Obama has Failed at Everything

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
661

[quote]Gkhan wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Gkhan wrote:
If Assad was going to rape your sister you said don’t touch her or I’ll kill you. He rapes her anyway and you cut his balls off. He still raped her. You can’t deny that. In spite of your warning, he still raped her. He may not be able to do it again, but he still did it. So how’s that a victory?

interesting how you ignored this. [/quote]

I get your point, but how about this analogy.

Gun man seizes a school. Police surround school and warn gunman not to shoot or they will be forced to take action.
Gunman shoots up the school, gunman is forced to give up his guns and ammo.
Did the warning from the po-po work?
Do you like that analogy?[/quote]

Here’s a better analogy.

The corrupt mayor of a town has a fleet of heavy armoured vehicles, which he threatens to have his SWAT teams roll through the street, squashing a group of protestors. The state governor grows concerned that this tactic is heavy-handed, so he warns the mayor not to run over any protestors using armoured SWAT vehicles, or he will be forced to take action.

The state government drafts a new law, banning heavy armoured SWAT vehicles.

A state legislator, who is a friend of the mayor, convinces him to give up all of his SWAT vehicles, And the mayor grudgingly complies. All of the SWAT vehicles are carted off to the scrap heap.

But then word comes that a bike cop has just bludgeoned a protestor to death with his bicycle.

It wasn’t a heavy armoured SWAT vehicle, but a vehicle nonetheless, and it was used to kill someone.

Would you say that the Armoured SWAT Vehicle ban, and therefore the governor who sponsored it, were failures because they did not prevent the protestor getting beaten to death by a bicycle?[/quote]

Varq, I don’t have a problem with the Armoured SWAT Vehicles being taken away. But they should punish who ever used that bicycle. How come the guy who killed someone with a bike gets off scott free?
[/quote]

Well, if we are going to move forward with this analogy, I don’t think a bicycle is a good analogy for chlorine gas.
It was, after all one of the first official chemical weapons ever used. As a chemical weapon, it’s legit. No, it’s not as powerful as Sarin or Mustard but it wasn’t an accident that someone happened to die.
These canisters were used deliberately to kill people. The reported total is 14 times so far. And it’s a horribly painful way to die, if not wide spread in effect.
My contention is Assad used chlorine gas, a chemical, deliberately to kill people in 14 separate attacks. Sorry, I don’t consider this a minor thing.

662

[quote]Gkhan wrote:

[quote]kamui wrote:

Bad analogy.

No one said “don’t touch her” in this story.
At most, we said “Please put a condom before you rape my jihadist sister”.
And our rapist is now castrated.

[/quote]

So, you’ve not only condoned the use of chemical weapons, you’ve somehow made Assad OUR rapist. He was never our ally, never. Unless we are friends with Iran and Hezbollah as well.[/quote]

Syria has made strange bedfellows out of us. Israel help!

663

Slight side track:

Now, I am not posting this because of the veracity of what this guy says. Clearly he’s an over the top political hack. It’s not surprising what he says, or how biased it is. What is surprising is who printed it. CNN? Left leaning CNN printed this opinion piece?
I have read some pieces that are slightly to the right on CNN, I have never read anything like this.

664

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:
We were talking about the ‘red line’ and the violation of that. Not the further violation of it with regards to the chlorine gas attacks. [/quote]

Got it. My misunderstanding.

Nah, I’ll only go so far as to post pictures of Elmer Fudd with a shotgun.[/quote]

You are hunting wabbits?[/quote]

No, remember you implied that people were calling you a “nimrod” and I posted a picture of a “mighty hunter” worthy of the name.[/quote]

I was making sure I was covering every base. And it wasn’t people, but it’s done and not saying anymore about it.

665

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Gkhan wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Gkhan wrote:
If Assad was going to rape your sister you said don’t touch her or I’ll kill you. He rapes her anyway and you cut his balls off. He still raped her. You can’t deny that. In spite of your warning, he still raped her. He may not be able to do it again, but he still did it. So how’s that a victory?

interesting how you ignored this. [/quote]

I get your point, but how about this analogy.

Gun man seizes a school. Police surround school and warn gunman not to shoot or they will be forced to take action.
Gunman shoots up the school, gunman is forced to give up his guns and ammo.
Did the warning from the po-po work?
Do you like that analogy?[/quote]

Here’s a better analogy.

The corrupt mayor of a town has a fleet of heavy armoured vehicles, which he threatens to have his SWAT teams roll through the street, squashing a group of protestors. The state governor grows concerned that this tactic is heavy-handed, so he warns the mayor not to run over any protestors using armoured SWAT vehicles, or he will be forced to take action.

