U.S attacks Syria

[JackJack]

Originally Posted by driveway

Credit where credit is due, I think Trump did the right thing and I think he did it in the right manner.

I agree that it was the right response.

What I'm most conflicted about (as others have mentioned and pointed out) is that where is the foreign policy guidelines supporting US involvement? It may not sound like a big deal but if anything goes wrong (US military loss of life, further terror attacks, etc.) everyone will point to the retaliation as being impulsive. And therein lies the biggest problem.

Trump isn't the right person to be involved in getting the US into another potential disastrous outcome in Syria. His statements are a window into how two-dimensional he views the issues.

He doesn't have the intellect, stamina or attention span to understand the baseline fundamentals of the geo-political and cultural fracturing that has resulted in modern day Syria. And Iraq. And Afghanistan. And Yemen. And Palestine.

Everything that I've read and seen to date leads me to believe that Trump is playing a game of chess but doesn't understand how the game is played. At an international level he is getting out maneuvered and baited. What if all along the plan was to get US involvement in Syria (by the Russians?). They knew what buttons to push on Trump and they baited him?

The red line that can't be crossed? Russia and Syria now know that a chemical attack on a civilian population results in a US Cruise Missile strike.

What has changed?

Next week when cluster bombs destroy residential neighborhoods or a hospital, will the US react? If Boko Haram kidnaps, tortures and maims school-aged girls in Nigeria, should we expect the same response?

This is why I'm conflicted. Because short-term, it appeases those who say we must do something. Long-term I can't see how it help.

[Bigtime]

Originally Posted by Lubicon

Abandoned or evacuated? There is a difference. If they took out enough infrastructure to render the base unusable or ineffective is that not effective?

Anyone know if the Tomahawk can carry cluster bombs? Having a few of them make their runs down the runway dispensing them would do a good job of shutting down the airbase for use.

[CaptainCrunch]

To me chemical weapons and biological weapons and even nuclear weapons are a great evil, more then any other weapon their use is completely indiscriminate and there's no way to avoid killing in mass, in fact its what they're designed for.

They are the ultimate terror weapon, and in the case of chemical weapons depending on the type used, the long term effects are pretty horrific.

The unfortunate/fortunate thing is that the American's had to warn the Russians and the Russians promptly turned around and warned the Syrians.

However that base was a key nexus for strike packages by the Syrians so even with limited casualties its likely that base is out of business for a time.

Unfortunately you can't go after suspected chemical weapons sites because they're strategically centered around civilian areas and you can't bomb then without the risk of the weapons basically being set off.

The only way to get rid of these weapons and be sure about it is to either seize them, or nuke them.

The big issue now is the "safe Skies" agreement between the Russians and Americans. With the Russians modernizing Syria's anti-aircraft defenses, and the Russian controlled anti-aircraft defenses, combined with the sheer number of planes in close proximity almost guarantees a shove off mate incident.

[photon]

Some info on how effective the strikes may/may not have been.

https://theintercept.com/2017/04/07/...ke-ally-syria/

The one thing that kind of got me in that:

The question I get over and over from Syrians is, why is it ok to kill us with bombs but not with gas? What's the difference?

Exactly. No action when so many more killed with conventional weapons, no help when people try to leave (used as the boogyman in an election campaign instead, oh those scary Syrians going to come and ruin your country).

It's just frustrating.

[nik-]

Originally Posted by JackJack

I agree that it was the right response.

What I'm most conflicted about (as others have mentioned and pointed out) is that where is the foreign policy guidelines supporting US involvement? It may not sound like a big deal but if anything goes wrong (US military loss of life, further terror attacks, etc.) everyone will point to the retaliation as being impulsive. And therein lies the biggest problem.

Trump isn't the right person to be involved in getting the US into another potential disastrous outcome in Syria. His statements are a window into how two-dimensional he views the issues.

He doesn't have the intellect, stamina or attention span to understand the baseline fundamentals of the geo-political and cultural fracturing that has resulted in modern day Syria. And Iraq. And Afghanistan. And Yemen. And Palestine.

Everything that I've read and seen to date leads me to believe that Trump is playing a game of chess but doesn't understand how the game is played. At an international level he is getting out maneuvered and baited. What if all along the plan was to get US involvement in Syria (by the Russians?). They knew what buttons to push on Trump and they baited him?

The red line that can't be crossed? Russia and Syria now know that a chemical attack on a civilian population results in a US Cruise Missile strike.

