freeman3 wrote:Well it's good to know that Tom is reading our posts carefully. .Aha!, so you did vote for Romney, RJ!...If I ever become president I am appointing Randy as my Secretary of State because he would (1) kick butt and take no prisoners, and (2) we could refight the Civil War in our spare time...Is it just me or did Tom and Ricky have the same English teacher who loved Virginia Woolf and stream of consciousness...

freeman3 wrote:Well it's good to know that Tom is reading our posts carefully. .Aha!, so you did vote for Romney, RJ!...If I ever become president I am appointing Randy as my Secretary of State because he would (1) kick butt and take no prisoners, and (2) we could refight the Civil War in our spare time...Is it just me or did Tom and Ricky have the same English teacher who loved Virginia Woolf and stream of consciousness...

But, Kerry/Obama have ceded the political battleground to Putin. He looks like a diplomatic genius and they look like . . . well, themselves

rickyp wrote:Ray

But, Kerry/Obama have ceded the political battleground to Putin. He looks like a diplomatic genius and they look like . . . well, themselves

You never replied...and i'd like to know ...

If the surrender of WMD by Syria goes through, have they achieved their goals? And have they achieved them without having to strike militarily?
How is this a failure?
If they've coopted Putin and Putin gains a little credibility through his invovlement does it diminish the achievement of the goal? Why?

Ray


But, Kerry/Obama have ceded the political battleground to Putin. He looks like a diplomatic genius and they look like . . . well, themselves

You never replied...and i'd like to know ...

On the eve of the 12th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Barack Obama made the strongest possible case for the use of force against Bashar Assad’s Syrian regime. But it wasn’t a very strong case. Indeed, it was built on a false premise: “We can stop children from being gassed to death,” he said, after he summoned grisly images of kids writhing and foaming at the mouth and then dying on hospital floors. Does he really think we can do that with a limited military strike—or the rather tenuous course of diplomacy now being pursued? We might not be able to do it even if we sent in 250,000 troops and got rid of Assad. The gas could be transferred to terrorists, most likely Hizballah, before we would find all or even most of it. And that is the essence of the policy problem Obama has been wrestling with on Syria: when you explore the possibilities for intervention, any vaguely plausible action quickly reaches a dead end.

The President knows this, which makes his words and gestures during the weeks leading up to his Syria speech all the more perplexing. He willingly jumped into a bear trap of his own creation. In the process, he has damaged his presidency and weakened the nation’s standing in the world. It has been one of the more stunning and inexplicable displays of presidential incompetence that I’ve ever witnessed. The failure cuts straight to the heart of a perpetual criticism of the Obama White House: that the President thinks he can do foreign policy all by his lonesome. This has been the most closely held American foreign-policy-making process since Nixon and Kissinger, only there’s no Kissinger. There is no éminence grise—think of someone like Brent Scowcroft—who can say to Obama with real power and credibility, Mr. President, you’re doing the wrong thing here. Let’s consider the consequences if you call the use of chemical weapons a “red line.” Or, Mr. President, how can you talk about this being “the world’s red line” if the world isn’t willing to take action? Perhaps those questions, and many others, fell through the cracks as his first-term national-security staff departed and a new team came in. But Obama has shown a desire to have national-security advisers who were “honest brokers”—people who relayed information to him—rather than global strategists. In this case, his new staff apparently raised the important questions about going to Congress for a vote: Do you really want to do this for a limited strike? What if they say no? But the President ignored them, which probably means that the staff isn’t strong enough.

