chassroc
Cave Dweller
Rocks are abundant when you have rocktumblinghobby pals
Member since January 2005
Posts: 3,586
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Syria
Jun 17, 2013 6:49:40 GMT -5
Post by chassroc on Jun 17, 2013 6:49:40 GMT -5
Looks like the USA is going in on Syria. We are going to help the insurgents or rebels or freedom fighters orwhatever you want to call those opposing the regime.
I know I dont know who we are backing, does anyone?
I know I dont know if they are any better than the government, does anyone?
I know I dont know if this will result in another Islamic Republic, does anyone?
I suppose we are going in to support Israel after Hezbollah joined the Governement, Streange bedfellows all around, dont you think
Charlie
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Sabre52
Cave Dweller
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,466
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Syria
Jun 17, 2013 8:12:32 GMT -5
Post by Sabre52 on Jun 17, 2013 8:12:32 GMT -5
Yep I agree. can't tell the good guys from the bad so we should stay out of other folk's civil wars. They all pretty much hate our guts so if they want to slaughter each other, it's a win win situation for us.....Mel
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Syria
Jun 17, 2013 10:01:32 GMT -5
Post by helens on Jun 17, 2013 10:01:32 GMT -5
We are against the Assad regime in Syria, in support of the rebels. Assad, the current ruler of Syria, is being armed by Russia and Iran. Hezbollah (anti-Israel) sends troops to help Assad kill rebels. Venezuela is fueling Assad. North Korea sends them small arms. The rebels are formally recognized by the UK, France, Turkey, and the rest of the middle East, including the newly won Libya and Egypt, as well as Saudi Arabia and our other Middle East allies, support the Rebels. And of course Isreal, since those most opposed to Isreal are squarely on Assad's side. The problem now is that the rebels have almost no support except lip service, and Assad is being heavily armed/reinforced by his allies. The Rebels are losing due to this support, and are starting to recruit from the Taliban out of desperation. The reason this matters is that if we let the rebels we support rely more heavily on the Taliban, we basically give Syria to Al Qaeda. If we do nothing, and Assad wins, he will look to taking out Isreal in support of Hezbollah, and backed by Iran. Isreal would be overwhelmed. That's it in a nutshell. And I do not believe that 'support' means troops from the US, despite the Republicans going crazy pressuring Obama to do so. Here's a 'sides' breakdown: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_involvement_in_the_Syrian_civil_warThe Republicans have been bugging and bugging Obama to step into Syria for 2 years. Now he's in a position where he may have to, suddenly, they are using this to demand that he get authorization from Congress, making it sound like they don't want an engagement, when they have been the ones buzzing around his head for the last 2 years screaming for US engagement: www.politico.com/story/2013/06/gop-to-obama-on-syria-where-you-been-92824.htmlExerpts: Read more: www.politico.com/story/2013/06/gop-to-obama-on-syria-where-you-been-92824_Page2.html#ixzz2WUAAWPn0I think Obama was hoping that we'd have another Libya, where the rebels themselves took out Gaddafi, with the US helping with a little bit of bombing. But Gaddafi was not armed by Russia, Iran and North Korea, with fighters from Hezbollah and Iran. The rebels were winning, so it didn't seem necessary that we'd have to do anything. I think the big concern here is that if Assad wins, the full force of all this fighting will turn on Israel. If the rebels win, there will be quiet as they reorganize. That said, I'm against any kind of US ground troops. But it's diplomatically touchy to send them weapons too.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Member since January 1970
Posts: 0
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Syria
Jun 17, 2013 10:25:48 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Jun 17, 2013 10:25:48 GMT -5
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chassroc
Cave Dweller
Rocks are abundant when you have rocktumblinghobby pals
Member since January 2005
Posts: 3,586
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Syria
Jun 17, 2013 11:20:09 GMT -5
Post by chassroc on Jun 17, 2013 11:20:09 GMT -5
Funny side note about Putin this morning
Bob Kraft of the Patriots was over in Russia a while back and he must have been wearing all of his Super Bowl rings. He gave one to Putin ... and apparantly never got it back.
Putin's people say it was a gift, Kraft says it wasn't
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Syria
Jun 17, 2013 11:31:11 GMT -5
Post by helens on Jun 17, 2013 11:31:11 GMT -5
Well... you know that if you give Russia an inch, they'll take a yard. Ok, that wasn't very funny:(.
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Syria
Jun 17, 2013 11:35:50 GMT -5
Post by helens on Jun 17, 2013 11:35:50 GMT -5
This crisis has been brewing for years already, well before the election. The Republicans have been pulling out the stops to send troops there or otherwise interfere... Obama put it off as long as he could, and Republicans are crying too little too late... but I'm glad we did not engage yet.
