This does seem to be your attitude toward the study of world politics despite your eagerness to opine loudly about them. Run along now.
Considering I only made two basic arguments in the post, I could take a wild guess it was regarding the failed attempt at deterrence…
What’s in disagreement is the success of the chemical weapons removal by Russia as an act of compellence.The definition of success I suppose is the pivotal issue regarding ones opinion on the outcome, considering that any result would be imperfect for American interests I don’t see any way the end result could be settled as either a success or failure whence the ongoing bickering that has swelled this thread.
What I’m truly curious about is why the red line failed to begin with? So far I see 3 possible explanations.
Command & Control error - Possible internal power struggles within Assad Regime could have led to the chemical weapons attack without full consent of Assad. (I wouldn’t expect continued chlorine attacks if this were the case)
An essential act of survival for the Assad Regime - Was the regime so hard pressed that it had to resort to chemical weapons despite the known eventual consequences from the West? (I don’t believe the regime was this hard pressed at the time so I doubt it)
A calculated challenge of the Red Line - Did they feel confident they could use chemical weapons and then rely on their relationship with Russia to avoid the full consequences of doing so? (This seems the most likely, it seems pretty reasonable that the Assad regime would have discussed the options with Russia prior to the attack and therefore would have had the outcome somewhat planned. I would also assume that they anticipated that the West would not be too eager to depose Assad given the ISIS elements in the region combined with the chemical weapons stockpiles.)
I see the reasoning in the defiance as a critical indicator of the overall handling of Syria. If my suspicion is correct then as a concern in the broader global spectrum Assad was able to subvert American demands directly through their relationship with Russia.
So maybe I was pissed when I wrote it. Sue me.
(Or possibly someone will sue you for plagiarism one day…j/k)
Bingo. Interesting post above btw.
Ok, I’ve got some questions for someone to take a stab at if you are so inclined:
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What were the intentions of the American involvement in Libya during their civil war?
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How has the outcome benefited America?
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What were the intentions of the American involvement in the Syrian civil war, the red line, arming rebels etc?
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How has the outcome benefited America?
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How or did the Iran nuclear deal weaken Iran’s influence in the Middle East?
Look up Hama massacre 1982…it’s the historical reason the West feared Assad would use chemical weapons in a civil war. Their fears had precedence.
would the words pseudo-intellectual douchebag classify as reductive, juvenile language?
The freaking Russians, seeing what we did to their dictator ally in Libya and the chaos which resulted there, took Obama’s threat (although YOU, yourself said his threat was ambiguous, after all I ADMITTED the Russians feared the Americans were going to bomb Syria, OBAMA NEVER SAID IT, so they reacted to a non-threat basically, which was a pretty much weak-ass threat in my opinion) The Russians made a deal and took out all the Sarin and VX weapons out of Syria to in an effort to save their ally Assad, while leaving him able to use Chlorine with impunity. Every time he drops a barrel bomb, despite how weak you claim the attack is, he’s laughing at the impotence of the Americans in this situation. Because if they were really afraid Assad would use NO chemical weapons PERIOD, or the Russians would forbid him from doing so. None of that has happened, so in spite of the overwhelming victory from Obama’s non-threat, it has not stopped Assad’s use of chemical weapons. That is a fact and even if there’s only 0.092 deaths by chemical weapons after the threat surely does not negate it. Make any excuse you like and you indeed have, but do the people in Syria think it is a great victory?
If this is such a great victory what exactly did we gain if the [quote=“smh_23, post:766, topic:210298”]
the American military and national security apparatus does not share this primary concern.
[/quote] about the innocent dead? Wouldn’t that alone be the primary achievement of the Obama so-called threat? Having the Russians take the deadliest gas out of the country so it could not be used against the civilian rebels? If not, you have contradicted yourself…why did we make the threat? Please explain if it is the correct time of the month which allows you to do so. We had the Russians take the chemical weapons out of Syria so they could not be used on civilians but the civilian deaths are not the primary concern of the security apparatus? How on earth does this even make the slightest amount of sense?
If anything, the situation is an overwhelming victory for the Russians. They are the ones who benefited the most out of this American foreign policy fiasco.
There, a wall of text with an article included and only 2 insults, poor ones at that.
Gkhan:
I hesitated in getting in the middle of you and smh’s party; but I had to interject with two of your points:
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No one that I am aware of…certainly not in the Administration, Military and Security community; thought for one instant that they would totally and completely eliminate the Assad’s ability to wage war or to drop Chemical Munitions on his own people . The reduction of the threat; with a reduction in the possibility that millions of tons of the most lethal agents known to man was spread throughout the Middle East; was accomplished. This “zero-sum” measure that you have; especially as it relates to war; is naive on your part.
