So what should we do about Syria?

[babylonsister]

Ignore the chemical warfare, or do something? And if so, what should that 'something' be?

Sounds pretty bleak to me either way.

[dkf]

1. Well certainly nothing til we have absolute proof. Saying the rebels have no capability is weak.

Too many other players with their own interests.

[RKP5637]

2. Yep, pretty bleak either way. n/t

[Wait Wut]

3. I don't know.

I don't want us involved, but I want something done.

I'm glad I'm not the President. I'm sure the word 'bleak' is circling his brain, too.

[markpkessinger]

4. Why was there not a similar outcry a couple of weeks ago . . .

. . . When Egyptians were slaughtering their own citizens?

[BOG PERSON]

12. well, you see, those were muslim fanatics armed with deadly rocks

these are peaceful car-bombers defending their cherished belief system against minority encroachment

[mike_c]

5. contribute troops and material to the combined U.N. peacekeeping force....

Oh, no U.N. force? Then we should do nothing. The U.S. is not the world's cop, judge, jury, and executioner. Here's another test of our civilization. Do we act like cowboys and make the world our wild west or do we act like partners in an international community, even when we don't like what all the other partners want?

[meow2u3]

6. I think we should stay out of Syria

I don't want to find out later that the rebels we defend turn out to be terrorists and use the military power we gave them against us. We don't need another instance of blowback.

[Junkdrawer]

7. Stop funding al Qaeda in Syria would be a great start

Oh, wait. We're promoting Democracy and self determination.

[KoKo]

8. NOTHING...Stop Arms Shipments and Propaganda Rhetoric...

Let them sort it out on their own. If it doesn't come now...it will come LATER after our Involvement in Protracted Wars in ME and AFRICOM...and it's OUR TAXPAYER DOLLARS....while so many here in America (not that Fucking Homeland Crap) are Suffering.

[former9thward]

9. Same as in Egypt -- Nothing.

If the UN acts then we are part of the UN. Otherwise nothing.

[Glassunion]

10. Have we even so much as tried

a strongly worded letter yet?

[babylonsister]

13. From today...

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/08/john-kerry-syria-chemical-attacks-moral-obscenity/68732/

John Kerry: Syria's Chemical Attacks 'A Moral Obscenity'

[Glassunion]

15. Fuck a lot of that sounds familiar in a peculiar kind of way...

Any U.S. response, he added, would be "grounded in facts, informed by conscience, and guided by common sense."....

made it absolutely clear that the U.S. is certain that a chemical weapons attack took place...

promised that the U.S. would release additional evidence addressing those points...


All of those statements sound familiar, but I can't quite put my finger on it (aluminum tubes). Guess it means that we should warm up the bombers and go bomb the fuck out of a preschool in a far away land full of brown people... Cause nuthin' makes 'Murica safer than vaporizing a shit ton of little brown 6 year olds half a world away. Fuck yeah!!!!

[babylonsister]

17. You asked, I answered.

I think I need more info, too. I'm sick of people going off half-cocked into war, but Kerry didn't propose anything yet.

[Glassunion]

21. That's not how it works.

Government cannot stand by, take a deep breath and wait and see. They can't wait, and explore the evidence. We live in a 24hr a day news cycle, and someone has to start bombing the shit out of something, less we be branded wimps. Bomb first, clean up for the next 20 years seems to be policy.

[1-Old-Man]

11. nothing

[snappyturtle]

30. Same from this old woman nt

[Douglas Carpenter]

14. as in medicine, Above all do no harm

This article was written more than a year ago - and was not even considering the possibility of direct intervention at that time but the basic points are the same I strongly recommend reading this article in salon.com by Gary Kamiya:

Liberals arguing that the U.S. should give weapons to Syrian rebels underestimate Assad's power

http://www.salon.com/2012/04/13/dont_arm_syrias_rebels/singleton/

snips:

This is not a knee-jerk left-wing response. It has nothing to do with Iraq. Nor does it have anything to do with the proxy war between the U.S. and its allies and Iran and its allies. It is not driven by pacifism or opposition to all war. All U.S. wars are not axiomatically foolish, evil or driven by brutal self-interest (although most of them since World War II have been). The airstrikes on Kosovo and the Libya campaign were justified (although the jury is still out on the latter intervention). If arming the Syrian opposition would result in fewer deaths and a faster transition to a peaceful, open, democratic society, we should arm them.