The state government drafts a new law, banning heavy armoured SWAT vehicles.

A state legislator, who is a friend of the mayor, convinces him to give up all of his SWAT vehicles, And the mayor grudgingly complies. All of the SWAT vehicles are carted off to the scrap heap.

But then word comes that a bike cop has just bludgeoned a protestor to death with his bicycle.

It wasn’t a heavy armoured SWAT vehicle, but a vehicle nonetheless, and it was used to kill someone.

Would you say that the Armoured SWAT Vehicle ban, and therefore the governor who sponsored it, were failures because they did not prevent the protestor getting beaten to death by a bicycle?[/quote]

Varq, I don’t have a problem with the Armoured SWAT Vehicles being taken away. But they should punish who ever used that bicycle. How come the guy who killed someone with a bike gets off scott free?
[/quote]

Well, if we are going to move forward with this analogy, I don’t think a bicycle is a good analogy for chlorine gas.
It was, after all one of the first official chemical weapons ever used. As a chemical weapon, it’s legit. No, it’s not as powerful as Sarin or Mustard but it wasn’t an accident that someone happened to die.
These canisters were used deliberately to kill people. The reported total is 14 times so far. And it’s a horribly painful way to die, if not wide spread in effect.
My contention is Assad used chlorine gas, a chemical, deliberately to kill people in 14 separate attacks. Sorry, I don’t consider this a minor thing.[/quote]

Fine. The cop was on horseback, and he trampled the protestor with his horse.

You can’t tell me that a horse isn’t “legit”.

666

[quote]pat wrote:
Slight side track:

Now, I am not posting this because of the veracity of what this guy says. Clearly he’s an over the top political hack. It’s not surprising what he says, or how biased it is. What is surprising is who printed it. CNN? Left leaning CNN printed this opinion piece?
I have read some pieces that are slightly to the right on CNN, I have never read anything like this.[/quote]

I knew I was on the page of a hard-hitting news source when I saw the article right under this one: “Why You Shouldn’t Touch Your Eye Boogers”.

Regardless, pretty good analysis.

I’ve opposed your position on this thread because Devil’s Advocate is my favorite game (even though Bashir al-Assad is by no means my favorite devil: I mean, the guy is a former opthamologist for fuck’s sake), but I do agree that our Commander-in-Grief is a joke, and getting funnier by the day.

667

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Gkhan wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Gkhan wrote:
If Assad was going to rape your sister you said don’t touch her or I’ll kill you. He rapes her anyway and you cut his balls off. He still raped her. You can’t deny that. In spite of your warning, he still raped her. He may not be able to do it again, but he still did it. So how’s that a victory?

interesting how you ignored this. [/quote]

I get your point, but how about this analogy.

Gun man seizes a school. Police surround school and warn gunman not to shoot or they will be forced to take action.
Gunman shoots up the school, gunman is forced to give up his guns and ammo.
Did the warning from the po-po work?
Do you like that analogy?[/quote]

Here’s a better analogy.

The corrupt mayor of a town has a fleet of heavy armoured vehicles, which he threatens to have his SWAT teams roll through the street, squashing a group of protestors. The state governor grows concerned that this tactic is heavy-handed, so he warns the mayor not to run over any protestors using armoured SWAT vehicles, or he will be forced to take action.

The state government drafts a new law, banning heavy armoured SWAT vehicles.

A state legislator, who is a friend of the mayor, convinces him to give up all of his SWAT vehicles, And the mayor grudgingly complies. All of the SWAT vehicles are carted off to the scrap heap.

But then word comes that a bike cop has just bludgeoned a protestor to death with his bicycle.

It wasn’t a heavy armoured SWAT vehicle, but a vehicle nonetheless, and it was used to kill someone.

Would you say that the Armoured SWAT Vehicle ban, and therefore the governor who sponsored it, were failures because they did not prevent the protestor getting beaten to death by a bicycle?[/quote]

Varq, I don’t have a problem with the Armoured SWAT Vehicles being taken away. But they should punish who ever used that bicycle. How come the guy who killed someone with a bike gets off scott free?
[/quote]

Well, if we are going to move forward with this analogy, I don’t think a bicycle is a good analogy for chlorine gas.
It was, after all one of the first official chemical weapons ever used. As a chemical weapon, it’s legit. No, it’s not as powerful as Sarin or Mustard but it wasn’t an accident that someone happened to die.
These canisters were used deliberately to kill people. The reported total is 14 times so far. And it’s a horribly painful way to die, if not wide spread in effect.
My contention is Assad used chlorine gas, a chemical, deliberately to kill people in 14 separate attacks. Sorry, I don’t consider this a minor thing.[/quote]

Fine. The cop was on horseback, and he trampled the protestor with his horse.