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Assad is a Mad Man with a noose around his neck who is not “laughing” at anyone, especially not the U.S. Someone who most likely has to change his position and whereabouts on a continuous basis; and probably has nightmares of U.S. Seals and Dragon-Teethed Drones carrying Hellfires with his name on them; is not running around doing a Happy Dance and thumbing his nose up at the U.S.
My opinion? Deterence was ambiguous and the Assad regime calculated that it could use a psychologically devastating weapon that would sap the morale of rebel forces without consequence.
Obama: “We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.”
In any event, it’s clear that the Assad regime and its ally Russia scrambled to relinquish two million pounds of military grade chemical weapons when the U.S. suggested that doing so would avert a concerted air campaign.
Two million pounds of sarin, VX, and mustard gas were removed from a jihadist beehive and the international security norm that the use of military grade chemical weapons was upheld (their use is a significant and destabilizing escalation toward total war).
American and international security interests > Syrian civilian casualties.
A nuclear Iran is much more difficult to contain than a non-nuclear Iran.
Nobody gives a shit about your opinion. Your opinion is worthless. Really: You don’t know what you’re talking about at even the most fundamental, semiregular-tabloid-reader sort of level. You opened this pathetic mess of a “debate” (I use scare quotes because debates generally have two sides) with a four-sentence faceplant up your own ass, a post so thoroughly expressive of your basic ignorance of the essential facts relating to the matter about which you were trying to argue that it would have been almost impressive if it did not represent such a futile and clownish waste of other people’s time. Then, as intellectually dishonest worms like you do, you tried to simply waddle away, refusing even to glance back and apologize for the pile of shit you’d left for someone else to clean up.
I should have left you with that loss, but I chose instead to write a very long and very detailed post, a post brimming with information that was utterly new to you – a post to which you would not be able to create a whole and cogent and material response even if you were given the next three years to try.
But trying is not something you’re interested in doing. Instead it seems you’re going to pick out little bits at a time and attach to them some limp, deeply confused, fact-challenged, non sequitur gibberish…pretending all the while that we’re back at square one, before I disabused you of (some of) your awesome ignorance of world affairs, before I fully and in great detail defeated the juvenile, know-nothing horseshit that spills forth through your keyboard each and every time you decide to impose your meaningless opinions on the marketplace of ideas. I see that you’ve even decided to burden this thread with another addled installment of here, let’s pretend that savage beating didn’t happen, lemme get a do-over, I’ll just pull some rhetorical questions out of some or another orifice, slap them together, and lob the mess into the center of the public square, because that’s how adults argue politics, right? (Aside: I would urge any bystanders not to make the mistake of stepping in the muck.)
Seriously, though: fun aside: you’re neither knowledgeable nor intelligent nor intellectually honest enough to do this. That’s been clear for a long time. If you somehow think I’m wrong about this, go back to that long post I wrote. Read it, understand it, and then respond to it (every word of it: it’s a progression). In your response, explicitly concede the points you cannot rebut, and rebut the points you can. When I say “rebut the points you can,” I mean that you must rebut the actual points that were made, i.e. that your rebuttals must have logical and material continuity with the claims they address. They must adduce evidence in support of counter-claims that specifically address and defeat my argument. They cannot tilt at strawmen. They cannot be logically disjointed from my post. They have to make sense. They have to reflect reality. They have to constitute a legitimate framework by which to evaluate the material we’re evaluating (again: if every foreign policy is a failure by your childish fucking lights, that says nothing about every foreign policy and everything about the dim worthlessness of your childish fucking lights). I don’t work for free, and I don’t give head starts or do-overs: this is what you wanted. I made my argument. You can correctly respond to it, or you can fuck right off. Anything less than a full response to that post (in which I generously taught you all sorts of things both specific and general) will be ignored.
Now, we both know you aren’t remotely capable of managing what I just described (i.e., of engaging in legitimate debate), so I believe that this is adios for real.
How about I’m talking about targeting his troops, how about the helicopters which are used to drop barrel bombs, how about bombing them when they are sitting on a runway or landing pad? How about punishing Assad militarily for using the chemicals weapons against his own people? If they could not eliminate his ability to wage war or drop Chemical munitions on his own people, then the threat, or lack of one, because Obama never actually made clear what exactly his threat was, should not have been made.
But why wouldn’t we think it was possible? Hell, it worked pretty good in Libya, after all.
You must or you wouldn’t have responded. I think there various people on these boards who do, and others who agree with me. Two in particular I know for sure who do.
I don’t give a shit about yours, what you think about this debate or me.
So what exactly about a Washington Post article didn’t you understand? Is this somehow not reality, not a real opinion or idea because it goes against your narrative?
