Arming Syrian Rebels

[Sloth]

No thanks. DB’s posts pretty much cover it.

[drunkpig]

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

First of all, since when was the U.S. in the business of propping countries that could never exist on their own? Secondly, at some point Israel has to take the reins themselves. You don’t believe in using tax dollars to fund other people’s lifestyles here in America. What is different about Israel that lets you toss that belief aside in their case? The support that we give them is nothing more than international welfare and entitlements.[/quote]

First of all - who the hell said the US was in the business of propping up countries that could never exist on their own? The US was instrumental in re-establishing the Israeli state after the end of WWII. Obviously - the US feels a sense of responsibility for Israel. It’s not that hard to pick up a history book and read a little bit about the subject matter. But seeing as how you can’t read an internet post and interpret it correctly, I shudder to think how badly you could screw up reading a text book.

As for comparing international aid with wasting tax dollars on domestic social experimentation - I’d prefer us not have to do either one. But given the choice between supporting the only stable democratic government in the ME, and enabling generational poverty and government dependence, I’ll pick the former every time.

While we certainly invest a TON of money in the Middle East by virtue of our oil expenditures, that same logic could applied to us by China. But we would NEVER stand for another country to tell us what to do. That would be a violation of a little something we here in America like to call “sovereignty”. Our country exists in part as a testament to the right of sovereignty, yet we toss that aside when it comes to other countries’ sovereignty. So I don’t buy the argument that us buying oil in the Middle East gives us the right to tell those countries how to run themselves. If we don’t like how they run their shit, fine. But trying to force a region that doesn’t have the same cultural, political or economical background as us to accept our values is EXACTLY what provokes a lot of this terrorism. Justifying it by saying we buy their oil doesn’t cut it.

If the US became as unstable as the Islamo-fascist ME, they’d be over here in a New York minute attempting to stabilize their investment. To think otherwise is the ultimate in ignorant stupidity.

No one fucks with us because we are bigger, faster, stronger, and more organized than anyone else on the planet, and the rest of the world is scared shitless to pick a real fight with us. Bravado? Maybe. But it’s not bragging when you can back it up.

[drunkpig]

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

And you couldn’t be further from the truth regarding your assumptions about where Israelis come from or where they have connections. Almost 70% of all Israelis are born in Israel, and most of that 70% are 2nd or 3rd generation Israelis. About 3% descend from North America. I assume that when you say “direct connection” you mean descended from, moved from or have relatives who have moved to the U.S. About 10% of the Israelis in the world live in France, the U.S. and Canada.[/quote]

And you couldn’t be further from the truth in assuming you have a fucking clue what my assumption was. Obviously, what was written was not enough for you and you felt the need to put words in my mouth.

Based on REAL Jewish population, my assumption is exactly what I said it was the first time: that a majority of the the citizens in Israel have direct connections to the US. Business partners, friends, acquaintances, family, etc… But nice job with your myopic ignorance.

Jewish Population of the World

[quote]The use of any other words other than exactly what I said is you just making shit up.
If by “direct connection” you mean people living in the U.S. who are Jewish, well, there are just as many Muslims in the U.S. as there are Jews, and there are WAY more Muslims who are 1st or 2nd generation Americans than there are Jews who are one or two generations removed from Israel. So perhaps by your logic Israel is the 52nd state, but that would make the rest of the Middle East the 53rd, 54th, 55th states and so on.[/quote]

Really? You want to back that up with a link? By my count - there are twice as many Jews as Muslims living in the US.

Number of U.S. Muslims to double - USATODAY.com

Now is USA Today a liar? Or are you? You can’t both be telling the truth.

[DBCooper]

[quote]b89 wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:
We can enjoy a high standard of living without having to prove ourselves as the alpha dog in every fucking conflict around the world, you know. We can extract ourselves from the current mindset that we have, which is basically that it is our duty to correct every injustice we see around the world. As a country, we aren’t fit to pass moral judgments on others, not with things like legalized abortion, the NSA scandal, the IRS scandal, massive racism, corruption in our gov’t, and on and on and on. We can be a much more isolationist country and still enjoy a high quality of life. Last I checked, Norway, Sweden, Australia and Switzerland all have pretty high standards of living and no one in the Middle East is foaming at the mouth to attack them.

Terrorists don’t hate this country for its ideals and the freedoms that we value. There are all sorts of countries that hold those same values near and dear, and they aren’t being targeted by terrorists. No, it’s our actions that motivate terrorists. Actions like arming Sunni terrorists over Shi’ite terrorists, actions like taking sides in an issue that we have NO BUSINESS taking sides on. Imagine how Americans would react if China were constantly sending troops or weapons over here to combat every little thing we did that they didn’t like.

You know how many Chinese are killed by American cigarettes? It must be in the hundreds of thousands PER YEAR. What would Americans do if the Chinese started bombing Phillip-Morris factories and accidentally killed a bunch of civilians in the process? What if China essentially justified those actions as their sovereign right to go after factories that produce WMDs, which is exactly what cigarettes are, and then downplayed the deaths of innocents in the process by saying, “Oh well, gotta break some eggs to make an omelette”, which is basically a simplification of our foreign policy? We would flip the fuck out and go after China with everything we have. How can we expect anything less from these terrorists in the Middle East? It’s absolutely insane to expect anything but more terrorists to be motivated to come after us if we go into Syria and start killing people there. And it’s a complete fallacy that we have to do so in order to protect our way of life here in America.[/quote]

Those nations aren’t a superpower. Being a superpower requires an innate ability to demonstrate your power, violent actions have always been respected as power. China and Russia do send support to help fight against us in conflicts. The Russians supported the North Vietnamese in the Vietnam war and the Chinese supported the North Koreans in the Korean war. That’s just the reality of the world. Every nation knows about espionage and conflicting interests, the stronger nations just get their way.

Terrorism is peculiar thing. Especially when it comes to Islamic terrorism. At this point in time to problem wont just disappear, they were largely just left alone prior to 9/11. Sure, America was active in various nations but even something as simple as defending Saudi Arabia at the request of Saudi Arabia turned this nation into an enemy. They’ll always use something as propaganda or a recruiting tool. And even if America made concessions to them they’d just say America is weak and they’d declare victory over us, they’d use it as propaganda too.[/quote]

Why do we have to be a superpower? Where the FUCK is that written into the Constitution?

That is such a bullshit, false bravado, pseudo-alpha attitude to have. What do we care if these Islamist wackos declare victory over us? What the FUCK did they win? The right to blow themselves into smithereens in the middle of some outback shithole of a town where 90% of the people have no running water or electricity and the really prosperous ones might have two goats instead of one, while we sit at home watching them declare victory on our 48" plasma TV screens from the comfort of our 4000 sq. ft. homes? If that’s what Islamist fundamentalist victory over the U.S. looks like I hope I fucking lose that one.

What do we care if we look weak to some uneducated goat-fucking dope fiends in the most backwards region of the world? For that matter, what do we care if we look weak to ANYONE on the planet? ARE we weak? No fucking way. We have Mean Mother Green and Her Killing Machine ready to deploy to any corner of the globe at a moment’s notice and we have the capability of destroying every single country on this planet if we really wanted to. We aren’t some fucking dog trying to exert dominance over the pack and establish ourselves as the alpha of the group. The strong thing to do, the thing that will prolong our reign as the world’s premier superpower is picking and choosing which battles to fight, and the less we fight, the better off we are.

There is exactly ONE superpower in this world, the U.S. There are plenty of countries that enjoy high standards of living, have sound infrastructures, provide for their citizens and protect their citizens’ rights just as well as the U.S., if not better, and there are plenty countries amongst that list that don’t find themselves thwarting attempts from Islamic fundamentalists trying to crash jets into their buildings. So clearly, being a superpower isn’t a prerequisite for being a prosperous country that stands for individual freedom and democracy.

