Politics Middle Eastern power shifts

lugar hasn't been representing me or the state of indiana for years. he doesn't even live here. who cares what he has to say. he lost cause he's a loser, not for working with obama.

 

Lugar lost the primary last year.

And in turn, the Tea Party extremist lost in the general election, giving the Democrats a traditional red state, but at the cost of losing one of the best foreign policy minds in the Senate.

 

the link didn't work, but who cares? call him 'extreme.' lugar wasn't a conservative or a good representative of our state so he's gone. i for one am saddened by the lose of these great foreign policy minds...... better to have a democrat than a fake conservative.

 

Lugar was a Reagan Republican. He just didnt fit the mold of today's more extreme Republicans who campaign against compromise and who are hardly statesmanlike or bring much expertise on anything to the table other than how to say NO.
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And i fixed the link....but we digress.

 

Isn't the whole point of shooting missiles to cover Obama's ass for drawing a red line that actually got crossed? Clearly, he and the international community don't give a shit about Syrians, or at least they don't give enough of a shit to do anything meaningful. Assad kills these people in any gas-free way and Obama wouldn't have even mentioned it.

On the subject of intervention, one could make reasonable arguments on either side of the table. As with most atrocities, the international community continues its stumbling, epic fail through history while the US plays politics and talks empty. Obama's response seems to be his attempt to cope with the fact that in trying to sound tough with talk of red lines, he let his mouth write a check that nobody really wants to cash.

 

reagan republican's voted him out of office. enough said. doesn't change the reality of the situation, which is more wars from our nobel peace prize president.

 

Ultimately, I expect the Senate to pass a resolution, the House to reject it, and Obama will proceed with a target limited strike that I will support for reasons cited above, notwithstanding our past dismal record on responding to atrocities. And if it meets its expectations, Syria and the world will be a (marginally) better place w/o chemical weapons as an acceptable tool of war.

 

I expect that whatever happens, partisans will claim vindication and/or victory, then get distracted trying to score political points via the suffering of people who aren't Syrians, then forget about Syria for another couple decades.

 

under what authority will he attack with? or should i say over what authority will he attack?

 

Under the same authority that Reagan invaded Grenada in 1983 and bombed Libya in 1986, GHW Bush invaded Panama in 1989 and invaded Somalia in 1992, Clinton bombed Bosnia in 1995 and sent troops into Haiti in 1994, and Bush sent troops into the Liberian civil war in 2003 and Haiti in 2004.

The concept is an act short of war that is of limited duration and scope not only to protect American lives but also “on missions of goodwill or rescue" are within a president's power.

 

united states policy toward syria has been to work to destabilize asad without overthrowing the government. it has been to arm the rebels who can pay and who seem ideologically acceptable. it is geared toward turning a revolution into a civil war into a long, bloody stalemate, simply because the west cannot fashion a process of some kind that would make the outcome of toppling asad predictable. the consequences of this fine bit of realpolitik has been over 2 million refugees and 120K+ dead and god only knows how many wounded. the syrian army has been particularly brutal...systematic rape for example...repeated use of chemical weapons that no-one gave a fuck about until now. the language of high moral ground and accompanying self-congratulations about it are really nauseating. the air strike being proposed is guaranteed to do one thing: more people will end up dead. but given that american interests lay in continuing a civil war, that's all it's supposed to do. a pox on all their houses.

 

I hate to say it, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of our congressmen actually want to see more dead people in that region.

 

You can make a case like the above about Egypt, where the dictator was "our dictator" and the military was trained and armed by us, but IMO, you are way off the mark in your analysis of the current state of affairs in Syria, where the nature of the opposition/rebel forces is highly uncertain and every action and reaction is influenced by the roles played by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah v the rest of the world.

This is not even like Libya, where Gaddafi had no friends or defenders.

And, I would agree that our past record on responding to atrocities/genocide has, more often than not, been too little, too late.

I would reiterate again the distinction in the use of chemical weapons....only used as a weapon of war on both opposing forces and civilians by two previous regimes in the last 100 years, Hitler and Saddam. I get that 120K dead by other means is an atrocity as well and the US and the international community have done too little, too late, primarily as a result of Russia's actions at the UN.

One can make the case that mass murder by any means is an atrocity and I would agree.

But there are no international conventions or treaties beyond the general terms in Geneva conventions regarding acts against civilians, whereas there are specific conventions starting from post WWI to as recent as the 1990s regarding use of chemical weapons because nearly every country in the world (except Hitler and Saddam) has acknowledged the barbaric nature of gassing one's citizens.

At some point, one needs to ask if we will just continue to stand by while dictators gas their citizens.

Or are we to take the position that because we have failed in the past, that we should refrain from acting in the present or future.

We are far apart on this one, my friend.

 

Wait, dropping innumerable of gallons of agent orange doesn't constitute the use of chemical weaponry? Assad should have just poured some roundup on those people. Then we'd have his back because Monsanto gives a lot of money to the Democratic party.

I like that the US executes people with poison gas, and that's not cruel of unusual, but gas a bunch of people during a war and all of a sudden we give a shit, even though war is the one context where US wisdom tends towards 'we are justified in doing whatever we want because *WAR*'. Incoherent. That's the one word that summarizes our policy portfolio.

For the record, I'm generally against killing, regardless of some absurdly arbitrary concerns about the method of execution. America deserves absolutely no fucking kudos for pretending to give a fuck about chemical weapons when it couldn't be bothered to give an actual fuck about militarized sexual violence in Syria.

 

It appears to me that both you and Roach are just a tad cynical in your comments and IMO hardly making a rational case for the new coalition of Isolationist Right/Anti-War Left and the absurd commentaries of extremists on both ends from Cruz to Kucinich.

Or maybe I'm the cynic or just a believer that appeasement to dictators should not be an option.
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Or maybe we'll look back 20 years from now (just as we are looking back on the Rwanda genocide today) and say damn, just like Rwanda, we fucked up again and let another slaughter of innocent civilians go unchecked and this time with chemical weapons.

 

I don't know that there is a rational case that can be made to appeal to establishment centrists. Especially ones who support Obama while unironically decrying dictator appeasement. Anyone who sees coherence or morality in the US foreign policy objectives isn't subject to the constraints of rational argument.

Or maybe we'll look back from right now, as in today, at all the atrocious things that Assad was doing a year ago and say "Damn, that shit didn't matter a year ago, why does it matter now? Oh yeah, that's right, some arbitrary red line was crossed."

I'd be careful bringing up Rwanda here. Judging by Obama's track record, he would have ignored Rwanda completely because they were only using machetes and Ak-47s (no gas needed).

And who was the dude whose indifference played a large role in Rwanda getting so out of hand? Current hero of establishment centrists, William Jefferson Clinton, who gets a massive fucking pass for everything. At least we'll be able to count on the fact that no matter what Obama does now - no matter how brazenly he betrays the core values of his constituency- in twenty years we'll have party faithful ready to hold him up as a beacon of whatever bullshit corporatism it is they're trying to sell the electorate.

 

Geo-politics is a bitch and an unfortunate piece of the equation.

But at least you guys havent condemned the US for the slaughter of 1+ million unborn US babies every year.

The serious question is when should the US, with superior military and intel, along with diplomatic resources, inject itself into a civil conflict -- alone or with the UN, but solely with the limited intent to degrade the mass killing capabilities of a dictator?

Never or under what circumstances?

 

Given that the Arab League is now apparently on board (and some willing to offer access to airspace and other support resources), I dont share the belief that it is a political mistake. It is a political statement to Russia that blocking every UN attempt to address a humanitarian crisis is not acceptable.