Aylee
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quote:
ORIGINAL: TheHeretic
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ORIGINAL: cloudboy
The other factor in play here is the timing of a strike / intervention. Waiting a period of time to marshal support and build a coalition is more important than acting fast and going it alone.
The larger problem at play is how divided the world is: there is no coalition to intervene and stabilize the country, the UN is divided, and factions in the Middle East don't trust each other and regularly use terror and violence as a weapon.
The US has spent something like $1 Trillion Dollars and Afghanistan, IRAQ, Egypt, Syria all remain highly unstable.
Hi, Cloudboy. I'm not going into that whole other aspect you brought up. Not only do I have and freely use a sense of humor, it can be very dark and twisted. I'm the guy who will walk up to someone looking at the wreckage of his eurosedan, and cheerfully offer, "well, that's the way the Mercedes bends." People get it, or they don't. When I go really dark, most people don't get the joke, but that's how my tension release valve works, and I won't be altering it.
Moving on.
Unless the strike plan involves destruction of fixed, complex and very expensive infrastructure at its foundation, the "timing doesn't matter" argument is complete horseshit. It's called dispersal. It has been reported that Assad is even using civilian homes to get his stuff out of harm's way.
Destroying syria isn't worth our time or interest.
The only purpose here is to scare every OTHER tinpot dictator badly enough to stop developing chemical weapons.
In order to do that, the simplest method is to destroy the following targets:
Assad's family, but not Assad himself.
Likewise, the families of Assad's Generals, but not the Generals themselves.
Keep going down the list until you've destroyed enough civilians to equal the civilians killed by the Syrian use of sarin.
And finish your bombing campaign by hitting one chemical weapons bunker, located in the middle of a Syrian loyalist population, after making certain that the bunker does NOT contain VX, since almost any other chemical weapon will degrade naturally after a few hours.
That should be enough to make our point, and the civil war can continue on as-is.
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The thing to keep in mind is that world isn't just divided, it is in competition. Russia isn't just hanging out, being pricks for fun (though I suspect Putin enjoys that aspect), they have active interests in building their own standing in the region, and whittling away at ours.
Well... There are some differences between the Soviet model and the Russian Imperial one, as pertains to foreign relations. But mostly you are correct: the similarities outweighed the differences, especially after WWII.
Today's Russia, however, is no closer to the old Imperial Russia than it is to the USSR. At no point in Russian or Soviet history was the Russian ruling class as beholden to the West as it is now. These guys _cannot afford_ belligerence on a level much beyond a 'very angry note'. Not 'their country cannot afford' - the _actual_rulers_personally_ cannot afford. And they know it, all too well.
P.S. The meme of Russian responses being driven by the history of being invaded again, and again, and again is a popular one. However, one might keep in mind that, while being supposedly a habitual victim of unending invasions, Russia managed to expand from not much more than a city-state, and not a large one, at that, into an empire more than twice the size of the USA. 90+% of that expansion happened through Russia invading its neighbors.
So... are the American responses largely driven by past experiences of the Colonies being repeatedly invaded by all those nasty Indians, by any chance? :-)
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I had a chance to read a speculative piece today, on who benefits from forcing our hand on the President's throwaway line. Worth a peek, if you have a couple minutes.
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/143492/samuels-syria-vladimir-putin#
The US is holding Mr. Putin and his close circle of kleptocrats by something more important to them than even their balls: their wallets. Rulers of the USSR and Russian Empire were sovereigns of a (mostly) self-sufficient country, with all or most of their riches residing inside that country. Putin & Co., on the other hand, are utterly dependent on their country's exports to, and their business and personal bank accounts in, the West. Their freedom of maneuver against the West, therefore, is severely constricted.
If Putin can deter us from this _totally_ unnecessary war, God bless him.
Mind you, I am pretty sure he is a corrupt Tsar-in-all-but-name. But I am unconvinced that Russia doesn't need a Tsar or that her having one would not be in our interest.
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Yes. We have spent a lot of money in the ME. We have spent a lot of money fighting drugs and poverty too. Pointless wastes that have done as much harm as good, over the decades. We may very well be spending a hell of a lot more money there, too, if we are dragged into something else, that does meet the criteria. Just the posture we are maintaining right now could explode, if somebody does something stupid.
This is a clear case for "containment".
Let 'em kill each other.
If things go quiet, throw in some more ammo.
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Edit to add - I don't watch Breaking Bad (never even caught an episode), so call it even on references the other guy isn't familiar with. I do know enough about speed freaks to know it cannot be an analogy with foundations in any sort of reality.
I got nothing for this. Sounds like a TV show.
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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam
I don’t always wgah’nagl fhtagn. But when I do, I ph’nglui mglw’nafh R’lyeh.
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RE: Team America - World Police: The Obama Years - 
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