Syria - hype or war?

[jmain]

Obama and Kerry have definitely made their intentions clear and Fox and CNN are all saying the same thing, attack is about to happen...

Egypt is in civil war.
Syria is in civil war.
Russia says don't engage.
Israel is in the middle.
Arab States are silent.
Obama's warning has allowed Syria to move assets to Iran.

Obama has the media feeding this, like nothing I have seen. That was the plan.
If this is a bluff, then I am really disturbed.


What say you?

[The Annoyed Man]

Whether one agrees with Bush's decisions regarding the invasion of Iraq, he certainly had the good sense to make his case to Congress and to seek congressional support.......and he got it. Obama is NOT seeking congressional support because he knows darn well that he won't get it. I don't want another war. Let all those people kill each other off until there aren't enough of them left to cause any trouble to anyone else. They have descended into some kind of multigenerational cultural insanity, and they have to have their own "come to Jesus" moment before they voluntarily turn themselves around. And as long as their religion of peace becomes increasingly under the sway of people who don't want peace with anybody, or whose definition of peace is world domination, they will continue to kill one another. It's not our problem. We can't fix it, and even if we could fix it, we don't have the right to impose ourselves on another people without there being A) preexisting alliances and B) and overt invitation.

Add to that that our own policy implementation is so dysfunctional that we now have a reputation for encouraging rebellion and then leaving the rebels to twist in the wind at great personal expense to them. The only reason we should be involved in there is if Syria's civil war poses an existential threat to our own survival. It does not. They will produce terrorists no matter who is in power, and the only way to stop that is to do the one thing that nobody (rightly) wants to do, and that is to turn Syria into a sea of melted glass, and then tell the rest of those tinpot dictators "that's what happens if you mess with us." But we can't do that, and we shouldn't do that. Therefore, we have one option: continue to provide support to the one democracy in the area with our values—Israel—and let the rest of them go to hades.

[Beiruty]

Limited air strike with limited outcome. Think of it as slap on the wrist. What is more effective is arm and train Ex-soldiers of the Syrian Armed forces who had defected and now fighting under the banner of Free Syrian Army.

[AEA]

Let Syria sort itself out - we're not the world police.

and I simply ignore anything MaoBama and his supporters have to say, about anything.

It's amazing how my blood pressure has been reduced by using this method!

[suthdj]

So what else is happening this may just be a smoke screen to hide somethig else or maybe lead to something more, either way I am against any action over there.

[talltex]

Let Syria sort itself out - we're not the world police.

I agree as well. If the rest of the world is not interested in doing anything about Syria why should we do anything? It's a waste of time and resources.

While there is no doubt that what has happened in Syria is terribly wrong, nothing we do will accomplish anything but creating one more group that will hate the USA for meddling in their affairs. Even among the ones that might possibly benefit from our action, many will still resent it. If you look back at our many attempts to intervene in other countries because of human rights issues over the last 50 years, it's pretty clear that we really didn't accomplish much at all. In most cases we simply expended billions of dollars in resources and human lives, only to have whatever gains we felt were made, erased as soon as we stopped providing the money and manpower to enforce OUR views. Even when the USA doesn't physically put boots on the ground, but supports one faction over another, we still engender the hate and resentment from the other group involved from then on. Unless there is an overwhelming worldwide consensus that action must be taken, and all those other countries are willing to step up and commit THEIR money and people in equal measure, then we need to stay out of it. In most of the interventions where there WAS a worldwide consensus, the actual responsibility for enforcing it quickly deteriorated to where it wound up being 90% USA and 10% "rest of the world", and we are the ones that all the resentment is focused on.

[jimlongley]

So what else is happening this may just be a smoke screen to hide somethig else or maybe lead to something more, either way I am against any action over there.

Along with all of the others, I do not see a reason to meddle in the internal affairs of that nation and I particularly question the logic of a "limited air strike." Just what are they going to strike? The imperial palace? That will just make a bunch of people mad at us, and possibly lead to retaliation against us. The weapons making facilities? They can, and probably will make more facilities, and that will possibly lead to retaliation against us.

I could go on, but suffice it to say that every scenario I can conceive of involving our "intervention" leads me to, at a minimum, retaliation against us, in the form or terrorism if not flat out war.

And having said that, recognize that as President, bambam has not yet had "his war" only the left overs of previous Presidents' wars, and he may be interested in getting this one going in order to solidify his party's hold on the White House, either by getting Clinton, Kerry, or Biden elected in his stead, or even as a justification to either allow him to run for a third term, or just to declare martial law with no elections until after the war is over.

Where is my tin foil?