[DBCooper]

[quote]drunkpig wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

First of all, since when was the U.S. in the business of propping countries that could never exist on their own? Secondly, at some point Israel has to take the reins themselves. You don’t believe in using tax dollars to fund other people’s lifestyles here in America. What is different about Israel that lets you toss that belief aside in their case? The support that we give them is nothing more than international welfare and entitlements.[/quote]

First of all - who the hell said the US was in the business of propping up countries that could never exist on their own? The US was instrumental in re-establishing the Israeli state after the end of WWII. Obviously - the US feels a sense of responsibility for Israel. It’s not that hard to pick up a history book and read a little bit about the subject matter. But seeing as how you can’t read an internet post and interpret it correctly, I shudder to think how badly you could screw up reading a text book.

As for comparing international aid with wasting tax dollars on domestic social experimentation - I’d prefer us not have to do either one. But given the choice between supporting the only stable democratic government in the ME, and enabling generational poverty and government dependence, I’ll pick the former every time.

While we certainly invest a TON of money in the Middle East by virtue of our oil expenditures, that same logic could applied to us by China. But we would NEVER stand for another country to tell us what to do. That would be a violation of a little something we here in America like to call “sovereignty”. Our country exists in part as a testament to the right of sovereignty, yet we toss that aside when it comes to other countries’ sovereignty. So I don’t buy the argument that us buying oil in the Middle East gives us the right to tell those countries how to run themselves. If we don’t like how they run their shit, fine. But trying to force a region that doesn’t have the same cultural, political or economical background as us to accept our values is EXACTLY what provokes a lot of this terrorism. Justifying it by saying we buy their oil doesn’t cut it.

If the US became as unstable as the Islamo-fascist ME, they’d be over here in a New York minute attempting to stabilize their investment. To think otherwise is the ultimate in ignorant stupidity.

No one fucks with us because we are bigger, faster, stronger, and more organized than anyone else on the planet, and the rest of the world is scared shitless to pick a real fight with us. Bravado? Maybe. But it’s not bragging when you can back it up.

[/quote]

You are really off your rocker now, shitfacedsow. You said earlier that Israel would be a goner if the U.S. didn’t support it. Here are your exact words:

“Israel would not exist, nor would they have a booming economy today if not for US support”.

If that isn’t the definition of propping up a country, I don’t know what is.

I also find it hilarious that you advise me to pick up a history book in the same sentence that you say the U.S. helped “re-establish” the State of Israel after WWII. I guess you must have missed the part about there not being any official state of israel until 1948, which means that the U.S. didn’t help “re-establish” anything after WWII. The Land of Israel from antiquity and early Roman history was not a “state”.

And then you go on to call Israel a stable democracy, even though you’ve already stated previously that they could never exist without our support. What is stable about a country that could never exist without the aid of another country? Essentially, you’ve chosen to enable generational poverty in israel instead of the U.S. I’m not sure what to say about that one.

But the real doozy is when you say that “no one fucks with us”. What would you call flying two jets into the World Trade Center? What would you call the continued resistance directed toward our soldiers in Afghanistan for almost 12 years? What would you call KILLING THOUSANDS OF AMERICANS HERE AND IN THE MIDDLE EAST?!?!?!?!?!?! If that’s your idea of not fucking with us, I hope I never see what it looks like when someone does fuck with us.

[drunkpig]

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

You are really off your rocker now, shitfacedsow. You said earlier that Israel would be a goner if the U.S. didn’t support it. Here are your exact words:

“Israel would not exist, nor would they have a booming economy today if not for US support”.

If that isn’t the definition of propping up a country, I don’t know what is.[/quote]

Then you need to recheck your definitions. But as evidenced by your previous lies - facts don’t seem to take up much room in your arsenal.

Let me dumb it down for you:

1. The US has been Israel’s closest Ally for over 60 years. We have supported Israel since the beginning and continue to do so - both officially and by private donation. I’m not Jewish, nor do I know anyone over there, but I - and thousands of others like me - donate quite generously to organizations like FDIF.

2. Were it not for the aid we have given Israel in the past - they would have been wiped off the planet in the late 60’s.

3. Since the mid 70’s we have paid Israel to sit still and shut up.

4. Had we allowed Israel to remain unleashed and un-muzzled, we would not have a “Palestinian” problem, and the Mid East would be a far less volatile part of the globe.

I also find it hilarious that you advise me to pick up a history book in the same sentence that you say the U.S. helped “re-establish” the State of Israel after WWII. I guess you must have missed the part about there not being any official state of israel until 1948, which means that the U.S. didn’t help “re-establish” anything after WWII. The Land of Israel from antiquity and early Roman history was not a “state”.

IF you don’t believe that Israel was once its own nation with its own borders, then take the “re” off from “re-establish”. I guess they just pulled those 1948 borders out of their asses, huh?

And then you go on to call Israel a stable democracy, even though you’ve already stated previously that they could never exist without our support. What is stable about a country that could never exist without the aid of another country? Essentially, you’ve chosen to enable generational poverty in israel instead of the U.S. I’m not sure what to say about that one.

Have you compared the poverty levels in Israel with the poverty levels in Syria? or Egypt? Obviously not. You can’t even read population tables correctly. But nice try. I think I’ll wait until you produce some facts before chasing you and your lies down a rabbit hole.

[quote]But the real doozy is when you say that “no one fucks with us”. What would you call flying two jets into the World Trade Center? What would you call the continued resistance directed toward our soldiers in Afghanistan for almost 12 years? What would you call KILLING THOUSANDS OF AMERICANS HERE AND IN THE MIDDLE EAST?!?!?!?!?!?! If that’s your idea of not fucking with us, I hope I never see what it looks like when someone does fuck with us.
[/quote]

Two jets flying into the WTC was a sucker punch. It was almost 12 years ago - it’s not happened again, and we’ve moved on. Not to diminish the devastation or the loss of life in Lower Manhattan that day, but when I say fuck with I’m not talking about one singular event that has not repeated itself since. I am talking about invasion and or continuous attacks.

The fact that Afghanistan has not been a glass parking lot for almost 12 years speaks to our government’s lack of testicular fortitude. We had a chance to show our power, and decided to try to make friends instead of win a war.

The rest of your “but what about the troops?” BS does not deserve a reply. I can feel the insincerity from here.

I hope we never experience really being fucked with either. But to think that the US endures even a fraction of what Israel lives with on a daily basis is…well…something you would do.

[Gambit_Lost]

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

[quote]Gambit_Lost wrote:

[quote]Jewbacca wrote:
There is no good side to this, and it will turn out badly.

…

The islamist rebels are basically fucking crazy, feeding on religious fervor, and hate the USA as much as they hate Assad. [b]Not sure why anyone would help them, unless the goal is to have every able-bodied man in the country dead.[/b]
[/quote]

That is my take on this decision. Makes me wonder if Kissinger didn’t find himself a youth potion.

[quote]pat wrote:

That’s not the way the world works. Everybody’s money is tied together in some fashion. Syria’s importance to the region is to great, not just Israels. Are you going to let Al qaeda run Syria? That’s the price of doing nothing. Syria’s fate is tied to our national interests and there is nothing we can do about that. Syria going strait to hell is bad for everybody.[/quote]

Pat is right Cooper. Isolationism simply wouldn’t work. Neither will invasion though. Afghanistan should have taught us that simply ignoring a problem (Taliban) won’t work, but invasion and trying to take over won’t work either.

Jewbacca’s “hold the boarders” and let it work itself out might work…unless WMDs are being sold…

No good options to this one. [/quote]

I completely disagree.

First of all, just because WE ignore them doesn’t mean that they will be ignored entirely. If foreign military intervention on the side of one group of terrorists over the other is what is needed to maintain peace there, then let Israel do it because I’m sick of seeing American soldiers come home in bodybags or in need of serious therapy and counseling for a lost, pointless cause. And the first half of that last sentence is EXACTLY what we will be doing there. We will simply be arming one group of terrorists over another.

You cite Afghanistan. Go back a little further and ask yourself if ignoring the Taliban was the problem or ARMING the Taliban 20 years prior was the problem. THAT is the mistake we will be making in Syria.

In 5 or 10 or 20 years from now, we’ll be fighting the same people we just took sides with. These are not some 21st century, Muslim versions of the American revolutionaries we’re arming here. These are Sunni extremists with a tiny minority of democracy-focused fighters amongst them, who will be wiped out by the Sunni Islamists that comprise a large portion of the rebel cause and have the motivation to bring the pro-democracy faction to a bloody end.

