What Should The U.S. (and the west) Do About Syria?

[Kenbushway]

Personally, I think the U.S. should consider serious military action against Pakistan if they continue to impede our operations in Afghanistan.

Easy for someone to say we should go to war when they aren't the ones going to be fired at. Have you not seen reports saying the suicides in the armed forces are so high its almost 1 a day?
The last thing this country needs is another expense. Just remember common sense saves lives.

 

[stj]

Qatar and Saudi Arabia are the worst enemies of the Arab Spring. Breaking with them is true support for the Arab Spring. Conniving in Sunni massacres of Alawites isn't. There has historically been a relationship between democracy and the exclusion of certain Others from the People, which has often led to ethnic cleansing, even genocide. If despising sectarianism and tribalism is Stalinism, then up with Stalinism!
(By the way, I couldn't find a decent looking Fourth Internationalist sickle and hammer.)

The official story was that NATO was protecting civilians in Bosnia and Kosovo. The real purposes were to take Serbian territory, overthrow Milosevic, liberalize the Serbian economy, exclude Russian influence from Europe, monopolize the use of violence in Europe and incidentally terrorize every government that didn't accede to Western tutelage. It was not an accident that NATO violated Bulgarian airspace, bombed the Chinese embassy and came close to violence in a confrontation with Russians. These otherwise senseless events clearly expose the reality of the NATO war.

On the other hand, when that tinpot Saakashvili started shelling towns in South Ossetia, people actually pretended the Russians started the violence! Some even openly cited Georgia as an outpost of Christianity! But like the Serbs, the Russians are not quite human but socialist. The secret motto seems to be, Death to the Stalinist Peoples!

Another thing that isn't an accident is the extraordinary bloodlust on display in this thread.

 

[Knight Templar]

Qatar and Saudi Arabia are the worst enemies of the Arab Spring. Breaking with them is true support for the Arab Spring. Conniving in Sunni massacres of Alawites isn't. There has historically been a relationship between democracy and the exclusion of certain Others from the People, which has often led to ethnic cleansing, even genocide. If despising sectarianism and tribalism is Stalinism, then up with Stalinism!
(By the way, I couldn't find a decent looking Fourth Internationalist sickle and hammer.)

The official story was that NATO was protecting civilians in Bosnia and Kosovo. The real purposes were to take Serbian territory, overthrow Milosevic, liberalize the Serbian economy, exclude Russian influence from Europe, monopolize the use of violence in Europe and incidentally terrorize every government that didn't accede to Western tutelage. It was not an accident that NATO violated Bulgarian airspace, bombed the Chinese embassy and came close to violence in a confrontation with Russians. These otherwise senseless events clearly expose the reality of the NATO war.

On the other hand, when that tinpot Saakashvili started shelling towns in South Ossetia, people actually pretended the Russians started the violence! Some even openly cited Georgia as an outpost of Christianity! But like the Serbs, the Russians are not quite human but socialist. The secret motto seems to be, Death to the Stalinist Peoples!

Another thing that isn't an accident is the extraordinary bloodlust on display in this thread.

You left out the black helicopters.

Must not forget the black helicopters.

 

[chardman]

Imagine that Syria was a white Christian country, like Georgia in the Caucasus. Then when the dictatorial leader starts shelling towns people don't get upset.

QUOTE]

I hope you remember the 1990s where the U.S. & NATO TWICE bombed a "white Christian country" (Serbia) in order to protect Muslims (Bosnians and Kosovars).

and if you want to argue that Serbians are not really "white Christians" I suggest you make that statement outside of Sijan Hall at the U.S. Air Force Academy.

Lance Sijan was a Serbian American who was the first Air Force Academy graduate to be awarded the Medal of Honor (postumously)

Please consider learning how to use quote tags properly.

​

 

[captcalhoun]

i don't care whether they're Arabs or White. Murderous regimes are murderous regimes.

All it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing.

and if we can't frag their SAMs, armour, artillery and air support, we should stick a sniper team in there and just whack al-Assad.