You can’t tell me that a horse isn’t “legit”.[/quote]

Well, I shouldn’t have pushed on the legitimacy of the ‘bicycle’. I am just saying that chlorine gas poisoning is no minor thing.

Now as to the question. It depends on the intent. Was the intent, simply to remove heavy SWAT armored vehicles, or to prevent the police from killing protesters with their modes of transport.
If the goal was simple to remove armored vehicles and they removed armored vehicles, then it was successful.
If the goal was to prevent police from killing people with their modes of transport then it failed.

Now I get your point, in that we seem to express no problem with Assad murdering the shit out of his populous with conventional weapons, we were only expressing concern over chemical weapons which we got most of.
But I think this is also where we disagree, because it’s not ok for Assad to murder his people with conventional or chemical weapons.

The ‘red line’ was to signify, at the time it was said in the context it was said, “Ok, if you cross this line you have officially gone too far and we are going to put a stop to it and you.”
We had various options on the table that enabled us to take out the chemical weapons and seriously impair Assad’s ability to continue his attacks and give the rebel contingent a significant advantage in making head way and hopefully leading to Assad’s ouster in favor of a more moderate leadership. We had been talking with, and helping to some degree this rebel contingent in order to do just that.
We already had those options on the table, plans in place to eliminate the chemical threat via limited strikes, remove the air-strike capability, and provide arms and tactical support to the rebels. We wanted Assad gone and we said as much.
But we allowed Russia to intervene. Russia, who supports Assad and wanted him to stay in power and crush the rebellion, the opposite of what we wanted.
And subsequently we did, in fact change our ‘calculus’ on Syria to a much weaker position. We allowed ourselves to be hornswoggled into focusing only on chemical weapons rather than the initial goal of an Assad-free relatively peaceful, relatively stable Syria who was not a threat to regional peace.
So we allowed Russia to broker the deal and we accepted it. Assad gets rid of chemical weapons so at least he cannot poison people anymore. But this move backfired on us, big time.
In exchange for his chemical weapons, Assad not only got to retain his power but also received the means and the backing he needed not only to hold on, but to continue to reign hell on the opposition expanding his sphere of influence and tightening his grip which is exactly the opposite of what we wanted to happen.
And something else magical happened that helped his cause greatly. Terrorists. It’s debatable what role Assad had in throwing open the doors to al qaeda and their cronies to invade the rebel control territories. He certainly didn’t seem to mind. The rebels having little support, no protection from air strikes and being poorly armed had little chance of stopping the influx. The Syrian rebellion has been greatly muddied because of the influx of these terrorists. And now, after all this, after the tides of the war has greatly turned in Assad’s favor, now we choose to deliver arms to the Syrian rebels. But who are we arming and how the hell are we going to keep those weapons out of the hands of ISIS and the like?

The ‘red line’ was the one chance we had to seriously turn the tide. We had ample opportunity, justification, and means to turn this thing around and get Assad and his chemical weapons out. We relented and after the situation has completely gone to hell, now we act with what we should have done then.
If we are doing it now, why didn’t we do it when we had the chance to really make a difference?
This opportunity missed and allowing Assad’s ally to broker a deal that pacified us, but empowered Assad is why I considered it a failure. As it allowed the situation to massive deteriorate in Assads favor.

And on top of that, as if to snub his nose at the U.S., he still found a way to use chemicals as a weapon to kill people. That’s the rub.

I appreciate you allowing to explain myself calmly. I hope we can discuss it, calmly.

668

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

You can’t tell me that a horse isn’t “legit”.[/quote]

Never ask a Mongol if horse isn’t “legit”.

669
670

This is a really excellent primer – 11 minutes – on the current hostilities.

Watch it and you will know 99% more than any given person in the MSM.

671

[quote]Jewbacca wrote:

I love it, where do you find these? The cartoons are great.

672

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Gkhan wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Gkhan wrote:
If Assad was going to rape your sister you said don’t touch her or I’ll kill you. He rapes her anyway and you cut his balls off. He still raped her. You can’t deny that. In spite of your warning, he still raped her. He may not be able to do it again, but he still did it. So how’s that a victory?

interesting how you ignored this. [/quote]

I get your point, but how about this analogy.

Gun man seizes a school. Police surround school and warn gunman not to shoot or they will be forced to take action.
Gunman shoots up the school, gunman is forced to give up his guns and ammo.
Did the warning from the po-po work?
Do you like that analogy?[/quote]

Here’s a better analogy.