The ONLY reason we are siding with the Sunnis is because Iran has sided with the Shi’ites. It’s the Cold War all over again. We let our allies be determined by who Iran sides with, just like we sided with a bunch of monsters like Trujillo, Diem, Pinochet, military juntas in Guatemala and Argentina, Mubarak, and even, yep, you guessed it, Saddam Hussein, all because of the fact that they were less communistic or socialistic than the alternatives. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I didn’t even mention pieces of shit like Reza Pahlavi or Somoza Garcia.

This is an eerily similar situation to all of those past interventions that went nowhere or saw us funding, arming and siding with authoritarian, violent and dictatorial monsters.

So yes, we SHOULD ignore this situation. We SHOULD be isolationists, because the other options are either A) kill every last motherfucker in Syria on BOTH sides of the fight, B) side with a group of Shi’ite psychopaths, C) side with a bunch of Sunni psychopaths or D) side with the tiny minority of democracy-centric rebels who will be killed and dragged through the streets by virtue of their alliance with us and who will be replaced by whatever group of psychopaths is violent and twisted enough to carry out those killings.

The U.S. has chosen option C. I wish us luck, but the history of our attempts at foreign intervention tell me that luck alone will not prevent this from degenerating into some version of every other debacle our interventions have turned into.[/quote]

There’s a lot going on here, but I don’t want to break it up.

-RE: “let Israel do it” I’m not entirely against this. I do NOT want boots on the ground. But I also see Israel as a friend. If we say, “F it, I’m out. You guys figure it out.” Will they then say the same when they receive intelligence? IMO, we need to stick together.

-RE: Arming the Taliban was the mistake. I disagree. We were on the brink of nuclear war. Penny-wise, pound-foolish. IMO it was ignoring them in the 90s that was the problem. “HISTORY IS OVER!” we can walk away! was the problem… perhaps we can agree to disagree.

-RE: 5-20 years from now. Yeah, maybe we will be fighting them. I just hope they aren’t on the side of China in the war, if you catch my meaning. Arming them is not a “good” it’s a “less bad”

-RE: list of dictators. I bet you can already guess my response. Go back to the one Europe and the US basically ignored. Arming Dictators is horrible, horrible, horrible. Maybe some of them should not have been supported. But we were staring at “War Three”… that would have been worse.

-If we go isolationist, China starts with Taiwan. Then they’ll expand and expand. I don’t think it would be long until we see China VS Japan. Maybe that is okay for you. It’s not for me.

IMO getting in bed with dictators was horrible. But WWIII would be worse. It’s ugly as hell when we start talking about IR. But putting up walls and pretending we’re not involved is not the solution.

[Gambit_Lost]

[quote]pat wrote:

We are not dealing with a situation that is good or favorable in anyway. We’re not dealing with a situation where idealism will prevail into some type of Utopian fix for the middle east. We’re dealing with a situation where there are only levels of negative. We’re dealing with a situation where the rebels aren’t much better than the government. But still the problem is that the cost of doing nothing is far more detrimental than doing something to secure, limit and isolate the problem.

I would be lovely if we lived in a world where everybody could mind their own business, but we don’t. We are dealing with a situation where there are only bad options. People can and are getting involved in the Syrian situation.

So say we stay out of it. Who gets control of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile, al qeada, Iran?
Syria’s problem is a bad one with far reaching consequences. We have a duty to ourselves and our allies to contain the situation the best we can. If we do not we will have a major stability problem in the region and then the world.[/quote]

Exactly this.

[Gambit_Lost]

[quote]DBCooper wrote:
We can enjoy a high standard of living without having to prove ourselves as the alpha dog in every fucking conflict around the world, you know. We can extract ourselves from the current mindset that we have, which is basically that it is our duty to correct every injustice we see around the world. As a country, we aren’t fit to pass moral judgments on others, not with things like legalized abortion, the NSA scandal, the IRS scandal, massive racism, corruption in our gov’t, and on and on and on. We can be a much more isolationist country and still enjoy a high quality of life. Last I checked, Norway, Sweden, Australia and Switzerland all have pretty high standards of living and no one in the Middle East is foaming at the mouth to attack them.
[/quote]

Those countries enjoy a high standard of living in large part due to America’s military and foreign policy since War Two. You know this.

The idea that “If we don’t bug them they won’t bug us” is simplistic to the point of naivete. And you know this too.

Wife is calling…maybe I’ll be able to psot more later.

[DBCooper]

[quote]Gambit_Lost wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

[quote]Gambit_Lost wrote:

[quote]Jewbacca wrote:
There is no good side to this, and it will turn out badly.

…

The islamist rebels are basically fucking crazy, feeding on religious fervor, and hate the USA as much as they hate Assad. [b]Not sure why anyone would help them, unless the goal is to have every able-bodied man in the country dead.[/b]
[/quote]

That is my take on this decision. Makes me wonder if Kissinger didn’t find himself a youth potion.

[quote]pat wrote:

That’s not the way the world works. Everybody’s money is tied together in some fashion. Syria’s importance to the region is to great, not just Israels. Are you going to let Al qaeda run Syria? That’s the price of doing nothing. Syria’s fate is tied to our national interests and there is nothing we can do about that. Syria going strait to hell is bad for everybody.[/quote]

Pat is right Cooper. Isolationism simply wouldn’t work. Neither will invasion though. Afghanistan should have taught us that simply ignoring a problem (Taliban) won’t work, but invasion and trying to take over won’t work either.

Jewbacca’s “hold the boarders” and let it work itself out might work…unless WMDs are being sold…

No good options to this one. [/quote]

I completely disagree.

First of all, just because WE ignore them doesn’t mean that they will be ignored entirely. If foreign military intervention on the side of one group of terrorists over the other is what is needed to maintain peace there, then let Israel do it because I’m sick of seeing American soldiers come home in bodybags or in need of serious therapy and counseling for a lost, pointless cause. And the first half of that last sentence is EXACTLY what we will be doing there. We will simply be arming one group of terrorists over another.

You cite Afghanistan. Go back a little further and ask yourself if ignoring the Taliban was the problem or ARMING the Taliban 20 years prior was the problem. THAT is the mistake we will be making in Syria.

In 5 or 10 or 20 years from now, we’ll be fighting the same people we just took sides with. These are not some 21st century, Muslim versions of the American revolutionaries we’re arming here. These are Sunni extremists with a tiny minority of democracy-focused fighters amongst them, who will be wiped out by the Sunni Islamists that comprise a large portion of the rebel cause and have the motivation to bring the pro-democracy faction to a bloody end.

The ONLY reason we are siding with the Sunnis is because Iran has sided with the Shi’ites. It’s the Cold War all over again. We let our allies be determined by who Iran sides with, just like we sided with a bunch of monsters like Trujillo, Diem, Pinochet, military juntas in Guatemala and Argentina, Mubarak, and even, yep, you guessed it, Saddam Hussein, all because of the fact that they were less communistic or socialistic than the alternatives. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I didn’t even mention pieces of shit like Reza Pahlavi or Somoza Garcia.

This is an eerily similar situation to all of those past interventions that went nowhere or saw us funding, arming and siding with authoritarian, violent and dictatorial monsters.

So yes, we SHOULD ignore this situation. We SHOULD be isolationists, because the other options are either A) kill every last motherfucker in Syria on BOTH sides of the fight, B) side with a group of Shi’ite psychopaths, C) side with a bunch of Sunni psychopaths or D) side with the tiny minority of democracy-centric rebels who will be killed and dragged through the streets by virtue of their alliance with us and who will be replaced by whatever group of psychopaths is violent and twisted enough to carry out those killings.

The U.S. has chosen option C. I wish us luck, but the history of our attempts at foreign intervention tell me that luck alone will not prevent this from degenerating into some version of every other debacle our interventions have turned into.[/quote]

There’s a lot going on here, but I don’t want to break it up.

-RE: “let Israel do it” I’m not entirely against this. I do NOT want boots on the ground. But I also see Israel as a friend. If we say, “F it, I’m out. You guys figure it out.” Will they then say the same when they receive intelligence? IMO, we need to stick together.

