Syria and WMDs

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The US is reporting that they have a "high confidence" that chemical weapons including Sarin gas have been used by the Syrian regime against their opposition...

So what do we do now?

From the Msnbc article

The United States and its allies have concluded that the government of Bashar al-Assad has used chemical weapons in Syria's protracted civil war, leading President Barack Obama to broaden aid — including military support — to opposition groups.
The intelligence community concluded with "high confidence" that the Assad regime had used chemical weapons — including the nerve agent sarin — "on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year."
"The intelligence community estimates that 100 to 150 people have died from detected chemical weapons attacks in Syria to date; however, casualty data is likely incomplete," said Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes.

http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news...

The UN has to go in now right?

I seriously doubt we put boots on the ground, unless they're SF. More likely we'd do a larger version of what happened in Libya: no-fly zone, air strikes on armor and artillery and some strong incentives for Assad to abdicate rather than continue against all odds.

And the UN reported that it was actually the rebels that used sarin...

Either way, this falls firmly in the realm of not-our-f*cking-problem. If the French, the source of the intelligence, are so certain that the Syrian government used sarin they can mortgage their grandchildren's future and go after the Assad regime.

We've already done walked down this path before and, in case anyone forgot, we wasted a couple trillion dollars, killed tens of thousands of Iraqis, killed a few thousand Americans, forced millions of Iraqis to flee their own country, destabilized the entire region, turned Iran into a global player, and inflamed sectarian violence to the point that a civil war is all but assured in Iraq, but, sure, let's invade another Muslim country on dubious intelligence for sh*ts and giggles. The third time is the charm, right?

I'm sure Colin Powell isn't doing anything right now. We could always stick him in front of the UN Security Council again for old times' sake.

OG_slinger wrote:

And the UN reported that it was actually the rebels that used sarin...

Either way, this falls firmly in the realm of not-our-f*cking-problem.

Yeah, OG_slinger summed the reality up nicely. No good could possibly come from US intervention in Syria, regardless of the reason or circumstances. It has to be some bizarre cocktail of hubris and vanity that keeps the US going back time and again into middle eastern conflicts and it needs to stop. Now I can see the US providing intelligence, logistical, and diplomatic support to a larger coalition of nations against Assad. But US boots on the ground? No f'ing way.

Looks like we areopenly supporting the rebels now. 80's era proxy wat ftw.

It pisses me off to no end that folks in congress, especially McCain are sitting there saying things like the following, I bolded the part that twists my knickers from McCain's comments about the White House announcement that chemical weapons have been used.

"I applaud the president's decision. I applaud the fact that he has now acknowledged what the French and others and all the rest of us knew, that Bashar al-Assad was using chemical weapons."

BULLsh*t. How dare anyone in our government state that they "know something" as it relates to WMDS after the whole Iraq debacle. Unless you have a video of Assad admitting to doing it or video of government military loading and firing chem weapons we should back the hell out...

Someone needs to sit these idiots down for a sesame street level discussion on "knowing" versus "having a hunch."

Paleocon wrote:

Looks like we areopenly supporting the rebels now. 80's era proxy wat ftw.

Which brings us to the real question: who gets prosecuted for material support of terrorism when we provide supplies to the terrorists rebels?

Once again, the United States government proves itself completely incapable of understanding that in some conflicts there are no good guys to support.

Aetius wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

Looks like we areopenly supporting the rebels now. 80's era proxy wat ftw.

Which brings us to the real question: who gets prosecuted for material support of terrorism when we provide supplies to the terrorists rebels?

Once again, the United States government proves itself completely incapable of understanding that in some conflicts there are no good guys to support.

Precisely.

Given the choice between supporting an al-Qaeda affiliate or letting Hezbollah deal with them, we seem incapable of making the easy, better decision.

Provide weapons to the smaller, weaker group. Destroy any of their flying machines that leave the ground. Then leave the two hugh-man tribes to do battle fairly.

I really hate the idea of us getting involved here, but I can't fully explain why, other than that my cousin is in the military and that certainly worries me if boots are being put on the ground.

Demosthenes wrote:

I really hate the idea of us getting involved here, but I can't fully explain why, other than that my cousin is in the military and that certainly worries me if boots are being put on the ground.

I am inclined to agree with Aetius on this one that there are no good guys here. The suffering of others may play well as a motivation, but it is hardly a responsible one when it comes to the application of military force or political capital.

There is no compelling American interest here. And until there is, any intervention we commit will likely be a misguided one with no clear benefits and numerous unforeseen externalities.