 

[Starkers]

And when he's replaced by someone worse?

 

[captcalhoun]

take him out too.

 

[DimesDan]

find al-assad and drop a 500lb Paveway on him. or stick a Hellfire into his limo.

should've fragged his air defences and then fragged every damn tank and artillery piece in the country as soon as he started shelling towns.

Nice option.

I mean, seriously, it's brilliant. Causing a massive international incident with other Nuclear nations, ones who have blocked all attempts at a diplomatic solution to this problem is just shear brilliance.

I guess the ensuring Nuclear winter would off set global warming and the reduction in the population of the more developed nations would stop some of the other problems we'll be having soon regarding over population and feeding everyone.

No one is going to use nuclear weapons on behalf of the Assad regime.

Hopefully. I was being a tad sarcastic and hyperbolic in response to the resident Arm-chair Generals pretty ludicrous idea.

Although I'm sure a scenario where Assad is "taken out" has been formulated by some powers, putting it into action is another completely different ball game. The repercussions could be disastrous for the Syrian people, the Middle East on and the whole and maybe the wider World.

i don't care whether they're Arabs or White. Murderous regimes are murderous regimes.

All it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing.

and if we can't frag their SAMs, armour, artillery and air support, we should stick a sniper team in there and just whack al-Assad.

Great idea Arm-chair General.

Now I'm all up for playing some strategy or first-person shooter video games, but I actually know what I can carry out in them is very different to what can be done in reality.

If life was like COD or Command-and-Conquer, it would have been game over years ago and no restarts or respawns.

And when he's replaced by someone worse?

Maybe we could make Syria a protectorate of either ourselves or France (just like after the First World War, I just can't remember who it belonged to) as that seemed to work out well last time.

 

[Starkers]

take him out too.

I don't think assasinating the leader of a country is as easy as you think...besides you're only a hop skip and a jump away from deciding to assasinate a leader because you don't agree with him

 

[DimesDan]

take him out too.

I don't think assasinating the leader of a country is as easy as you think...besides you're only a hop skip and a jump away from deciding to assasinate a leader because you don't agree with him

Exactly. No doubt there are treaties that forbid such actions and they've been in place for decades.

 

[Starkers]

I think there are, but even setting aside the legalities if the situation, the pure mechanics of assasinating a despot would potentially make it a futile endevour. These men are usually so incredibly paranoid that no one gets near them if they don't want them to. They have tight knit security, personal bodygaurds, decoys, lookalikes, the whole nine yards. Yes the Americans nearly got Saddam on the eve of the invasion, emphasis on the nearly, and they never got close again until long after the (initial) hostilities had ended.

 

[Count Zero]

Taking out the man at the top might have been an option in the case of Gaddafi but Assad isn't the one calling the shots in all likelihood. You'd have to take out the military leadership as well, and then you'd still end up with a messy civil war fueled by ethnic and religious tensions with massacres on both sides which would probably spread to Libanon, too.
I don't see any easy solution to this and it seems to me that hardly anyone does which is why the political leaders of the Western World are so reluctant.

 

[Knight Templar]

take him out too.

I don't think assasinating the leader of a country is as easy as you think...besides you're only a hop skip and a jump away from deciding to assasinate a leader because you don't agree with him

Exactly. No doubt there are treaties that forbid such actions and they've been in place for decades.

Actually it isn't treaties but several centuries of tradition going back to the Middle Ages because there were several instances of the the leaders of armies being killed during a battle and then no one being able to control the leaderless army as it ran amok and murdered and pillaged.

 

[horatio83]

The official story was that NATO was protecting civilians in Bosnia and Kosovo. The real purposes were to take Serbian territory, overthrow Milosevic, liberalize the Serbian economy, exclude Russian influence from Europe, monopolize the use of violence in Europe and incidentally terrorize every government that didn't accede to Western tutelage. It was not an accident that NATO violated Bulgarian airspace, bombed the Chinese embassy and came close to violence in a confrontation with Russians. These otherwise senseless events clearly expose the reality of the NATO war.