-RE: Arming the Taliban was the mistake. I disagree. We were on the brink of nuclear war. Penny-wise, pound-foolish. IMO it was ignoring them in the 90s that was the problem. “HISTORY IS OVER!” we can walk away! was the problem… perhaps we can agree to disagree.

-RE: 5-20 years from now. Yeah, maybe we will be fighting them. I just hope they aren’t on the side of China in the war, if you catch my meaning. Arming them is not a “good” it’s a “less bad”

-RE: list of dictators. I bet you can already guess my response. Go back to the one Europe and the US basically ignored. Arming Dictators is horrible, horrible, horrible. Maybe some of them should not have been supported. But we were staring at “War Three”… that would have been worse.

-If we go isolationist, China starts with Taiwan. Then they’ll expand and expand. I don’t think it would be long until we see China VS Japan. Maybe that is okay for you. It’s not for me.

IMO getting in bed with dictators was horrible. But WWIII would be worse. It’s ugly as hell when we start talking about IR. But putting up walls and pretending we’re not involved is not the solution. [/quote]

1. Who cares if Israel provides us with intelligence or not? The CIA is still pretty damn effective at gathering its own intelligence, and if we aren’t nearly as actively involved in everyone’s shit over there then we won’t need Israel’s added intelligence capabilities anyways.

2. Saying that we were on the brink of nuclear war with the USSR at the time that we armed the Taliban/mujahideen is patently false. Do a little research into something called “Team B”. The intelligence community in the U.S. at the time knew that the Soviets were on the brink of collapse. We knew that they had practically zero motive or ability to use nuclear weapons at that time unless it was to quicken their own demise in the form of us wiping them off the map. When KAL 007 was shot down by the Soviets, that was just further evidence that the Soviets simply were not a threat to us. They were so incompetent by that point that they couldn’t even distinguish between a commercial airliner from Korea and a U.S. spy plane.

3. The U.S. will NEVER find itself in an all-out war with China, especially not with Syria on its side. China would be shooting themselves in the head if they went to war with us. Our economy is inextricably tied to theirs. They have a huge dependence on the U.S. buying the shit that they manufacture over there. If they went to war with us they would find themselves severely hampering the buying power of their biggest customer. The only thing that would instigate a war between us and China would be an overtly aggressive action on our part toward them.

4. I’m going back to the one the U.S. ignored, although there are two that I assume you are talking about: Hitler and Stalin. I don’t know what your point is there, or if you even have one. The U.S. basically ignored Hitler because we were isolationists at the time, although to say that we ignored him is a bit misleading. Britain essentially hoped that if Hitler went off the deep end he’d do so by attacking the Soviets and not them. My point about the list of dictators is that we regularly find ourselves aligning with some seriously fucked up people simply because of who they oppose. Britain did the same basic thing with Stalin and Hitler, although they didn’t really “align themselves” with Hitler.

5. China won’t do anything that will provoke WWIII with the U.S. on one side and them on the other. They aren’t going to go after Taiwan, not unless the U.S. has already withered away to the point where the Chinese economy is not intrinsically tied to ours. The same goes for China vs. Japan. China is not the 21st century version of the Soviet Union. These doomsday scenarios you point to simply are not going to happen, so basing our foreign policy decisions on them is completely foolhardy and ignorant. It’s like having General jack D. Ripper from Dr. Strangelove running the State Department.

Besides, I’m not suggesting that we go completely isolationist, only that we take steps in that direction in the Middle East. If we could remain isolated from as much of the bullshit in the Middle East as possible, it leaves us with way more resources to invest in THIS country and in protecting our interests from whatever encroachments China decides to make if they go off the deep end.

[pat]

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

I’m MORE than familiar with the history of Cuba. The Cuban Missile Crisis was something that was at least partially provoked by the U.S.‘s failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs and the subsequent attempts to assassinate Castro. Putting missiles there was no different in the Soviets’ eyes than us stationing missiles all over Europe and on the Turkish/Russian border. Maybe if we weren’t putting missiles up pointing them at everyone someone wouldn’t do the same thing to us. But that’s neither here nor there.
[/quote]
You seem to have selective memory when it comes to Cuba and the Soviets. You’re not going to successfully argue that the Soviets putting ballistic missiles in Cuba was just a normal practice where satellite nations naturally receive nuclear missile capability and it was no real threat and there was nothing to deal with there. There is to much of a history fail there to even deal with on a forum. It’s well documented stuff and if it were not consequential to the United States, there would have been no crisis.
Further, before the Bay of Pigs is where the U.S. failed. We failed because we did nothing and didn’t want to get involved. Castro looked to the U.S. first and Eisenhower told him to fuck himself. The Soviets rode in on their white horse and the rest is, as they say, history.

You keep saying that the price of doing nothing is too great but I haven’t really heard you say anything in regards to what that price is. Do you really think that Israel will allow those chemical weapon stockpiles to flow freely from Syria if we stay home? Of course not. So there’s one “price” we can cross off the list.

I did mention but perhaps not explicitly enough. Outsiders are getting involved. And if we create a vacuum by ignoring or not getting involved in someway, others will. Those others are Iran, Al qaeda, China, North Korea and/ or various sundry enemies of the United States and Israel. This will serve to either further destabilize the region and provide strategic capabilities to people who wish to actively do us harm.
Those who assist get a foothold and that foothold could either be helpful or harmful to us.
There is no way that what’s happening in Syria right now is not going to affect us in some way. It’s messy, but not impossible to contain the threats and potential threats.

We have ZERO duty to our allies. Our allies have a duty to US. We’ve done WAY more for our allies than they have done for us. We owe them nothing. What are we worried about over there? Some chemical weapons? So what? There are stockpiles of them all over the Middle East. How many have been used by al Qaeda or Iran against the U.S.? You think that al Qaeda will get their hands on Syria’s? Why haven’t they done so in the past? Because Assad controlled them. Why do you think there is a push to get Assad out? This is something that was a small minority of concerned Syrians and that movement has now been commandeered and taken over by Sunni extremists looking to get them before their Shi’ite extremist rivals get them. Why? Because the side that gets them first will use them on the other side.

We have zero duty to our allies? That’s a great plan, let’s alienate our allies and bang our dicks on the table about how they ‘owe’ us. Allies, by definition, protect each other’s interests. Sure we’re often way to nice and we have helped more than we have been helped. That’s not the chip to play in a situation like this. Further, if it can be done, we want Syria to turn into an ally. If we demonstrate that we leave our allies out in the cold, they won’t be. Syria would be a very beneficial ally to have. I don’t expect them to be particularly loyal, or even play nice as ally’s, but it’s still a strategic play to have them on the books as one.

And do you think that Iran wants to see us get dragged into this mess? Of course they do. Our enemies know they can’t defeat us in a straight-up fight. They have to nickel and dime us to death over the long haul. This is another way for them to do so.

No the hell they don’t. The last thing they want is yet another American friendly nation on their border who will not trade with them and kick them out of Syria. Iran is already there assisting Assad in murdering his own people as well as Hezbollah. This is no minor skirmish. It’s a powder keg with huge regional consequences. The last thing Iran wants to deal with is American might. They want control over the situation and if we do nothing, they will get it.

I firmly believe that the first step toward defeating terrorism is to what is necessary to eliminate us as a favorite target of terrorists. Otherwise, we are fighting the Forever War and we will lose it. Terrorism is an idea, a mindset, a method, that has been around long before the U.S. and will be around long after the U.S. It CANNOT be stopped entirely. That is a fundamental fact of the world that we live in that you and others seem to be completely unwilling to admit. The fact is that we can NEVER stop terrorism, but we can take steps to lessen the motivation of terrorists to attack US.

This mindset is invented in the first place. You aren’t going to demotivate terrorists by increasing their ability to operate. That will serve only to embolden them. This idea that if we just act nice and treat them they way they say they want, they will leave us alone is a myth. No amount of apology or American concession will lessen their desire to harm us. They never had a reason to attack us in the first place, they invented one.
Unless we converted to a muslim theocracy and imposed sharia law, they will not be satisfied to leave us alone. We are not dealing with rational people.