What has changed?

Next week when cluster bombs destroy residential neighborhoods or a hospital, will the US react? If Boko Haram kidnaps, tortures and maims school-aged girls in Nigeria, should we expect the same response?

This is why I'm conflicted. Because short-term, it appeases those who say we must do something. Long-term I can't see how it help.

Has there ever been a firm policy towards the Syrian conflict?

It's been a mess since the start, and it's now spanning into a second administration. You're asking for something that's never really been delivered in any administration. And you're asking it from the least qualified administration ever lol.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by JackJack

I agree that it was the right response.

What I'm most conflicted about (as others have mentioned and pointed out) is that where is the foreign policy guidelines supporting US involvement? It may not sound like a big deal but if anything goes wrong (US military loss of life, further terror attacks, etc.) everyone will point to the retaliation as being impulsive. And therein lies the biggest problem.

Trump isn't the right person to be involved in getting the US into another potential disastrous outcome in Syria. His statements are a window into how two-dimensional he views the issues.

He doesn't have the intellect, stamina or attention span to understand the baseline fundamentals of the geo-political and cultural fracturing that has resulted in modern day Syria. And Iraq. And Afghanistan. And Yemen. And Palestine.

Everything that I've read and seen to date leads me to believe that Trump is playing a game of chess but doesn't understand how the game is played. At an international level he is getting out maneuvered and baited. What if all along the plan was to get US involvement in Syria (by the Russians?). They knew what buttons to push on Trump and they baited him?

The red line that can't be crossed? Russia and Syria now know that a chemical attack on a civilian population results in a US Cruise Missile strike.

What has changed?

Next week when cluster bombs destroy residential neighborhoods or a hospital, will the US react? If Boko Haram kidnaps, tortures and maims school-aged girls in Nigeria, should we expect the same response?

This is why I'm conflicted. Because short-term, it appeases those who say we must do something. Long-term I can't see how it help.

I'm not getting your theory that the Russians want American involvement. America's already bombing the crap out of ISIS which to an extent is helping the Russians with their aim of securing the government in place.

I don't see the end game of the Russians taking the chance of having the American's disrupting their operations there.

Basically if the Americans' declared a maritime exclusion zone and a no fly zone to Russians, there wouldn't be much that the Russians could do about it.

I'm not seeing your end game.

[photon]

Yeah that safe skies agreement not so much now.

Russia on Friday froze a critical agreement on military cooperation with the United States in Syria after an American military strike, warning that the operation would further corrode already dismal relations between Moscow and Washington.

Syria, Russia’s ally, condemned the American strikes as “a disgraceful act.”

In addition to suspending the pact to coordinate air operations over Syria, an accord that was meant to prevent accidental encounters between the two militaries, Russia also said it would bolster Syria’s air defense systems, and was reported to be planning to send a frigate into the Mediterranean Sea to visit the logistics base at the Syrian port of Tartus.


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/w...kes-syria.html

[nik-]

Originally Posted by photon

Some info on how effective the strikes may/may not have been.

https://theintercept.com/2017/04/07/...ke-ally-syria/

The one thing that kind of got me in that:

The question I get over and over from Syrians is, why is it ok to kill us with bombs but not with gas? What's the difference?

Exactly. No action when so many more killed with conventional weapons, no help when people try to leave (used as the boogyman in an election campaign instead, oh those scary Syrians going to come and ruin your country).

It's just frustrating.

For one, this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemic...ons_Convention

For two, bombs serve a purpose other than just killing people. Chemical weapons don't, especially when they're being used in already populated areas. They're just for basically torturing people to death.

[nik-]

Originally Posted by photon

Yeah that safe skies agreement not so much now.

Russia on Friday froze a critical agreement on military cooperation with the United States in Syria after an American military strike, warning that the operation would further corrode already dismal relations between Moscow and Washington.

Syria, Russia’s ally, condemned the American strikes as “a disgraceful act.”

In addition to suspending the pact to coordinate air operations over Syria, an accord that was meant to prevent accidental encounters between the two militaries, Russia also said it would bolster Syria’s air defense systems, and was reported to be planning to send a frigate into the Mediterranean Sea to visit the logistics base at the Syrian port of Tartus.


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/w...kes-syria.html

And all I can think of is that this is great theatre to distract from the Russia investigation.

I'm turning into Alex Jones.

[CaptainCrunch]

Now if I was a tinfoil wearing 9/11 truther everything is the US' fault because they're the ultimate evil on the planet behind every single conspiracy because its a false flag yo here's my take.

