Ray Jay,
Those scholarship are underestimating the power of the media. Everybody seems to be doing that lately. You start showing pictures of Jewish children going into a oven and the American people especially the mother's of this country, you would have had cries to all our represenatives to stop it.
My wife now saw pictures of little children dead, violently in the streets of Syria and she wants us to missile that @#$! back to the stone age. Messing with mothers is a very very bad thing.

Just look at what happened when they saw the killing in Vietnam, how the media played a role in getting American people behind the anti-war effort after they saw what the media was showing.

You are right that we got in WWII to stop the Axis powers, but had we the media ability that we have today you can bet if we weren't already in the war we would have been after a couple pictures from the ovens.

The camps were not discovered until the end of the war, so it's hard to see where you're going with this.

Intervention is Syria now is not about preventing humanitarian catastrophe, that ship sailed long ago. It's about saving face because Obama made an ill-advised decision to set the use of chemical weapons as his red line event. I don't think that's a good enough reason to go to war.

As for demanding payment from the UK and France, forget it. It's not the UK and France who are dragging a reluctant Obama to war here. This situation has come about because your President has painted himself into a corner and now finds himself in a situation where he needs to back his words with actions. The likelihood is that our forces will get dragged into it anyway, at great expense that we can't really afford, so why on earth should we also have to pay American costs ?

Sas,
Very simple, I said if you had the media in WWII that you have to today, they would have seen the camps, see what was going on, they get everywhere today, if you had the iphones then, you would have seen a different response from the USA.
Simply, take todays media ability and project it back to WWII in the camps and then think about what would have happened, just like Syria today.

NO you are wrong on who is being dragged in. Cameron from England cut his vacation short to start drawing up plans for a military strike on Syria, the French are actually leading the intervention this time, Obama is dragging his feet like he always does. Yes he made a red line, it was broken once and we did nothing(typical from obama) so they used chem weapons again, and the pictures are coming out and our people are getting upset.
We will gladly sit this one out, like I said let the Europeans handle it. If you watch the news, you would see that France and England are leading this one and Turkey said they would go along with Germany.
Turn it on the news now, its all over the place. They are waiting for us to make up our mind.

Sass:

I don't think that's a good enough reason to go to war.

I'm not advocating that we go to war. I'm advocating air strikes and cruise missiles.

Sass:

The camps were not discovered until the end of the war, so it's hard to see where you're going with this.

After State Department confirmation in November 1942 that the Germans were attempting to annihilate the European Jews, US and British authorities, on the initiative of Great Britain, held a conference on refugees in Bermuda in April 1943. Although the revelation of German actions stimulated public pressure for action, the Bermuda Conference did not generate new initiatives; its meager results increased the anger and frustration of American Jews who were determined to rescue their remaining coreligionists.

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php ... d=10007411

(cross posted with Defiant)

"David Cameron has said the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government is "morally indefensible" after he recalled Parliament to discuss responses to the crisis. "

This was from the BBC, it's all over FOX news here, they are taking a lead in this.

All i am saying is that Europe handle it. That way you don't have to pay us. They can use their own military.

Sass:

The camps were not discovered until the end of the war, so it's hard to see where you're going with this.

Jan Karski (June 24, 1914, in some sources April – 13 July 2000) was a Polish World War II resistance movement fighter and later professor at Georgetown University. In 1942 and 1943 Karski reported to the Polish government in exile and the Western Allies on the situation in German-occupied Poland, especially the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, and the secretive German-Nazi extermination camps.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Karski

Don't be naive. There's simply no way that the Europeans could drag America into a war that it doesn't want to join. Cameron has to be politically proactive because he needs to try and rally public support for intervention (currently running at about 70% against) and he has to get it through Parliament. After Iraq the idea of the UK being America's loyal poodle has become political poison here and Cameron can't afford to be perceived as simply following along to another American war in the Middle East. The reality of the situation though is that we have no strategic interests in Syria.

Oh, and 'Brown from England', who I take to mean Gordon Brown, has been out of office for 3 years. He's also Scottish.

RJ, the fact that some stories of the death camps were in circulation as early as 1942 desn't really change the fundamental point that the US had already joined the war by then. The true extent of what was going on wasn't widely known in any case until troops roilled into Auschwitz, and it seems a bit odd to speculate on what might have happened if the Jews of the 1940s had been equipped with iphones. The past really is a foreign country...

I'm not advocating that we go to war. I'm advocating air strikes and cruise missiles.

That sounds a lot like going to war to me.

Sass:

RJ, the fact that some stories of the death camps were in circulation as early as 1942 desn't really change the fundamental point that the US had already joined the war by then. The true extent of what was going on wasn't widely known in any case until troops roilled into Auschwitz, and it seems a bit odd to speculate on what might have happened if the Jews of the 1940s had been equipped with iphones. ...

I think you are right that the extent of the atrocities were not fully known. However, I don't think we should whitewash the poverty of the U.S. response. Roosevelt intentionally did not publicize the atrocities against the Jews, and he intentionally did not rescue innocents that he could have saved.

Sass:

That sounds a lot like going to war to me.

but not the same scale as Afghanistan or Iraq, correct?

Relax Sas, as you see I edited Brown to Cameron.
And really, you don't think England and France are not talking with Obama, what are you going to do? There is naivity at its best. Of course they are looking at Obama and asking what he is going to do. I believe if we sit it out, France and England with Germany and Turkey will take some kind of action.
It will be extremely minimal but they can then sleep at night knowing they did something.

However this is what will happen, it will be the same ole same ole. Let the USA fire those expensive weapons, launch the f-18 Super Hornets to knock out Assad's air capability from delivering Weapons of mass destruction and England will give us submarine support. And we pay the cost. Thanks!

Ray Jay is right again.

There is a huge difference between firing cruise missiles and launching air strikes vs. putting troops on the ground. Much much different than Iraq. Still expensive on our tab.

And really, you don't think England and France are not talking with Obama, what are you going to do? There is naivity at its best. Of course they are looking at Obama and asking what he is going to do. I believe if we sit it out, France and England with Germany and Turkey will take some kind of action.

They're talking to Obama because Obama is in charge and nothing can be done without his say so. I guarantee without a shadow of a doubt that if the US sits this one out then everybody else will do the same.

Btw, I know that this is a diplomacy site, but 'England' is not a country. What you're referring to is the United Kingdom, 'UK' for short. I hate to get all pedantic about this but if you can't even make the distinction between UK and England then it does rather suggest you don't understand a damn thing about us.

RJ:

but not the same scale as Afghanistan or Iraq, correct?

Perhaps. Certainly it wouldn't be on the same scale as Iraq, but Afghanistan started out as merely air strikes to support an attack by indigenous forces. It didn't work out that way in the end. Hands up who thought we'd still be there 12 years later.

It's not a worthwhile distinction to make in my view. When you start bombing then you've gone to war

"Btw, I know that this is a diplomacy site, but 'England' is not a country. What you're referring to is the United Kingdom, 'UK' for short. I hate to get all pedantic about this but if you can't even make the distinction between UK and England then it does rather suggest you don't understand a damn thing about us. "

Really, that's just a pompous ass remark. who cares, england, united Kingdom, uk, great britain, the island, you know what I mean.

I will try and not hold you responsible, for United States, United States of America, US, USA, the states, america.

Lighten up Francis.

It matters because if you're not even aware of what our country is called then you clearly don't have sufficient knowledge of our political situation to be qualified to make the statements that you've been doing in this thread. In my experience Americans who describe the UK as England invariably seem to know jack shit about us. Maybe you're different, but you haven't really given any evidence of that.