Well, in war, there rarely are "good guys", just guys we support more as people and/or a nation. I would have hoped we'd have learned our lesson from Iraq. Middle eastern country with ethnically diverse but antagonistic groups locked into a space by insane mapmakers decades ago? Let's take out the guy that was kind of holding it together and try to get those groups to all play nice. That'll work super well this time.

What is the point of a UN ban on chemical weapons if it is not enforced? I agree it should not be US responsibility, the UN needs to lead the charge, but if they do nothing it continues the slide into irrelevancy.

Demosthenes wrote:

Well, in war, there rarely are "good guys", just guys we support more as people and/or a nation. I would have hoped we'd have learned our lesson from Iraq. Middle eastern country with ethnically diverse but antagonistic groups locked into a space by insane mapmakers decades ago? Let's take out the guy that was kind of holding it together and try to get those groups to all play nice. That'll work super well this time.

I think the reason folks like McCain have a hard on for getting rid of Asad is because his alliance with Iran represents a competing interest in the region. This is largely due to our distorted history vis Iran and the resultant imbalance of our natural interests in the region. As I have stated numerous times before, the Persians and Americans are natural allies in the region from the standpoint of aligning regional prerogatives. It is mostly because of our naive and misguided interventionism vis the Shah that this whole business is way out of balance.

Conversely, the radical Sunnis in the region are very much natural adversaries to our interests. If anything, the whole idea of a neo-caliphate state should run diametrically to our interests and just about any alternative short of total annihilation would seem preferrable. The fact that we are trying to force some kind of common ground with that interest group demonstrates some pretty profound ignorance of both history and politics.

I'll just leave this here.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...

When a 14-year-old boy from the Syrian city of Aleppo named Mohammad Qatta was asked to bring one of his customers some coffee, he reportedly refused, saying, “Even if [Prophet] Mohammed comes back to life, I won’t.”

According to a story reported by two grassroots Syrian opposition groups, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Aleppo Media Center, Qatta’s words got him killed. A group of Islamist rebels, driving by in a black car, reportedly heard the exchange. They stopped the car, grabbed the boy and took him away.

Qatta, in refusing to serve a customer coffee – it’s not clear why – had used a phrase that the Islamist rebels took as an insult toward the Prophet Mohammed, the most important figure in Islam. That offhand comment, made by a boy, was apparently enough for these rebels to warrant a grisly execution and public warning.

The rebels, according to ABC News’ reconstruction of the Syrian groups’ reports, appear to have whipped Qatta. When they brought him back to where they’d taken him, his head was wrapped by a shirt.

The rebels waited for a crowd to gather; Qatta’s parents were among them. Speaking in classical Arabic, they announced that Qatta had committed blasphemy and that anyone else who dared insult the Prophet Mohammed would share his fate. Then, the shirt still wrapped around the boy’s head, the rebels shot him in the mouth and neck.

Podunk wrote:

I'll just leave this here.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...

When a 14-year-old boy from the Syrian city of Aleppo named Mohammad Qatta was asked to bring one of his customers some coffee, he reportedly refused, saying, “Even if [Prophet] Mohammed comes back to life, I won’t.”

According to a story reported by two grassroots Syrian opposition groups, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Aleppo Media Center, Qatta’s words got him killed. A group of Islamist rebels, driving by in a black car, reportedly heard the exchange. They stopped the car, grabbed the boy and took him away.

Qatta, in refusing to serve a customer coffee – it’s not clear why – had used a phrase that the Islamist rebels took as an insult toward the Prophet Mohammed, the most important figure in Islam. That offhand comment, made by a boy, was apparently enough for these rebels to warrant a grisly execution and public warning.

The rebels, according to ABC News’ reconstruction of the Syrian groups’ reports, appear to have whipped Qatta. When they brought him back to where they’d taken him, his head was wrapped by a shirt.

The rebels waited for a crowd to gather; Qatta’s parents were among them. Speaking in classical Arabic, they announced that Qatta had committed blasphemy and that anyone else who dared insult the Prophet Mohammed would share his fate. Then, the shirt still wrapped around the boy’s head, the rebels shot him in the mouth and neck.

Danger! Danger, Will America!

LeapingGnome wrote:

What is the point of a UN ban on chemical weapons if it is not enforced? I agree it should not be US responsibility, the UN needs to lead the charge, but if they do nothing it continues the slide into irrelevancy.

It's not a UN ban on chemical weapons. It's an international treaty--the Chemical Weapons Convention--that's administered by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. And Syria just so happens to be one of the handful of countries that didn't sign the treaty.

So you're kinda asking the UN to go in and bust heads about something that is not even its responsibility because someone in Syria might have broken a treaty that doesn't apply to the country in the first place.

Podunk wrote:

I'll just leave this here.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...

