Syria - Iraq 2.0?

paulsurovell said:

If "Head-chopper pals" tells us something about the author's "motivation," then "Your man Trump is escalating the civilian deaths" (your phrase) tells us something about your motivation.

I stated a fact about Trump's directives changing the rules of engagement. That was not contradicted, so I don't know what your "motivations" statement has to do with the factual accuracy.

I don't think anyone is cheering. I said I'm not sure I'm against action against Syria. That doesn't mean I'm cheering. And it doesn't mean that I agree with how Trump handled this (likely without congressional approval and likely without any kind of plan or forethought is despicable).

Huff Post quote: "We love them (the Syrians) enough to bomb them, but not take them as refugees."

Yes, but! -- others say -- we only bombed air fields, not civilians! Civilians *always* perish in military strikes. That's when civilians become conveniently known as collateral damage. Don't you know our Tomahawk missiles let God sort them out. Good job wagging the dog, Mr. Trump. You sure showed them.

And now we await the blow back. Brace for impact.

We had to kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to show how much we care about them.

DottyParker said:

Huff Post quote: "We love them (the Syrians) enough to bomb them, but not take them as refugees."

Yes, but! -- others say -- we only bombed air fields, not civilians! Civilians *always* perish in military strikes. That's when civilians become conveniently known as collateral damage. Don't you know our Tomahawk missiles let God sort them out. Good job wagging the dog, Mr. Trump. You sure showed them.


And now we await the blow back. Brace for impact.

The attack was way too impulsive. This is bad. I'm surprised the attack is being downplayed as the smallest option trump had.

This attack cost around 20% the annual budget for the National Endowment of the Arts.

Trump is taking the wrong action to be a tough guy.

I will gladly let our military figure out how to solve military problems. Syria, however, it not a simple military problem.

ajc said:

FWIW, not like Obama, all Trump has to do is listen to his military advisors. They'll do all the planning; and as the best military in the world, he's confident they know what they're doing, and they'll do it well...

Assad does not benefit from a good working relationship between then U.S. and Russia with regard to Syria. What the U.S. and Russia might agree to in order to stop the fighting might not be in Assad's interest. So, this brings us to the question of why Assad would use chemical weapons? Did he do it to provoke a strong reaction by the U.S., knowing that this would likely poison any chances for U.S.-Russian cooperation? If so, then we can conclude that Assad has had a rather good week.

tjohn said:

drummerboy said:

Well, the winds of war are being stirred up again. All of a sudden, the deaths of innocent Syrians has become the worst thing ever, and action must be taken.

(Reminder - the death toll in the gas attack is less than 100. We recently killed 200 civilians in Mosul.)

It's remarkable how the media buys into this crap. All I see is repeated clips of dying children and grieving fathers - as if this crap hasn't been happening EVERY DAY for years in Syria.

Anyway, get ready for another sh!tshow in Syria. And it will be all due to Obama's "red line" statement.

Sometimes I really hate our country.

For some reason, people think that dying from poison gas is worse than dying from a bullet or shrapnel wound. I don't know that this is true. In fact, I rather doubt that it is true.

There are some interesting assessments of why Assad would use chemical weapons. One interesting idea is that Assad felt that Russia and the U.S. were evolving towards a solution that would be imposed on Assad and Assad knew that by using chemical weapons, he could aggravate and widen the rift between Russia and the U.S. After all, it wasn't too long ago that Trump said that removing Assad was not a priority and now he is rumbling about military action. So, why would Assad want to aggravate the situation?

I find this statement extremely offensive , considering that the World found it necessary to ban poison gas use after WW1. Not only is it a slow agonizing death, but the survivors have damaged lungs for the remainder of their lives.

tomcat said:

I find this statement extremely offensive , considering that the World found it necessary to ban poison gas use after WW1. Not only is it a slow agonizing death, but the survivors have damaged lungs for the remainder of their lives.

You do understand that chemical weapons were banned mostly because they aren't that effective against prepared forces and just make everybody miserable.

Oh please. When you look at the death we and other great powers have rained down on civilians either on purpose or as "collateral" damage over the last 50 years, try not to pretend that chemical weapons are uniquely worse than phosphorus, napalm and effects from toxic chemicals and metals in our weapons.

You know what is worse than chemicals - our policies of trying to calibrate and control conflict which guarantees that conflicts which might otherwise be violent but somewhat quick drag on forever.  It would have been better for Assad to have killed 50,000 with sarin and secured an end to the fighting in six months than to have the civil war go on forever as it is now.

I would much rather die the pleasant death of being drowned by the rubble caused by a bomb, limbs torn apart and crushed by falling chunks of concrete and steel, lungs choked with dust, then the horror of nerve gas.