The public presentation of his policies has been left to the likes of Secretary of State John Kerry, whose statements had to be refuted twice by the President in the Syria speech. Kerry had said there might be a need for “boots on the ground” in Syria. (Obama: No boots.) Kerry had said the military strikes would be “unbelievably small.” (Obama: We don’t do pinpricks.) Worst of all, Kerry bumbled into prematurely mentioning a not-very-convincing Russian “plan” to get rid of the Syrian chemical weapons. This had been under private discussion for months, apparently, the sort of dither that bad guys—Saddam, the Iranians, Assad—always use as a delaying tactic. Kerry, in bellicose mode, seemed to be making fun of the idea—and the Russians called him on it. Kerry’s staff tried to walk back this megagaffe, calling it a “rhetorical exercise.” As it stands, no one will be surprised if the offer is a ruse, but the Administration is now trapped into seeing it through and gambling that it will be easier to get a congressional vote if it fails.

Which gets close to the Obama Administration’s problem: there have been too many “rhetorical exercises,” too many loose pronouncements of American intent without having game-planned the consequences. This persistent problem—remember the President’s needless and dangerous assertion that his policy wasn’t the “containment” of the Iranian nuclear program—has metastasized into a flurry of malarkey about Syria. It’s been two years since he said, “Assad must step aside.” He announced the “red line” and “the world’s red line.” And now, “We can stop children from being gassed.” The Chinese believe that the strongest person in the room says the least. The President is the strongest person, militarily, in the world. He does not have to broadcast his intentions. He should convey them privately, wait for a response, then take action, or not. He should do what the Israelis did when they took out the Syrian nuclear reactor: they did it, without advance bluster, and didn’t even claim credit for it afterward. The wolf doesn’t have to cry wolf, nor should the American eagle. We must stand for restrained moral power, power that is absolutely lethal and purposeful when it is unleashed, but never unleashed wantonly, without a precise plan or purpose.

GMTom wrote:If we are drawn into conflict due to alliances, that's a different story of course. But right now the key word you mention is "potential" yes there are potential impacts but we have none just yet and such a strike could very well make matters worse for those allies in the region.

GMTom wrote:Why does nobody not mention the very possible bad side effects of such an attack? i have not seen anything here other than my posts, should a western (mostly US) attack be made, watch the entire situation amp up and get worse! How does THAT help our allies in the region???

danivon wrote:

DEFIANT wrote:This whole thing is a powder keg and this may be the ignition to set off the middle east. But to take no action is an action, so by sitting on the sidelines we do not in partial control the situation in Syria, it may blow without our input...

Syria may well set things off, but then again so could Western intervention, particularly of the military kind.

freeman3 wrote:From what I understand that by getting rid of Assad we may be allowing people to come to power that are more anti-western, anti-Israel than Assad is

Doctor Fate wrote:If our enemies (Syria is a client of Iran and supplies/supports Hezbollah) are shooting each other, should we interject a few missiles or planes? What will that do? The other side (the rebels) are hardly "freedom fighters." We've been down this road a few times now--haven't we learned anything?

Doctor Fate wrote:The rebels are really not "good guys."

And, what if there are indirect consequences? Iran decides to fire up a Hezbollah missile campaign against Israel, or whatever. We cannot expect "nothing" to happen.

What will such a strike accomplish? Will it kill more civilians?

dag hammarsjkold wrote:1. if green light, Congress takes the blame alongside you when things go wrong and they will go wrong. This way you safeguard the party in 2016 for shouldering the blame for what will of course become a quagmire costing more billions.

danivon wrote:As you rightly point out I am wary of the unintended consequences of an Israeli airstrike on Iran. Similarly, and not coincidentally, I am wary of the unintended consequences of a US airstrike on Syria.

dag hammarsjkold wrote:And can someone tell me what is the big damn hurry for intervention? I don't get it. Why the rush to punish? What is the harm in biding our time and taking things slow? Isn't it possible that in time a solution may present itself?

I can not believe any of this crazy talk. A strike will solve nothing, add to the complexity, create ample opportunity for more suffering, more hatred, entangle us in yet another mindless effort costing us millions or even billions that we can not afford.

If the surrender of WMD by Syria goes through, have they achieved their goals? And have they achieved them without having to strike militarily?
How is this a failure?
If they've coopted Putin and Putin gains a little credibility through his invovlement does it diminish the achievement of the goal? Why?