Senate Intervention in Syria: Yay or Nay?

Which still leaves:

How many deaths are permitted for your operation to be a success? And innocents will die in it.
Who provides the military assets? A measure of what and who you'll lose in the conflict too.

You said earlier you were thinking of "Normandy", if you're referring to the Overlord landings then here's the kicker:

(my emphasis)
http://www.ddaymuseum.co.uk/d-day/d...-normandy-your-questions-answered#casualities

And that was day 1!

We have news stories when 1-2 soldiers die and people aren't happy about it, do you really think the population of whatever countries form the alliance to run this hypothetical war you have in mind - and it would be a war by any definition - would be able to endure such a level of loss? I don't think so. The scale of destruction that WW2 featured is inconceivable by modern standards - the 2003 shock and awe strikes? Limited compared to WW2, there the view would likely have been to destroy the entire city of Baghdad and everybody in it!

 

If your genius plan is to carpetbomb the place to hell, you might as well just drop a couple nukes on there. I don't think the two people left alive after are gonna thank you for "liberating" them. Lest we forget, the entire rationale behind this discussion about intervention is to punish the dictator for excessive cruelty against his own people, particularly civilians?

Well, good job! Your brilliant solution is to help him do that even more effectively.

 

FID, as usual, you have a point somewhere, but as usual you bury it in so much embarrassingly ignorant crock that it becomes the dumbest post in the thread.

JB, I want a world that doesn't give dictators a chance anymore. I'm done with them. They need to go. There's no good reason to keep them. Assad should have been removed from power a long time ago. I don't care about military casualties; why have an army if you fear your soldiers may die? And it's a bit of an exaggeration to claim that an invasion of Syria would cost as many lives as the liberation of Europe.

VVM, you're carpet-strawmanning.

 

Um, okay? Given that it took a decade and change to get to "first day of Operation overlord" casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq combined I'm not sure what your point is.

 

I really don't think I am. I mean, look at your last post. Your reasoning for this proposed plan of yours is that you are tired of dictators. How has any dictator affected your life whatsoever, that entitles you to make decisions about how and when to remove them? As opposed to, you know, those who actually live under their rule, I mean. But then again, I appreciate your candor. At least you're not hiding behind "liberating the oppressed" anymore.

 

If the Allies hadn't liberated Europe, I wouldn't have existed. Good enough?

But it's not about me. It's about "the oppressed".
I think everyone in the world should be allowed to vote, and that their elections should be fair.

 

That's pretty much the point Boba.

Despite waging 2 wars, there's been a comparatively low casualty count. Iraq fell apart very fast and Afghanistan was broken anyway.

In contrast. Syria, so far, despite 2 years of civil war, hasn't - therefore the death toll would likely be higher. What I'm getting at is the full campaign and subsequent nation-building that Watto appears to want would likely incur casualties far quicker and I'm not convinced the civilian populace would accept that. I'd suspect there's a fair amount of people who are looking at both and saying we did what's proposed in Syria here and there and look what happened.

Watto, that's a nice dream but democracy can't be compelled in the way you appear to be thinking and it takes a long time to take root, during which the entire process is very vulnerable to disruption. Which may be the problem - we're wanting instant results and gratification. The Cold War was a long game but it paid off, maybe what we need most is patience and have some faith in other's people's ability to sort out their affairs themselves.

 

100,000 people in two years isn't a high casualty count?

 

Wipe them out. All of them.

 

Oh, great example, Watto. Something that happened before you were even born. That's your experience with dictators that entitles you to make life and death decisions on behalf of a country of 20 million people. No, that's not nearly good enough, I'm sorry.

That's cute that you care about other people's right to vote, and it's easy to hurl out armchair warrior slogans like "live free or die" from the comfort of your living room. But if your family is ripped away from you because of a "liberating" mortar, my guess is you'd say the hell with voting. That's just my guess, though. For all I know, you're a paragon of virtue who would take it all with a smile and as you cast your ballot for the first time whisper to yourself "it was worth it" like out of a movie. Maybe you really are that guy. Forgive me if I have my doubts. But the more important question is: is the average Syrian that guy? The average North Korean? Iranian? Cuban? Maybe that's a question you should know the answer to beforehand. Since you're so passionate about their rights and wellbeing, I mean. I only mention it because you're so concerned for them.

