Do we really have to take military action to Syria?

@mysteryman,

Quote:

Are you ever going to explain how Japan's war crimes were justified?
You claimed they were.

Are you ever going to stop lying? Not bloody likely. Lying doesn't mean much to a guy who runs to enlist just to get in on US war crimes and terrorist actions.

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From Yahoo news.

Quote:

U.S. ready to go it alone on Syria after stinging British defeat

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@edgarblythe,

edgarblythe wrote:

Do we really have to take military action to Syria?

Do we want a world where people are deterred from using weapons of mass destruction against civilians?

Or do we want a world where the bad guys freely massacre civilians with illegal weapons while no one does anything?

No, we don't have to do anything. If we choose to be evil scumbags, we'll be allowed to make that choice.

But don't bet on us deciding to become evil scumbags. We choose to be the good guys whether you like it or not.

edgarblythe wrote:

Haven't we had enough yet?

America will never "have enough" of doing the right thing.

We like being the good guys.

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@Lustig Andrei,

Lustig Andrei wrote:

No disagreement with you there, euro. But is the analogy relevant? Just because the US violated some basic precepts of humanitarianism in Southeast Asia, is that a reason for allowing Assad to get away with it also?

The US didn't violate any precepts of humanitarianism in Southeast Asia.

And we've certainly never used chemical weapons against civilians.

For that matter, I'm not sure we've ever used chemical weapons period, although there was a time we were willing to contemplate using them against military targets.

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@spendius,

spendius wrote:

What about Agent Orange?

That was a defoliant.

spendius wrote:

Are high explosives not chemical weapons.

No.

spendius wrote:

The US can jump into bed with France now and they were boycotting French cheese after the Iraq decisions.

I thought the boycott was pretty silly, especially since the cheese sellers had nothing to do with the anti-Americanism that the boycott was reacting to.

It ended up being free advertising for the cheese sellers though. I didn't even know you could buy French cheese online until the boycott brought it to my attention.

spendius wrote:

They go from bed to bed without rhyme or reason and solely on who smiles. (Just like on A2K).

Just because the UK sits this one out and France joins in does not mean we are shifting any alliances.

This UK vote feels a bit like a kid's mother making him stay home for no good reason while all his friends head off to a ball game. But on the other hand, this shouldn't amount to much. We're just going to fire off some cruise missiles and then call it a day.

We won't escalate to a no fly zone (and the much heavier bombardment that goes along with it) unless Assad repeats his use of chemical weapons.

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@JTT,

JTT wrote:

What about napalm, depleted uranium, carpet bombing, machine gunning villagers, drone strikes on civilians, drone strikes within sovereign nations, white phosphorus, ... .

Targeting civilians is of course immoral, illegal, and all-around wrong in every respect.

But napalm, depleted uranium, white phosphorus, and thermobaric dronestrikes are all legal and legitimate weapons.

We should clean up around destroyed tanks after a war though, if we used DU to destroy them.

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@izzythepush,

Interesting article....I had watched a few clips of your Parliament in session on the BBC today. I can very well understand British reluctance to join a coalition to strike Syria, especially since Iraq turned out to be such a prodigious lie by the Bush administration, and frankly, I, for one, do not blame the Brits! After the lying Bush/Cheney administration, most nations would be wary of joining the US in another war. I would like to see Bashar al-Assad gone, but there are so many ramifications to be considered. The middle east is such a cauldron of burning coals right now, with Egypt's internal strife and Iraq's ongoing bombing problems...after all, we, the US, broke the latter country that was held together without splintering under Saddam Hussein.

Syria is undergoing a civil war and no one is 100% sure just who are the good guys there. The US must not forget the considerable enemies we will make regardless who the winning side is in Syria....the loser will still come after US interests and any country who helped the US. If the US were going to strike it would be hoped it would aim for the chemical weapons site to destroy such, but how sure are we where they are actually located and how to prevent the dictator from developing such again if there's not going to be a regime change?! If we expect things to improve in Syria one would have to remove the root cause, and absent this, it's doubtful there will be a change UNLESS it comes from within.

