[Discussion] Syrian Conflict General Discussion

A thread to discuss the ongoing Syrian conflict.

Reaper81 wrote:

And they recognize how incredibly weak the US administration is.

Though, to be fair, the whole Obama 'line in the sand' thing turned out to be a bit of a joke too. I realize that international politics are horrifyingly complicated, but every parent knows you make no threats you don't intend to back up.

I have a great deal of admiration for Obama, but I really feel he slipped up on this one.

I suspect Obama felt pushed to do something, and figured a bluff was as reasonable as anything else. But Syria is just a fecal sandwich for us. There literally is no good way to be involved with it. Every bite is going to taste terrible, no matter which side you start from.

Robear wrote:

I suspect Obama felt pushed to do something, and figured a bluff was as reasonable as anything else. But Syria is just a fecal sandwich for us. There literally is no good way to be involved with it. Every bite is going to taste terrible, no matter which side you start from.

Oh for sure. As I said - horrifyingly complicated.

Maddow Slams Trump's Weak And Confused Response To Syria Crisis

Rallick wrote:
Reaper81 wrote:

And they recognize how incredibly weak the US administration is.

Though, to be fair, the whole Obama 'line in the sand' thing turned out to be a bit of a joke too. I realize that international politics are horrifyingly complicated, but every parent knows you make no threats you don't intend to back up.

I have a great deal of admiration for Obama, but I really feel he slipped up on this one.

The problem being, he had nothing else TO do other than completely ignore the situation, which wasn't going to play well either. Republicans, after calling anyone who didn't support the war in Iraq a terrorist sympathizer, then tried to lay all responsibility for Syria on "Well, this is OBAMA'S war, not the American people's" just like they did with Clinton in Eastern Europe.

And this is after a good deal of fatigue to war in the first place thanks to Iraq.

Obama didn't ignore Syria, we made movements to go in an bomb them, and our threat of force was sufficient for Syria to agree to destroy their chemical weapons. For some reason the narrative became "Obama did nothing" which is wholly false. We got close to actually attacking them.

Whether that was a bluff from the beginning or not is hard to know, but either way it worked to get Syria to destroy their weapons cache.

The issue is that Syria sucks and while they destroyed a lot of chemical weapons, it doesn't mean they don't have any, as can be seen from the latest attack. Chlorine-based chemical attacks are easy to do since chlorine is needed in normal, civilian life.

Rallick wrote:
Reaper81 wrote:

And they recognize how incredibly weak the US administration is.

Though, to be fair, the whole Obama 'line in the sand' thing turned out to be a bit of a joke too. I realize that international politics are horrifyingly complicated, but every parent knows you make no threats you don't intend to back up.

I have a great deal of admiration for Obama, but I really feel he slipped up on this one.

I suppose I could have fleshed out my thoughts a bit more.

Obama was very hands-off on Syria. I don't know that I would label the approach weak in the same way I labelled this administration weak, though.

Would I rather we intervened years ago? Yes. But that preference is a fantasy. The last two decades have shown that bullets don't solve problems. They just create new or different problems.

There is zero international will to solve the multifarious humanitarian crises in the Mideast. There is zero will domestically. Plenty of social media outrage and tough talk, sure.

Little Syrian babies being gassed to death is beyond-the-pale outrageous. But we can't bring them back to life nor will bombing the f*ck out of Assad. Sending in 1st Marine Division to prevent further loss of life in the forseeable future is a mission without end.

We are still in Iraq. We are still in Afghanistan. Nearly 16 years later, we still have soldiers directly in combat.

I came home from Iraq in July 2007. 2007. The war was old to America then. Syria? It's just another place on a map to America that isn't America.

And Trump? He'll either do something stupid or he'll do what his security team tell him. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Trump is stupid and weak enough to believe that a "new" war will boost his approval ratings.

The only problem is that gassed Syrian babies are not dead New Yorkers and I belive that most Americans would not support any protracted combat.

Obama went to Congress for authorization to engage Syria. Congress failed to give that authorization. Should Obama not have gone to Congress?

Baron Of Hell wrote:

Obama went to Congress for authorization to engage Syria. Congress failed to give that authorization. Should Obama not have gone to Congress?

Obama was correct to have went to Congress first.

A few years ago, I felt very different (see my posts in favor of extrajudicial drone-killings) than I do today. Did I feel better after known scumbag al-Awlaki was killed? Yes. Did it solve anything at all? Hell no.

Editted for clarity.

Baron Of Hell wrote:

Obama went to Congress for authorization to engage Syria. Congress failed to give that authorization. Should Obama not have gone to Congress?

Yeah, this is up there with McConnell throwing his hands up in exasperation like "How can Democrats be gearing up to stop our Supreme Court pick? Why would they even do that?" in terms of stupid memories regarding Republicans and Syria.

Reaper81 wrote:

A few years ago, I felt very different (see my posts in favor of extrajudicial drone-killings) than I do today. Did I feel better after known scumbag al-Awlaki was killed? Yes. Did it solve anything at all? Hell no.

Editted for clarity.

Thoughts on UBL raid?

boogle wrote:
Reaper81 wrote:

A few years ago, I felt very different (see my posts in favor of extrajudicial drone-killings) than I do today. Did I feel better after known scumbag al-Awlaki was killed? Yes. Did it solve anything at all? Hell no.

Editted for clarity.

Thoughts on UBL raid?

Tougher call for me. 9/11 was a significant motivator for me in volunteering for overseas service so an American administration dealing with Bin Laden was personally important to me.

As an aside, I agreed with Iraq initially but see it for the massive mistake it was now. Saddam was demonstrably worse in every conceivable way than a guy like al-Awalki (and arguably even Bin Laden.) The world has only gotten worse as a direct result of us removing Saddam and the Baath Party.

