President Obama Hits The PAUSE Button On Syria

oralloy wrote:

The UN does not intend to give anyone a mandate to curb the use of nerve gas against civilians, so the US is going to go ahead and do it without a mandate.

If the UN does not intend to give anyone a mandate to bomb Damascus, then America's right under international law to bomb it anyway is as strong as Cuba's right to bomb Guantanamo Bay for the human-rights abuses America committed there. In other words, it has none.

Put that together with the absence of any strategical logic connecting Obama's "limited strikes" with the cessation of nerve-gas attack, and the case for such an attack looks awfully feckless.

revelette wrote:

So, what is the alternative? Allow chemical weapons to become acceptable, perhaps even a convential means of achieving objectives?

I won't answer this question because I disagree with its premise. Your usage of the word "allow" implies that America is in charge, that America has the rightful power to allow or forbit the Syrians from throwing poison gas upon another.But right now, it isn't and it doesn't, because nobody elected it sheriff.
That being said, yes, the alternative is that America sit tight. And that's exactly what I want it to do.

oralloy wrote:

If it isn't too late for Israel to conduct the bombing campaign, they should break their deal with Obama and start bombing tonight.

What deal did Israel have with Obama?

That kind of raises the question of what happens to nerve gases when they are "blown up". Personally, I would like to know which way the wind was blowing relatively to myself and the nerve gas.

BRUSSELS, Sept 2 (Reuters) - NATO's secretary-general said on Monday he had seen evidence convincing him Syrian authorities were behind a deadly chemical weapons attack and said it would send a "dangerous signal to dictators" if the world did not respond firmly.

However, Anders Fogh Rasmussen said it was up to individual NATO countries to decide how they would respond to the attack and he did not envisage any NATO role beyond existing plans to defend NATO member Turkey, which borders Syria.

"I have been presented with concrete information and, without going into details, I can tell you that personally I am convinced, not only that a chemical attack has taken place ..., but I am also convinced that the Syrian regime is responsible," Rasmussen told a news conference.

U.S. President Barack Obama has said he will seek congressional authorisation for punitive action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad after what Washington said was a sarin gas attack on Aug. 21 that killed more than 1,400 people.

Rasmussen said there was "agreement that we need a firm international response in order to avoid that chemical attacks take place in the future. It would send, I would say, a dangerous signal to dictators all over the world if we stand idly by and don't react."

But Rasmussen said he saw no further role for NATO in the Syria crisis, beyond defending Turkey.

"If a response to what has happened in Syria were to be a military operation, I'd envisage a very short, measured, targeted operation, and you don't need the NATO command and control system to conduct such a short, measured, tailored, military operation," he said.

Well done Frank

Something like it, although I don't precisely equate Thomas and those like-minded with the mice of the fable.

He doesn't really expect anyone else to enforce his international law or hold tightly the reins on the US, which in some ways make the exercise all the more meaningless.

There's a very good chance that eventually the US will not be able to do whatever it pleases, and some other nation will take its place. It's unlikely they will be as restrained as we have been.

Watch out Frank, Tico is setting you up

......It would be completely different if we knew with absolute certainty that Assad was responsible for chemical attacks on his own people. (I'm still waiting to see if it was a Syrian upset about a YouTube video.)

It would be different if instead of killing a few hundred civilians, Assad had killed 5,000 civilians with poison gas in a single day, as well as tens of thousands more with chemical weapons in the past few decades.

It would be different if Assad were known to torture his own people, administer summary executions, rapes, burnings and electric shocks, often in front of the victim's wife or children.

It would be different if Assad had acted aggressively toward the United States itself, perhaps attempting to assassinate a former U.S. president or giving shelter to terrorists who had struck within the U.S. -- someone like Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood terrorist.


It would be different if Assad were stirring up trouble in the entire Middle East by, for example, paying bounties to the families of suicide bombers in other countries.

It would also be different if we could be sure that intervention in Syria would not lead to a multi-nation conflagration.

It would be different if we knew that any action against Syria would not put al-Qaida or the Muslim Brotherhood in power, but rather would result in a functioning, peaceful democracy.

And it would be different if an attack on Syria would so terrify other dictators in the region that they would instantly give up their WMDs -- say, Iran abandoning its nuclear program.

If all of that were true, this would be a military intervention worth supporting!

All of that was true about Iraq, but the Democrats hysterically opposed that war. They opposed it even after all this was known to be true -- indeed, especially after it was known to be true! The loudest opponent was Barack Obama. ......

Am I that transparent?

Kuwait was not.