It certainly doesn't help that China and Russia are against the US (although if its proven beyond a doubt Bashar al-Assad did use chemical weapons on his own people,then there might be a change in Russia's stance.) and now we have the Brits. There seem to be a crack in the coalition clamoring to not strike Syria and in the face of such opposition, it might be best to simply not do so until the UN inspectors complete their investigation, even though it looks as if the sites of the chemical use has been compromised..

Still, one's heart is bleeding for those who were killed by the use of sarin nerve gas. What a monster that Bashar al-Assad. I will not mourn if this dictator meets a sudden demise.

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From the Guardian live blog

Quote:

1.23am BST
“Russia is working hard to avoid any scenario involving the use of force with regard to Syria,” Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov has said. From the state owned Ria Novosti news agency:

He [Ushakov] also said the United States has not handed Russia any “surveillance data” suggesting that Damascus has used chemical weapons, adding that Moscow does not believe claims that is had done so.

“They [Americans] are citing the secrecy of some information,” Ushakov said.

“We don’t have that evidence, and we don’t believe it,” he said.

Quote:

David Davis, who stood against Cameron for the party leadership, said the result was an "unfortunate" setback for the PM but added that Cameron had made "quite a shaky argument" about Assad's responsibility in the attack.

He told BBC Radio 4's World At One:

What he said was they couldn't prove it outright, he used the words 'a matter of judgment' several times. That's really quite a shaky argument when you are going to kill people.

Quote:

2.37pm BST
Breaking news on Reuters:

US official says the release of an unclassified intelligence report about Syria chemical attacks will be released today.

1 Reply

Article I'm still thinking about:

Obama, Samantha Power & Utopian Interventionism
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2013/08/28/obama_samantha_power_amp_utopian_interventionism_314535.html

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@JPB,

Quote:

US official says the release of an unclassified intelligence report about Syria chemical attacks will be released today.

Did a bloke say that?

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@Moment-in-Time,

Cameron really shot himself in the foot over this. There was a Labour amendment that would have set out a roadmap for possible military action. The Tories voted down the amendment so Labour voted against the motion along with Tory and Liberal rebels.

The feeling was that we were being rushed into something without being allowed to see all the evidence, and after Iraq we weren't prepared to do that again.

Assad is a monster, but we still don't know with 100% certainty that he authorised the use of chemical weapons. As David Davis has pointed out, it could be a rogue element in the Syrian regime or rogue rebels hoping to provoke a Western response.

We shouldn't do anything until the inspectors report back.

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@JTT,

I enlisted in 1978, right out of high school. I didn't "run to enlist" to get in on anything.

And as for me lying, YOU are the one that said ANY attack on a sovereign nation by anyone is a war crime. YOU then said that
Japan was justified in attacking the US.

So, that means that you think Japan's war crimes against the US were justified.

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@mysteryman,

Quote:

I enlisted in 1978, right out of high school.

You can be forgiven then, being an ignorant little putz whose brain was saturated with US propaganda.

You'll have to find and quote me as to what I actually said, MM. Your interpretation of things is terribly skewed given your long history of being bombarded by propaganda.

Quote:

Japan fired the first shot in the Second World War, but the war was not one of Japanese aggression and American defense, but of rivalry between Japan and the U.S. over the control of the Pacific region. One pacifist made this cogent analysis of U.S. war aims.

The U.S. did not go to war with the Japanese fascists because their purpose was fascism. Far from it: We abetted their [Japan's] purpose for profit, and when we went to war with them it was not because their purpose was fascism; it was because they tried to steal from us what we had stolen 43 years earlier from Spain.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/War_Peace/Pacifism_War.html

1 Reply

@JTT,

Quote:

You'll have to find and quote me as to what I actually said, MM.

With pleasure.
Here is what you said on Tue 11 Dec, 2012 07:46 pm on the "Afghanistan and Iraq:a retrospective" thread...

