Thread: Strike against Syria

Originally Posted by Jimbo

I'm a bit out of the loop - what is the US intending to do? Attack Syria?

James.

Who knows for sure but there is a lot of saber rattling and posturing going on by a few countries not just the US.

Bob

We seem to be treating the Middle East the same way that we treat an illness. War is likened to an antibiotic. Just one more country(just one more illness) just one more war(just one more course of antibiotics). We just don't realise that we're creating a Super Bug that's becoming Resistant to our course of treatment!

Well our Kommander in Chief did warn them not to cross the line.After all one doe's have to save face.
We do have an obligation to destroy syrias weapons of mass distruction do we not?? dejavue

When are we going to realize that we need to eliminate needing anything from that region of the world. I don't care what anybody says, we have had 40 years to plan and we haven't done anything. Lets use our resources and keep our young men and women safe and let someone else worry about where theyre getting their oil from. Add up the cost of keeping the oil flowing and subsidize domestic production. Bakken reserve in Montana is the largest oil find in last 40 years. Conservation, increased efficiency and why does every electric appliance I have draw juice whether Im using it or not? Start building diesel vehicles here like they use in Europe. Diesel is 20-30% more efficient than gas. Theres a million things that can be done. I don't care if certain people want to live like they did 500 years ago and I don't care if they don't like the way we live. Time to raise the gate and flood the moat.

Originally Posted by BobH

The whole thing is a little puzzling. The West did not intervene when Saddam gassed the Kurds in 1988 but waited a couple of years till he invaded Kuwait to take military action the first time. The second time the West intervened and got rid of Saddam on the pretext of his possession of WMDs which turns out he did not have at that time. Now we have Bashar al-Assad very likely gassing his own people and there is a move to outside military intervention. Why now and not in 1988 for the Kurds? It is all smoke and mirrors the reasons given for actions taken. That is not meant to take anything away from the heinous nature of both events. Call me a cynic, believe what you will.

Bob

I guess some of you forgot that the WMD's were thought to have crossed over into Syria ahead of the attack on Iraq...


But I do agree, on the "when" issue

My understanding of the situation is that when the fighting first started in Syria the rebel faction was largely democratic and secular. In time factions of Al Quaeda thinned out, marginalized, or otherwise eliminated that faction while we made idol threats and wondered what to do. As it sits right now your assessment is spot on. If Asaad is left alone we have a tyrant running Syria, if Asaad is ousted we have a no less tyrannical and no more democratic radical islamic theocracy. In short it is a no win situation for anyone to intervene. It's a Syrian problem, let the Syrians handle it. There is most assuredly nothing worth a single Dutch, German, Australian, American, Canadian, British, French or Spanish kid dying or losing a limb for.

It sure would be nice if my own government would stop cow towing to the tree hugging dirt worshipers and exploit its own vast reserves of oil and natural gas so we could be energy independent and not have to sacrifice lives to ensure we can all drive to work every day.

I'm curious to see if Obama the Warhawk will just cowboy the whole thing on his own or if he'll seek congressional approval like Dubya did.

I have my thoughts on this matter. I feel the only thing the US should do in Syria is offer humanitarian aid to the victims of this alleged gassing. No one even knows who did this attack.

As Johnny said above, I don't think the US should get involved other than humanitarian aid. Too many of our soldiers have died in causes not of our own. In the grand scheme of things, it is a sad thing that we are, this supposed advance animals we tout ourselves to be. I was reading a sci-fi book recently where an ancient alien race came in contact with humans. Long story short, over the course of the story, due to certain events, the aliens had to befriend the humans and vice versa. In one part of the novel a human and one of the leaders of the aliens are speaking with each other regarding their races. The alien says to the human, "We have observed your species for a very long time now. You spend so much time, energy, lives, and resources killing each other, yet you still manage to progress and advance."

This hit me really hard because if someone was watching us over these thousands of years, this is what they would see. We keep doing the same things to each other, billions of lives wasted, over the same reasons: power, money, territory, etc. In ancient times it is understandable, but now its just sad. Will it ever end? Who knows...

Originally Posted by gssixgun

I guess some of you forgot that the WMD's were thought to have crossed over into Syria ahead of the attack on Iraq...


But I do agree, on the "when" issue

The media refused to give that any credence to that as there were Russian trucks bringing stuff out of Iraq and into Syria in the days before the 03 war. And Khaddafi gave his stuff up as well shortly after , a gift from Saddam maybe? We will never know. The people only know what the media tells them, and whoever can control the media sets the pulse of what we are thinking about. Im sure you guys are good at reading between the lines. Like when Michael Corleone told Tom Hagin that they had news people on the payroll, "They might like a story about that, they might".

WRT the oil resources issue, would it not be better to use everyone else s oil first making huge profits while doing so and save yours for last? Who knows if that is a policy or not. If it is then soldiers die and are maimed in the cause of vested interests, mostly profit. Just a thought nothing more.

Bob