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Libertarian666
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Re: Syria

Post by Libertarian666 » Tue Aug 27, 2013 11:47 am

Obama doesn't need any reason to do anything. He does whatever he wants.
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Re: Syria

Post by Reub » Tue Aug 27, 2013 12:02 pm

Obama has a preference for helping Islamic radicals while at the same time taking out a few Al Qaeda leaders every now and then. It is a strange contradiction. He helped Islamists overthrow our friend Mubarak, take over Libya and Tunisia, and did nothing when Iran's people were looking for a better way. This would continue that policy.
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Re: Syria

Post by Mdraf » Tue Aug 27, 2013 12:05 pm

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Re: Syria

Post by Pointedstick » Tue Aug 27, 2013 12:28 pm

Boy, I sure hope the rebels don't turn out to be radicals who actually hate us. Nah, couldn't happen. Just because it happened in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Egypt, doesn't mean it'll happen in Syria too. Nope. This time is different. Lucky number 7!
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Re: Syria

Post by Reub » Tue Aug 27, 2013 2:20 pm

TennPaGa wrote:
Reub wrote: Obama has a preference for helping Islamic radicals while at the same time taking out a few Al Qaeda leaders every now and then. It is a strange contradiction.
Karl Rove, Bill Kristol, Elliot Abrams, et. al. say hello:

From The Weekly Standard: Experts to Obama: Here Is What to Do in Syria
A big group of foreign policy experts, from across the ideological spectrum, is calling on President Obama to impose "meaningful consequences on the Assad regime" for their use of chemical weapons.

"At a minimum, the United States, along with willing allies and partners, should use standoff weapons and airpower to target the Syrian dictatorship’s military units that were involved in the recent large-scale use of chemical weapons.  It should also provide vetted moderate elements of Syria’s armed opposition with the military support required to identify and strike regime units armed with chemical weapons," the experts write.

"Moreover, the United States and other willing nations should consider direct military strikes against the pillars of the Assad regime.  The objectives should be not only to ensure that Assad’s chemical weapons no longer threaten America, our allies in the region or the Syrian people, but also to deter or destroy the Assad regime’s airpower and other conventional military means of committing atrocities against civilian non-combatants.  At the same time, the United States should accelerate efforts to vet, train, and arm moderate elements of Syria’s armed opposition, with the goal of empowering them to prevail against both the Assad regime and the growing presence of Al Qaeda-affiliated and other extremist rebel factions in the country."

...

The signatories on the letter addressed to President Obama inlcude Senator Joe Lieberman, Bernard-Henri Levy, Karl Rove, Bill Kristol, Elliott Abrams, Leon Wieseltier, and many others. Right now, 66 experts have signed the letter.
Who cares what these people are saying? They are not in power. Neither is Bush. The people in power have supported radical Islamists all over the Middle East ever since they took over. This includes Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt. So why wouldn't they add Syria to their list? And yet, in Iran, where pro-Westerners wanted freedom and we could have made a real strategic impact, we ignored them.
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Re: Syria

Post by MediumTex » Tue Aug 27, 2013 3:31 pm

Mr. President, why bother building all of this great military hardware if you're not going to use it?  This is probably the best chance you are going to have while you are in office to blow up a bunch of stuff.  Don't let it pass.  Don't let that Nobel Peace Prize cloud your judgment.

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Re: Syria

Post by Benko » Tue Aug 27, 2013 3:32 pm

TennPaGa wrote: why do you think Barak Obama, William Kristol, Karl Rove, Elliot Abrams, and Joe Lieberman all support radical Islamists in Syria?
How about Obama is an anticolonialist who selects choices which appropriately (according to anticolonialists)  hurts the US and Rove is just a neocon?
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Re: Syria

Post by Libertarian666 » Tue Aug 27, 2013 3:35 pm

Benko wrote:
TennPaGa wrote: why do you think Barak Obama, William Kristol, Karl Rove, Elliot Abrams, and Joe Lieberman all support radical Islamists in Syria?
How about Obama is an anticolonialist who selects choices which appropriately (according to anticolonialists)  hurts the US and Rove is just a neocon?
They are both neocons.
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Re: Syria