But that's just me.

And I've always wondered about the morality of "rules of war", like banning gas. Such rules simply allow the warmongers to normalize war so that the rubes will wave their flags as needed.

I leave this fun video with no comment.

So was this attack militarily effective? Russia says only 23 of 59 missles hit the base.

Could that be true? Were they able to shoot down 26 missles before they reached their target?

I've opposed every U.S. military action of my lifetime, regardless of who has been president. So I'm not in favor of this one either. But even for the U.S., this particular military strike seems ridiculously impulsive and not thought out. It's as if Trump was watching video of Syrian victims on CNN and immediately got on the phone and ordered air strikes.

peteglider said:

So was this attack militarily effective? Russia says only 23 of 59 missles hit the base.

Could that be true? Were they able to shoot down 26 missles before they reached their target?

Well, if Russia says it is true, it must be.

This thread really bothers me. First, we have drummer boy who two weeks ago said that anyone who enlisted in the military was a murderer now applauding these folks. Second we have AJC saying Trump is great because he listens to generals. First off, Trump said he was smarter than the generals, remember? Second, generals won't help the middle East. Slow, steady, non spectacular work by the state department is our best hope. Yet, we are cutting that budget. It seems like no one, except maybe tjohn, is really thinking.

We helped to create this mess with the treaty of Versailles, and it's going to take a real commitment to help straighten it out.

ml1 said:

I've opposed every U.S. military action of my lifetime, regardless of who has been president. So I'm not in favor of this one either. But even for the U.S., this particular military strike seems ridiculously impulsive and not thought out. It's as if Trump was watching video of Syrian victims on CNN and immediately got on the phone and ordered air strikes.

From what I've read, Trump wanted to take some kind of action, but didn't know what, so he called a few meetings with the NSC and Pentagon, found some attack options that had been drawn up for a few years and went with a modified version of one of those. I don't think it's a coincidence that Bannon was dropped from the NSC on Wednesday, while these plans were being worked out. This was put together my McMasters, Mattis and General Dunford, as it should have.

However, as he so rightly pointed out in 2013 when Obama did something similar, he should have gone to Congress first. But it's really not surprising that he didn't, as he considers "telegraphing" military operations to be foolish and prefers to be unpredictable, as he mentioned so often on the campaign trail. This Trump is the one his voters want to see: unilaterally blowing up brown people and their stuff with little to no regard to the consequences.

ridski said:

This Trump is the one his voters want to see: unilaterally blowing up brown people and their stuff with little to no regard to the consequences.

I think you have that wrong. A lot of Muslims aren't really brown people, but it will MAGA to blow them up too.

FilmCarp said:

This thread really bothers me. First, we have drummer boy who two weeks ago said that anyone who enlisted in the military was a murderer now applauding these folks. Second we have AJC saying Trump is great because he listens to generals. First off, Trump said he was smarter than the generals, remember? Second, generals won't help the middle East. Slow, steady, non spectacular work by the state department is our best hope. Yet, we are cutting that budget. It seems like no one, except maybe tjohn, is really thinking.

We helped to create this mess with the treaty of Versailles, and it's going to take a real commitment to help straighten it out.

agree with this.

Syria is a horror. Humanitarians we are not, after all we dont give a crap about the refugees and we dont care about collateral damage, I mean civilian murders as a result of non authorized military actions.

The fact that Assad is a war criminal, bombs hospitals, schools, civilian population in his zeal to retain power is enough, we dont require extra angst because he used banned weaponry.

Its a fact that Russia is bad actor on the world stage under Putin and its also a fact that peace is something that has to be worked on by communicating and free exchange of ideas, by trade and by treaty. Today we have a fool in the whitehouse who has the final say on what actions are taken. Anyone have any confidence in the decisions coming out of the oval office with regards to world events?

GL2's petty politics:

Hope this doesn't improve DJT's popularity but glad he's pissed off the alt-right.

We're playing chess.

FilmCarp said:

This thread really bothers me. First, we have drummer boy who two weeks ago said that anyone who enlisted in the military was a murderer now applauding these folks. Second we have AJC saying Trump is great because he listens to generals. First off, Trump said he was smarter than the generals, remember? Second, generals won't help the middle East. Slow, steady, non spectacular work by the state department is our best hope. Yet, we are cutting that budget. It seems like no one, except maybe tjohn, is really thinking.

We helped to create this mess with the treaty of Versailles, and it's going to take a real commitment to help straighten it out.

This attack happened on the 100th anniversary of the US's entry into WW1. There was an Op-Ed in the NY Times this week arguing that the United States's entry into WW1 is just about the worst mistake ever made. The Treaty of Versailles was the result.

