[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
I merely pointed out that our policy in Syria has been a failure thus far. You chose to make it about chemical weapons and chemical weapons only. That was never my point. I take it you were being opportunistic. To salvage something from it, that otherwise has been a disaster. I am looking at results. And the results haven’t been good.
[/quote]
It’s time for a refresher course on the history of this thread.
You wrote, without elaboration (and therefore without much meaning):
[quote]pat wrote:
The failure in Syria has come back to bite [Obama] in a big way.[/quote]
To which I directly responded:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Are you referring to this “red line” we’ve heard so much about? Or is this about ISIS? If the former, I hear that the Finns are unloading some cargo of interesting origin in Hamina as I write this.[/quote]
To which you, in turn, directly responded:
[quote]pat wrote:
The ‘red line’ was one of many failures in Syria. Ignoring it in the first place was the biggest failure. We’re only seeing the very first implications of letting that situation go to hell.[/quote]
[That is, you responded to my request for clarification in the affirmative.] From there, the argument proceeded: to the simplistic objections regarding Assad’s having crossed the line and Obama’s having “done nothing” [which is nonsense] about it, to Bismark/SexMachine/smh’s responses to the said objections. Rational decision-making and cost-benefit ratios and all that.
In other words, I made this about the August/September 2013 “red line”/chemical weapons chain of affairs because that was what I wanted to debate. I made it explicitly clear to you that that was what I wanted to debate, and not only did you not object, you reaffirmed your position and proceeded to defend it. Now that the chips have fallen where they’ve fallen, you are heading back to the beginning with a mind to alter history. But it isn’t going to fly.
I repeat myself: I intervened in this discussion to debate a specific point which you made and with which I took explicit and specific issue. Because my name is not Barack Obama, and I am not paid by Barack Obama, I have exactly no interest in defending Barack Obama for the defense’s sake. I don’t care whether or not you like him or his policies. What I care about is supporting good arguments and attacking bad ones. I saw a bad one, and I attacked it.
I have no interest in arguing the grand, wide-angle “Syria problem” with you, because that kind of counter-factual debate requires a great deal of prior study, is much more complicated than you seem to think, and is in some ways unsolvable.
Which gets at something I’ve said a few times over the course of this thread. The ability to reason and argue with as much specificity* as possible is a highly undervalued skill. (Check into any collection of terminal idiots–commenters at Breitbart or Daily Kos, for example–and you’ll find the opposite of the kind of specific rationality that I’m talking about. Or look at the best threads on PWI, which are threads that, in one way or another, contain sustained investigation of a particular topic’s most fundamental details.) You and I weren’t talking about “Syria” or “Benghazi” or “Iraq,” we were talking about something specific, and this was made clear from the utter outset.
*Relatedly, I’ve lately seen a few posters grumble about “graduate school” types–I may have been implicated, though I’m not in graduate school–focusing on minutia. Well, same deal.[/quote]
Man if you got the time to dig up old posts you have more time than me.
Yes, I said the ‘red line’ was one of many failures in Syria. As I said, it was a failure because they crossed, first and foremost, I.E. they were undeterred to use them and for no apparent gain. Seemly just because they could.
I consider the response of threat with a another threat a failure. What was the point of the first threat then?
It’s great Assad got rid of his chemical weapons, but to end up armed with better strategic tactical weapons is somewhat of a wash save for the fact that the collateral damage from chemicals are worse over all. I said the ‘red line’ was one of many responding to your question is if that was what I meant. I said one of many and thankfully you were honest enough to post that part. Which I appreciate, because it proves my point.
The chemical weapons bullshit was your baby. I was never interested in the specifics of the deal. To me it’s irrelevant to the larger scale issues.I don’t give a shit who has them, who destroyed them or how much was destroyed. There’s a lot more to the story than the chemical weapons.
Something you got rather hot and bothered about reduced yourself to ad hominem attack and personal attacks, etc. Why? You wanted to beat me I guess. You wanted to win, but you missed the fucking point in the first place.
Obama had a lot of chips on the table in that situation and he played one. To which Russia goes “Oh we’ll take care of it” because we have every reason to believe that the Russians are going to talk the Syrians out of their chemical weapons and get nothing for it. Maybe you believe that bullshit, I don’t. Clearly, that wasn’t the case.
If you want to go through ‘he said she said’ go nuts. I don’t have time for it. I do this while I wait for jobs to finish. If you need your dick to appear really large bigger than mine, just post a picture of the damn thing.
Obama’s policies in Syria have failed, period. It was a simple point, it was a plain point and it meant much more than the removal of chemical weapons.
I don’t give a shit about the rest and I have no interest in rehashing it, over and over and over.
If you believe the American policies with regards to Syria are a resounding success, you are entitled to your opinion. I am entitled to mine which with a 100,000+ dead, 5 million dispersed, the terrorist threat that has emerged, and Assad rearmed and strengthened, I pretty much consider that an epic fail. It’s the opposite of our stated position and we stuck our dirty paws in it, and did nothing to stop it from going straight to hell. We had our chances and they are gone, yet now we are arming the rebels after all is pretty much lost. For what, I don’t know. At this point we are better off with Assad than with an on going civil war and a huge terrorist contingent. On top of that, Assad still sees fit to kill people with chemicals, less effective, but the moral of the story is the same.