Yeah, the West totally stole all the Serbian land. That's why we have all these colonies down there.
What the West actually did was to try to prevent the vision of Great Serbia from coming true.

Of course economic interest had a role, they always have. But when Yugoslavia went down the last people who still sticked to the Yugoslav dream (which was precisely the opposite of what you claim to despise, tribalism), the only folks who still had the Yugoslav flag hanging around in public offices and the only folks who were violated by their neighbours were the Bosnians.
Your "the West is always evil" game becomes ideological insanity when you side with butchers like Assad and Milosevic.

On the other hand, when that tinpot Saakashvili started shelling towns in South Ossetia, people actually pretended the Russians started the violence! Some even openly cited Georgia as an outpost of Christianity! But like the Serbs, the Russians are not quite human but socialist. The secret motto seems to be, Death to the Stalinist Peoples!

About Georgia and Russia, it was definitely stupid to consider taking a country so close to Russia into the NATO.
About your Christian shtick and outpost comment, it is obviously nonsensical as Russia is predominantly Christian. There are fucked up crusaders out there like Bush, Blackwater and so on but not each and every political act of the West has something to do with Christianity.

 

[stj]

^^^You're the one who suppports the massacre in Houla. The assumption that nothing less than total subservience to official policy is tolerable is wholly unwarranted. My position is neutrality towards Syria, but hostility towards the Qataris and the Saudis. It's your love for the Qatari and Saudi monarchies that is monstrous.

As for refighting the newest Balkan wars? Bosnia and Kosovo are in fact colonies of the new sort, where the imperial powers take no responsibility for providing any amenities but instead support the most venal puppets possible, who can only stay in power by promoting sectarianism and tribalism. The psychotic theory that a "Greater Serbia" in which the larger, Serbian portion of the Yugoslav peoples ends up which the larger portion of the land is somehow an affront only demonstrates how completely morally and intellectually bankrupt your notion of democracy really is.

Your beloved democrats the Kosovars have continued your glorious struggle for democracy, defeating the threat to humanity of Greater Romany by ethnically cleansing Kosovo of the filthy Roma. (Serbs too of course, but equally of course you approve ethnic cleansing of Serbs, in Croatia, in Kosovo, soon enough in the Banat. I suppose you have hopes of cleansing Belgrade of Serbs too.)

Face facts: Milosevic was hated because he wasn't neoliberal enough and didn't sufficiently savage the living standards of the Serb population, and that is the only reason he was hated. You loved Franjo Tudjman. But then, he proudly used the symbols of the Nazi puppet government in Croatia.

Since the sectarian mass murderers of Houla are your democracy in action, what can we conclude?

 

[PsychoPere]

No doubt there are treaties that forbid such actions and they've been in place for decades.

Even if there aren't international treaties in place regarding political assassinations (a cursory Google search of a mere few minutes didn't immediately bring anything up explicitly addressing the issue*), there have been at least three presidential executive orders since 1976 that have prohibited the practice. Of course, those proscriptions have also been weakened in the name of "fighting terrorism," and the orders haven't exactly stopped government-sanctioned assassination attempts anyways.

(* The closest I found during this cursory search was a UN treaty that prohibited the assassination of diplomatic agents while performing their duties, as well as heads of state while abroad. The "several centuries of tradition" that Knight Templar references was legally framed in the 1907 Hague Convention, which stated "the right of belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited." This, of course, is the convention that the Bush Administration and others have cited as part of the justification for not treating terrorists as prisoners of war but rather "enemy combatants" since it also requires POWs to wear "fixed distinctive emblem recognizable at a distance.")

 

[horatio83]

^^^You're the one who suppports the massacre in Houla. The assumption that nothing less than total subservience to official policy is tolerable is wholly unwarranted. My position is neutrality towards Syria, but hostility towards the Qataris and the Saudis. It's your love for the Qatari and Saudi monarchies that is monstrous.