 

My point is that it's easy to cheer on a war of choice from the confines of your own country. It's like the people we accuse of being chickenhawks in the US who cheer for war, but offer little support other than buying those damned yellow ribbons to 'support the troops'.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/the_baby_and_the_baath_water]Link[/url] for a detailed history of how badly the US has screwed up Syria thus far. True, European empires did not help the region, but we went and cocked it up even further.

Humans are, by and large, masochists. It's why we tolerate a certain amount of abuse from the people in charge and why people become wage slaves and tolerate it, why there's dictators, why democracy is kind of an anomaly in the world, etc. We (humans) get off on the abuse of others because want to feel safe and as long as there's a mostly peaceful status quo, we'll oblige it--no matter if that status quo is killing whole ethnic groups or just dissenters. Soo...yeah, ideally everyone should be free and allowed to vote and elections should be fair, but when a society already distrusts your every motive, that makes it harder to do. And besides...lobbing a few missiles to show our displeasure isn't going to help. Neither is an outright invasion. Unless you know something I don't.

 

You're both making rather silly points, my good friends.
I can't have an opinion because? I'm not in a war?
People can't have democracy because? They'd still get killed? They get killed now.

Ben's point makes the most sense here: that you can't subjugate a country into democracy. So instead of turning our backs, we should be thinking about how it can be done.

 

You can, but it's a lot easier to cheer for a country to go to war when your country has no stake in it. I think Americans are rather sick of war and the Middle East. If that entire area collapsed in to the sea that no one would shed a tear as (and this is within recent history) nothing of value would be lost. Oil...'ehh...it's on its way out anyway, plus there's offshore oil rigs if necessary. This seems a little colder and more callous than a lot of people, but I'm frankly sick of the entire region.

And people can have democracy, but they need to be willing participants and so far no one is too willing to make it work.

 

I'd also add that you're falling in to the same trap that the US fell into originally in that link I provided you.

 

Oh you were counting the Iraqi ones too Boba? Quite seriously,in that sense, that's what you'd need to avoid in Syria but I doubt that could happen without a ground campaign and those tend to be costly and very bloody.

I think patience plays a key role, Iran is heading in the right direction - it may not appear to be as fast as people would like, but it's the right direction and they have to do it themselves if it's to last. Plus if we stop threatening to bomb them for the sin of using nuclear technology, they might be less scared and so less motivated to get nuclear weapons. There's a fairly reasonable case for an Iranian bomb in self-defence terms - it has Pakistan to the East and Israel to the West, both not exactly friendly to it. Oh and Iraq, which didn't have nukes, got invaded a decade ago. It's not hard to see the line of thought...

Plus what of those countries that freed themselves in the Arab Spring and we haven't heard much about? Might be no news is good news! Have to have a look online to see what's going on in those cases.

The problem in Syria is there is a litany of horror stories, with atrocities attributed to both the government and rebels. For all Saddam was a bastard, he wasn't friendly to Al Qaeda, invading Iraq helped them in that respect - will the same happen in Syria if we intervene?

One of the great sins of the Cold War was in settling for lesser evils in order to defeat the perceived greater evil of the USSR and a couple of those really bit us on the arse in the years following the war's end. What I'm wanting is for us to be smarter in foreign policy, especially where military intervention is concerned - with particular to the costs and consequences. So we don't repeat the sins of the past and fight today's wars by fighting the last war. So far this hasn't happened and our politicians have been permitted to be quite irresponsibly blase about it, but I think that's changing.

No one in the British Parliament who opposed the motion for military action was likely of the view: Screw 'em, they can look after themselves. More likely it was: Throwing a few bombs around is unlikely to help the Syrian public much, so where else will this go? Is there a defined military strategy in place with clear objectives? What happens afterwards if it's successful? There's very little in the way of clear answers right now, we're simply in the school of "Something Must Be Done!" - which is no longer good enough. After Iraq people want to know the what, how, when, for how long and at what cost? Trust in politicians is at an all-time low in the UK and not just due to Iraq.

