Not even a day after celebrating the legacy of America's most famous pacifist, the President is discussing military strikes against Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria. President Obama indicated that the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime would constitute a red line, which is to say, his line of death. The decision on the part of lawmakers in the UK not to join in on military strikes against Syria is not going to matter much, the ramped-up war rhetoric is great for Lockheed Martin's stock price, and a barrage of cruise missiles would be even better.
Meanwhile, the Armageddon fans are as giddy as schoolkids with first crushes.
Scores of thousands dead, and scores of gums flap noisily, but nothing is "done." A few hundred or whatever die from non-explosive chemical weapons & a fit is thrown. I do not get it. What part of "It's murder either way" don't they understand?
ReplyDeleteAlan Grayson is cynical, too.
ReplyDeleteAnd so are the Brits, for once.
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I know it's a quite the minority opinion, but I actually support an attack. There are international laws and conventions against the use of Chemical Weapons going back to 1925. The CWC of 1993 is very clear. So what's the point of any of that without enforcement? The problem with CW, for those who keep asking, is that they are easy and cheap to produce, and there can be no anti-proliferation regime because the chemicals used to make them are all dual-use. So either every brutal dictator and despot with a people problem knows that he'll pay a stiff price for deploying them, or you're going to see an increase in their use as the number of ethnic, sectarian, ideological, and nationalist/separatist conflicts keeps increasing, threatening those entrenched in power. The world either has to essentially sign off on the use of "human insecticide" as a political or even crowd control measure or they have to respond. I personally do not want to live in a world where dictators can wipe out entire neighborhoods with a big can of RAID with impunity.
ReplyDeleteOf course, I do tend to support humanitarian intervention when it can do some good - I supported it in Libya, and believe the world should have acted in Srebrenica and Rwanda. But the key thing about this event is that it's really not about Syria at all - it's about responding to a release of Sarin gas on a civilian population, and a firm commitment to respond that way every time, no matter who or where.
Nope - there are times when lethal force is necessary, and this is one of those events where it's time to break things and hurt people.
PS. For those who will offer hyperbole, this will not result in a long-term involvement in the Syrian Civil war, nor will it result in anything like the Iraq invasion and occupation. This is blowing up a bunch of a dictator's shit because he used CW. Nothing more.
Wrong, mikey. This is someone claiming it is blowing up a bunch of a dictator's shit because he used CW and nothing more, which is something more.
ReplyDeleteAnd with us, "blowing up a dictator's shit" never simply ends there. And IF we do that, where do we stop? So many dictators with shit in need of blowing up, and so inadequately few things to satisfactorily go "boom".
ReplyDeleteWrong, davidly.
ReplyDeleteOr rather, it's arrogant and WRONG to just claim you're right and I'm wrong, you know all the answers and I'm a helpless idiot.
Your opinion is valid - but it's no more "right" than mine. Make a case if you want, although there's not much point in debating this - I think you're crazy for wanting to allow any two-bit thug to use CW without consequence, and you think I'm some kind of naive fool at best, or a war monger at worst. Nope, your opinion if merely that - and neither of us can declare that the other is WRONG. If you're so certain of your cosmic wisdom in these matters, it is you who is naive...
Let me get this straight, we're relying of IDF intercepts as a justification to go to war? Israel has been pleading us to bomb Syria for the past 2 and a half years!
ReplyDeleteAnd videos posted on YouTube by the rebel forces...really?
I'm not sure what you're claiming here. Do you actually doubt that there was a chemical attack on 8/21 in Ghouta? Do you not realize that people, journalists, NGOs, medical workers and many others witnessed it? Do you not realize that we have images of the delivery systems (artillery rockets the Syrians call Falaq-2 that are well known by the international arms control community to be dual-capable of HE and CW delivery)? Do you not realize that we know the range of these weapons and the direction from which they were launched, which fixes the launch sites in Government controlled territory? Do you not realize that the Syrian goverment has been using Sarin mixed with crowd control agents since February, but there is no evidence that the rebels have ever taken control of or deployed CW? Do you not know my friend Occam, who has a razor that says the regime has CW, they have delivery systems, they have trained personnel to execute the deployment of those weapons, and they are desperately fighting a war they cannot lose - they know if they lose they die. Do you not realize that the al-Assad family has a long history of brutal large scale political violence? Are you unaware of Hama? Are you really discounting thousands of eye witness reports, including those of international journalists and MSF doctors, hundreds of videos and the indisputable deaths of well over a thousand people, with another 2500 treated for symptoms consistent with Sarin toxicity? To what end? If you don't think the world should respond to a CW release against civilians, just say so. I think the world MUST respond - but pretending the attack didn't occur is just cheap.