The corrupt mayor of a town has a fleet of heavy armoured vehicles, which he threatens to have his SWAT teams roll through the street, squashing a group of protestors. The state governor grows concerned that this tactic is heavy-handed, so he warns the mayor not to run over any protestors using armoured SWAT vehicles, or he will be forced to take action.

The state government drafts a new law, banning heavy armoured SWAT vehicles.

A state legislator, who is a friend of the mayor, convinces him to give up all of his SWAT vehicles, And the mayor grudgingly complies. All of the SWAT vehicles are carted off to the scrap heap.

But then word comes that a bike cop has just bludgeoned a protestor to death with his bicycle.

It wasn’t a heavy armoured SWAT vehicle, but a vehicle nonetheless, and it was used to kill someone.

Would you say that the Armoured SWAT Vehicle ban, and therefore the governor who sponsored it, were failures because they did not prevent the protestor getting beaten to death by a bicycle?[/quote]

Varq, I don’t have a problem with the Armoured SWAT Vehicles being taken away. But they should punish who ever used that bicycle. How come the guy who killed someone with a bike gets off scott free?
[/quote]

Well, if we are going to move forward with this analogy, I don’t think a bicycle is a good analogy for chlorine gas.
It was, after all one of the first official chemical weapons ever used. As a chemical weapon, it’s legit. No, it’s not as powerful as Sarin or Mustard but it wasn’t an accident that someone happened to die.
These canisters were used deliberately to kill people. The reported total is 14 times so far. And it’s a horribly painful way to die, if not wide spread in effect.
My contention is Assad used chlorine gas, a chemical, deliberately to kill people in 14 separate attacks. Sorry, I don’t consider this a minor thing.[/quote]

I wasn’t aware that there were acceptable ways of killing people in a war.

Does it really matter HOW you kill someone? What is the fundamental difference between dropping a bomb through someone’s house and detonating a chemical weapon inside of it? It’s fucking war! The point of war is to kill as many people on the other side as you can until they are no longer able to kill you and are so weakened that they have no choice but to capitulate to the demands that led to war in the first place.

We used a weapon in WWII, twice, that has just as nasty an effect on people as mustard gas or chlorine gas. We used Agent Orange and Agent Blue in Vietnam during Operation Ranch Hand specifically to destroy crops and starve people to death to lower the recruiting potential of the VC. Hundreds of thousands of stillborn babies, babies born with grotesque physical deformations, hundreds of thousands killed outright, hundreds of thousands starved to death, etc. Huge swaths of land are STILL unusable due to the overwhelming presence of dioxins, which has led to massive erosion and flooding problems as a result of a lack of foliage and trees. People who think we lost that war are nuts. We won the SHIT out of that war.

What is the difference between that and using mustard gas? This whole quibbling over HOW people get killed during war is absolutely ridiculous and one of the main reasons our military efforts recently have gone for naught. It reminds of that scene in Casino when Joe Pesci stabs the guy in the neck with the pen. DeNiro says something like, “I was just wondering why the guy was saying what he said, but Nicky just hit him. He didn’t care.”

673

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Gkhan wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Gkhan wrote:
If Assad was going to rape your sister you said don’t touch her or I’ll kill you. He rapes her anyway and you cut his balls off. He still raped her. You can’t deny that. In spite of your warning, he still raped her. He may not be able to do it again, but he still did it. So how’s that a victory?

interesting how you ignored this. [/quote]

I get your point, but how about this analogy.

Gun man seizes a school. Police surround school and warn gunman not to shoot or they will be forced to take action.
Gunman shoots up the school, gunman is forced to give up his guns and ammo.
Did the warning from the po-po work?
Do you like that analogy?[/quote]

Here’s a better analogy.

The corrupt mayor of a town has a fleet of heavy armoured vehicles, which he threatens to have his SWAT teams roll through the street, squashing a group of protestors. The state governor grows concerned that this tactic is heavy-handed, so he warns the mayor not to run over any protestors using armoured SWAT vehicles, or he will be forced to take action.

The state government drafts a new law, banning heavy armoured SWAT vehicles.

A state legislator, who is a friend of the mayor, convinces him to give up all of his SWAT vehicles, And the mayor grudgingly complies. All of the SWAT vehicles are carted off to the scrap heap.

But then word comes that a bike cop has just bludgeoned a protestor to death with his bicycle.

It wasn’t a heavy armoured SWAT vehicle, but a vehicle nonetheless, and it was used to kill someone.