This is complicated because this issue pits Russia, China, Iran, North Korea on the same side against the US, Isreal, UK, France, and the rest of our allies. Had Romney won, today we'd be in WWIII. As it is, I'm not sure how well Obama can dodge this bullet, but we knew it was coming for a very long time already.
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Syria
Jun 17, 2013 22:06:38 GMT -5
Post by helens on Jun 17, 2013 22:06:38 GMT -5
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chassroc
Cave Dweller
Rocks are abundant when you have rocktumblinghobby pals
Member since January 2005
Posts: 3,586
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Syria
Jun 18, 2013 9:13:06 GMT -5
Post by chassroc on Jun 18, 2013 9:13:06 GMT -5
WW1 was started in the Balkans (Yugoslavia, Serbia, Croatia, etal) When an Austrian archduke was killed by a local partisan. Various countries took sides and the result was a disaster.
We hope that is not the outcome in Syria with the local government, and Israel, and Hezbollah, and al-queda and local religious and political groups plus Iran/Iraq on the side of the Shias and Saudi Arabia, etal on the side of the Sunnis.
Now Russia is warning the USA/Europe not to interfere. The USA warned Russia not to arm Assad. USA warned Assad not to use WMDs. Israel is smarting from Hezbollah already.
And we dont really care, do we?
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grayfingers
Cave Dweller
Member since November 2007
Posts: 4,575
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Syria
Jun 18, 2013 10:14:33 GMT -5
Don likes this
Post by grayfingers on Jun 18, 2013 10:14:33 GMT -5
Well Charlie, back when I thought I lived in a country that was by it's very nature a beacon of freedom and hope for the world. . . I cared. We now live in a country where not only do we not care about the well-being and just treatment of people in other lands, we do not even care about maintaining our own moral compass. As long as it is someone else's Ox being gored, we will even defend and attempt to justify abuse of power as long as it is "our" guy doing it. We apparently now do not value the equal application of our own laws and freedoms, so it really is small surprise to me that we are also disengaged concerning suffering abroad. After the lessons learned from our past forays into Arabian matters, it seems obvious that it would not matter if we do care. We have our faults, but when our motives are always questioned anytime we try to help with anything in the mid-east, one sees that it is a lose-lose situation for any president. I have heard that there is a possibility that one reason we have not got the real full story on Benghazi is that it was a CIA operation tasked with running Libyan arms to the FSA. We likely have been arming the rebels through the Saudis, Turkey and others for a couple of years already. Us and Europe coming out and publicly saying we will arm them (small arms and bullets, wink, wink, nod, nod.) only served to heat up the cold war. We have troops in Jordan, Turkey. . . The Saudis seem to be preparing for something. . . Saudi Soldiers Singing Anti-Assad Song While Training www.liveleak.com/view?i=3e4_1371409565The Russians are playing chess. . . They have special ops guys in Syria, and Iran has a lot of Quds force, the foreign operations arm of the Revolutionary Guards fighting there. Russia to create Mediterranean fleet to protect Syria www.liveleak.com/view?i=a5f_1371053352So, what we have is a region-wide battle between Shia and Sunni, influenced by the usual puppetmasters. I feel for the innocents, but I have to say let them do what they will. We have lost our leadership role on the world stage anyway, who is going to take us seriously, we are something of a paper tiger these days.
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Syria
Jun 18, 2013 10:20:32 GMT -5
Post by helens on Jun 18, 2013 10:20:32 GMT -5
Well, I think we've known since the 1950s that should WWIII come, it would start in the Middle East. Every US President has tried to tip the scales there, subtly or overtly, and Russia has tried to tip the scales there the other way. Both sides took turns in Afghanistan. Libya and Iran/Iraq, as well as Egypt and Jordan. Turkey is NATO. So I think no one had much doubt that Syria would be the likely spark.
We had this discussion before the election... the President of the USA is really pretty powerless about lawmaking and domestic policy. He's just the fall guy, being blamed for things completely or mostly outside his control, in the finger-pointing jostle. Everything people have been whining at about Obama doesn't even fit in his job description.
What the President DOES is control Foreign Policy and act as Commander in Chief. That's his job 100%. No one else makes those decisions for him, if/when Congress gives him the green light. And we all have seen that Congress doesn't even need to give a green light, Presidents have a vast autonomy to do all kinds of war related actions, 'police actions' if you will. In Foreign Policy, as we saw with Reagan in Granada, Libya, etc. As we saw with Clinton in the Balkins and Somalia, heck, the entire Korean War was nothing more than a Presidential 'police action'. And don't even get me started on George Bush Jr.