Obama tried the ol’ appeasement tour early in his presidency, it did not do one fucking thing to subvert their desire to harm and kill us. These people only understand the language or force, not sympathy.

And I know people don’t want to hear it and it pisses people off because it’s kind of like admitting defeat and acquiescence and compromise and all that shit isn’t the macho thing, but we HAVE to change our actions in the Middle East 180 degrees if we want to lessen the motivation for terrorists to come over here and kill Americans with dirty bombs and jets and rocket launchers and chemical weapons. If someone gets it in their head that they want to kill a lot of Americans, they can do it. But if we give them less motivation by refusing to constantly stick our noses into everyone’s shit telling them what to do, how to live, how to behave, what they can and can’t use their oil money for and so forth, we will reduce the amount of people who are crazy enough and pissed off enough at us to risk everything to kill some Americans.

Sure, they’d like nothing more than for us to emasculate Israel and let them have at it.
Our policies are not the motivation for their hostilities, it’s only an excuse. If they didn’t have that excuse, they’d simply invent another.

[quote]
I really don’t know what is so hard to understand about that. So what if we lose some face in the process? So what if we piss off some of our allies? What have they done for us anyways? What the FUCK has Israel ever done for us? What the FUCK has Saudi Arabia ever done for us? What the FUCK has Western Europe ever done for us? How many of their soldiers have died in Afghanistan and Iraq? You know what happens if we go into Syria? We fuck things up even worse, just like we’ve done in Afghanistan and Iraq, maybe kill a few thousand civilians along the way and BOOM, you have the next generation of al Qaeda crazies looking to kill Americans out of revenge for the “injustices” we’ve committed in Syria. What happens if we do nothing? A bunch of wacky Syrians get killed, maybe some chemical weapons get out and they get used against each other or possibly Israel. That’s a shitty thing to happen, but shitty things happening is an eventuality over there no matter what we do. As an American, I’d rather see Israel at risk with a bunch of Syrians getting gassed to death than the exact same thing happening PLUS American lives and money going down the drain while resentment and motivation for attacking the U.S. increases rather than decreases.[/quote]

I guess you were asleep in 2009 what Obama tried that. The whole appeasement thing did not do a fucking thing, not a single iota to stop the terrorists. What’s interesting to me is that even the fact that obama already tried that and it failed miserably somehow does not deter you to think trying the same failing idea once again would work. No matter how many times you add 2+2, it will never equal 5. Trying a failing idea repeatedly does not increase it’s chances of working.
The funny thing is, that even obama, who believed these same silly notions, knows now that they do not work. My fear with obama is that he may try half-assed commitments like Clinton did with Bosnia and Somalia which could be disastrous. If you commit, whatever you commit has to be sufficient to succeed. What you don’t want is another ‘Blackhawk Down’ scenario.

I really am having a hard time believing you think an appeasement strategy would work. Especially in light of the fact that it hasn’t.

[pat]

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

I also find it hilarious that you advise me to pick up a history book in the same sentence that you say the U.S. helped “re-establish” the State of Israel after WWII. I guess you must have missed the part about there not being any official state of israel until 1948, which means that the U.S. didn’t help “re-establish” anything after WWII. The Land of Israel from antiquity and early Roman history was not a “state”.

[/quote]

LOL!!! Come on Drunk Pig, you know this is the first and only time Israel has been a nation!

You may want that history book after all DB…

[b89]

I think you’re living in a dreamworld. You don’t think Islamic terrorism has impacted the nations you mentioned? They’re even targeting Switzerland and Switzerland is neutral. This is from an article written in 2006 *"Swiss intelligence is realizing that you can’t just sit back and cross your arms and say, ‘We’re not a target because we’re a small country,’ " he said. “Switzerland is no longer able to exclude itself from the rest of the world in the face of a globalized threat.”.

Every single one of those nations are dealing with Islamic terrorism, they’re people that can’t be reasoned with. Their leaders power is dependent on recruiting, propaganda and calling for attacks. To let people like that declare a victory over a nation like the United States would be catastrophic, it’d be used a propaganda to empower them to continue attacks against innocent people on multiple continents.

People are only human, humans are animals. Projecting power keeps other nations from attempting expansion. Isolationism has never accomplished anything for the United States of America. Prior to America joining WWII this nation was mulling over whether or not it should enter the war and trying to impose sanctions on Japan. Talk with Japan did nothing, they took our talk about treaties and declared war on this nation by attacking Americans on American soil in Pearl Harbor, Japan.

In OIF and OEF talk was cheap, the indigenous population didn’t care about what the United States claimed it could do. When the American military proved to them that they were the baddest motherfuckers in the valley they gained their support.

Problems with education, infrastructure and anything else wrong with this nation rests solely on the shoulders of the elected officials of this nation. I can imagine you’ve an idea of how much waste and rampant corruption exists in this nation. Imagine if all of the luxuries being a superpower has afforded this nation were actually put to use.

• http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/19/AR2006071901795_3.html

[pat]

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

[quote]drunkpig wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

First of all, since when was the U.S. in the business of propping countries that could never exist on their own? Secondly, at some point Israel has to take the reins themselves. You don’t believe in using tax dollars to fund other people’s lifestyles here in America. What is different about Israel that lets you toss that belief aside in their case? The support that we give them is nothing more than international welfare and entitlements.[/quote]

First of all - who the hell said the US was in the business of propping up countries that could never exist on their own? The US was instrumental in re-establishing the Israeli state after the end of WWII. Obviously - the US feels a sense of responsibility for Israel. It’s not that hard to pick up a history book and read a little bit about the subject matter. But seeing as how you can’t read an internet post and interpret it correctly, I shudder to think how badly you could screw up reading a text book.

As for comparing international aid with wasting tax dollars on domestic social experimentation - I’d prefer us not have to do either one. But given the choice between supporting the only stable democratic government in the ME, and enabling generational poverty and government dependence, I’ll pick the former every time.

While we certainly invest a TON of money in the Middle East by virtue of our oil expenditures, that same logic could applied to us by China. But we would NEVER stand for another country to tell us what to do. That would be a violation of a little something we here in America like to call “sovereignty”. Our country exists in part as a testament to the right of sovereignty, yet we toss that aside when it comes to other countries’ sovereignty. So I don’t buy the argument that us buying oil in the Middle East gives us the right to tell those countries how to run themselves. If we don’t like how they run their shit, fine. But trying to force a region that doesn’t have the same cultural, political or economical background as us to accept our values is EXACTLY what provokes a lot of this terrorism. Justifying it by saying we buy their oil doesn’t cut it.

If the US became as unstable as the Islamo-fascist ME, they’d be over here in a New York minute attempting to stabilize their investment. To think otherwise is the ultimate in ignorant stupidity.

No one fucks with us because we are bigger, faster, stronger, and more organized than anyone else on the planet, and the rest of the world is scared shitless to pick a real fight with us. Bravado? Maybe. But it’s not bragging when you can back it up.

[/quote]

You are really off your rocker now, shitfacedsow. You said earlier that Israel would be a goner if the U.S. didn’t support it. Here are your exact words:

“Israel would not exist, nor would they have a booming economy today if not for US support”.

If that isn’t the definition of propping up a country, I don’t know what is.

I also find it hilarious that you advise me to pick up a history book in the same sentence that you say the U.S. helped “re-establish” the State of Israel after WWII. I guess you must have missed the part about there not being any official state of israel until 1948, which means that the U.S. didn’t help “re-establish” anything after WWII. The Land of Israel from antiquity and early Roman history was not a “state”.

And then you go on to call Israel a stable democracy, even though you’ve already stated previously that they could never exist without our support. What is stable about a country that could never exist without the aid of another country? Essentially, you’ve chosen to enable generational poverty in israel instead of the U.S. I’m not sure what to say about that one.