LOST said:

FilmCarp said:

This thread really bothers me. First, we have drummer boy who two weeks ago said that anyone who enlisted in the military was a murderer now applauding these folks. Second we have AJC saying Trump is great because he listens to generals. First off, Trump said he was smarter than the generals, remember? Second, generals won't help the middle East. Slow, steady, non spectacular work by the state department is our best hope. Yet, we are cutting that budget. It seems like no one, except maybe tjohn, is really thinking.

We helped to create this mess with the treaty of Versailles, and it's going to take a real commitment to help straighten it out.

This attack happened on the 100th anniversary of the US's entry into WW1. There was an Op-Ed in the NY Times this week arguing that the United States's entry into WW1 is just about the worst mistake ever made. The Treaty of Versailles was the result.

That's a bit of a stretch. You would have to prove that absent U.S. involvement in WW I, that Great Britainand France wouldn't have had their way in the Middle East. Except in our mythology, it is not really true that our involvement was necessary from France and Great Britain to win.

tjohn,

Read the Op-Ed piece. The author, a historian of that War believes that without US intervention both sides would have realized that neither could win a decisive victory and would have eventually worked out a negotiated Peace. I am no scholar of the subject but he made a pretty good case.

Applaud? I'm applauding?

And I'm pretty sure I never used the word murderer.

And I don't think I ever said military action is unjustified. It's just that, by far, most of our actions are unjustified. This particular action is more justified than most, IMO. I don't particularly have a problem with bombing a Syrian airfield. Though it was limited, it does put a kink in the armor of a rather vile despot who has killed a lot of people. That's hardly a bad thing.

Is it?

It remains to be seen what the future holds as the ramification of this strike plays itself out. That's an unknown, and if this strike leads to increasing involvement and sending in more ground troops, then it will have turned out to be a bad decision.

Having said all that, I'm very bothered by how quickly the media bought into the need for military action. It's a little scary.

And it gives me very little comfort that the Trump administration has completely reversed itself re Syria in the matter of a couple of days.

And, to be sure, if we had not responded with this strike, I would have been OK with that too. It's kind of scary to have a President who does a 180 because he's all of a sudden concerned about Syrian babies. Where has he been the last 5 years?

OTOH, I'm kind of comforted by the fact that our response was fairly limited.

Anyway, if the end result of this attack is simply that Assad stops using poison gas, that seems to me to be a good thing.

Time will tell.

FilmCarp said:

This thread really bothers me. First, we have drummer boy who two weeks ago said that anyone who enlisted in the military was a murderer now applauding these folks. Second we have AJC saying Trump is great because he listens to generals. First off, Trump said he was smarter than the generals, remember? Second, generals won't help the middle East. Slow, steady, non spectacular work by the state department is our best hope. Yet, we are cutting that budget. It seems like no one, except maybe tjohn, is really thinking.

We helped to create this mess with the treaty of Versailles, and it's going to take a real commitment to help straighten it out.

Hypocrisy on both sides of the aisle, but what else is new.

From POLITICO:

President Donald Trump’s missile attacks against the Syrian government on Thursday night split Congress into several camps, winning bipartisan backing from some senior lawmakers while also sparking a coalition of those on the left and right who raised constitutional concerns.

Congressional leaders in both parties largely signaled their support. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) called Trump’s strikes “appropriate and just" and said he looks "forward to the administration further engaging Congress in this effort."

Top Democrats, like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) also offered their support, but both made clear they believed any escalation would require the approval of Congress.

“Tonight’s strike in Syria appears to be a proportional response to the regime’s use of chemical weapons," Pelosi said, but added, “The crisis in Syria will not be resolved by one night of airstrikes." Durbin said “any further action will require close scrutiny by Congress, and any escalation beyond airstrikes or missile strikes will require engaging the American people in that decision."

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said, “Making sure Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do.” The New York Democrat added, though, that “it is incumbent on the Trump administration to come up with a strategy and consult with Congress before implementing it.”

Meanwhile, libertarian-minded Republicans like Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Rand Paul of Kentucky blasted Trump's decision to launch strikes without first getting approval by Congress.

“The President needs congressional authorization for military action as required by the Constitution,” Paul said in a Tweet.

They were joined by liberal Democrats, including Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Rep. Ted Lieu of California, who also argued the use of force requires congressional approval under the Constitution.

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), who was the lone member of Congress to vote against the 2001 war authorization against Al Qaeda, called the strikes an “act of war” and said Congress needs to come back into session and debate the matter. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) called Trump's failure to seek congressional authorization "unlawful."

On the other side were Republican defense hawks, who offered full-throated praise for Trump’s decision — including Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, two of Trump’s fiercest GOP critics on other issues.

