikes on Assad giving air support to ISIS. That’s actually a much more legitimate concern today, since Russia and Assad have worked diligently to eliminate moderate rebels and minimize strikes on ISIS, since it makes their propaganda much easier.
So saying “the reason for bombing are actually true” is being generous to people whose reasoning was consistently and strongly against the actions now supported with the sole change in the situation being the political party of the leadership. Even if you were naive enough to think they really were concerned about humanitarian issues, the refugee ban from Syria makes it abundantly clear just how naive and wrong that is. Trump cares about the suffering of the Syrian people enough to bomb them but not enough to let them escape the bombing.
No, I think Trump’s revealed his reason before:
Given he’s got record lows in approval ratings this has every appearance of wagging the dog. In this case it also gives a false sense of him taking a stand against Russia (though Trump informed Russia of the bombings before the press or Congress), and I’d be willing to bet a lot of money that this attack will be used as a lame excuse to try to paper over his campaign’s prior collusion with Putin during the election.
They’re already trying to use the attacks to bully the American people into authoritarian bootlicking:
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THIS ADMINISTRATION
HAS WORKED
#76 DAYS
WITHOUT A WAR
Damn. Have to reset that sign again…
THIS ADMINISTRATION
HAS WORKED
#0 DAYS
WITHOUT A WAR
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Meanwhile in Canada,…
refugees curling lesson
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Curling is a crime in principle though.
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Remember when Obama said that using chemical weapons was a red line that would prompt military action against the regime. You remember when nothing happened when they did? I’m no fan of Trump, at all, but if you want to stop Assad from gassing kids, Tomohawks against his airforce is a lot more likely to work than vetoed UN resolutions. It’s also much more likely to make Russia take notice. And, as a fringe benefit, it stops those aircraft targeted from dropping barrels of explosives onto civilian areas. I know lots of people hate Trump, but that’s no reason to like Assad or Putin…
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OK, I’ll tiptoe around the topic here. Of course noone supports the use of gas. It’s abominable.
But shooting kids in the head, bombing kids, burning kids to death is all fine.
Why is this the “red line”? (Not just Trump, Obama was just as guilty).
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