That analysis has been provided by a number of in-depth reports, most notably a new study by the International Crisis Group, as well as the excellent on-the-ground reporting of Nir Rosen for Al-Jazeera. The bottom line is simple. The war has become a zero-sum game for Assad. If he loses, he dies. But the only way he can lose is if he is abandoned by his crucial external patron, Russia, which is extremely unlikely to happen absent some slaughter so egregious that Moscow feels it has to cut ties with him. Assad has sufficient domestic support to hold on for a long time, and a huge army that is not likely to defect en masse. Under these circumstances, giving arms to the rebels, however much it may make conscience-stricken Western observers feel better, will simply make the civil war much bloodier and its outcome even more chaotic and dangerous.

The key point concerns Assad’s domestic support. Contrary to the widely held belief that most Syrians support the opposition and are opposed to the Assad regime, Syrians are in fact deeply divided. The country’s minorities – the ruling Alawites, Christians and Druze – tend to support the regime, if only because they fear what will follow its downfall. (The grocery on my corner in San Francisco is owned by a Christian Syrian from a village outside Damascus. When I asked him what he thought about what was going on in his country, he said, “It’s not like what you see on TV. Assad is a nice guy. He’s trying to do the right thing.”) As Rosen makes clear, Syria’s ruling Alawite minority is the key to Assad’s survival: Absent an outside invasion, the regime will not fall unless the Alawites turn on it. But the Alawites fear reprisals if the Sunni-dominated opposition, some of whose members have threatened to “exterminate the Alawites,” defeats the Assad regime. The fear of a sectarian war, exacerbated by the murky and incoherent nature of the opposition, means that the minorities are unlikely to join the opposition in large numbers.

...

Our national instinct is to come riding to the rescue. It goes against our character to simply sit on our hands. Our sincere, naive and self-centered belief that America can fix everything, and our equally sincere, naive and self-centered belief that moral outrage justifies intervention, is a powerful tide, pulling us toward getting directly involved in Syria’s civil war.

But in the real world, we cannot always come riding to the rescue. Sometimes, we have no choice but to watch tragedy unfold, because anything we do will create an even bigger tragedy.

http://www.salon.com/2012/04/13/dont_arm_syrias_rebels/singleton/

[LittleBlue]

16. Ignore chemical warfare

It is utterly bizarre how tens of thousands of people were killed by conventional weapons and it didn't cross the red line, but chemical weapons kill a fraction of that number and suddenly everything is different.

[babylonsister]

19. That's a real good point,

I don't know what the difference is, maybe b/c it seems more barbaric than conventional weapons? They all suck imo.

[leveymg]

31. You can see the difference between gas artillery shells and High Explosive: paint.

The lineup below shows the various types of 105mm artillery shells used by the US Army. The specimen on the extreme left is standard High Explosive (HE), while the one directly next to it is the U.S. version of lethal gas ordinance.



It's been pointed out by a leading US chemical weapons expert that the use of an equal number of high explosive artillery rounds is usually more lethal: Dan Kazseta, a US Army Chemical Corps veteran and consultant, available here (fairly long, but all informative):

http://newsmotion.org/author/noreplybloggercom-brown-moses?page=1

[Gravitycollapse]

22. Chemical weapons represent a sort of total war that is disliked among humanitarians.

It is a form of total war or war of attrition. Break the rebels backs by killing their families and burning down their cities.

Not that this hasn't been occurring with conventional weapons. It just seems to be the tipping point for mostly everyone with an ounce of decency.