Would you say that the Armoured SWAT Vehicle ban, and therefore the governor who sponsored it, were failures because they did not prevent the protestor getting beaten to death by a bicycle?[/quote]

Varq, I don’t have a problem with the Armoured SWAT Vehicles being taken away. But they should punish who ever used that bicycle. How come the guy who killed someone with a bike gets off scott free?
[/quote]

Well, if we are going to move forward with this analogy, I don’t think a bicycle is a good analogy for chlorine gas.
It was, after all one of the first official chemical weapons ever used. As a chemical weapon, it’s legit. No, it’s not as powerful as Sarin or Mustard but it wasn’t an accident that someone happened to die.
These canisters were used deliberately to kill people. The reported total is 14 times so far. And it’s a horribly painful way to die, if not wide spread in effect.
My contention is Assad used chlorine gas, a chemical, deliberately to kill people in 14 separate attacks. Sorry, I don’t consider this a minor thing.[/quote]

I wasn’t aware that there were acceptable ways of killing people in a war.

Does it really matter HOW you kill someone? What is the fundamental difference between dropping a bomb through someone’s house and detonating a chemical weapon inside of it? It’s fucking war! The point of war is to kill as many people on the other side as you can until they are no longer able to kill you and are so weakened that they have no choice but to capitulate to the demands that led to war in the first place.

We used a weapon in WWII, twice, that has just as nasty an effect on people as mustard gas or chlorine gas. We used Agent Orange and Agent Blue in Vietnam during Operation Ranch Hand specifically to destroy crops and starve people to death to lower the recruiting potential of the VC. Hundreds of thousands of stillborn babies, babies born with grotesque physical deformations, hundreds of thousands killed outright, hundreds of thousands starved to death, etc. Huge swaths of land are STILL unusable due to the overwhelming presence of dioxins, which has led to massive erosion and flooding problems as a result of a lack of foliage and trees. People who think we lost that war are nuts. We won the SHIT out of that war.

What is the difference between that and using mustard gas? This whole quibbling over HOW people get killed during war is absolutely ridiculous and one of the main reasons our military efforts recently have gone for naught. It reminds of that scene in Casino when Joe Pesci stabs the guy in the neck with the pen. DeNiro says something like, “I was just wondering why the guy was saying what he said, but Nicky just hit him. He didn’t care.”[/quote]

Because non discriminate area weapons such as chemical weapons are ethically and legally untenable in the present technological era, and their present use would severely degrade American grand strategy.

Really? American “restraint” is why Afghanistan and Iraq had less than stellar results? I suggest you acquaint yourself with basic counterinsurgency. Simply killing insurgents is myopic. Providing security and services to the populace is crucial.

674

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Gkhan wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Gkhan wrote:
If Assad was going to rape your sister you said don’t touch her or I’ll kill you. He rapes her anyway and you cut his balls off. He still raped her. You can’t deny that. In spite of your warning, he still raped her. He may not be able to do it again, but he still did it. So how’s that a victory?

interesting how you ignored this. [/quote]

I get your point, but how about this analogy.

Gun man seizes a school. Police surround school and warn gunman not to shoot or they will be forced to take action.
Gunman shoots up the school, gunman is forced to give up his guns and ammo.
Did the warning from the po-po work?
Do you like that analogy?[/quote]

Here’s a better analogy.

The corrupt mayor of a town has a fleet of heavy armoured vehicles, which he threatens to have his SWAT teams roll through the street, squashing a group of protestors. The state governor grows concerned that this tactic is heavy-handed, so he warns the mayor not to run over any protestors using armoured SWAT vehicles, or he will be forced to take action.

The state government drafts a new law, banning heavy armoured SWAT vehicles.

A state legislator, who is a friend of the mayor, convinces him to give up all of his SWAT vehicles, And the mayor grudgingly complies. All of the SWAT vehicles are carted off to the scrap heap.

But then word comes that a bike cop has just bludgeoned a protestor to death with his bicycle.

It wasn’t a heavy armoured SWAT vehicle, but a vehicle nonetheless, and it was used to kill someone.

Would you say that the Armoured SWAT Vehicle ban, and therefore the governor who sponsored it, were failures because they did not prevent the protestor getting beaten to death by a bicycle?[/quote]

Varq, I don’t have a problem with the Armoured SWAT Vehicles being taken away. But they should punish who ever used that bicycle. How come the guy who killed someone with a bike gets off scott free?
[/quote]

Well, if we are going to move forward with this analogy, I don’t think a bicycle is a good analogy for chlorine gas.
It was, after all one of the first official chemical weapons ever used. As a chemical weapon, it’s legit. No, it’s not as powerful as Sarin or Mustard but it wasn’t an accident that someone happened to die.
These canisters were used deliberately to kill people. The reported total is 14 times so far. And it’s a horribly painful way to die, if not wide spread in effect.
My contention is Assad used chlorine gas, a chemical, deliberately to kill people in 14 separate attacks. Sorry, I don’t consider this a minor thing.[/quote]

I wasn’t aware that there were acceptable ways of killing people in a war.