Bin Laden was the self-admitted most significant player in 9/11 and I don't know that any legal system on Earth would have been sufficiently fair or unbiased for him.

He was out of the game a long time and I (admittedly not being up to snuff on my current AQ spin-off groups) don't believe that killing him was a major motivating factor for IS or other post 9/11 terror groups.

I guess I never imagined any scenario in which he rots in a Supermax being remotely plausible.

Furthermore, I appreciate Obama's decision to send SEALs to do the job. Just given how delicate the situation was (solid but not 100% verified intel, obvious collusion with Pakistan, untested technology for the stealth helicopters, proximity to civilians) I don't know that we would see a similar decision out of a second-term Obama.

TL; DR: We're not better off that he is dead. However, I don't know that we're worse off, either.

The problem at its core is ideological and won't go away regardless of how many people we kill.

That's not to say we don't have a right to go and attack terrorists, but most of energy seems to go into that and it's a losing battle, inviting only more and more aggression against us.

garion333 wrote:

The problem at its core is ideological and won't go away regardless of how many people we kill.

That's not to say we don't have a right to go and attack terrorists, but most of energy seems to go into that and it's a losing battle, inviting only more and more aggression against us.

Which holds true in the context of Syria and its present leadership.

Considering the anti refugee rhetoric, the verbal fellating of Assad, and the calls for "Russian cooperation" that preceded all of this (not to mention the airstrikes that killed dozens of civilians), one has to wonder why this particular attack caused such a huge shift in not just rhetoric, but policy position.

It really makes me wonder who stands to gain and what.

Reaper81 wrote:

Furthermore, I appreciate Obama's decision to send SEALs to do the job. Just given how delicate the situation was (solid but not 100% verified intel, obvious collusion with Pakistan, untested technology for the stealth helicopters, proximity to civilians) I don't know that we would see a similar decision out of a second-term Obama.

TL; DR: We're not better off that he is dead. However, I don't know that we're worse off, either.

Was it ever going to not be JSOC elements that took down UBL?
Still heated on the bragging about a successful hit on TV instead of Milosevicing the guy.

boogle wrote:
Reaper81 wrote:

Furthermore, I appreciate Obama's decision to send SEALs to do the job. Just given how delicate the situation was (solid but not 100% verified intel, obvious collusion with Pakistan, untested technology for the stealth helicopters, proximity to civilians) I don't know that we would see a similar decision out of a second-term Obama.

TL; DR: We're not better off that he is dead. However, I don't know that we're worse off, either.

Was it ever going to not be JSOC elements that took down UBL?
Still heated on the bragging about a successful hit on TV instead of Milosevicing the guy.

I neglected to mention my reason for supporting a raid instead of drone strike. Not for bragging rights, rather, a blind drone strike (even when there is a high likelihood that the intended target is present, collateral damage is likely to be low, etc) is always problematic.

Yes.
Yes.
But like in my dream scenario they use handcuffs instead of multiple 5.56 rounds.

You've done your reading on ST6 I assume? That was never on the cards.

Insanity

All it will do is make things tense around the world and further prolong the war in Syria.

Let's think this through.

Chances are really good that they, in accordance to the conflict avoidance rules between the US and Russia, we informed the Russians of the impending strikes beforehand to make sure their in country personnel would be safely out of the area before the missiles landed.

It is also pretty safe to say that the Russians would not be stingy with that information with their Syrian allies.

My guess was that this was just a waste of $25 million in military hardware.

Paleocon wrote:

My guess was that this was just a waste of $25 million in military hardware.

Just shy of $94 million. The unit cost of the Tomahawks fired is $1.59 million.

- The target was the infrastructure at Shayrat Airfield in western Syria (where the chemical weapons were believed to be launched from).
- Russia was notified before the attack, the Russian military area in that airbase was deliberately not targeted.

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Tillerson: Strikes don't signal change in military action policy in Syria

"I would not in any way attempt to extrapolate that to a change in our policy or posture relative to our military activities in Syria today. There has been no change in that status," he added. "I think it does demonstrate that President Trump is willing to act when governments and actors cross the line and cross the line on violating commitments they've made and cross the line in the most heinous of ways."

More than anything else this attack has shades of the 98 strikes on Afghanistan and Sudan. A pretty transparent attempt to distract from domestic issues.

And justify the huge bump in military spending. Got to show some results for a 50 billion bump.

And now Putin stirs the pot.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has denounced the US strike against a Syrian government airbase as "aggression against a sovereign state in violation of the norms of international law."

CNN wrote:

The Russian Defense Ministry said Friday that it plans to bolster and increase the effectiveness of the air defense system in Syria following the attack.

"In order to protect the most sensitive objects of the Syrian infrastructure, a system of measures to bolster and increase the effectiveness of the Syrian armed forces' air defense systems will be implemented," ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a statement carried on state media.

Russia earlier announced it would suspend an October 2015 agreement aimed at minimizing risks of in-flight incidents between Russian and US-led-coalition aircraft.

The risk of a direct collision between the US and Russia in Syria had "significantly increased" since the US missile strike, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

In a regular call with reporters, Peskov added that it was "indisputable" that the US airstrike on Syria "was carried out for the benefit of ISIS and other terrorist organizations."

Russian Senator Konstantin Kosachev wrote:

"In one way or another, Russian cruise missiles continue to strike terrorists, and American ones strike government forces which, in fact, lead the war against terrorists."

He continued: "I'm afraid that given such an approach, the desired Russian-American anti-terrorist coalition in Syria, so often talked about since Trump rose to power, will repose in the Lord before it has the chance to be born."

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Shockingly, it appears that Syria knew it was coming and moved their sh*t.

Add in reports that we didn't even crater the airfield and we spent $90m so 45 could appear decisive for about 10 hours.