The people of Syria think we dropped the ball by not attacking and taking out Assad’s weapons of warfare. Is this somehow not true? Is the article from the Onion or the Washington Post?
Good enough. I addressed points in your argument, backed it up with the article. I pointed out a couple of points in what you wrote which do not make any sense and contradict each other… You do not want to respond to what I wrote, that’s entirely up to you. Par for the course.
adios to you also.
What the fuck are you talking about? I have never said or suggested or even subtly hinted at anything that could even be mistaken for this claim. Precisely the opposite is true, and this is one of the very many reasons that the outcomes we achieved vis-a-vis Assad’s chemical weapons were, as I have in detail shown, positive.
If I’m wrong, find it. Seriously, find the instance in which I claimed anything remotely resembling this. We’ll put the comprehensive rebuttal you owe me on hold. Find these words of mine and reproduce them here.
Precisely why I edited them out of my post. But not before you responded.
oh well.
have a good one.
Think about that statement, Gkhan…and what the after match in Libya has been.
Short-sided thinking can have profound strategic consequences.
What is happening to the Syrian people is an absolute nightmare…but us jumping in there completely dismantling the military would have (AND MIDDLE EASTERN HISTORY HAS PROVEN THIS)…created a void to be filled by something that has often proven to be even worse.
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It doesn’t have any-thing what-so-ever to do with my argument. Jesus. You don’t even understand how this kind of thing is done, do you?
I write a very detailed and specific post that is specifically, explicitly, and emphatically about American security interests, and you respond with an article about how “[Syrians’] views on U.S. policy differ markedly from the president’s”? Well no shit, but this debate is not about Syrians’ interests, and it is not about Syrians’ glimmers of hope.
Read carefully: You are not going to rebut that post with a link, particularly a link that doesn’t address what the post addressed. You are not going find some article that responds specifically to those points and that progression. If you want it done, you have to do it. You won’t – and couldn’t anyway – so there it is.
I already addressed this but you seemed to ignore it, so repeat myself I will.
You said:
What threat exactly? What was Obama’s threat? You your self said he never actually threatened to bomb Syria and I linked a video which clearly showed you were correct. You counted this as a victory in the red line argument, but if this was true, the Russian’s actions could not be in anticipation of a vague threat which was not even uttered.
I, and several others on these boards who remain silent now, feel the Russian’s national pride was severely hurt by NATO and the US bombing of Libyan troops and death of Qadaffi in Libya. They made the deal to remove the chemical weapons from Syria to head off a vague threat made by President Obama. You would agree it was vague, wouldn’t you, because it was you who brought this to everyone’s attention. They removed the said weapons from Syria. Did they do this because they were afraid of some vague threat or did they do this as a beginning point to bolster their influence in the region? They did this to fortify their ally Assad so he and his pro-Russian government.
I put a forth a question, which remains unanswered, out there: what exactly were our goals in getting involved in Syria? Why make a red line threat to begin with? Could you please explain this, because what you have said has many contradictions in it. Such as:
Ok…if indeed true, Obama did do something. Everything in the quote above. Why did he do so? What was the reasoning behind the red line threat in the first place? I do not expect an answer to this or any question, but follow this reasoning:
On one hand the chemical weapons were seized by the Russians for what? So they wouldn’t be used on civilians? So on one hand you claim we care about civilians. But on the other about civilian deaths:
Yet they must care, or the red line threat would be meaningless
What does it represent? That it is a more lethal killer than Chlorine? Because
and we can’t act out on our threat because
[quote=“smh_23, post:804, topic:210298”]
it isn’t actually in our interest to start creating chaos in Syria by bombing Assad.[/quote]
Are you crazy? We did everything in our power to drive Qadaffi out of power and you can damn bet if the Russians were not in Syria we would be doing everything and are doing everything in our power in spite of the Russians to get Assad out of power.
Yet it is all somehow justified because
WTF? Those are all pitiful excuses.
No idiot. The problem becomes apparent when we make a threat to punish Assad if he uses a chemical weapon. If
Then he should be punished according to the red line threat or the Russians should prevent him from using chemical weapons or admit that the red line threat is merely that…a vague, oddly worded threat never meant to be backed up by force and now with the Russians in Syria, never will.
The article I posted brings up the fact that the people of Syria feel betrayed by the lack of action against Assad by the American military. So the very people all of this were meant to help feel we have failed them. Let that sink in for a moment. I guess if you’re the one being bombed it doesn’t much matter if it’s VX, Sarin or Chlorine.
So what were America’s interests in Syria?
So all of this boils down ultimately to regime change? And who’s still in charge in Syria, with full Russian backing?
Who is really the winner so far in the Syrian war?
Certainly not Obama.
You are absolutely correct Mufasa.