ReplyDelete"And with us, "blowing up a dictator's shit" never simply ends there. And IF we do that, where do we stop?"
ReplyDeleteAgain, I don't quite understand this. This is about enforcing the CWC, not about going to war with Syria. If it was al-Bashir or Joseph Kabila I'd be advocating the same course of action. And just because GW Bush did things a certain way, there's no reason to believe that Obama will act in the same manner. Syria has no oil, and is currently locked in a brutal full scale civil war. Nobody's lying about the possible existence of nuclear weapons - we're talking about the ACTUAL use of CW against a civilian neighborhood. The parallels to Iraq are...vague to nonexistent
I have no doubt CWs were used. But by whom? That's not as conclusive as you let on. In fact, there many qualified people who question these conclusions. Did you know even US intelligence official concede that proving who actually ordered the attack is no "slam dunk?" Did you know that the UN, back in April, found that it was the rebels, not Asad, who used sarin gas? http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/05/us-syria-crisis-un-idUSBRE94409Z20130505
ReplyDeleteDid you know that instead of condemning the rebels for using CWs, Obama actually armed them two months later. I could write a list that goes on and on. But let me just conclude that so far as your humanitarian concerns go, Doctors Without Borders and The Red Cross says that Syrian intervention will be a big mistake. http://www.msf.org.uk/article/syria-msf-statements-should-not-be-used-justify-military-action
Let's be clear - all the evidence, and all the logic, points to the Assad brothers using CW. As Patricia points out, they've been doing so for months. I think the world needs to respond to these releases.
ReplyDeleteBut let's be clear - I'm not trying to change your mind - I'm just explaining my rationale. If you don't think that there's been an event that should be responded to, or if you think that, in spite of the evidence to the contrary, you're not certain that the Asssad brothers Fourth Division Chemical Weapons troops who have been using CW for months and training for just this kind of event for years are responsible for the deaths of fourteen hundred innocent people in Ghouta, fine.
But this seems so vanishingly unlikely to me. The part you seem to be missing is that Syrians are, just like Americans, human beings. If the rebels decided to murder well over a thousand innocent civilians in order to, I suppose, garner a western response, do you really believe that NOBODY in the rebel ranks might have been troubled enough by that to expose it? You're playing the same stupid game as the 9/11 truthers - a conspiracy so wide ranging and so tightly controlled that not even ONE individual might have found the political murder of his mom or dad just a little problematic.
Again, I'd like to introduce you to my friend Occam - he has a fairly well known razor.
Once again - if you don't think this rises to the importance of a US military response, you should say so. But echoing Ba'athist political propaganda that it was the fault of 'terrorists' who want to destroy democracy in Syria is not going to impress anyone who has been paying attention to this story....
I don't see the logic in the Syrian Government launching chemical weapons on civilians three days after they invited the UN inspectors in and after turning the tide against the rebels.
ReplyDeletePatricia has a valid point. It would be of more negotiating interest to the US if the rebels weren't taking such a beating before the Geneva conference.
Btw, I am a 9-11 truther, but not in the popular sense. I believe there were radical factions in the Saudi government that were involved more than was admitted to by the 8-11 Commission.
I love the back-and-forth on this topic. Great comments, everybody. Part of me thinks that the best course would be to demolish the airfields that are being used to resupply Assad's regime, but I don't think the U.S. should get involved unilaterally or without Congressional and (dare I say it?) UN approval.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Baldy. I was a little worried about using your turf for a conversation, but there it is, y'know?
ReplyDeleteThing is, nobody's playing honestly anymore. The UNSC has vetoes from Russia and China, just as it has vetoes from the US when it comes time to sanction Israel.
In a sense there's NEVER a clear-cut legal case for humanitarian or international law enforcement intervention, but is that a good reason for us all to heave a big sigh of relief and say "well, we tried" or is that something we need to recognize is part of the game and say "god dammit, no, you won't prevent us from sanctioning CW releases"...
mikey: I am not saying your wrong on the substance - although I think it is incorrect - I am saying your wrong with "nothing more".
ReplyDeleteIf you're going to rely on what someone says he is going to do and admit you believe him, that is one thing. But if you're going to make the same claim as he does and then say there is nothing more to it than that, you are doing precisely what you reprimanded me for - which is limiting it to some invariable truth. There is an important distinction. So yes, there is much more to it than that.