Trump under tremendous pressure with the Russian investigation and the possibility that they will discover the truth that he and Putin conspired to fix the last election with Rssian helps needs to show that he's not best buddies in the whole world with Putin who he met at a meeting of the Skull and crossbones.

So suddenly Trump needs to show that he's not Putin's best buddy and he phones up Vlad and says "Yo dude over the phone secret handshake. I need a conflict with you".

So Putin puts down his bong and plays with his Templar Knights member ship pin, and he says "I have just the thing, we'll get brother Assaad, you know the guy from the circle of thorn meeting to chemical bomb his own people. You'll be all like, this is bad, and blast a base, but tell me which one so I can get my people out of there first. Then I'll act all mad and stuff."

And then trump looks at his Bilderberg secret white ink tattoo and says "Yeah and then you can shoot down one of our aircraft, hopefully not one that's being flown by a jew, because that would piss off the Rothchilds man, and then we can exchange some fire, and everyone will think that we've always been enemies."

And then Putin thinks about it and says "Kewl, you owe me one, I'll inform Xenu on mars"

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by nik-

For one, this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemic...ons_Convention

For two, bombs serve a purpose other than just killing people. Chemical weapons don't, especially when they're being used in already populated areas. They're just for basically torturing people to death.

The sole purpose of chemical weapons is to depopulate in large numbers, terrify a population and in certain cases render an area unusable for a period to time.

[photon]

Originally Posted by nik-

For one, this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemic...ons_Convention

For two, bombs serve a purpose other than just killing people. Chemical weapons don't, especially when they're being used in already populated areas. They're just for basically torturing people to death.

True but if you're one of the what, half million people killed it doesn't matter much if it's by chemical weapon or by conventional bomb.

But I get what you're saying.

[photon]

In the matter of the vanishing red line, Obama claimed ultimate victory in large part because the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, offered him a way out—in exchange for forgoing strikes on Assad regime targets, the Russians would convince the Syrians to give up their chemical weapons stockpiles. Huge stockpiles of chemical agents would subsequently be shipped out of Syria for destruction, and Obama’s allies explained the sagacity of his approach by noting that President George W. Bush went to war in Iraq to neutralize weapons of mass destruction that no longer existed by the time of the 2003 invasion; Obama, on the other hand, avoided war in Syria while somehow managing to neutralize its chemical stockpiles.

The events of the past week, culminating in the decision by President Obama’s successor to launch a punitive strike on a Syrian air base in retaliation for Assad’s continued use of chemical weapons against civilians, prove a number of points, some that reflect well on Obama, and some that do not. The first is that the 2013 Obama-Putin deal to disarm Assad of his chemical weapons was a failure. It was not a complete failure, in that stockpiles were indeed removed, but Assad kept enough of these weapons to allow him to continue murdering civilians with sarin gas. The argument that Obama achieved comprehensive WMD disarmament without going to war is no longer, as they say in Washington, operative.

President Obama failed to convince Washington to put away the playbook permanently.
The events of the past week also prove that a core principle of the Obama Doctrine is dead. President Trump’s governing foreign policy doctrine is not easily discernible, of course. His recent statements about Syria—kaleidoscopic in their diversity—combined with his decision to order an attack, have half-convinced me that he is something wholly unique in the history of the presidency: an isolationist interventionist.

But what is not wholly novel about Trump is that he, and his top advisers, under pressure to respond to Assad’s use of chemical weapons, reached for the same playbook that Obama resisted opening. This decision returns the U.S. to a historic norm. In other words, President Obama failed to convince Washington to put away the playbook permanently.

https://www.theatlantic.com/internat...ne-rip/522276/

[nik-]

Originally Posted by photon

True but if you're one of the what, half million people killed it doesn't matter much if it's by chemical weapon or by conventional bomb.

But I get what you're saying.

Dead is dead for sure. But I think I'd rather be killed by a collapsing wall or the direct force of a bomb than having my eyes and skin burning while the fluid in my lungs turns into acid.

War is horrible, but chemical weapons are sadistic.

[CaptainCrunch]

Those chemical weapons were either Syria's and they didn't disarm, but the darker more complex theory is that those were Russian chemical weapons dropped from Syrian warplanes.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by nik-

Dead is dead for sure. But I think I'd rather be killed by a collapsing wall or the direct force of a bomb than having my eyes and skin burning while the fluid in my lungs turns into acid.

