[Official] Do you support military strikes against Syria?

Because her tenure as SOS was an abysmal failure from Russia to Egypt to the Falkland Islands.

 

Uh, right. Care to point out how she failed on those? This should be amusing.

Though I do think txtony is wrong as well, because I'm not particularly certain why Kerry is all of a sudden the hawk and Clinton the dove, when everything in their history has basically had it the other way around.

 

She was an absolute mastermind with breathtaking breakthrough of all the major issues.

Of course she was not and I doubt history will said she was anywhere close to your opinion of her either.

In this ever increasing complex world with diminishing US power, I doubt there would be much of any transformative policy the US can do oversea. Focus on cleaning our own house first and perhaps one day we can be that again.

Anyhow, I'm sure you disagree about Clinton and we can leave it as that (or you can argue with Korjirou).

 

There were plenty of opportunities for Clinton to promote stronger actions and involvement but did not. Kerry, in a couple of month since SOS is advocating major military involvement.

 

Don't fool yourself. The only reason Hillary would be more dovish right now than Kerry (publicly) is because she doesn't want any of this baggage on her neck when she runs for president. Kerry is hardly a hawk. Clinton has voted in favor of military action in the past, heck, it was used against her by Obama.

I think she thanks her stars that she is out office now so this doesn't get tied to her. Her run as secretary of state was a global campaign trip.

 

The SOS promotes what the president tells them to promote.

 

If you read nothing else today, please read this:

A war the Pentagon doesn’t want
By Robert H. Scales
Robert H. Scales, a retired Army major general, is a former commandant of the U.S. Army War College

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/us-military-planners-dont-support-war-with-syria/2013/09/05/10a07114-15bb-11e3-be6e-dc6ae8a5b3a8_story.html

 

Could easily be the other ways around. What changed in the last few months? New SOS and SOD. I'm thinking it's more likely Kerry convinced Obama.

 

History is important. Current actions is more important. You can guess all you want for the reasons why Clinton didn't push more aggressively for involvement when she was SOS, but it is what it is. I'm thinking she thought Military actions wasn't in the best interest of the US more than for her own political future. But you can think whatever you want.

 

There are articles out there that say she and the generals were actually pushing for intervention early on and Obama ignored them.

 

Use of chemical weapons.

 

If he doesn't want to get more involved he just doesn't have to. The majority of the American people will be satisfied. The Republican leadership will call him a traitor, a Kenyan a communist fascist or whatever as usual.

Obama is a political calculating machine without strong beliefs aside from the strong belief to be "bipartisan" whatever that means with today's GOP

 

Obama shoud just get over himself and surrender to the judgement of the interantional community and the American people. Don't worry about McCain, Lieberman, the Israelis and the Saudis and the Washington hawks.

 

Unless, of course, he thinks it's the right thing to do.

So your argument is that he's a political calculating machine, and simultaneously that he's doing something that most of the country - both parties - is opposed to? That makes perfect sense.

 

What is this universal judgment of the international community? Half the G-20 has come out in support of action. 7 countries have come out against. In the region, Iran is supposed, while Turkey, Israel, and the Arab League are in favor.

 

People keep ignoring this. We signed the Geneva Protocol forbidding the use of chemical weapons in 1925, and the subsequent biological and chemical conventions of 1972 and 1993. Again, so many of you are ignoring what's behind President Obama taking this kind of stand. He's siding with international law. The President wants to punish Assad's regime for doing what should be unthinkable, using weapons of mass destruction. Their use is so horrific that no less a figure than the German madman, Adolf Hitler, a veteran of the trenches of WWI, declined to use them during WWII. Honestly, it boggles my mind to read some of these comments. I just wish Obama had already acted. At least we aren't seeing the vastly different reaction of President Ronald Reagan to Saddam's use of chemical weapons, including Sarin and Mustard gas, during the Iraq-Iran War, when he approved giving Saddam critical intelligence about Iran's massing of troops at a weak point in his defenses in the south. The resulting Iraqi chemical weapon attacks on the massed Iranian forces was devastating.

Below is a quote from the aritcle in the respected publication, Foreign Policy, in their September 6, 2013 issue:

The U.S. government may be considering military action in response to chemical strikes near Damascus. But a generation ago, America's military and intelligence communities knew about and did nothing to stop a series of nerve gas attacks far more devastating than anything Syria has seen, Foreign Policy has learned.

In 1988, during the waning days of Iraq's war with Iran, the United States learned through satellite imagery that Iran was about to gain a major strategic advantage by exploiting a hole in Iraqi defenses. U.S. intelligence officials conveyed the location of the Iranian troops to Iraq, fully aware that Hussein's military would attack with chemical weapons, including sarin, a lethal nerve agent.

The intelligence included imagery and maps about Iranian troop movements, as well as the locations of Iranian logistics facilities and details about Iranian air defenses. The Iraqis used mustard gas and sarin prior to four major offensives in early 1988 that relied on U.S. satellite imagery, maps, and other intelligence. These attacks helped to tilt the war in Iraq's favor and bring Iran to the negotiating table, and they ensured that the Reagan administration's long-standing policy of securing an Iraqi victory would succeed. But they were also the last in a series of chemical strikes stretching back several years that the Reagan administration knew about and didn't disclose.

U.S. officials have long denied acquiescing to Iraqi chemical attacks, insisting that Hussein's government never announced he was going to use the weapons. But retired Air Force Col. Rick Francona, who was a military attaché in Baghdad during the 1988 strikes, paints a different picture.

"The Iraqis never told us that they intended to use nerve gas. They didn't have to. We already knew," he told Foreign Policy.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articl...prove_america_helped_saddam_as_he_gassed_iran

And below is a description of the Geneva Protocol:

The Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare, usually called the Geneva Protocol, is a treaty prohibiting the first use of chemical and biological weapons. It was signed at Geneva on 17 June 1925 and entered into force on 8 February 1928. It was registered in League of Nations Treaty Series on 7 September 1929.[4] The Geneva Protocol is a protocol to the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907.

It prohibits the use of "asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of all analogous liquids, materials or devices" and "bacteriological methods of warfare". This is now understood to be a general prohibition on chemical weapons and biological weapons, but has nothing to say about production, storage or transfer. Later treaties did cover these aspects — the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Protocol

 

He is more afraid of the organized GOP opposition than he is the American people. He apparenty has the Democrats for good or bad.

Hey he does think "it is the right thing to do" strategically.

 

It would be easier to take his devotion to international law more seriously if he would not continue to support Israel flaunting international law.

Oh well, at least he is better than Romney.

 

If it were the rebels who used chemical weapons, would Obama seek to punish them?

I don't think so. This isn't just about use of chemical weapons. Let's all be real here.

 

I think the era of the importance of international law is coming to an end. The laws only matter in so much as they're enforced and enforced by credible actors. The US lost it's credibility in Iraq and most of the world doesn't care about the enforcement unless it affects them directly. It's all a death blow to the UN. It's past the point being useful. The future needs to be about regional organizations acting and handling business in it's backyard.