But the real doozy is when you say that “no one fucks with us”. What would you call flying two jets into the World Trade Center? What would you call the continued resistance directed toward our soldiers in Afghanistan for almost 12 years? What would you call KILLING THOUSANDS OF AMERICANS HERE AND IN THE MIDDLE EAST?!?!?!?!?!?! If that’s your idea of not fucking with us, I hope I never see what it looks like when someone does fuck with us.
[/quote]

The French propped us up in the Revolution, and we would not exist without their support. So I guess by your definition we are not a stable democracy? Well, technically that’s true, we are a republic. But I guess we’re just a french puppet or satellite state.

[pat]

[quote]b89 wrote:
I think you’re living in a dreamworld. You don’t think Islamic terrorism has impacted the nations you mentioned? They’re even targeting Switzerland and Switzerland is neutral. This is from an article written in 2006 *"Swiss intelligence is realizing that you can’t just sit back and cross your arms and say, ‘We’re not a target because we’re a small country,’ " he said. “Switzerland is no longer able to exclude itself from the rest of the world in the face of a globalized threat.”.

Every single one of those nations are dealing with Islamic terrorism, they’re people that can’t be reasoned with. Their leaders power is dependent on recruiting, propaganda and calling for attacks. To let people like that declare a victory over a nation like the United States would be catastrophic, it’d be used a propaganda to empower them to continue attacks against innocent people on multiple continents.

People are only human, humans are animals. Projecting power keeps other nations from attempting expansion. Isolationism has never accomplished anything for the United States of America. Prior to America joining WWII this nation was mulling over whether or not it should enter the war and trying to impose sanctions on Japan. Talk with Japan did nothing, they took our talk about treaties and declared war on this nation by attacking Americans on American soil in Pearl Harbor, Japan.

In OIF and OEF talk was cheap, the indigenous population didn’t care about what the United States claimed it could do. When the American military proved to them that they were the baddest motherfuckers in the valley they gained their support.

Problems with education, infrastructure and anything else wrong with this nation rests solely on the shoulders of the elected officials of this nation. I can imagine you’ve an idea of how much waste and rampant corruption exists in this nation. Imagine if all of the luxuries being a superpower has afforded this nation were actually put to use.

• http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/19/AR2006071901795_3.html

[/quote]

No, no… if we just reverse course in the ME, they will love us and leave us alone, don’t ya know?

[SexMachine]

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Jewbacca wrote:
There is no good side to this, and it will turn out badly.

Assad, the evil optomotrist (really!), is a foul man, but a known evil and kept the peace, more or less, so normal people could go about their lives, more or less. He is from the same trans-islamic political party as Saddam. Not a pretty group — the party was originally formed by Nazi Germany to organize the islamic world against the Allies and to kill the resident Jews in what-was-then the British protectorate and-what-is-now mostly Israel. So, I can’t say I am a fan.

The islamist rebels are basically fucking crazy, feeding on religious fervor, and hate the USA as much as they hate Assad. Not sure why anyone would help them, unless the goal is to have every able-bodied man in the country dead.

Anyway, it’s a bad scene, happening next door to me, but I would really just let it run its course. This intra-Islamic fighting has been going on since 600 CE. They only stop when there are Christians or Jews to kill.

Just don’t let it spread to Joran or Israel and help evac the people caught in the middle.[/quote]

I am actually all for setting up a puppet government over there. If we intervene, it has to be to the point we plant our flag. We cannot let the rebels run the show, it will be a theocracy much like the Taliban, we cannot support Assad, he’s all but done. So a new government is going to take effect, we have to intervene to the point where we can ensure they will do no harm to us or our interests. I agree, there is nothing pretty about this and no good solutions, only different levels of bad. The problem is, how many Syrians are we going to let die? They are the ones getting bombed and gassed. That’s where this gets messy, we don’t want another Congo situation, you can’t just let 2 million people die. Well you can, but it’s not very nice to do so.

Isolationism is as dead as can be. There is no opting out of dealing with it. Syria is to much of a heavy hitter to allow it to devolve into chaos. [/quote]

The Syrian problem will not be solved by any puppet government I’m afraid. It’s a wider movement extending throughout the Shia belt. Assad is from the Alawite sect which reveres Mohammad’s son in law Ali as do the Shia so they are natural ideological allies. Iran and their proxies(Hezbollah etc) are fighting the Sunnis throughout the Muslim world and the Russians are supporting them. Where will it end? God only knows but not with a pro-Western puppet government.

[Gambit_Lost]

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

[quote]Gambit_Lost wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

[quote]Gambit_Lost wrote:

[quote]Jewbacca wrote:
There is no good side to this, and it will turn out badly.

…

The islamist rebels are basically fucking crazy, feeding on religious fervor, and hate the USA as much as they hate Assad. [b]Not sure why anyone would help them, unless the goal is to have every able-bodied man in the country dead.[/b]
[/quote]

That is my take on this decision. Makes me wonder if Kissinger didn’t find himself a youth potion.

[quote]pat wrote:

That’s not the way the world works. Everybody’s money is tied together in some fashion. Syria’s importance to the region is to great, not just Israels. Are you going to let Al qaeda run Syria? That’s the price of doing nothing. Syria’s fate is tied to our national interests and there is nothing we can do about that. Syria going strait to hell is bad for everybody.[/quote]

Pat is right Cooper. Isolationism simply wouldn’t work. Neither will invasion though. Afghanistan should have taught us that simply ignoring a problem (Taliban) won’t work, but invasion and trying to take over won’t work either.

Jewbacca’s “hold the boarders” and let it work itself out might work…unless WMDs are being sold…

No good options to this one. [/quote]

I completely disagree.

First of all, just because WE ignore them doesn’t mean that they will be ignored entirely. If foreign military intervention on the side of one group of terrorists over the other is what is needed to maintain peace there, then let Israel do it because I’m sick of seeing American soldiers come home in bodybags or in need of serious therapy and counseling for a lost, pointless cause. And the first half of that last sentence is EXACTLY what we will be doing there. We will simply be arming one group of terrorists over another.

You cite Afghanistan. Go back a little further and ask yourself if ignoring the Taliban was the problem or ARMING the Taliban 20 years prior was the problem. THAT is the mistake we will be making in Syria.

In 5 or 10 or 20 years from now, we’ll be fighting the same people we just took sides with. These are not some 21st century, Muslim versions of the American revolutionaries we’re arming here. These are Sunni extremists with a tiny minority of democracy-focused fighters amongst them, who will be wiped out by the Sunni Islamists that comprise a large portion of the rebel cause and have the motivation to bring the pro-democracy faction to a bloody end.

The ONLY reason we are siding with the Sunnis is because Iran has sided with the Shi’ites. It’s the Cold War all over again. We let our allies be determined by who Iran sides with, just like we sided with a bunch of monsters like Trujillo, Diem, Pinochet, military juntas in Guatemala and Argentina, Mubarak, and even, yep, you guessed it, Saddam Hussein, all because of the fact that they were less communistic or socialistic than the alternatives. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I didn’t even mention pieces of shit like Reza Pahlavi or Somoza Garcia.

This is an eerily similar situation to all of those past interventions that went nowhere or saw us funding, arming and siding with authoritarian, violent and dictatorial monsters.

So yes, we SHOULD ignore this situation. We SHOULD be isolationists, because the other options are either A) kill every last motherfucker in Syria on BOTH sides of the fight, B) side with a group of Shi’ite psychopaths, C) side with a bunch of Sunni psychopaths or D) side with the tiny minority of democracy-centric rebels who will be killed and dragged through the streets by virtue of their alliance with us and who will be replaced by whatever group of psychopaths is violent and twisted enough to carry out those killings.

The U.S. has chosen option C. I wish us luck, but the history of our attempts at foreign intervention tell me that luck alone will not prevent this from degenerating into some version of every other debacle our interventions have turned into.[/quote]

There’s a lot going on here, but I don’t want to break it up.

-RE: “let Israel do it” I’m not entirely against this. I do NOT want boots on the ground. But I also see Israel as a friend. If we say, “F it, I’m out. You guys figure it out.” Will they then say the same when they receive intelligence? IMO, we need to stick together.

-RE: Arming the Taliban was the mistake. I disagree. We were on the brink of nuclear war. Penny-wise, pound-foolish. IMO it was ignoring them in the 90s that was the problem. “HISTORY IS OVER!” we can walk away! was the problem… perhaps we can agree to disagree.