The proverbial 'red button' sits on the President's desk. He has control over the greatest military on earth. It's almost sole control too. The scary thing is, you have the entire military, the Joint Chiefs of Staffs, who all want him to hit that button. And they are in and out of his office all day long. They want to test their new toys, they want to test the mettle of their men, they want to DO something. It's got to be boring as hell to be a Joint Chief of Staff with nothing to do. You have the CIA wanting to DO something too. And you have almost no one walking into the Oval Office saying, "lets NOT do something about military action in your term as President"... because military action is usually what writes a President into the history books. The only potential other side is the Dept of State, the US diplomatic corps. The Sec of State is the only one who accesses the President and might prefer to say... "Lets NOT have a war, lets find a diplomatic solution to this problem". That person, the Sec of State, if they are not a peace-loving hippie, if that person agrees with the 4 military guys, Sec of Defense, and maybe the CIA guy, we're going to kill some people in the world, and not a few people. The only thing saying 'No' left then, against a room full of voices saying "YES!" is the President's conscience. We saw what happened with George Bush... not once, but twice.
Syria has always been the elephant in the room left after the 1st term. The US has done a whole lot of messing around the Middle East, and Russia wants its turn too... so this is becoming the fulcrum. Obama must do SOMETHING. But here is where the brainpower, his own morality, and his ability to solve a complex problem will be necessary. This is really why we elected him, because nothing but this is under his direct control. If we want peace, we should elect a man who is AFRAID of war. And we did.
An ambitious businessman who grew up with a silver spoon and can buy his way out of any hardship cannot relate to the pain and suffering of a soldier who lost his legs, a mother who lost her son, a child who lost her father. We have never respected politicians who have bad relationships with their spouses or families... because that man may not be able to love enough in his heart to understand another man's loss, a loss he can create. He will not think hard before putting a burden of pain on another man's family. He may think of US soldiers, all with families, as no more than pieces on a chessboard, in a game he 'wins' for his own glory, whatever the price. Our choice this past election was between a man who grew up in an area seeing drug wars, afraid of the consequences of fighting, has been to and experienced other nations and their perspectives, understands poverty- which every war provides in plenty, and realizes who will do all the dying... people he cares about. Versus a man who doesn't know a single soldier personally, because he can buy his own children out of serving, and cannot relate to suffering or poverty as a whole.
Obama's been tested in small ways, and all his choices have been to minimize collateral damage. For all the whining about drones, no one can deny that the program saved a whole lot of US soldier lives. Or sending Commandoes to take out a target, instead of sending a few battalions for the face to face engagement. While no one knows what may happen in Syria, our best hope is that he can overtly and covertly diffuse this crisis without it blowing up. And of course, if he does, no one will ever know what he did. They'll go right back to making fun of him, blaming him, and insulting him. It takes a hell of a strong man to deal with that and not be tempted to say, F U, lets DO THIS, and start WWIII, in the face of his own nation not standing behind him. I hope he's got that mettle. And if he does, we won't even know how close we came. We'll see.
And I want to note that Snowden is still at large... and we could have had him a week ago. SOMEONE was on his side, and my money is on Obama.
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Syria
Jun 18, 2013 10:22:28 GMT -5
Post by helens on Jun 18, 2013 10:22:28 GMT -5
Bill, it just ain't that simple.
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Syria
Jun 18, 2013 10:35:53 GMT -5
Post by helens on Jun 18, 2013 10:35:53 GMT -5
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Member since January 1970
Posts: 0
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Syria
Jun 18, 2013 17:53:36 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Jun 18, 2013 17:53:36 GMT -5
Bill, it just ain't that simple. Of course not, nothing is ever that simple.
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grayfingers
Cave Dweller
Member since November 2007
Posts: 4,575
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Syria
Jun 19, 2013 16:22:00 GMT -5
Post by grayfingers on Jun 19, 2013 16:22:00 GMT -5
I like to hear a variety of views, especially those unfiltered by our media. Does not mean the info is more or less 'true', but good insights. What this FSA General has to say is interesting. . . www.liveleak.com/view?i=53a_1371637813
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Syria
Jun 19, 2013 18:39:37 GMT -5
Post by helens on Jun 19, 2013 18:39:37 GMT -5
Well hell, it won't let me post a reply. That said, maybe someone's downloading this whole database over this thread and causing the system to lock up. Wouldn't that be hilarious:P? LOLOL!
I think that general's pretty smart... he's right, it's in the world's best interest for their fight to last 50 years and not end in a month. Keeps em out of trouble. But it doesn't change anything, they're still going to fight, and bug everyone for more weapons, Russia is still going to arm Assad, and we're going to waffle and try not to interfere, and everyone else is going to scream and yell. Having a peacenik Dem Prez is sometimes a good thing:).
And frankly, I am not myself clear WHY we hate Assad so bad.
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Syria
Jun 19, 2013 20:44:32 GMT -5
Post by Rockoonz on Jun 19, 2013 20:44:32 GMT -5
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Syria
Jun 19, 2013 21:18:11 GMT -5
Post by helens on Jun 19, 2013 21:18:11 GMT -5
We haven't given them any weapons yet, and we may get away with not giving them any at all.
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