Post by Benko » Tue Aug 27, 2013 4:11 pm

Tenn PA how about debunking me?  Go through the list of Obama's foreign policy decisions and point out ones that have turned out favorably for the US? 
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Re: Syria

Post by MediumTex » Tue Aug 27, 2013 4:32 pm

Benko wrote: Tenn PA how about debunking me?  Go through the list of Obama's foreign policy decisions and point out ones that have turned out favorably for the US?
Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
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Re: Syria

Post by Libertarian666 » Tue Aug 27, 2013 4:39 pm

TennPaGa wrote:
Benko wrote: Tenn PA how about debunking me?  Go through the list of Obama's foreign policy decisions and point out ones that have turned out favorably for the US?
How is "making foreign policy decisions that turn out unfavorable to the U.S." equivalent to "anticolonialist"?

And what does "anticolonialist" mean anyway?

What does "unfavorable to the U.S." mean?

For example, I'd say the U.S. NOT intervening in Egypt or Syria (so far) has been favorable to the U.S. because (i) no U.S. blood was spilled and (ii) the U.S. has no compelling interest in what goes on in either of those countries anyway, so doing "something" will be worse than doing nothing.
In general, the government's doing nothing is often better than its doing something.
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Re: Syria

Post by MediumTex » Tue Aug 27, 2013 4:47 pm

TennPaGa wrote:
Benko wrote: Tenn PA how about debunking me?  Go through the list of Obama's foreign policy decisions and point out ones that have turned out favorably for the US?
How is "making foreign policy decisions that turn out unfavorable to the U.S." equivalent to "anticolonialist"?

And what does "anticolonialist" mean anyway?

What does "unfavorable to the U.S." mean?

For example, I'd say the U.S. NOT intervening in Egypt or Syria (so far) has been favorable to the U.S. because (i) no U.S. blood was spilled and (ii) the U.S. has no compelling interest in what goes on in either of those countries anyway, so doing "something" will be worse than doing nothing.
Every Syrian that is killed by a U.S. attack will potentially spawn several terrorists who might not otherwise have had an especially strong hatred of the U.S. 

What Assad Jr. is doing in Syria today is bad, and what Assad Sr. was doing in Syria back in 1990 was just as bad when George Bush went over there and told him that if Assad Sr. would be supportive of the U.S. attack on Iraq, the U.S. would overlook some of the shady and brutal activities in which he was engaged.

This outrage over brutal acts rings a little hollow when you see how selective and opportunistic the U.S. government is in its expressions of outrage.

The fact is that nations like ours seemingly just aren't happy unless we get to watch our military blow up a bunch of stuff from time to time.

I think that one of the greatest disappointments of the Carter administration was that he didn't blow anything up, and on the one occasion when he tried to blow some stuff up in the form of the 1980 Iranian hostage rescue operation, the only thing that got blown up was the U.S. helicopters before they even got to the rescue location.

A solid piece of advice to any modern U.S. president would be to periodically blow some stuff up.  It is soothing to the citizenry.
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Re: Syria

Post by Mdraf » Tue Aug 27, 2013 5:31 pm

TennPaGa wrote:
Benko wrote: Tenn PA how about debunking me?  Go through the list of Obama's foreign policy decisions and point out ones that have turned out favorably for the US?
How is "making foreign policy decisions that turn out unfavorable to the U.S." equivalent to "anticolonialist"?

And what does "anticolonialist" mean anyway?

What does "unfavorable to the U.S." mean?

For example, I'd say the U.S. NOT intervening in Egypt or Syria (so far) has been favorable to the U.S. because (i) no U.S. blood was spilled and (ii) the U.S. has no compelling interest in what goes on in either of those countries anyway, so doing "something" will be worse than doing nothing.
Benko asks a good question. Asking rhetorical questions back does not advance the discussion. "Anti-colonialist" means against colonialism. "unfavorable to the US" means something that does not favor the US.