-RE: 5-20 years from now. Yeah, maybe we will be fighting them. I just hope they aren’t on the side of China in the war, if you catch my meaning. Arming them is not a “good” it’s a “less bad”

-RE: list of dictators. I bet you can already guess my response. Go back to the one Europe and the US basically ignored. Arming Dictators is horrible, horrible, horrible. Maybe some of them should not have been supported. But we were staring at “War Three”… that would have been worse.

-If we go isolationist, China starts with Taiwan. Then they’ll expand and expand. I don’t think it would be long until we see China VS Japan. Maybe that is okay for you. It’s not for me.

IMO getting in bed with dictators was horrible. But WWIII would be worse. It’s ugly as hell when we start talking about IR. But putting up walls and pretending we’re not involved is not the solution. [/quote]

1. Who cares if Israel provides us with intelligence or not? The CIA is still pretty damn effective at gathering its own intelligence, and if we aren’t nearly as actively involved in everyone’s shit over there then we won’t need Israel’s added intelligence capabilities anyways.

2. Saying that we were on the brink of nuclear war with the USSR at the time that we armed the Taliban/mujahideen is patently false. Do a little research into something called “Team B”. The intelligence community in the U.S. at the time knew that the Soviets were on the brink of collapse. We knew that they had practically zero motive or ability to use nuclear weapons at that time unless it was to quicken their own demise in the form of us wiping them off the map. When KAL 007 was shot down by the Soviets, that was just further evidence that the Soviets simply were not a threat to us. They were so incompetent by that point that they couldn’t even distinguish between a commercial airliner from Korea and a U.S. spy plane.

3. The U.S. will NEVER find itself in an all-out war with China, especially not with Syria on its side. China would be shooting themselves in the head if they went to war with us. Our economy is inextricably tied to theirs. They have a huge dependence on the U.S. buying the shit that they manufacture over there. If they went to war with us they would find themselves severely hampering the buying power of their biggest customer. The only thing that would instigate a war between us and China would be an overtly aggressive action on our part toward them.

4. I’m going back to the one the U.S. ignored, although there are two that I assume you are talking about: Hitler and Stalin. I don’t know what your point is there, or if you even have one. The U.S. basically ignored Hitler because we were isolationists at the time, although to say that we ignored him is a bit misleading. Britain essentially hoped that if Hitler went off the deep end he’d do so by attacking the Soviets and not them. My point about the list of dictators is that we regularly find ourselves aligning with some seriously fucked up people simply because of who they oppose. Britain did the same basic thing with Stalin and Hitler, although they didn’t really “align themselves” with Hitler.

5. China won’t do anything that will provoke WWIII with the U.S. on one side and them on the other. They aren’t going to go after Taiwan, not unless the U.S. has already withered away to the point where the Chinese economy is not intrinsically tied to ours. The same goes for China vs. Japan. China is not the 21st century version of the Soviet Union. These doomsday scenarios you point to simply are not going to happen, so basing our foreign policy decisions on them is completely foolhardy and ignorant. It’s like having General jack D. Ripper from Dr. Strangelove running the State Department.

Besides, I’m not suggesting that we go completely isolationist, only that we take steps in that direction in the Middle East. If we could remain isolated from as much of the bullshit in the Middle East as possible, it leaves us with way more resources to invest in THIS country and in protecting our interests from whatever encroachments China decides to make if they go off the deep end. [/quote]

Hmmm… I think you might just be throwing words at me rather than thinking through what you are saying. I haven’t slept much, so apologies if this is terse:

1. You are ignoring my point. If you want a list of reasons why the US and Israel are good allies and should continue to support each other, PM Jewbacca. I don’t care to debate this with you.

CIA and intelligence gathering: Yeah, they are good. But then again, I think Iraq has WMD.

2. I don’t care to debate “If the USSR was a true threat in the late '70s early 80’s.” You seem to be taking a stance that is directly against what most at the time believed. Your analysis of Team B seems… hmmm… unique? Anyway, if you don’t think the Soviets were a threat, there is nothing to debate.

3. & 5) You wrote: "The only thing that would instigate a war between us and China would be an overtly aggressive action on our part toward them. " In your worldview only the US’s actions can lead to war. This is silly.

If the US abandons the East, either because isolationists like you move us there politically or because we have “withered” as you put it, China WILL become more aggressive towards Taiwan.

Your strawman about China=USSR is just that: a strawman.

Your idea that fear of a war between China and Japan or Taiwan is a “doomsday scenario” is absurd. Your faith in trade/globalization is far beyond reasonable. You seem to be (because of ignorance or inappropriate faith in economics?) downplaying the animosity between these nations and the rampant nationalism of these nations. I don’t think that China will go to war with Japan over the Senkaku islands this year (I wasn’t so sure 6 months ago), but only fools would say it is beyond reasonable to see war as a possibility.

#4) My point was that ignoring problems doesn’t make them go away. The US could abandon its position in the world, to disastrous consequence. You seem to be moving toward “Peace in our time.” That’s fine as far as it goes, but don’t be surprised when others call you on it.

RE: you final comment: Finally you sound a LITTLE reasonable. That is a long way from saying “…we SHOULD ignore this situation. We SHOULD be isolationists”.

[Gambit_Lost]

[quote]Gambit_Lost wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:
We can enjoy a high standard of living without having to prove ourselves as the alpha dog in every fucking conflict around the world, you know. We can extract ourselves from the current mindset that we have, which is basically that it is our duty to correct every injustice we see around the world. As a country, we aren’t fit to pass moral judgments on others, not with things like legalized abortion, the NSA scandal, the IRS scandal, massive racism, corruption in our gov’t, and on and on and on. We can be a much more isolationist country and still enjoy a high quality of life. Last I checked, Norway, Sweden, Australia and Switzerland all have pretty high standards of living and no one in the Middle East is foaming at the mouth to attack them.
[/quote]

Those countries enjoy a high standard of living in large part due to America’s military and foreign policy since War Two. You know this.

The idea that “If we don’t bug them they won’t bug us” is simplistic to the point of naivete. And you know this too.

Wife is calling…maybe I’ll be able to psot more later. [/quote]

Eh, I was going to write more about this, but I’m tired. Let’s just say the US has a large interest in maintaining the current international order as has been the case since the US helped set it up. The pic doesn’t fit my point entirely, but I’m not a cartoonist.

[Gambit_Lost]

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

I’m MORE than familiar with the history of Cuba. The Cuban Missile Crisis was something that was at least partially provoked by the U.S.‘s failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs and the subsequent attempts to assassinate Castro. Putting missiles there was no different in the Soviets’ eyes than us stationing missiles all over Europe and on the Turkish/Russian border. Maybe if we weren’t putting missiles up pointing them at everyone someone wouldn’t do the same thing to us. But that’s neither here nor there.
[/quote]
You seem to have selective memory when it comes to Cuba and the Soviets. You’re not going to successfully argue that the Soviets putting ballistic missiles in Cuba was just a normal practice where satellite nations naturally receive nuclear missile capability and it was no real threat and there was nothing to deal with there. There is to much of a history fail there to even deal with on a forum. It’s well documented stuff and if it were not consequential to the United States, there would have been no crisis.
Further, before the Bay of Pigs is where the U.S. failed. We failed because we did nothing and didn’t want to get involved. Castro looked to the U.S. first and Eisenhower told him to fuck himself. The Soviets rode in on their white horse and the rest is, as they say, history.

You keep saying that the price of doing nothing is too great but I haven’t really heard you say anything in regards to what that price is. Do you really think that Israel will allow those chemical weapon stockpiles to flow freely from Syria if we stay home? Of course not. So there’s one “price” we can cross off the list.

I did mention but perhaps not explicitly enough. Outsiders are getting involved. And if we create a vacuum by ignoring or not getting involved in someway, others will. Those others are Iran, Al qaeda, China, North Korea and/ or various sundry enemies of the United States and Israel. This will serve to either further destabilize the region and provide strategic capabilities to people who wish to actively do us harm.
Those who assist get a foothold and that foothold could either be helpful or harmful to us.
There is no way that what’s happening in Syria right now is not going to affect us in some way. It’s messy, but not impossible to contain the threats and potential threats.