Does it really matter HOW you kill someone? What is the fundamental difference between dropping a bomb through someone’s house and detonating a chemical weapon inside of it? It’s fucking war! The point of war is to kill as many people on the other side as you can until they are no longer able to kill you and are so weakened that they have no choice but to capitulate to the demands that led to war in the first place.

We used a weapon in WWII, twice, that has just as nasty an effect on people as mustard gas or chlorine gas. We used Agent Orange and Agent Blue in Vietnam during Operation Ranch Hand specifically to destroy crops and starve people to death to lower the recruiting potential of the VC. Hundreds of thousands of stillborn babies, babies born with grotesque physical deformations, hundreds of thousands killed outright, hundreds of thousands starved to death, etc. Huge swaths of land are STILL unusable due to the overwhelming presence of dioxins, which has led to massive erosion and flooding problems as a result of a lack of foliage and trees. People who think we lost that war are nuts. We won the SHIT out of that war.

What is the difference between that and using mustard gas? This whole quibbling over HOW people get killed during war is absolutely ridiculous and one of the main reasons our military efforts recently have gone for naught. It reminds of that scene in Casino when Joe Pesci stabs the guy in the neck with the pen. DeNiro says something like, “I was just wondering why the guy was saying what he said, but Nicky just hit him. He didn’t care.”[/quote]

For once I agree with you.

675

[quote]Bismark wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Gkhan wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Gkhan wrote:
If Assad was going to rape your sister you said don’t touch her or I’ll kill you. He rapes her anyway and you cut his balls off. He still raped her. You can’t deny that. In spite of your warning, he still raped her. He may not be able to do it again, but he still did it. So how’s that a victory?

interesting how you ignored this. [/quote]

I get your point, but how about this analogy.

Gun man seizes a school. Police surround school and warn gunman not to shoot or they will be forced to take action.
Gunman shoots up the school, gunman is forced to give up his guns and ammo.
Did the warning from the po-po work?
Do you like that analogy?[/quote]

Here’s a better analogy.

The corrupt mayor of a town has a fleet of heavy armoured vehicles, which he threatens to have his SWAT teams roll through the street, squashing a group of protestors. The state governor grows concerned that this tactic is heavy-handed, so he warns the mayor not to run over any protestors using armoured SWAT vehicles, or he will be forced to take action.

The state government drafts a new law, banning heavy armoured SWAT vehicles.

A state legislator, who is a friend of the mayor, convinces him to give up all of his SWAT vehicles, And the mayor grudgingly complies. All of the SWAT vehicles are carted off to the scrap heap.

But then word comes that a bike cop has just bludgeoned a protestor to death with his bicycle.

It wasn’t a heavy armoured SWAT vehicle, but a vehicle nonetheless, and it was used to kill someone.

Would you say that the Armoured SWAT Vehicle ban, and therefore the governor who sponsored it, were failures because they did not prevent the protestor getting beaten to death by a bicycle?[/quote]

Varq, I don’t have a problem with the Armoured SWAT Vehicles being taken away. But they should punish who ever used that bicycle. How come the guy who killed someone with a bike gets off scott free?
[/quote]

Well, if we are going to move forward with this analogy, I don’t think a bicycle is a good analogy for chlorine gas.
It was, after all one of the first official chemical weapons ever used. As a chemical weapon, it’s legit. No, it’s not as powerful as Sarin or Mustard but it wasn’t an accident that someone happened to die.
These canisters were used deliberately to kill people. The reported total is 14 times so far. And it’s a horribly painful way to die, if not wide spread in effect.
My contention is Assad used chlorine gas, a chemical, deliberately to kill people in 14 separate attacks. Sorry, I don’t consider this a minor thing.[/quote]

I wasn’t aware that there were acceptable ways of killing people in a war.

Does it really matter HOW you kill someone? What is the fundamental difference between dropping a bomb through someone’s house and detonating a chemical weapon inside of it? It’s fucking war! The point of war is to kill as many people on the other side as you can until they are no longer able to kill you and are so weakened that they have no choice but to capitulate to the demands that led to war in the first place.

We used a weapon in WWII, twice, that has just as nasty an effect on people as mustard gas or chlorine gas. We used Agent Orange and Agent Blue in Vietnam during Operation Ranch Hand specifically to destroy crops and starve people to death to lower the recruiting potential of the VC. Hundreds of thousands of stillborn babies, babies born with grotesque physical deformations, hundreds of thousands killed outright, hundreds of thousands starved to death, etc. Huge swaths of land are STILL unusable due to the overwhelming presence of dioxins, which has led to massive erosion and flooding problems as a result of a lack of foliage and trees. People who think we lost that war are nuts. We won the SHIT out of that war.