“Unlike the previous administration, President Trump confronted a pivotal moment in Syria and took action,” McCain and Graham said in a joint statement. “For that, he deserves the support of the American people.”

Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, another GOP defense hawk who has sometimes been critical of Trump, also issued a statement of support.

“By acting decisively against the very facility from which Assad launched his murderous chemical weapons attack, President Trump has made it clear to Assad and those who empower him that the days of committing war crimes with impunity are over,” Rubio said.

Congress and the White House have long been at odds over the president’s constitutional war powers.

Both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were authorized by Congress. But President Barack Obama did not seek congressional authorization for the 2011 military intervention in Libya.

Obama did seek authorization in 2013 for strikes against the Assad regime in Syria, though he maintained he had the power to order strikes without such an authorization.

Ultimately, Congress never acted on a resolution against the Syrian government amid significant opposition, and Obama did not launch strikes, instead pursuing diplomatic avenues for removing chemical weapons from Syria.

Many Republicans may find themselves in an awkward spot Friday as they justify their support for Trump's missile strike after suggesting similar actions by the Obama administration would be unconstitutional.

Stalwart Trump ally Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), along with more than 100 colleagues, signed a 2013 letter that sharply warned Obama against a unilateral attack. "Engaging our military in Syria when no direct threat to the United States exists and without prior congressional authorization would violate the separation of powers that is clearly delineated in the Constitution," they wrote.

Other GOP signatories included Rep. Lynn Jenkins of Kansas, who applauded Trump as "decisive," and Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina, who commended Trump for his "swift action." A slew of other Republicans who praised Trump — including Don Young of Alaska, Martha Roby of Alabama, Roger Williams of Texas — opposed or leaned heavily against Obama's request to authorize the use of force in Syria while heaping praise on Trump Thursday night.

There are two fundamental issues at work here:

(1) The US assumes the right to attack, invade, occupy, destabilize and topple any country at any time. It is a right that we bestow only upon ourselves and deny to the rest of the world. As the pundits are telling us, "There is a new sheriff in town." American exceptionalism.

(2) When it wants to execute this right, the US military-industrial-intelligence-media complex needs a pretext in the form of an event, to rally the public behind it. If no such event exists, one can be fabricated as was done in the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, the dying incubator babies in Kuwait, the Mushroom Cloud of 2003, and the unconfirmed alleged sarin attack by Syria this week.

The typical pattern for these events is first the inflammatory and incessant promotion by the news media, second, acceptance by a misinformed and angered public, followed by the revelation that the story was false and manipulated, when there is a period of introspection by the public, which fades away until the cycle is repeated.

As for telegraphing, this was telegraphed big time.

https://theintercept.com/2017/...

The Pentagon has developed plans for an airstrike against Syrian government targets in response to this week’s apparent chemical attack by Syrian government forces, according to two U.S. military officials.
Secretary of Defense James Mattis will present the proposals to Donald Trump later today at the president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
One of the proposals drawn up is a “saturation strike” using dozens of cruise missiles designed to hit Syrian military targets — including military air fields — in an effort to limit future Syrian Air Force attacks on rebel positions, according to the two U.S. military officials.
The officials asked for anonymity to discuss classified plans.

ridski said:




However, as he so rightly pointed out in 2013 when Obama did something similar, he should have gone to Congress first. But it's really not surprising that he didn't, as he considers "telegraphing" military operations to be foolish and prefers to be unpredictable, as he mentioned so often on the campaign trail. This Trump is the one his voters want to see: unilaterally blowing up brown people and their stuff with little to no regard to the consequences.

drummerboy said:



And, to be sure, if we had not responded with this strike, I would have been OK with that too. It's kind of scary to have a President who does a 180 because he's all of a sudden concerned about Syrian babies. Where has he been the last 5 years?

OTOH, I'm kind of comforted by the fact that our response was fairly limited.


Anyway, if the end result of this attack is simply that Assad stops using poison gas, that seems to me to be a good thing.

Time will tell.

If Trump was a half-way decent person his response would have been to change his policy on refugees.

LOST said:

tjohn,

Read the Op-Ed piece. The author, a historian of that War believes that without US intervention both sides would have realized that neither could win a decisive victory and would have eventually worked out a negotiated Peace. I am no scholar of the subject but he made a pretty good case.

It's been the subject of endless alternative histories. The real question is what would have happened if the U.S. had been truly neutral in WW I instead of being neutral in name only as American capitalists sought to make a buck off of the fighting in Europe.

In any case, with a negotiated piece, Great Britain and France would still have had their way in the Middle East. What wouldn't have happened is the removal of majority Pole territories from Prussia. And I suppose we would have been spared the nightmare of Nazism.