We have ZERO duty to our allies. Our allies have a duty to US. We’ve done WAY more for our allies than they have done for us. We owe them nothing. What are we worried about over there? Some chemical weapons? So what? There are stockpiles of them all over the Middle East. How many have been used by al Qaeda or Iran against the U.S.? You think that al Qaeda will get their hands on Syria’s? Why haven’t they done so in the past? Because Assad controlled them. Why do you think there is a push to get Assad out? This is something that was a small minority of concerned Syrians and that movement has now been commandeered and taken over by Sunni extremists looking to get them before their Shi’ite extremist rivals get them. Why? Because the side that gets them first will use them on the other side.

We have zero duty to our allies? That’s a great plan, let’s alienate our allies and bang our dicks on the table about how they ‘owe’ us. Allies, by definition, protect each other’s interests. Sure we’re often way to nice and we have helped more than we have been helped. That’s not the chip to play in a situation like this. Further, if it can be done, we want Syria to turn into an ally. If we demonstrate that we leave our allies out in the cold, they won’t be. Syria would be a very beneficial ally to have. I don’t expect them to be particularly loyal, or even play nice as ally’s, but it’s still a strategic play to have them on the books as one.

And do you think that Iran wants to see us get dragged into this mess? Of course they do. Our enemies know they can’t defeat us in a straight-up fight. They have to nickel and dime us to death over the long haul. This is another way for them to do so.

No the hell they don’t. The last thing they want is yet another American friendly nation on their border who will not trade with them and kick them out of Syria. Iran is already there assisting Assad in murdering his own people as well as Hezbollah. This is no minor skirmish. It’s a powder keg with huge regional consequences. The last thing Iran wants to deal with is American might. They want control over the situation and if we do nothing, they will get it.

I firmly believe that the first step toward defeating terrorism is to what is necessary to eliminate us as a favorite target of terrorists. Otherwise, we are fighting the Forever War and we will lose it. Terrorism is an idea, a mindset, a method, that has been around long before the U.S. and will be around long after the U.S. It CANNOT be stopped entirely. That is a fundamental fact of the world that we live in that you and others seem to be completely unwilling to admit. The fact is that we can NEVER stop terrorism, but we can take steps to lessen the motivation of terrorists to attack US.

This mindset is invented in the first place. You aren’t going to demotivate terrorists by increasing their ability to operate. That will serve only to embolden them. This idea that if we just act nice and treat them they way they say they want, they will leave us alone is a myth. No amount of apology or American concession will lessen their desire to harm us. They never had a reason to attack us in the first place, they invented one.
Unless we converted to a muslim theocracy and imposed sharia law, they will not be satisfied to leave us alone. We are not dealing with rational people.

Obama tried the ol’ appeasement tour early in his presidency, it did not do one fucking thing to subvert their desire to harm and kill us. These people only understand the language or force, not sympathy.

And I know people don’t want to hear it and it pisses people off because it’s kind of like admitting defeat and acquiescence and compromise and all that shit isn’t the macho thing, but we HAVE to change our actions in the Middle East 180 degrees if we want to lessen the motivation for terrorists to come over here and kill Americans with dirty bombs and jets and rocket launchers and chemical weapons. If someone gets it in their head that they want to kill a lot of Americans, they can do it. But if we give them less motivation by refusing to constantly stick our noses into everyone’s shit telling them what to do, how to live, how to behave, what they can and can’t use their oil money for and so forth, we will reduce the amount of people who are crazy enough and pissed off enough at us to risk everything to kill some Americans.

Sure, they’d like nothing more than for us to emasculate Israel and let them have at it.
Our policies are not the motivation for their hostilities, it’s only an excuse. If they didn’t have that excuse, they’d simply invent another.

[quote]
I really don’t know what is so hard to understand about that. So what if we lose some face in the process? So what if we piss off some of our allies? What have they done for us anyways? What the FUCK has Israel ever done for us? What the FUCK has Saudi Arabia ever done for us? What the FUCK has Western Europe ever done for us? How many of their soldiers have died in Afghanistan and Iraq? You know what happens if we go into Syria? We fuck things up even worse, just like we’ve done in Afghanistan and Iraq, maybe kill a few thousand civilians along the way and BOOM, you have the next generation of al Qaeda crazies looking to kill Americans out of revenge for the “injustices” we’ve committed in Syria. What happens if we do nothing? A bunch of wacky Syrians get killed, maybe some chemical weapons get out and they get used against each other or possibly Israel. That’s a shitty thing to happen, but shitty things happening is an eventuality over there no matter what we do. As an American, I’d rather see Israel at risk with a bunch of Syrians getting gassed to death than the exact same thing happening PLUS American lives and money going down the drain while resentment and motivation for attacking the U.S. increases rather than decreases.[/quote]

I guess you were asleep in 2009 what Obama tried that. The whole appeasement thing did not do a fucking thing, not a single iota to stop the terrorists. What’s interesting to me is that even the fact that obama already tried that and it failed miserably somehow does not deter you to think trying the same failing idea once again would work. No matter how many times you add 2+2, it will never equal 5. Trying a failing idea repeatedly does not increase it’s chances of working.
The funny thing is, that even obama, who believed these same silly notions, knows now that they do not work. My fear with obama is that he may try half-assed commitments like Clinton did with Bosnia and Somalia which could be disastrous. If you commit, whatever you commit has to be sufficient to succeed. What you don’t want is another ‘Blackhawk Down’ scenario.

I really am having a hard time believing you think an appeasement strategy would work. Especially in light of the fact that it hasn’t.[/quote]

Overall very well said. I may disagree with some minor points, but it’s nice to read this after reading yet another “let’s just ignore the situation…it’s our fault…only the US could cause war” opinion.

[pat]

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Jewbacca wrote:
There is no good side to this, and it will turn out badly.

Assad, the evil optomotrist (really!), is a foul man, but a known evil and kept the peace, more or less, so normal people could go about their lives, more or less. He is from the same trans-islamic political party as Saddam. Not a pretty group — the party was originally formed by Nazi Germany to organize the islamic world against the Allies and to kill the resident Jews in what-was-then the British protectorate and-what-is-now mostly Israel. So, I can’t say I am a fan.

The islamist rebels are basically fucking crazy, feeding on religious fervor, and hate the USA as much as they hate Assad. Not sure why anyone would help them, unless the goal is to have every able-bodied man in the country dead.

Anyway, it’s a bad scene, happening next door to me, but I would really just let it run its course. This intra-Islamic fighting has been going on since 600 CE. They only stop when there are Christians or Jews to kill.

Just don’t let it spread to Joran or Israel and help evac the people caught in the middle.[/quote]

I am actually all for setting up a puppet government over there. If we intervene, it has to be to the point we plant our flag. We cannot let the rebels run the show, it will be a theocracy much like the Taliban, we cannot support Assad, he’s all but done. So a new government is going to take effect, we have to intervene to the point where we can ensure they will do no harm to us or our interests. I agree, there is nothing pretty about this and no good solutions, only different levels of bad. The problem is, how many Syrians are we going to let die? They are the ones getting bombed and gassed. That’s where this gets messy, we don’t want another Congo situation, you can’t just let 2 million people die. Well you can, but it’s not very nice to do so.

Isolationism is as dead as can be. There is no opting out of dealing with it. Syria is to much of a heavy hitter to allow it to devolve into chaos. [/quote]

The Syrian problem will not be solved by any puppet government I’m afraid. It’s a wider movement extending throughout the Shia belt. Assad is from the Alawite sect which reveres Mohammad’s son in law Ali as do the Shia so they are natural ideological allies. Iran and their proxies(Hezbollah etc) are fighting the Sunnis throughout the Muslim world and the Russians are supporting them. Where will it end? God only knows but not with a pro-Western puppet government.[/quote]

Oh I know. I am just implying that would be the best possible outcome for us. I think the most realistic goal is to have some sort of established relations with the new government. The whole ‘keep your enemies closer’ thing. They won’t ever like us, they will never be our friends but we can have enough influence to have them in a situation of ‘do no harm’.