This is the only action I would remotely support. Neutralize the CBW and otherwise stay out of it. I don't want Assad to use those weapons against civilians. I also don't want him to ship them off for "safe keeping" to Hizbollah. I also *especially* don;t want them to fall into the hands of Al Qaeda/Al Nusra. I'd be OK with a limited air campaign to eliminate and/or secure those weapons. I am not sure how they are distributed, though. If they are widely dispersed such an operation would be... tedious. And dangerous. But beyond that, we really, really need to stay out of this one.
Probably not much but I am not the OP and didn't frame the question. Anyway this is still pretty ironic considering your first post in a thread about foreign policy is to accuse people of being "libs" while you preach about not focussing on political affiliation.
It does seem like the conspiracy theories are out. That said I won't rule out that the Rebels used gas but most of the evidence is that Assad's forces used them.
Whoever said this was sarin gas? From what I understand, it isn't. In fact, the symptoms are closer to what happens to pesticide exposure...and apparently the rebels were fighting around a bunch of farms.
Semi-related note: A hacker group aligned Assad claims to have hacked NYT and Twitter today: The New York Times said its website has been taken down, in what was likely an external malicious attack Tuesday. Eileen Murphy, VP of corporate communications, initially reported the outage via Twitter. While the Times was down, Twitter also experienced some hiccups on its website. A Twitter account for the group of hackers called the Syrian Electronic Army claimed that it had attacked the social media website and changed the ownership listing of Twitter's domain name registration.The same account later posted to Twitter that it had also taken over the registrations for the Times website and for the Huffington Post UK domain. (more at link) http://www.cnbc.com/id/100988768 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Electronic_Army
From the other thread, a member of the UN Committee on Syria: Ms. del Ponte, a former Swiss prosecutor and attorney general, told Swiss TV: "Our investigators have been in neighboring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals. According to their report of last week, which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated."
I support only air operations. Cruise missiles, bombers, fighter jets. The kosovo plan. The more interesting bit from this is if you attack Assad then you bring validity to the ouster of Hussein who killed thousands with chem weps.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/obama-and-biden-have-said-military-action-without-congressio Time to start drawing up articles of impeachment.
I was commenting on this idiotic thread poll and this forum in general, not on the foreign policy. It is irrelevant in a discussion of foreign policy, but in painting the stupidity of this poll I pointed out the inclination to make everything political. Like foreign policy.
Or just get the same exact people who initiate, preside and vote on impeachments to draft and pass a bill authorizing his military action. There's a gulf of difference between the two, but I'm sure they're already tonkin about it.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>Looking forward to Obama's "localized munitions-based humanitarian response initiative" in Syria later this week.</p>— John Ekdahl, Jr. (@JohnEkdahl) <a href="https://twitter.com/JohnEkdahl/status/372496756636131328" data-datetime="2013-08-27T23:12:02+00:00">August 27, 2013</a></blockquote> <script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
LMAO, but it was alright when George Bush did it? If the Constitution was more than just a damn piece of paper, we would've impeached just about every President in the last 100 years for violating some portion of it. What a joke!
I guess I could look it up and really read up on it in some other area, but can anyone explain to me why the use of chemical weapons killing 400 people is somehow reason enough to intervene in some manner while killing 100,000 by conventional means is not? I get that they have been banned internationally since before they existed and that its a slippery slope before they are used in actual war between countries, but that just doesn't seem compelling enough to me. I mean, we have done a remarkably consistent job at killing each other over the course of human history with a whole variety of technologies and strategies such that I feel like chemical weapons would be unlikely to really disrupt the status quo. Is it just about credibility at this point, or is the idea that chemical weapons killings are weighed 500% more than killings from conventional means? I feel like I am missing something.
GWB actually sought and received Authorization for the Use of Military Force in both Afghanistan and Iraq. In both cases Congress voted to support the authorizations. For all of the harping about the "illegal wars" they were as legal as any American war has ever been.
False - it's all about credibility at this point. POTUS stepped in it with his "red lines" comment and has to do something. Or at least, he feels like he does.
This makes no sense though, his voters probably have no idea he ever made that comment and wouldn't care if he backed down from it. No one is clamoring for intervention except John McCain and Lindsey Graham.