War is horrible, but chemical weapons are sadistic.

The method of dying really depends on the weapon, if this was Sarin and mustard gas in combination that's pretty nasty.

Chemical weapons as a whole basically make every nerve in your body fire at random, so you feel varying degrees of hot and cold from freezing to burning. You're body convulses and your nervous system over loads as signals aren't clear. It shuts down your automatic actions such as breathing. You lose control of your bodily functions as well.

The benefit in the war field is that you need very little exposure to a chemical weapon to die. A droplet is enough. On top of that you don't need to breath it in, skin contact even at the smallest scale will kill you.

Even if you manage to survive, your stuck with a lifetime of real health concerns from blindness to paralysis to a loss of bodily control.

Its a horrible horrible agent and for civilians there's no protection.

Blister agents like mustard gas are extremely painful because they're designed to burn you and raise massive blisters and if you inhale it your lungs blister.

the odd thing about mustard gas is it isn't a very effective killer, like a nerve agent, but if you don't receive a fatal dose, your stuck with a lifetime of serious health and breathing issues.

[HotHotHeat]

A popular reddit comment, pretty much bang on.

Don't want to be a tin foil hat guy but this is manufactured Cold War 2.0 which will lead to a peace deal that includes lifting sanctions on Russia.
Edit: Just to further explain what I mean...Trump and Putin, the U.S. and Russia are going to use a lot of strong language at each other. They're going to fight a proxy war in Syria with minimal casualties for Americans and Russians but utter devastation for Syrians. Then they're going to sit down for peace talks where everybody gets what they want (everybody at the top anyway). Sanctions are lifted on Russia, Trump gets support and stability at home, scandals go away, people get rich. The middle and lower classes of the U.S. and Russia are going to pay financially and the people of Syria are going to pay with their lives.

https://en.reddit.com/r/politics/com...events_direct/

[nik-]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

The method of dying really depends on the weapon, if this was Sarin and mustard gas in combination that's pretty nasty.

Chemical weapons as a whole basically make every nerve in your body fire at random, so you feel varying degrees of hot and cold from freezing to burning. You're body convulses and your nervous system over loads as signals aren't clear. It shuts down your automatic actions such as breathing. You lose control of your bodily functions as well.

The benefit in the war field is that you need very little exposure to a chemical weapon to die. A droplet is enough. On top of that you don't need to breath it in, skin contact even at the smallest scale will kill you.

Even if you manage to survive, your stuck with a lifetime of real health concerns from blindness to paralysis to a loss of bodily control.

Its a horrible horrible agent and for civilians there's no protection.

Blister agents like mustard gas are extremely painful because they're designed to burn you and raise massive blisters and if you inhale it your lungs blister.

the odd thing about mustard gas is it isn't a very effective killer, like a nerve agent, but if you don't receive a fatal dose, your stuck with a lifetime of serious health and breathing issues.

yeah I thought it was chlorine this time for some reason.

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

The benefit in the war field is that you need very little exposure to a chemical weapon to die. A droplet is enough. On top of that you don't need to breath it in, skin contact even at the smallest scale will kill you.

Even if you manage to survive, your stuck with a lifetime of real health concerns from blindness to paralysis to a loss of bodily control.

Its a horrible horrible agent and for civilians there's no protection.

Blister agents like mustard gas are extremely painful because they're designed to burn you and raise massive blisters and if you inhale it your lungs blister.

the odd thing about mustard gas is it isn't a very effective killer, like a nerve agent, but if you don't receive a fatal dose, your stuck with a lifetime of serious health and breathing issues.

The other benefit is you incur zero casualties yourself while inflict large death & even worse wounded.

To be chemical weapons aren't about maximum body count. They are about making a fighting force ineffective by creating an overwhelming number of causalities. Causalities are a large drain on the a fighting force logistically.

The dead are easy to deal with, the wounded are not.

If I was to set aside my humanity, I would advocate for the use of chemical weapons.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by Lubicon

Abandoned or evacuated? There is a difference. If they took out enough infrastructure to render the base unusable or ineffective is that not effective?

Evacuated. Semantics. Bottom line, does this impact Syria's of Russia's ability to carry out their military mission? Based on information available in the media, including quite a few retired generals, this will have zero impact. No impact means this is nothing but a dog and pony show. All this did was give Russia and opportunity to point at the United States and take away more moral high ground, and give congress more things to bitch about with Trump.