Senate Intervention in Syria: Yay or Nay?

I'm not sure what kind of bias you would expect NPR to have in explaining the tactical reasons that Assad might have had for killing 1,000 people with poison gas.

A helpful chart to clear up the international picture a bit:

 

Nay. This has the potential to become a massive clusterfrak, for the US and the world in general. Regardless of whatever horrors this petty despot causes in his own country, the US and the world don't need another round of renewed West Vs. East warfare right now.

 

Use tear-gas? I was pro-intervention when I knew there was a pro-democracy group there, but they were squashed by our inaction. So the only choice is between supporting a dictator and supporting terrorists--either way, we lose. The best thing that intervention can accomplish now is to contain the violence.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/30/opinion/brooks-one-great-big-war.html?ref=opinion&_r=1&]New[/url] York Times had a pretty decent piece on all of this. I hate to say it, but it really is starting to look like the beginnings of World War III. I really wish we would just sit this one out, but the 'political elite' are pushing for our intervention and Obama risks looking weak and we can't have that. Then he might really be comparable to Jimmy Carter.

 

That's one of the risks of U.S. military action, and a well-established one, that U.S. cruise missile strikes will just draw more fanatics into the conflict. One of the problems with the region in general are the unconscionably high growth rates across much of the Muslim world creating a youthful population with limited economic opportunity. Armed conflict is just something for all those unemployed young men to do with their time. There are nearly unlimited numbers of unemployed young men with nothing better to do with their time than die in some kind of government turmoil or sectarian strife.

 

No matter how stubborn an enemy is, there is never justification for using illegal forms of warfare. They are illegal for good reason, plus there was nothing stopping any of it from injuring innocent bystanders.

I think part of Cameron's problem was that he wanted to vote on action immeadiately and not wait for the results of the UN inspection which is what Labour wanted. Depending on those results, maybe the government would have supported Cameron, now he looks a fool.
Plus the country, like the US, isn't exactly in the best financial shape. I think most of the general population would prefer the government work on fixing unemployment and the economy than waste loads of money it doesn't have on a war it doesn't have to be involved in.

 

Cameron outlined his position publicly at least, which is helpful:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...ime-uk-government-legal-position-html-version

It's interesting to me that chemical weapon use is described as a crime, but military intervention is based on humanitarian intervention, justified in part by 100,000 deaths, at least 99% of which were not caused by chemical weapons.

The argument for humanitarian intervention seems almost entirely not based on the use of chemical weapons, despite this statement:

Renewed attacks using chemical weapons by the Syrian regime would cause further suffering and loss of civilian lives, and would lead to displacement of the civilian population on a large scale and in hostile conditions

as it seems clear that at least 99% of the suffering and loss of civilian lives and the ongoing refugee crisis has not the slightest thing to do with the use of chemical weapons.

If there has been a case for humanitarian intervention, it has been rock solid for many, many months, and it is not clear how the argument above would look any different if any reference to the use of chemical weapons were completely removed.

 

That attack on NPR was unwarranted. Do you have any objections to the content of what they said?

 

A large part of the problem here in the UK is Cameron and co have been arguing incessantly that the country is skint! Yet there was money enough to engage in Libya and now apparently enough cash to do Syria too, well IF those funds have magically been found, they can be used to fix the UK, screw the international stage. Modern warfare is prohibitively expensive.

Cameron's attitude up until last night was: By jingo, ALONE! He didn't want to hear: We have no guns, we have no ships, we have no money too! Now he has to.

The US? Will get over it, we're all grown ups, aren't we?

Besides, you can always ask the French for help!

What a lot of people are very wary of is not just cooked-up intelligence but out right deceit in the proposed - oh, no, it's not regime change, I don't think anyone in the UK believes that! Not least, as if logically considered, what will it take to stop Assad using chemical weapons? A hell of a lot more than a load of bombs and Tomahawks. And there's no shortage of nasty crap going on around the world, what's so special about Syria? Other than they know how to use Facebook?

Of course, the irony here is many of the same points being brought up with regard to Syria were also raised on Iraq. Yeah, Saddam's was a bastard, but he's was far from being the only one.

 

I think next generations of drone weapons will make it even easier to engage in limited military attacks. Once we have carriers stocked with drone aircraft and long range drone bombers to add to our cruise missiles and current drone strike capabilities, the idea of the U.S.experiencing even a few months without being involved in an armed strike somewhere within someone else's borders seems laughable. Has there even been an administration in my lifetime that wasn't involved in some kind of major military combat somewhere? Carter? Ford? Reagan had his little pointless war. Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2, Obama.