When a 14-year-old boy from the Syrian city of Aleppo named Mohammad Qatta was asked to bring one of his customers some coffee, he reportedly refused, saying, “Even if [Prophet] Mohammed comes back to life, I won’t.”

According to a story reported by two grassroots Syrian opposition groups, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Aleppo Media Center, Qatta’s words got him killed. A group of Islamist rebels, driving by in a black car, reportedly heard the exchange. They stopped the car, grabbed the boy and took him away.

Qatta, in refusing to serve a customer coffee – it’s not clear why – had used a phrase that the Islamist rebels took as an insult toward the Prophet Mohammed, the most important figure in Islam. That offhand comment, made by a boy, was apparently enough for these rebels to warrant a grisly execution and public warning.

The rebels, according to ABC News’ reconstruction of the Syrian groups’ reports, appear to have whipped Qatta. When they brought him back to where they’d taken him, his head was wrapped by a shirt.

The rebels waited for a crowd to gather; Qatta’s parents were among them. Speaking in classical Arabic, they announced that Qatta had committed blasphemy and that anyone else who dared insult the Prophet Mohammed would share his fate. Then, the shirt still wrapped around the boy’s head, the rebels shot him in the mouth and neck.

So what? I don't mean to sound callous, but this kind of stuff happens all over the world, all the time.

JC wrote:

So what? I don't mean to sound callous, but this kind of stuff happens all over the world, all the time.

Did you read the article? The point is not that this happened, but that it is part of a pattern of atrocity from an increasingly prevalent foreign Islamic extremist element among the Syrian rebels. How do we keep from arming these bastards along with the pro-democracy rebels?

Short answer: we don't.

Aetius is right. There are no good guys here, or at least not enough of them.

JC wrote:

The US is reporting that they have a "high confidence" that chemical weapons including Sarin gas have been used by the Syrian regime against their opposition...

So what do we do now?

Ignore the misdirection and resume focusing attention on the NSA.

False flag accusation?

Demosthenes wrote:

False flag accusation?

No. More of a "please ignore the man behind the curtain" situation.

My serious question is why does Russia support Syria? Is Russia in favor of these oppressive regimes because they prevent the possibility of even more unpredictable Islamic regimes gaining power? Because one could argue that Russia has a bigger problem with Islamic extremists than we do - thinking of the separatists.

Personally, I want to stay out of the middle east as much as possible. A pox on all their houses.

Greg wrote:

My serious question is why does Russia support Syria?

It goes back to when Russia was the Soviet Union and the Cold War was being played out. The old 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' logic. Or I guess in this case, it's technically 'the enemy of my enemy's friend is my friend'

The current Syria is friendly to Russia and has been for decades. The two ways that Syria is most likely to go after a revolution (muslim religious state with or without democracy, or the less possible democracy beholden to western interests) are much less so.

CheezePavilion wrote:
Greg wrote:

My serious question is why does Russia support Syria?

It goes back to when Russia was the Soviet Union and the Cold War was being played out. The old 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' logic. Or I guess in this case, it's technically 'the enemy of my enemy's friend is my friend'

Exactly right. Putin's antiquated view of global politics mirrors the the old cold war objectives of Soviet Russia.

I think it's important to keep in mind that much of Russia's support for Syria is really not so much about Syria's importance in the region as it is meant to bolster Russia's influence on Iran. Going back to the days of Imperial Russia, Persia has long been a key objective for influence if not outright conquest by its gigantic neighbor to the north. Russian dreams of a warm water naval base may have waned in recent decades but Iran is still seen as key to counterbalancing Western influence throughout the Near East and southern Central Asia.

If memory serves, it was the same week, if not the same day, that we heard about the regime using chemical weapons that we heard similar reports about the rebels using them. There hasn't been so much as a whisper about the latter since, whereas the former is a foregone conclusion.

I'm really skeptical about this, and thought it was really stupid of the US to pick a side and start drawing lines in the sand before the conflict had a chance to solidify.

CheezePavilion wrote:
Greg wrote:

My serious question is why does Russia support Syria?

It goes back to when Russia was the Soviet Union and the Cold War was being played out. The old 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' logic. Or I guess in this case, it's technically 'the enemy of my enemy's friend is my friend'

Sort of like our support of Israel.

One interesting thing to note is that if Syria had indeed been a storehouse for Saddam's supposedly massive stocks of chemical and radiological weapons, they would have been exposed by the rebels, or used by the government (remember, in this magical story chemical weapons never degrade), or cited by the Israelis as a massive worry and threat. And yet, all we have heard about are the chemical weapons the Syrian government produces.

Yet another Neocon myth shot to hell.

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