Quote:

Armed aggression against a sovereign nation is a war crime.

And then on the thread regarding Dec 7 being a day of infamy, you said

Quote:

Japan had valid reasons to attack the US

.

You said that on Sat 8 Dec, 2012 04:24 pm
So, using your own words, you believe Japan had valid reasons to commit war crimes.
If you truly believe that, then that totally negates anything you have said about the US and war crimes, because you believe there can be valid reasons to commit war crimes.

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@eurocelticyankee,

eurocelticyankee wrote:

Is napalm a chemical weapon? . . . Is white phosphorus a chemical weapon?'

Because if they are and I'm pretty sure they are.... there's a bit of pot kettle black going on here.

Good night now.

Is gunpowder?

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Who uses gunpowder?

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So much bullshit and a lot is coming out of the mouths of Kerry and Obama.

Spare me the moral outrage. Slaughtering civilians with conventional weapons isn't any less reprehensible than gassing them. If we refrained from intervening when Assad bombed and gunned down children than the fact that he may now be using sarin shouldn't make a difference.

There are two reasons to respond militarily:

To back up our big mouth president.

To exercise some measure of control on despots around the world by telling them there are some horrors we won't ignore. Admittedly, the message would be less tinny if the particular despot was one we supported, but in a world where war is almost as common place as weather, some effort to contain it can be, arguably, a "good thing"

My take is that all the bullshit coming from our government as more to do with the first reason than the second. Unfortunately, around the world the US is our president, and if his big mouth isn't backed up it affects all of us.

When all is said and done I think we need to respond, but I'm not going to argue that point too strenuously. This administration will respond with the Clintonian targeting of a camel in Afghanistan and our enemies will not be impressed.

Use violence very, very rarely, but when you do make it real. Kill the damned snake, don't just send it slithering away.

This president will never get it.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

Spare me the moral outrage. Slaughtering civilians with conventional weapons isn't any less reprehensible than gassing them.

The use of chemical weapons was banned in the 1920s. There is a difference, conventional weapons can, with limited success, be targeted, chemical weapons kill anyone in the vicinity.

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@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

Finn dAbuzz wrote:
Spare me the moral outrage. Slaughtering civilians with conventional weapons isn't any less reprehensible than gassing them.

The use of chemical weapons was banned in the 1920s. There is a difference, conventional weapons can, with limited success, be targeted, chemical weapons kill anyone in the vicinity.

More obscene rules of war.

We can't gas our enemies but we can blow them to bits, shoot their faces off or just put them neatly down with a kill shot.

Chemical weapons were outlawed because they demoralized the troops and horrified the folks back home. Can't have that.

Don't get me wrong, when violence is called for (and when that may be is of course subject to debate) I'm behind it, but these niceties of war that serve the powers that launch the slaughter only restrain the rapid and full out obliteration of the enemy that, in the end, saves lives.

I'm as much of a sucker for the fictional, romantic allure of the honorable and brave warrior as the next guy, but in reality it is kill or be killed. Kill as many of the enemy as quickly as possible and win. The US is in a historically unique position to do just this but keeps trying to combine destruction and creation for all sorts of bad reasons.

It worked once (WWII) after our enemies were well and truly crushed. It doesn't work while they are still shooting back.

Do it right or don't do it because the lives of American men and women, who have volunteered to serve their country, perhaps because they bought the romantic notion of the warrior, are on the line.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Oh and by the way, I have no problem with our using weapons we say our enemies cannot. If some people view this as hypocrisy they have fallen prey to the notion that there should be rules of war, and all the bullshit rhetoric from people like John Kerry who want to frame the issue in terms of morality.

If he really believes the crap he is spouting about "moral obscenity" it is only because he is so egotistical that he assumes anything leaving his lips must be true.

He's a career politician who has bullied and clawed his way to the top. If anyone thinks he actually has an inviolate set of principles beyond "Kerry must win!' they are fools.

1 Reply

Do we really have to take military action to Syria?

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