[quote]Bismark wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]Bismark wrote:
[quote]MaximusB wrote:
[quote]Bismark wrote:
[quote]Aggv wrote:
[quote]MaximusB wrote:
Who the fuck would trust Iran to adhere to any of this shit ?[/quote]
Neville Chamberlain ?[/quote]
By all qualitative and quantitative accounts, Iran has adhered to the Geneva interim agreement. What critics of a deal fail to understand is that the monitoring mechanisms under such a regime would be stronger than what’s currently in effect.
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Oh I believe you, in fact I fear the might hammer of Obama with that whole Syrian red line.
This deal should be written on a napkin and signed with crayons.
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Syria was compelled to remove its chemical weapons arsenal - the largest of its kind - from a jihadist beehive. How does Syrian chemical disarmament constitute a failure?
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Where to start with this one…
-The Red Line clearly meant military action. The line was crossed, no action.
- It left the Assad regime in tact, which created a vacuum in the rebel parts which gave rise to ISIS.
-The Russians brokered the deal.
-Assad is still gassing his people with chlorine, even recently, because he is not afraid of military action.
Maybe somebody who was there can explain it better:
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You are yet again demonstrating your fundamental ignorance of the subject. A violation of the red line was always said to lead in a “change of calculus”. I don’t wish to reenact your abysmal “Obama has failed at everything” thread from the summer in which you were trounced by Smh23 and myself, so here are the cliff notes:
Bismark wrote:
https://blackboard.angelo.edu/...esson_3/Art.pdf
The redline that chemical weapons use would change American “calculus” in Syria represented ambiguous deterrence. Assad gambled that he could utilize chemical weapons with no consequence. Deterrence failed. No one is disputing that. The ensuing result of successful peaceful compellence was directly connected to the aforementioned deterrence.
Deterrence: “Do not carry out action X, for if you do, I will strike you upon the head with this club.”
The redline did not present such an explicit threat of force, but merely a change of “calculus”, which is why the qualifier ambiguous is added. Deterrence functions most effectively when it is clearly presented to potential adversaries. However, if such an explicit conditional threat was issued and avoided by the Assad regime, over 1000 tons of military grade chemical weapons would still be in danger of falling into the hands of Islamic extremists. What benefits American and international security more: the removal of a 2,000,000 lbs of military grade chemical weapons from a jihadist beehive, or the preservation of roughly 1,500 Syrian nationals? International relations is a callous endeavor informed by rational egoism, whose ethics are decidedly guided by consequentialism. While the loss of innocent life was nothing short of tragic, to choose the latter would be nothing short of weakness underpinned by naive idealism.
Compellence: “I am now going to strike you upon the head with this club until you acquiesce to my demands.”
Compellence can take a peaceful or physical form. The Assad regime’s relinquishment of its military grade chemical weapons arsenal to avoid the actualization of the threat of American punitive strikes undeniably constitutes peaceful compellence. Nothing would be gained by targeted strikes because they were not necessary to enlist the cooperation of the Assad regime. Indeed, such punishment would greatly endanger the diplomacy that made the Syrian chemical deal possible. In addition, no such threat was issued in the initial ambiguous deterrence, so the concerns of a loss of face in the absence of physical compellence are misplaced.
Smh23 wrote:
Excellent post.
But the retort is forthcoming, and it’s going to knock your socks off:
"Oh yeah, well, here is a short list of shit that has nothing to do with your argument:
–Assad is still alive and killing people. Never mind that we are talking about chemical weapons diplomacy and not the end of the civil war. I am unable to reason with specificity, so take this mushy bolus of misconception, waffling, and tangential half-thoughts, and see what you can do with it, Jack! As an aside, I just wrote an article in which I rank the ten best and worst players in the NFL using data on their pole vaulting skills, passion for embroidery, blood type, and, of course, scrotal surface area. Mark Sanchez turns out to be the best QB in the history of the NFL, followed closely by Art Garfunkel.
–And chlorine was used! Never mind that the stupidity of this point has been explained to me by a handful of posters over multiple clear and well-assembled arguments to which I have never even considered responding. Never mind that what is at issue here is a stock of more than 2 million pounds of nerve and blister agents that are actual banned chemical weapons. Never mind that I cannot construct even a shitty half-argument wherein the strapping of some explosives to a common industrial and domestic agent in order to kill a few Syrian civilians constitutes an American foreign policy failure. Obama mishandled the situation because he did’t go in and empty all the factories, supermarkets, homes, and pools in the entire country of Syria. As an aside, Ronald Reagan was a terrible president, because my grandmother broke her leg during his administration, and he didn’t do anything to stop it, incompetent dick that he was."
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You were wrong then and your still wrong. Leon Panetta pretty much affirmed everything I said and he was fucking there.
And how petty do you have to be to drag the river for old posts made months ago? You’re inability to stay on topic is astounding. You have to drag the whole ‘Red Line’ thing in to a thread about something that has nothing to do with it. Rattling the cage of semantics to save the face of a guy who failed miserably at a critical point and the consequences of it are huge. We are still paying for that failure.
Everybody buy you seems to know what ‘change in calculus’ meant. What it did not mean we will slap your hand and take away your toys.
If you keep having to tell everybody how great you are, you may be missing something vital.
The Red Line miscalculation was a huge failure on the part of obama. History bares that out. The facts bare that out.
You can think of me what you will, Leo Panetta says I was right:
"Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Tuesday that President Obama damaged U.S. credibility by drawing a “red line” against Syria’s use of chemical weapons and then failed to back it up with military force when Syria crossed the line.
“It was damaging,” Mr. Panetta, who also served as CIA director for Mr. Obama, told Yahoo News.
Mr. Panetta said he supported drawing the red line as a warning to Syrian President Bashar Assad not to use chemical weapons was �¢??the right thing to do�¢?? but failing to enforce it was a mistake.
Mr. Obama instead opted for a Russian-brokered disarmament plan after Mr. Assad, tightening his grip on power in the face of a popular uprising and civil war, used chemical weapons to kill as many as 1,400 people.
“I think the credibility of the United States is on the line,” Mr. Panetta said. “It was important for us to stand by our word and go in and do what a commander in chief should do.”
He said Mr. Obama “sent a mixed message, not only to Assad, not only to the Syrians, but [also] to the world. And that is something you do not want to establish in the world, an issue with regard to the credibility of the United States to stand by what we say we’re gonna do.”"
He was there, he worked for obama, he’s a democrat, and he called it a failure. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Oh, I suppose he doesn’t know what he’s talking about either, huh?