[LittleBlue]

24. My tipping point was when the first 100,000 people died

Personally I think it's a product of gun culture that conventional weapons are seen as acceptable but WMD cross the line.

In terms of human suffering and number of dead/wounded, it's not even close. But that's because we see 30,000 victims of gun violence every year as normal in the US.

[leveymg]

33. Not that all that hasn't been carried out by both sides, including the use of chemical arms.

"Break the(ir) backs by killing their families and burning down their cities." Graphic and disturbing, but true all around.

[kelliekat44]

18. Help the President make Congress pass a jobs bill. nt

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

20. Given what our efforts have accomplished so far in the Middle East...Butt out.

[ZombieHorde]

23. Nothing. nt

[dtom67]

25. nothing we CAN do...

Pipelines for LNG WILL go through Syria to allow Qatar ( and others) to cash in on gas stocks in an effort to "diversify" the EU's energy dependency. Russia currently supplies 40% of western europe LNG imports. that is why they do not want action in Syria; any pipelines built there would be in direct competition with their own.

This is just business, and as such, we will be given no choice in the matter.

It cannot be stopped.

but it does piss me off how easily we find money for such things , while we must " tighten our belts " because of the Debt.

We have no money for social spending, yet we can leverage the future to the hilt, if it involves killing people.

and there is NO WAY I'll cheerlead for more killing.

but there is little we can do to stop the warfare....

[doc03]

26. Nothing n/t

[Lydia Leftcoast]

27. Nothing

There are no good guys in this conflict.

[JustAnotherGen]

28. Yep - its pretty bleak our options

But the question my husband and I keep asking . . . How do we know beyond a shadow of a doubt they have those weapons?

Answer: someone gave them to Syria. Maybe it was 20 years ago - but is got our little mitts all over it.

They are "certain" for a reason.


I thought there was additional UN investigations to go in tomorrow? Why the rush?

[ozone_man]

29. Absolutely nothing.

And stop funding the "rebels."

[Arctic Dave]

32. It's their civil war

Let them duke it out.

[fujiyama]

34. Let Turkey take care of it

The Saudis have plenty of military hardware we've sold and given them over the years too. Are they capable of using any of it? When will any of these countries do any heavy lifting in their own backyard? Then again, I have a feeling the US (and its lapdog, the UK) want it this way. It seems France is gung ho to get in on this action as well.

Ultimately, this is just another front in the great game and just a way of showing force against the Russians and the Chinese, neither of which will back down. I think Putin will double down in his support of Assad. He's not backing down and I think every Western leader, including Obama has seriously underestimated his resolve (as well as ruthlessness and cynicism) in restoring at the minimum, an image of Russia as a strong and powerful nation that will not let its allies down. We just never understood this, and I think Clinton and both Bushes never respected this loss of face and dignity after the fall of the USSR. Obama, I figured due to his work on non proliferation, had a more enlightened view, but apparently it's easier than not in helping to start another Cold War.

And I agree that the outcry of the use of chemical weapons is overblown. Sorry, we've sat back and watched somewhere between 60-100,000 people killed so far. This is nothing new in an already horrific and bloody civil war, where it's impossible to take sides because the allies of today could become the Taliban of tomorrow.

To borrow a phrase from a popular television serious, I think the US should really "tread lightly". We're stepping into a huge shit storm, which will have grave geopolitical as well as domestic consequences (don't think the ass hole republicans won't think twice of making political hay over this if it gets worse either - they have no conscience and the idiot public has a very short memory).

[jessie04]

35. Who cares ...let them use biological and nuclear weapons too.

In fact, if and when they use nukes, it's none of our business. We should just look the other way.

[NCarolinawoman]

36. Give the money to Meals on Wheels, Home Health care, Hospice, etc. instead of

missiles and war. After all, these programs have all been cut because there "IS NO MONEY!"

Gearing up for war costs MONEY! "We have NO money!"

...so I've heard.....from the politicians.