Attempting to inject moral relativism to every discussion is a trademark of the left when confronted with unpleasant facts.
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Re: Syria

Post by Benko » Tue Aug 27, 2013 6:12 pm

Mdraf wrote: Attempting to inject moral relativism to every discussion is a trademark of the left when confronted with unpleasant facts.
+1

"Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
Unless it is psychic stupidity,  I fail to see why it would perform better (or in this case worse) than a coin toss.

And MT I view your comment as much trying to cloud the issue as "What does "unfavorable to the U.S." mean?"
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Re: Syria

Post by notsheigetz » Tue Aug 27, 2013 7:32 pm

I like these questions asked by Pat Buchanan. He seems to be the only one asking them.....

"But who deputized the United States to walk the streets of the world pistol-whipping bad actors? Where does our imperial president come off drawing “red lines”? and ordering nations not to cross them?

Neither the Security Council nor Congress nor NATO nor the Arab League has authorized war on Syria.

Who made Barack Obama the Wyatt Earp of the Global Village?"


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Re: Syria

Post by Mdraf » Tue Aug 27, 2013 8:40 pm

I somehow think that this is all bluster and nothing will happen. Some mediator (Jimmy Carter ?) or a UN guy will pop out to "mediate". Obama will jump at the opportunity to do nothing and go back to his golf.

But if I am wrong and we bomb the daylights out of Syria we'll have to follow the script and rebuild the country at our expense.  if the bombing starts I'm loading up on CAT stock.
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Re: Syria

Post by Reub » Tue Aug 27, 2013 11:48 pm

I do believe that there is a place for foreign interventionism. It is necessary in this dangerous world to act wisely and forcefully....provided that we are promoting our own important strategic interests and the interests of our allies. What Obama has done and continues to do is just the opposite. Ergo, what Obama is threatening to do in Syria is wrong not because we are breaking a cardinal rule by intervening but because it is poor policy. Aiding radical Islamists, as we have already done in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia, while not lifting a finger against our strategic enemy, Iran, is a reprehensible, hypocritical policy that really makes one wonder what this Administration is really thinking.
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Re: Syria

Post by Benko » Wed Aug 28, 2013 12:23 am

Reub wrote: Aiding radical Islamists, as we have already done in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia, while not lifting a finger against our strategic enemy, Iran, is a reprehensible, hypocritical policy that really makes one wonder what this Administration is really thinking.
You don't understand.  America is evil and has a long history of oppression.  So the only moral thing to do is to act to take America down a few pegs in world influence.  It is appropriate and just and what must be done. There is nothing wrong at all about doing it.

When you can put yourself in that mindset you can understand many of the left (I can't verify that Obama has this mindset, but his actions sure go along with it)..  This is the mindset behind "vote early and vote often", Obamacare being passed the way it was, and many of the lefts shall we say difficult to comprehend way of doing things.

Which doesn't mean that I don't agree with many that we intervene all over the place far too often.
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Re: Syria

Post by Pointedstick » Wed Aug 28, 2013 12:43 am

Reub wrote: I do believe that there is a place for foreign interventionism. It is necessary in this dangerous world to act wisely and forcefully....provided that we are promoting our own important strategic interests and the interests of our allies.
This is a comprehensible position to me, but I think it's a dangerous one nonetheless for exactly the reason you give: the wide discretion allows for awful decisions made by idiots.

The way I see it, there are really only two options: non-intervention and selective intervention (constant intervention--i.e. continuous state of war with all others--being off the table due to resource constraints). At least with non-intervention, you know what you're getting, and you're not exposing yourself to the risk of your foreign actions making people abroad hate you. With selective intervention, every so often you get an Obama who is hopelessly lost and bumbles about while he ruins your country's reputation and intervenes schizophrenically and erratically.

