Damned if you do.. and damned if you don't

[Peacetrain]

Because the Bush Administration lied (even to Colin Powell), to start a war and mess that has been going on for 10 years.. how can anyone be blamed for chilling at the thought of another intervention (no matter how narrow) in the middle east.

You are damned if you do and damned if you don't

Here we are.. we are seeing videos of people being doused with chemicals, and we are in a place where we can't get ourselves involved.. We are not even sure if the videos are being produced to pull us in.

We are damned if we do, and damned if we don't.

Even our allies, and the UN will not step up to the plate.

Damned if they do, and damned if they don't

This is the true legacy of the Bush Administration.

[dkf]

1. Except "damned if you do" has more potential downside.

Getting involved could INSTANTLY escalate into Israel. Is that what we want?

[Peacetrain]

2. I have no idea

Last edited Fri Aug 30, 2013, 05:43 PM - Edit history (1)

what the outcome of any of this is going to be..

We need to get the heck out of the middle east..

but there is no win win in this..no right answer.


edit for grammar..

[dkf]

3. Adding more incendiary fuel will not help.

[Peacetrain]

7. I don't see how it works either

But again.. we might be in a different place, if we had not just finished 10 years of continuous conflict in the middle east..

[Ocelot]

19. No, but it might be what Israel wants.

The Jerusalem Post ran this headline on 5/14:

A former senior official in the Bush administration said on Thursday the use of chemical weapons in Syria might have been a "false flag operation" of Israel, meant to implicate Syrian President Bashar Assad.

"We don’t know what the chain of custody is. This could’ve been an Israeli false flag operation, it could’ve been an opposition in Syria... or it could’ve been an actual use by Bashar Assad. But we certainly don’t know with the evidence we’ve been given. And what I’m hearing from the intelligence community is that that evidence is really flakey," retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, told Cenk Uygur in an interview with Current TV.

http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Israel-may-be-behind-Syrian-chemical-weapons-use-312051

Netanyahu knows that this would be the best way to provoke a war with Iran. Interesting that the ISRAELI press would discuss this story in this light, but the American press won't. I guess that means they actually have freedom of the press.

[kardonb]

21. damned

STAY OUT OF THE DAMNED MIDDLE EAST !!!

[Adrahil]

31. Don't agree.

While that could happen, it's unlikely. And DON'T has some, very obvious instant downsides. For on, Iran would instantly feel they can proceed with a nuclear weapon, 'cause they know we won't stop them.

[LearningCurve]

4. I agree with this assessment

The Iraq War has complicated ANY discussion, regardless of what your position is on Syria.

[Peacetrain]

9. It might be a factor of my age

But I am a member of the Vietnam generation.. and what a hell hole that was..

War begets war as it was.. I still cringe at the thought of what happened in Cambodia after the Vietnam debacle. It was a direct offshoot of never ending war

[LearningCurve]

11. A nice perspective

Hard to disagree.

[progressoid]

5. If he does go ahead without support from our allies, it's damned. Period.

[Peacetrain]

6. Yep..

I don't see how we can do this unilaterally..

[treestar]

8. I agree,

see this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023564911

[Peacetrain]

10. That is about it..

[avaistheone1]

12. The U.S. is no god, and has no moral superiority over the world.

Best to get all the facts first, and to wait for a time when a political solution can be worked out.

We can kill people until things get to that point, or the people of Syria can. I think it would be best for the people of Syria to do their own killing. Who are we to pick sides in this?

[moondust]

13. The short-term thinkers in the Bush administration

probably figured nobody would remember how they ended up invading Iraq any longer than, say, a couple quarterly statements into the future.

[Maedhros]

14. There is no guarantee that U.S. intervention will result in fewer civilian casualties.

Quite the opposite, in fact:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/world/middleeast/us-syria-intervention-would-be-risky-pentagon-officials-say.html?pagewanted=all

Defense and intelligence officials say that Syria’s integrated air defenses — a combination of thousands of surface-to-air missiles, radars and antiaircraft guns — are not only more advanced than those in Libya, they are also arrayed in densely populated areas on the country’s western border, meaning that even with precision bombing, civilians nearby would probably be killed.

“There would be some severe collateral damage going after those areas,” Mr. Panetta said last week.

[Aerows]

15. George W. Bush tainted the idea of intervention forever for our country

His soul is as black as tar. Awful, awful entitled piece of shit that would be better served actually being in Afghanistan with our troops where he could earn a crust of honor, but instead is highly regarded as an elder statesman.

Society would be better off if he ended up a beggar and we could point to him as an example of what NOT to be.

[Blanks]

16. Maybe the administration should float the idea...

That we will be greeted as liberators. That worked so well before.

[on point]

17. Support legal machinery. Wait for the UN to ask for our help. Until then NO!

[Adrahil]

32. The UN is irrelevant

With Russia and China able to veto anything, it's useless.

[on point]

33. Just as useless as us being able to veto anything. Work to fix that

The major players want stalemate. I would suggest adding more members and making the general assembly vote a veto power on the security council

[Adrahil]

34. Except I don't particularly think...

.... The general assembly would have our best interests at heart. I mean, we're talking about a bady that put Iran on a human rights council, and nations that cheered Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro.

[on point]

35. The GA is supposed to rep the world, not the US. Our best interests are not prime consideration

Iran was on the Human rights council, same as Libya and the USA (torture is us) because the positiion cycles through members periodically not because they were selected as great representatives.