[The Annoyed Man]

There is ONE positive outcome if the chump in chief orders our military into a war that nobody from either party wants: the next president will not be a democrat. And not having another democrat in office is imperative to stopping the country's slide into irrelevance. No, it's not worth aiding and abetting the start of another war to achieve it, but it is the one light at the end of a very long and dark tunnel that would come out of this.

Obama ran hard on being the one to restore the nation's image to the rest of the world. His very first day in office, he offended a long-time ally, Great Britain. He has courted those who hate us and chastised those who look to us. He has on microphone and camera promised future concessions to a foreign leader who does not respect us. Furthermore, he is deliberately obtuse when it comes to acknowledging how global politics works in the real world. About a quarter of the world's nations have liked us, and the rest have hated us for varying reasons. Those reasons run the gamut from virulent politically philosophical differences, cultural differences, religious differences, economic differences, and yes, even something as venal as military genital envy. It's been that way for at least the last 113 years. It takes a blind megalomaniac on the order of Obama to believe that he can change it.

Vladimir Putin is a pig. A self-aggrandizing pig with no regard for human rights and the absolute cynicism of a practiced dictator. In those things, he and Obama are exactly alike. But there is ONE thing that Putin NEVER does, but which Obama ALWAYS does, and it is that Putin never puts the interests of other nations ahead of his own nation's interests. I don't love either man, but I can tell you which of the two I respect more, and it ain't Obama. And neither does most of the rest of the world now. One of the things that Putin is but not Obama, is being a realist. Compare their backgrounds.........

1. On the hand, a hardened KGB colonel with his fingers deep into both the domestic and foreign pies during his career, and a LONG experience of confronting the U.S., so he is not only not afraid of us, but his experience with Obama teaches him not to respect us much either. How can you possibly respect the leader of a foreign nation who promises you concessions after he is reelected? Isn't the job of that leader to represent his nation's interests, not your own nation's interests? So now Putin knows that he controls Obama.
2. On the other hand, a charlatan national political neophyte whose primary qualification is a drug addled community organizer who "knows about the world because I once lived abroad and have muslims in my family." A man who consorts with KNOWN domestic terrorists and is as unrepentant about it as are the terrorists themselves; who deliberately hides his birth certificate because—legal issues aside—he knows it will be problematic if the public finds out; who deliberately hides his academic records because he knows it will be problematic if the public finds out (possibly from a citizenship perspective too); who sat at the feet of a virulently racist pastor for 20 years and claims not to have seen the racism (because he fundamentally agreed with it, and therefore it's not racism); who served a few terms in the Illinois legislature, and just 2 years of one senatorial term, and THAT resumé is supposed to make him qualified to direct America's foreign affairs.

It's not even a close comparison. Obama is the mouse to Putin's Siberian tiger. The problem is that this mouse has been given ultimate command authority over the greatest military might the world has ever known, and he is likely to use it inappropriately to back up his poor foreign-affairs decision-making. Under Bush and other previous presidents, we at least had the respect of that part of the world which did not like us. Not any longer. What's worse is that we have lost a large measure of respect from that part of the world which did like us. Globally, we are less safe because of it. Globally, our interests no longer carry water with anybody.

We have Obama to thank for all of those things, and he is dragging us down with him. I have a deep and abiding lack of respect or any felicitous feelings for the man. He is almost single-handedly finishing off what's left of America. Yes, the other democrats are aiding and abetting him in it, and those that are unrepentant at this point are just as treasonous as he is........ but without his vaunted "leadership," they would not be nearly so effective at it.

Here is what the world sees when they look at the U.S.: a massively powerful nation that cannot make up its mind. THAT makes us dangerous in their eyes because they cannot predict which way we are likely to jump. They cannot count on either our alliance or our enmity. THAT is directly attributable to Obama's presidency, and that is why his presidency is one foreign policy disaster after another.

[RoyGBiv]

Re: Syria - hype or war?
How about c. Incompetence?

Nice summary TAM. Probably the most accurate single paragraph description of BHO that I've read.

[texanjoker]

Let Syria sort itself out - we're not the world police.

That and we cannot afford it.

[sookandy]

I got this link from a friend that has worked a lot overseas. Pretty good article.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wor ... ed-to-ask/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[RoyGBiv]

What really galls me is the continuing spiral-down of US credibility.

So now Obama will go to Congress, get turned down, and Iran, Putin and the DPRK will be further emboldened. Obama, after ignoring and breaching the Constitution for nearly 5 years, will now use the Constitution for political cover.

I am disgusted beyond words.

[philip964]

"LET ALLAH SORT IT OUT

“So we’re bombing Syria because Syria is bombing Syria? And I’m the idiot?” - Sarah Palin"

Sarah Palin is also a facebook "like", so I get her posts. I thought this one was pretty good.