This is the fate of superpowers in decline. Squander an ever-increasing level of resources in an ill-fated effort to deny the impending loss of superpower status.

 

You can drag that decline out for another 50 years - that's what we've been doing since Suez!

 

It's telling I think that since the year 2000, the U.S. has fought two of its five longest wars. These short punctuated wars distract us from the long, permanent war against our own diminished global status.

 

I think it played a major part in the parliamentary debate last night, I mean:

2001: Afghanistan to ?
2003: Iraq to 2008/9?
2011: Libya
2013: Syria - proposed

I think a large part of it, by now, was: Are you bloody kidding?

 

This is clearly something we should not be getting involved in. There is no upside to US intervention, intervention isn't even the right word. We aren't going to do enough for it to be intervention. There is nothing to gain here. Obama should keep his trap shut, and put this on the UN.

And when I say keep his mouth shut, I don't mean he shouldn't speak at all on this. He can condemn, he can talk about the morality of gassing women and children. What he should not do, is reinforce any more of his red line nonsense. That was a mistake, but it's one that's already made. There is no reason to compound it.

 

So apparently France is America's "oldest ally", that's new to me. They'll have to joyride on US carriers instead of ours

Lots of talk on the news that this will affect the UK's global standing, you'd think allies expect Cameron simply to defy Parliament and sanction war anyway. He has the authority to do that, but such a move might be the end of him. To defy his own government, acting apparently on the will of its people, would be a bad move however much others might like him for doing it.
It's not like the US needs help to do what it plans.

 

Well, France has been involved in the US' formation since the revolution. Hell, our revolution was one big proxy war between Britain and France. Sooo...yeah...they are our oldest ally.

 

Didn't they help you the US gain independance from the motherland that's now finally parting ways?
Go France!!

EDIT: What FID said, but with "Go France!!" added.

 

Also, coolest-looking jets in all of Europe.

 

Which nobody can afford because Europe is broke.

 

Except France, which owns them.

 

Personally, I always liked the Harriers and Tornados.

 

Bit early for the warnography isn't it, guys?

 

If they were new and active, yeah, but they scrapped the Harriers, Tornadoes are on the way out too. 'Sides, in Dragon's Den parlance, we're out! So you'll just see loads of F-planes!

 

Why? Let's run over a few scenarios:

1) The US strikes Syria and cripples Assad's ability to control his military and said government is toppled. In that scenario fundamentalist Muslims take over Syria, the violence 'ends' but gives the people we claim to be against a fertile breeding ground for all manner of religious extremism. And three to four months later the area erupts in violence again and likely uses chemical weapons, again, thus rendering the current 'intervention' pointless.

2) The Assad government absorbs the strikes, nothing changes, and people still die by the thousands only this time there's an outside aggressor that everyone in the region can get behind since we're already 'the great Satan'. So now everyone is stuck in the situation they are in now except now there's a bogeyman to unite behind.

3) Another strike and this time we need troops to kind of break things up, again we're seen as the aggressor only now we're invaders instead of 'peacekeepers'.

4) Do nothing, the violence continues to happen but the rest of the world is no worse for wear.

I realize none of these or all of these are likely, but it's not our place to be the policeman and as was mentioned earlier in the thread: we already use chemical weapons in our bombs. Yet no one is calling for intervention against us. Or is it only the brown people with the scary-sounding names that we don't trust with these weapons?

 

Depleted uranium may technically be a "chemical weapon," but it is not a poison gas that tends to fall under the umbrella label and is not classified as a chemical weapon under the treaties banning them.

Don't get me wrong, I think depleted uranium shouldn't be used. But the U.S. is using pretty standard language here.

 

I've been thinking this for some time. I'm convinced WWIII will begin before 2020, I just wasn't expecting it so soon.

And I agree with everyone that this will not return the US to superpower status, but rather further fracture an already multipolar world.

One interesting thought: with the proliferation of drone technology, eventually, America's geographic isolation may no longer be a credible deterrent. Even countries that are frenemies like China could conceivably launch a drone attack from some obscure location in the Atlantic against, say, New York and then deny any knowledge of it.

I am beginning to believe humanity has finally reached the crossroads; either we will find some way to solve our collective problems through technology, edcuation, and innovation, or we will beat ourselves to death.

Based on the way things are going, I have a feeling it's going to be the latter, and it will involve both the slow transformation of the western democracies into more authoritarian entities (already happening) followed by financial collapse, ruin, and finally, global war. The MIddle East is really nothing more than the match already hovering over our collective tinderbox.

Peace (I hope),

V-03