Or a Bush who starts two purposeless wars with ill-defined missions.
Or a different Bush who starts a war over a diplomatic misunderstanding and then forgets to finish it.
Or a Johnson who over-commits to a doomed war and shell-shocks an entire generation of young men.
Or a Nixon who purposelessly escalates the war only to suddenly withdraw and let the enemy instantly win.
Or a Kennedy who starts that war.
...and so on. :(
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Re: Syria

Post by MediumTex » Wed Aug 28, 2013 1:08 am

Benko wrote:
Mdraf wrote: Attempting to inject moral relativism to every discussion is a trademark of the left when confronted with unpleasant facts.
+1

"Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
Unless it is psychic stupidity,  I fail to see why it would perform better (or in this case worse) than a coin toss.

And MT I view your comment as much trying to cloud the issue as "What does "unfavorable to the U.S." mean?"
At this point I'm not sure what the issue is.

My Hanlon's razor comment was a standard description of what every President of the last 50 years has done in the foreign policy arena.

IMHO, Obama is just making sure that he gets to have his "stupid is as stupid does" moment in the sun while President by blowing up some stuff that one of his predecessors didn't get around to blowing up before him.

You can say Obama is "anti-colonialist", that Bush II was a "neo-con", that Clinton was a "New Democrat", that Bush I was trying to get the wimp monkey off his back, that Reagan thought he was in a movie about superpowers battling over good and evil, etc., but what it all really comes down to is if you put cutting edge military hardware in front of a delusional narcissist, sooner or later he's going to use it on someone he doesn't like.  I think it's just that simple (and just that stupid).
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Re: Syria

Post by MediumTex » Wed Aug 28, 2013 2:41 am

It's strange to read the news and see that a Syria military strike seems likely.

I guess that it's not any dumber than countless other things the government has done through history, but maybe I am just more sensitive to it than I was the last time we attacked another country without provocation (I guess it was Iraq back in 2003).

I will be sure to tune in and watch the "Missile Command"-themed excitement as the U.S. munitions rain down on a country trying to decide which group of thugs will get to tell everyone else in their society how to live.

I still don't understand why making sure that the Syrian civil war is fought on fair and humane terms is the U.S.'s responsibility.

It's almost like we are saying to Assad: "You're not doing it right.  If you want to kill your own people, you have to do it according to certain accepted guidelines, and to help get you back on track we are going to kill some of your people using several hundred of our best missiles.  Watch and learn."
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Re: Syria

Post by notsheigetz » Wed Aug 28, 2013 7:07 am

MediumTex wrote: It's strange to read the news and see that a Syria military strike seems likely.
Yes, there is something very strange about it. I do not recall ever seeing such unilateral action on the part of any president to take us to war.  Even Bush went to congress with the phony WMD claims to get authorization to attack Iraq. Johnson used the Gulf of Tonkin incident to get approval for Vietnam. Obama apparently believes he doesn't need any authorization at all. Has he been ordering drone strikes for so long that he has simply come to believe he can use the military any where and any way he wants?

I did hear Charles Krauthammer suggest that it would be wise to "consult" with congress before doing this but he made it sound only like nothing more than getting a rubber stamp as a sort of courtesy, not at all suggesting that he didn't have the right to do it.
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i am hoping we wont..

BTW there is a reason "the middle east" is also known as "the graveyard of empires".... many have gone there.... few last long
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Re: Syria

Post by Mdraf » Wed Aug 28, 2013 9:13 am

I don't for a moment think that Assad used chemical weapons without pre-clearance from Moscow. I have a feeling Obama is falling into a trap set by Putin.
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Re: Syria

Post by Pointedstick » Wed Aug 28, 2013 10:04 am

TennPaGa wrote: Also, found this quote:
“The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation"
Guess who said it?

EDIT: Yes, I know.  Cheetahs all.  *Sigh*
He continues:
As for the specific question about bombing suspected nuclear sites, I recently introduced S.J. Res. 23, which states in part that “any offensive military action taken by the United States against Iran must be explicitly authorized by Congress.”?
See, he's in the clear! He didn't introduce legislation stating that his future self would have to seek congressional authorization to attack Syria, only Iran! ;)
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Re: Syria

Post by MediumTex » Thu Aug 29, 2013 2:31 pm

The pressure is coming from the media that wants a juicy story to cover.
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