As for refighting the newest Balkan wars? Bosnia and Kosovo are in fact colonies of the new sort, where the imperial powers take no responsibility for providing any amenities but instead support the most venal puppets possible, who can only stay in power by promoting sectarianism and tribalism. The psychotic theory that a "Greater Serbia" in which the larger, Serbian portion of the Yugoslav peoples ends up which the larger portion of the land is somehow an affront only demonstrates how completely morally and intellectually bankrupt your notion of democracy really is.

Your beloved democrats the Kosovars have continued your glorious struggle for democracy, defeating the threat to humanity of Greater Romany by ethnically cleansing Kosovo of the filthy Roma. (Serbs too of course, but equally of course you approve ethnic cleansing of Serbs, in Croatia, in Kosovo, soon enough in the Banat. I suppose you have hopes of cleansing Belgrade of Serbs too.)

Face facts: Milosevic was hated because he wasn't neoliberal enough and didn't sufficiently savage the living standards of the Serb population, and that is the only reason he was hated. You loved Franjo Tudjman. But then, he proudly used the symbols of the Nazi puppet government in Croatia.

Since the sectarian mass murderers of Houla are your democracy in action, what can we conclude?

Stop misrepresenting me. In my very first post I expressed what I think about the Saudis crushing the protests in Bahrain and in my last post I wrote about Bosnians being violated by their neigbours which obviously includes Croats.
From the history of our own country you know precisely what Great XYZ implies, war at the costs of your neighbours. Thanks for admitting to love the Great Serbia vision and thus revealing what you are, a jingoist.

 

[captcalhoun]

the US may have sanctions against assassinating foreign leaders but the UK may not. let the SBS or the SRR do it.

we should take out dictators any where and every where they show up. make it a losing propostion. you start that shit and next thing you know, you're lying on the floor with a 7.62mm hole between your eyes. see who decides to be a dictator then.

and that's not being an arm chair general and playing too much COD, that's being someone who believes in right and wrong and that bombing the shit out of your own people and torturing people and 'disappearing' people is wrong and should be punished with the heavy end of the hammer.

maybe 'we' shouldn't be the world's policeman, but considering the UN's got as many teeth as a fucking chicken and is about as much use as a fucking inflatable dartboard, someone ought to do it.

 

[horatio83]

I'd be the first one to argue for the necessity of more worldwide cooperation with the long-run goal of a world government. You cannot handle problems like climate change otherwise and, guess what, we already have made some steps towards worldwide jurisdiction with institutions like the ICC.
But what you suggest, combining executive and judiciary to execute dictators, runs counter to the very basics of democracy. You cannot fight authoritarian regimes via adopting their methods.

 

[stj]

Why should I take your remarks on Bahrain seriously? I too deplored Bahraini suppression by violence of a popular movement, even to the point of advocating the US withdrawal of its naval base. US, Qatari and Saudi support for armed attacks by Sunnis is not the Arab Spring but an attempt to divide the people, then misuse them for their own nefarious agenda. The irrelevance of the Arab Spring to Syria is proved by the desire to launch attacks on the Syrian people. Bombing people is not helping them, starting wars is not helping them. Bombing people is hurting them, starting wars is hurting them. What on earthe do you have against the people of Syria?

The vision of Greater Croatia which required ethnic cleansing of Serbs is not one bit more jingoistic than Greater Serbia. The assumption that somehow Milosevic wasn't just as much a democrat and a jingo as Tudjman is absurd. And Milosevic was more democratic than Izetbegovic who wanted to take over a "country" as representative of a minority, not even a plurality!

Also, Yugoslavia should have stayed a united socialist country, which isn't jingo at all. Supporting the US right to exercise capital punishment on whatever country or persons it wishes, is.

On the other hand, sickness in the family is getting on my nerves, and I'm not using tact. Nonetheless, the fact remains that you want to support the people who carried out the massacre at Houla as an act of democratic humanitarianism. Something is horribly deranged.