Now that it is known, Syria is using chemical weapons on her own people should the United States once again take the lead role in hitting Bashar al-Assad and his regime? It appears that France, Germany and England are waiting for the USA to jump on the band wagon. My question is why are they waiting for us. Why don't they for once send their ships, missiles and men to punish Bashar al-Assad.
What really bothers me is when a crisis like this occurs and everybody is looking at us to hammer the situation but when we want to do something on our own we are the bad guy.

I say we stay out of it and let the Europeans handle this with their money, men and equipment.

What say you?

defiant

What really bothers me is when a crisis like this occurs and everybody is looking at us to hammer the situation but when we want to do something on our own we are the bad guy

Its a lot better to be reluctantly drawn in by circumstance and one's allies then to storm in with minimal support ....Especially if something goes wrong.
One of the reasons that everyone waits for the US is that between all the allies, they don't have the command and control capacities or arsenal that can deliver the most effective strike with the the least risk of either losses or collateral damage.
Similar to the necessitiy of having the US involved in Libya to have an over whelming superiority...

It was Obama's 'red line' that's supposedly been crossed. Doesn't strike me that the Europeans are the main driver behind this one.

Personally I think we'd all be much better off out of it. Certainly I don't want to see British involvement unless Turkey invokes the NATO provisions, which seems unlikely.

Yes and now for both moral and geopolitical reasons.

Morally, there are very few leaders who have used gas since WWI. Assad joins Mussolini and Hussein in that category. Neither Hitler nor Stalin nor Mao used poison gas on the battlefield.

Geopolitically, you cannot set red lines and then not act on them. we don't have to send boots on the ground, but we can certainly take away some air infrastructure and make them think twice before doing this again.

No doubt Russia, China, and Iran are watching to see how weak the U.S. can be.

Not showing backbone will only encourage further provocations throughout the world. Power abhors a vacuum. If we don't act, the weakness that we telegraph will encourage another power to overstep their bounds creating a much more dangerous situation. (Think Cuban missile crisis and Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.)

To me there are two issues here.

1. Call it a red line or morality. Do we as a civilized world leaders 'have' to stop a severe injustice as this? If somebody doesn't stop it what kind of people are we to let children die in the streets by poison.
We stopped Hitler from killing the Jewish people.
I believe we have to, but who does it?

2. Expending resources to accomplish the mission to stop the gasing.
There within lays the problem, the European Nations haven't the military structure that the USA has to be efficient, but that comes at a cost to us the taxpayers of the USA. And now with our financial status, we cannot be expending these kinds of resources anymore. That's why I am suggesting the Europeans handle this, time to build up your military and spend your money on this and not depend on the USA taxpayers to keep footing the bill in resources, lives and money for operations like this.
Or if you still want us to do this, then we act like a global police force and are paid for it.

Nobody wants war here and if this comes to war it would suck. We simply can't have another boots on the ground war. Lob some cruise missiles, maybe some air strikes and the like.
But even that costs us a lot of money and sets in motion all sorts of stuff nobody can see the end of.

What about Russia? They are demanding we stay out and they could be dragged into defending Syria. What about relations with the rest of the Arab world? If we do nothing, some will think we do not care, if we attack, some will consider it an attack on themselves. What about this line that can not be stepped over and has clearly been done, now to ignore that demand we made makes us look weak, to enforce it makes us look a bully. Who takes over power if/when the government is toppled? Is it yet another Iraq situation going from bad to worse? And what about the simple morality of it all? We can't sit back and watch thousands get killed by chemical weapons, it's like Hitler vs the Jews, it's like watching an old lady get beaten up and doing nothing about it. The whole situation just stinks with no good answer.

What really blows me away is Russia standing by Syria on this. Considering it a civil war and supporting the "legitimate" government, I get that. But watching them use chemical weapons simply can't be tolerated even by Russia!

Defiant:

We stopped Hitler from killing the Jewish people.

The U.S. goal was to stop the Axis powers from conquering the world. It just so happens that we saved a minority of the Jews of Europe, but that was never the U.S.'s objective. Shame on us.