Other nations cheered these folks partly because they poked the USA in the eye, and since the USA doesn't behave so well, they cheered

[obxhead]

18. no. we are damned if we do

And if we don't nothing happens.

If we do nothing a civil war we are not involved in continues and the rest of the world doesn't have another reason to hate us.

We have proven beyond any reasonable doubt that our military is ineffective and nearly useless against guerrilla tactics and pipe bombs. We do not need to prove that again.

[JDPriestly]

20. Precisely. Before Bush and in spite of Watergate and Iran Contra,

we trusted our government to at least correct itself when it did wrong.

But after Bush --- and after the failure to prosecute the bankers --- after the revelations about spying on our electronic transmissions and collecting our metadata -- and after the crackdowns on the Occupy Movement, I just don't trust a one of them to tell the truth.

I'm a solid Democrat. I work hard for the Democratic Party. But I am looking for honesty and justice, and I don't see it happening.

If we can't have honesty and justice in our own country with our own citizens, how can we claim to have the moral authority to go bombing other countries.

I have no idea what happened in Syria. I have no idea what the real goals are of the NSA and the military-industrial complex that probably have Kerry and Obama and all our good Democrats tightly wound around their fingers.

The evidence as presented in the short paper I read would not suffice to make me call a fire truck. I have not watched the video about the use of chemical weapons. (To busy working on local Democratic Party stuff, thank you.)

But no amount of PR without really hard evidence is going to persuade me. Iraq was a horror. Afghanistan only slightly better. Women still don't have many rights there.

And, by the way, if you watch what I think was a BBC video on Syria posted here on DU, you learn that Assad's father was somewhat liberal compared to other Muslims in Syria. For example, he built schools for girls in every town according to a Syrian woman on the video. That again may or may not be true. I don't trust the statements of people who apologize for Assad any more than I do those of the people who criticize him. But I did notice that a lot of women in that video were not wearing headscarves. So that is better than Iran. And it is my understanding that the opposition to Assad includes Iranian fanatics.


Yes. I don't trust anyone any more, anyone who talks about events or takes sides about events in foreign countries. I read the German and French newspapers so I believe what they say on many issues when their interests are not directly at stake. But I don't think we can rely on anyone in our government to tell us the truth.

They have to come really clean on a lot of things including what is really going on with the surveillance.

[Pale Blue Dot]

22. The President set himself up for this by drawing a line in the sand.

This was a MAJOR political screw-up. Before he drew that line, he had every option open. HE boxed himself in. HE made this a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario.

I promise that unless the President has something incredible up his sleeve, there is no way this ends well for him or for Democrats.

[AngryOldDem]

23. Yep.

Sometimes, unfortunately and sadly, wars need to be fought. That said, if we ask our military to do so, we need to be absolutely clear and certain what the aggression is, who is perpetrating it, and have a strategy in place to minimize casualties and other damage in order to reach the objective for which we are fighting.

Bush, by treating war as if he were playing with tin soldiers, did none of that; so now we are faced with massive (and understandable) skepticism as hundreds of innocents burn.

[Bluenorthwest]

24. Which is why refusing to hold Bushco accountable was a toxic decision by Obama and Congress

John Kerry, I admire him in some areas, but he not only voted for the Iraq war, he preached the gospel of Saddam's WMD. There was no one held accountable for the lies nor for their votes for war, Kerry was promoted, Hagel promoted, those who were correct have been refused higher offices by Obama, who promotes on the Yes voters and WMD chanters.
John Kerry was also in the Senate when Saddam used gas on the Kurds, he did not advocate war in that case, he did not demand that this was a thing that could not be ignored.
So he says 'this will not be Iraq' but if it is there will be no one held to account, so what's to prevent them from lying? Nothing. NO consequences, in fact if you lie and make illegal war you will get to head a cabinet department.

[Corruption Inc]

25. Powell conspired to commit war and he and the other bush criminals belong in jail

If they were at least tried in an actual court of law for violating the 1996 War Crimes Act in setting up torture camps and tried for a WMD conspiracy to commit war then the U.S. would not be damned for anything, we'd be praised for being a beacon of liberty and justice for all.

[Iggo]

26. So don't.

[LWolf]

27. We aren't damned if we don't.

Maybe if we do NOTHING. But war doesn't have to be the first option, the early option, or on the table at all.

[Little Star]

30. +1

[Plucketeer]

28. I wouldn't want to die from gas...

Of course, I'm really not keen on dying from anything - even "natural causes". The bottom line is - dead is dead - once you're rendered such, that's it. Kids - adults - bystanders - aggressors ....... dead is dead. Assault weapon, grenade, artillery, drone, bomb, IED, gas - it matters not once the spark of life is driven off. Our coffers would already be empty if we'd stuck our noses in EVERY point of conflict where folks of all ages were slaughtered. Hell, we CAUSE some of that slaughter and paint it "collateral damage". We're gonna owe the crime bosses of the gangster days a BIG apology if we meddle in Syria's business and brand it "justified".

[daa]

29. What plate are you talking about?

Children dying I Haiti? Thousand killed by the government in Egypt. Oh, Syria. No conclusive vide nice, just the same intelligence that cost us a trillion in Iraq and the same intelligence that didn't know shit about Boston.