 

Who here thinks Obama goes ahead anyway even if Congress says no?

Apparently, Damascus is celebrating today, Assad claiming that the 'united' front of Iran, Hezbollah, and Syria has 'frightened' the US in general and Obama in particular.

If they want to irritate Congress into voting 'yes' out of spite, they should keep this up. Then again, I previously mentioned the law of unintended consequences; if Congress does say 'no', and more chemical weapons are used (or Iran gets into it with Israel), will they reverse course? Will the US be more willing to jump into a bigger mess after saying no to a supposedly 'limited' one?

It's going to be an interesting week.

 

What exactly are you trying to say? That all the groups listed on this Wikipedia page are evil? How can you say that for even a majority of them?

 

Isn't that the definition of a "chicken-hawk"? Seems like a pretty good reason to not talk, to my mind.

There might be differences in scale. Plus, how do we even know that Syrians want our intervention? We know those who are currently fighting probably do, but how representative are they of the population?

You know the expression "people get the leaders they deserve"? Democracy in the West didn't become what it is now overnight. It took a long time for it to come into its own. Democracy isn't just being able to vote. That's a small part of it. The people have to have a democratic mindset. That's much more important, and the Middle East that I know isn't there. I see no sense of civic responsibility.

 

So what? They have a propaganda machine, nothing particularly surprising. Hell, the Syrians likely scooped up this guy!

 

VVM, I had to look it up, but no - a chicken hawk is something else. At any rate, it's silly to tell me to shut up. I don't think I have to explain that to you. None of us is going to Syria; replace 'arm chair' with desk chair' and we're all there. We're debating the moral and socio-political ramifications of a hypothetical war that nobody's actually fighting yet. I would hope solid reasoning is more important than whether or not you live in the US or not.


And don't think that decisions made by the US don't have a direct impact my little bike-ridden country.

The sentiment that the people in the Middle East "don't have a democratic mindset" was patronizing before 2010; now it's just outdated.

 

Have you avoided active military service? Have you also spoken in support of a war?

 

FID, it doesn't matter.

 

Well, it depends on the definition. That is what a chickenhawk is, however, I'm not using it as such. I still think your cheerleading is a lot more glib since there's no personal stake for you. You won't even have to pay for this clusterfrick whereas we would--either in lives or money. Hey, here's an idea: petition your government or if you're living in the States, go ahead and petition them. Tell them of the horrors you personally think are happening and that you want your military to get involved. Otherwise your view that the US should get involved strikes me as a bit hollow.

 

Rather, it's perhaps more accurate to say it's rarely been permitted to develop. I think that's the problem though, we're expecting the Middle East, a very diverse set of cultures and beliefs, to manifest the sort of western US / European democracy in months or years that took centuries to develop!

The idea of not fixing elections, of branches to government to monitor and check the other, the rule of law, the recognition that elites can't run the country, that legitimacy is deemed to flow from the expressed will of the populace at the ballot box - they all took time to really get established. Egypt throws off a repressive regime a year ago, they hit a major bump in the road in the recent months and suddenly they're being written off? Kind of arrogant no?

Is everything sorted in Eastern Europe, 20 years after the Velvet Revolutions? Arguably not, but that's no cause to damn them as failures. The Middle East may need as long or longer. Plus the societies in both cases need to adjust to there not being ongoing monitoring and the end of secret police. That's something we can't really comprehend because we're used to freedom. I mean I'm typing this without any notion that it may be read and police despatched to my house because of some subtext some zealous secret policeman has noticed.

 

FID we're not making policy here. We're reacting to the news. My view that the US (and France) should get involved is a reaction to Obama's (and Hollande's) view that the US (and France) should get involved. That's all.

The parliament of my country has already voted participation down. Wouldn't have helped much anyway. Do you have any idea FID how pervasive the US presence has been in the past 70 years? Do you understand how their idea of policing the world has shaped the world we lived in? It's not just your taxes. It's had more impact on more people outside the US than in it.

I'm not saying the US is under any obligation, just that they have historically been setting themselves up for this role. It's their mantle. Unless you think anybody else could handle it better?