What is the difference between that and using mustard gas? This whole quibbling over HOW people get killed during war is absolutely ridiculous and one of the main reasons our military efforts recently have gone for naught. It reminds of that scene in Casino when Joe Pesci stabs the guy in the neck with the pen. DeNiro says something like, “I was just wondering why the guy was saying what he said, but Nicky just hit him. He didn’t care.”[/quote]

Because non discriminate area weapons such as chemical weapons are ethically and legally untenable in the present technological era, and their present use would severely degrade American grand strategy.

Really? American “restraint” is why Afghanistan and Iraq had less than stellar results? I suggest you acquaint yourself with basic counterinsurgency. Simply killing insurgents is myopic. Providing security and services to the populace is crucial.

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/discussions/interviews/generation-kill[/quote]

That’s a really fuzzy line you are trying to drawing there. The ethics between a chemical bomb and a 2000 lb explosive munition is bleak.
It’s something that has been missed the entire discussion. You consider removing chemical weapons a victory. I consider the deterioration of the entire situation a failure. Assad gave up his chemicals and ended up better armed than he was with them.
It’s hard to know what was in that deal with Russia. We do know that arms shipments from Russia increased after the deal and Assad got some pretty trick weapons.
I’d give up my archaic chemicals for modern tactical weapons too. It’s an easy deal to make. If two countries who are basically enemies of your state strike a deal that appears in your favor, chances are it’s not in your favor. We traded a small victory for an overall loss.
The ‘ethics’ of chemical weapons indeed! That’s just fancy double talk.

676

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Jewbacca wrote:

I love it, where do you find these? The cartoons are great.[/quote]

http://en.johnkerry.co.il/

677

For both tactical and psychological reasons, CBRN’s represent a step along a path of escalation which ends in total (exterminatory) war. Cormac McCarthy shit. Obviously, it doesn’t matter to the dead how they died once they’re dead. But it matters to the living who’d rather not follow suit.

Weapons that initiate or can too easily lead to actual war – the kind of war we used to have before the Trinity test – are more worrisome than a civil war on the other side of the world and, frankly, more worrisome than some cave-dwellers planning to hijack an airplane somewhere in a nicer part of the world. Chemical weapons in particular are better suited for killing civilians than they are a useful tool for a battlefield strategist. More importantly, every time a chemical weapon is used, the anti-CBRN international norm is degraded, and we legitimize a qualitatively different kind of war, one which has the very real potential to end not in a treaty or a surrender or a draw-down, but in apocalypse. This is only a slight exaggeration, if that.

But don’t take my word for it. We made the escalation path explicit in the 2002 Statement on the National Strategy To Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction:

[quote]
The United States will continue to make clear that it reserves the right to respond with overwhelming force–including through resort to all of our options–to the use of WMD against the United States, our forces abroad, and friends and allies.[/quote]

[“All of our options” means The Bomb.]

Also 2002:

[quote]
The emergence of a new, hostile military coalition against the United States or its allies in which one or more members possesses WMD and the means of delivery is a potential contingency that could have major consequences for U.S. defense planning, including plans for nuclear forces…North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Libya are among the countries that could be involved in immediate, potential, or unexpected contingencies.[/quote]

So, here is the DOD under Bush talking about a nuclear strike on Syria because of chemical weapons. If that isn’t heavy talk, heavy talk does not exist. And that isn’t Bush’s DOD being hysterical, as some people have argued: These are the natural stakes where CBRN’s are concerned, whether anybody thinks it’s logical or not. This is why chemical weapons stockpiles mean more than conventional weapons stockpiles, and this is why Syria’s being armed with Russian bombs and heavy equipment is not remotely comparable to their sitting on 2 million pounds of Sarin and Mustard gas. And all of this is to say nothing of chemical weapons as tools for terrorism, which would require some skill–but then again, so does flying a plane into a building.

678

And to add one more thing, chemical weapons’ weaknesses, which Bismark was correctly talking about earlier, actually make them more dangerous in certain strange ways. Armies can fairly easily survive chemical attacks in modern warfare; civilians fare worse. And when civilians are targets, important fingers hover over big red buttons.

679

Sexmachine, what is your opinion of the Obama administration’s strategic pivot to Asia?

680

[quote]Bismark wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Gkhan wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Gkhan wrote:
If Assad was going to rape your sister you said don’t touch her or I’ll kill you. He rapes her anyway and you cut his balls off. He still raped her. You can’t deny that. In spite of your warning, he still raped her. He may not be able to do it again, but he still did it. So how’s that a victory?

interesting how you ignored this. [/quote]

I get your point, but how about this analogy.