Defiant:

I believe we have to, but who does it?

The U.S. No other country has the military capability and/or the political will.

Defiant:

Expending resources to accomplish the mission to stop the gasing.
There within lays the problem, the European Nations haven't the military structure that the USA has to be efficient, but that comes at a cost to us the taxpayers of the USA. And now with our financial status, we cannot be expending these kinds of resources anymore.

Wouldn't the Saudis pay for it if we asked? They have billions going to Egypt. This would not be expensive at all relative to Iraq or Afghanistan. This is more similar to Libya.

Tom:

What really blows me away is Russia standing by Syria on this. Considering it a civil war and supporting the "legitimate" government, I get that. But watching them use chemical weapons simply can't be tolerated even by Russia!

I think we underestimate the immorality of these regimes. Neither Russia nor Iran (Syria's two biggest supporters) care at all about these innocent lives. Look at what Russia did to Chechnya; Look at what Iran did to its own people. There is also a huge amount of evidence that Iran supports terrorists throughout the world.

It's not at all clear to me that using chemical weapons is necessarily any worse than a lot of the other things that have been done in this civil war. Isn't it a somewhat arbitrary line to establish when there are already over 100000 dead and 2 million refugees ?

Sassenach wrote:It's not at all clear to me that using chemical weapons is necessarily any worse than a lot of the other things that have been done in this civil war. Isn't it a somewhat arbitrary line to establish when there are already over 100000 dead and 2 million refugees ?

It is arbitrary, but it is the line that Obama set.

Better late than never ... you may recall that I called for intervention over a year ago. At the time the advice was not to do anything because it would cause a civil war, expand the conflict, cause innocent civilian deaths, destabilize Syria's neighbors. But all that has happened without intervention anyway.

By the way, I'm not saying we should enter the civil war. I'm just saying that we have to make Assad pay a price. I wouldn't worry about Russia and Iran; if we show resolve they will back down. They only act tough when we do not. They have more to lose than we do.

Ray Jay,
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. Even some of the regular Germany General's(Rommel) didn't know what was happening to the Jews, this was primarily done by the SS troops.

I am saying it is time for the other countries to spend some of their money on military capability or we get paid for your participation. We invent these weapons, we build these weapons, we maintain these weapons, but used when a part of the rest of the world leaders say we can use them. Nothing wrong in asking for compensation for the use of these weapons when so ordered.

You are also right, Russia and China have absolutely no value for life, that's what separates us from them and we can never depend on them to do the morally right thing, never will do it.

DEFIANT wrote:
I am saying it is time for the other countries to spend some of their money on military capability or we get paid for your participation. We invent these weapons, we build these weapons, we maintain these weapons, but used when a part of the rest of the world leaders say we can use them. Nothing wrong in asking for compensation for the use of these weapons when so ordered.

I agree. There should be a back door deal with the U.K., French, and especially Saudis.

Sassenach,
You are right to a point that dead is really dead. However, how you get that way is sometimes concerning especially if they are weapons that could be used against us if someone decided to deliver them to our door step.

Like I said earlier, watching children die in the street by suffocating, or bleeding from all areas, any super painful death is something we as a civilized nation have to act on. If that country were to remove all women and children and have at it. go ahead I will sell you the weapons if you are that stupid and determined to kill each other. You can't always stop killing of the innocent but when you do it as a primary principle, well, there is a special place for you in hell.

DEFIANT wrote:Ray Jay,
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.

There's a lot of scholarship that disagrees with you. Take a look and keep an open mind.

Exactly Ray Jay,
When we went into Iraq, I was always a proponent of hey, lets take 20% off the top of their oil sales for us, to pay for the campaign effort. That way it releives the tax burden on this country that helped. I never understood why we are coming to your country to essentially help you out(whether is was the right thing or not) and due it all at our cost, makes no sense.

Yea in 1991 when Saudi Arabia was afraid Saddam was going to go from Kuwait to Saudi, they were on their knees begging us to help, we will, for a price, we are not to suffer financially for these military operations.