Gun man seizes a school. Police surround school and warn gunman not to shoot or they will be forced to take action.
Gunman shoots up the school, gunman is forced to give up his guns and ammo.
Did the warning from the po-po work?
Do you like that analogy?[/quote]

Here’s a better analogy.

The corrupt mayor of a town has a fleet of heavy armoured vehicles, which he threatens to have his SWAT teams roll through the street, squashing a group of protestors. The state governor grows concerned that this tactic is heavy-handed, so he warns the mayor not to run over any protestors using armoured SWAT vehicles, or he will be forced to take action.

The state government drafts a new law, banning heavy armoured SWAT vehicles.

A state legislator, who is a friend of the mayor, convinces him to give up all of his SWAT vehicles, And the mayor grudgingly complies. All of the SWAT vehicles are carted off to the scrap heap.

But then word comes that a bike cop has just bludgeoned a protestor to death with his bicycle.

It wasn’t a heavy armoured SWAT vehicle, but a vehicle nonetheless, and it was used to kill someone.

Would you say that the Armoured SWAT Vehicle ban, and therefore the governor who sponsored it, were failures because they did not prevent the protestor getting beaten to death by a bicycle?[/quote]

Varq, I don’t have a problem with the Armoured SWAT Vehicles being taken away. But they should punish who ever used that bicycle. How come the guy who killed someone with a bike gets off scott free?
[/quote]

Well, if we are going to move forward with this analogy, I don’t think a bicycle is a good analogy for chlorine gas.
It was, after all one of the first official chemical weapons ever used. As a chemical weapon, it’s legit. No, it’s not as powerful as Sarin or Mustard but it wasn’t an accident that someone happened to die.
These canisters were used deliberately to kill people. The reported total is 14 times so far. And it’s a horribly painful way to die, if not wide spread in effect.
My contention is Assad used chlorine gas, a chemical, deliberately to kill people in 14 separate attacks. Sorry, I don’t consider this a minor thing.[/quote]

I wasn’t aware that there were acceptable ways of killing people in a war.

Does it really matter HOW you kill someone? What is the fundamental difference between dropping a bomb through someone’s house and detonating a chemical weapon inside of it? It’s fucking war! The point of war is to kill as many people on the other side as you can until they are no longer able to kill you and are so weakened that they have no choice but to capitulate to the demands that led to war in the first place.

We used a weapon in WWII, twice, that has just as nasty an effect on people as mustard gas or chlorine gas. We used Agent Orange and Agent Blue in Vietnam during Operation Ranch Hand specifically to destroy crops and starve people to death to lower the recruiting potential of the VC. Hundreds of thousands of stillborn babies, babies born with grotesque physical deformations, hundreds of thousands killed outright, hundreds of thousands starved to death, etc. Huge swaths of land are STILL unusable due to the overwhelming presence of dioxins, which has led to massive erosion and flooding problems as a result of a lack of foliage and trees. People who think we lost that war are nuts. We won the SHIT out of that war.

What is the difference between that and using mustard gas? This whole quibbling over HOW people get killed during war is absolutely ridiculous and one of the main reasons our military efforts recently have gone for naught. It reminds of that scene in Casino when Joe Pesci stabs the guy in the neck with the pen. DeNiro says something like, “I was just wondering why the guy was saying what he said, but Nicky just hit him. He didn’t care.”[/quote]

Because non discriminate area weapons such as chemical weapons are ethically and legally untenable in the present technological era, and their present use would severely degrade American grand strategy.

Really? American “restraint” is why Afghanistan and Iraq had less than stellar results? I suggest you acquaint yourself with basic counterinsurgency. Simply killing insurgents is myopic. Providing security and services to the populace is crucial.

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/discussions/interviews/generation-kill[/quote]

What a bunch of utter bullshit.

We are over there to destroy the Taliban’s ability to wage war from there against us. The first step is to kill every motherfucker associated with the Taliban. How you kill them is immaterial. Shit, this is a region that respects initiative and violence. Maybe the best way to win the hearts and minds of those goatfucking smack fiends is to show them how to REALLY get down.

Another thing to consider is this: what is the point of putting American soldiers at risk, regardless of the reasons, if you effectively hamstring them by forcing them to adhere to wholly contrived bullshit like “rules of engagement” and that sort of thing? And if we are NOT willing to send our soldiers into places where the best way to annihilate the enemy is turn our boys loose with zero restraint, then maybe we shouldn’t send them at all. It’s a really good way to keep our noses out of shit that doesn’t necessarily have a clear objective.