War with Syria

Tuco

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Whatever happens it'll be between America being completely satisfied with Syria handing over its weapons and Syria completely rejecting the idea of handing over its weapons. I don't think anyone thinks either of those will happen.

The big question is whether or not the US will engage Syria in the near future, which these negotiations stave off.
 
fanaskin

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Who's a "Moderate" Rebel in Syria? Check the Handwritten Receipts
The government has little oversight over whether US-funded supplies are falling prey to corruption?or into the hands of extremists.

The Syrian Support Group, a US-based nonprofit that is the only organization the Obama administration has authorized to hand out nonlethal US-funded supplies to the rebels, insists it keeps track of who's receiving this assistance based on handwritten receipts provided by rebel commanders in the field. According to Dan Layman, a spokesman for the group, this level of oversight is sufficient to guarantee US assistance is going to the right rebels and is being used appropriately. "What we're getting from [FSA commanders] in receipts directly reflects what's been given out and to whom, I'm very confident," he says. "The government regularly asks us for updates and new receipts, often faster than we can produce them." Layman doesn't know if or how the US government verifies these receipts.
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In 2012, Brian Sayers, then the Washington lobbyist for the Syrian Support Group, told McClatchy that "obviously, it's always going to be difficult to say who's the end user for every cent, every dollar, but we don't see that the military councils will provide funds to the fringe groups." Relying on local commanders to guarantee US assistance is managed effectively could lead to "massive corruption," warns Aki Peritz, a senior policy adviser for Third Way and a former CIA counterterrorism analyst. Peritz notes that the supplies being handed out by the Syrian Support Group can be sold for cash or traded for weapons and ammunition.
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The FSA's top general, Salim Idriss, and his senior commanders are technically responsible for vetting the hundreds of FSA military brigades receiving US-underwritten supplies, but some of this work falls to province-level military councils and lower-level commanders at field offices around the war-torn country. "A commander from a particular area will authorize a group of soldiers to go to a Supreme Military Council warehouse, and then write a detailed receipt saying this unit picked up three crates of MRE rations from the warehouse," Layman explains. The receipts are signed by the commander of the unit picking up the supplies and the local warehouse director, who is also under the command of the Supreme Military Council. Layman notes that his organization confers with senior commanders daily and has a staffer in Syria (a former Pentagon employee) who is responsible for oversight.
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AladainAF

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lol, Obama handled this so fucking horribly. He basically got curbstomped by Putin American History X style.

fucking lol.
 
Tuco

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AladainAF_sl said:
lol, Obama handled this so fucking horribly. He basically got curbstomped by Putin American History X style.

fucking lol.
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Yup. It's pretty embarrassing.

How should Pres. Obama have handled it and how would that improve things?
 
AladainAF

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Tuco_sl said:
Yup. It's pretty embarrassing.

How should Pres. Obama have handled it and how would that improve things?
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I'm not going to armchair President on the rerolled forums, but I think we already established the fact that Obama seems completely incapable of keeping his mouth shut, and like the shit that preceded this (i.e. Gates and the Trayvon Martin comments), he should have just kept his mouth shut with the whole red line garbage. He bluffed. Syria called it. And Putin was the dealer who cleaned up the mess and made the two children sit down, shut up and play nice.
 
Tuco

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Only thing worse than armchairing the president is talking shit about the actions taken and refusing to offer alternatives!
 
khalid

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Don't bluff in foreign policy, I think is the lesson here. Also, don't insert yourself in a conflict where you have no stake in the game. You should always be willing to let your enemies kill other enemies of yours.
 
AladainAF

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khalid_sl said:
Don't bluff in foreign policy, I think is the lesson here. Also, don't insert yourself in a conflict where you have no stake in the game. You should always be willing to let your enemies kill other enemies of yours.
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Yes this as well.

And Tuco, that's ridiculous. The alternative, as I stated before in this thread, was just to not make comments at all. Like Khalid and Arbitrary have both said -- it's his mouth.

We now have a president who has shown the world that he doesn't follow through. Any time he needs to "draw red lines" or "threaten action" it's just going to be met with "whatever" because he's already proven he won't do shit.

Even the media, as a whole, has said that whole Red Line shit is what got him in this mess. It wasn't the inaction. It wasn't that it was wildly unpopular among both the right and left in the US. It was the fact that he drew a line. The line was crossed. And he didn't do shit about it.
 
Lleauaric

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How did Obama lose anything?

Quote from Roger Ailes.

"Putin is angry. He thinks the United States doesn't take him seriously or treat Russia as a major player. Okay, fine, that's how he feels. If I were president, I'd get in a room with him and say, 'Look at the slaughter going on in Syria. You can stop it. Do it, and I'll see to it that you can get all the credit. I'll tell the world it was you who saved the innocent children of Syria from slaughter. You'll be an international hero. You'll go down in history.'

Hell, Putin would go to bed thinking, 'That's not a bad offer.' There will still be plenty of other issues I'd have with Russia. But instead of looking for one huge deal that settles everything, you take a piece of the problem and solve it. Give an incentive for good behavior. Show the other guy his self-interest. Everybody has an ego. Everybody needs dignity. And what does it cost? You get what you want; you give up nothing."
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So blame Fox News, it was their idea. I mean.. shit.. wasnt it some huge victory when GWB got Gaddafi to give up his WMDs after 9/11?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/3335965.stm

Whats changed? Assad is still going to end up like Gaddafi sooner or later.

re: Red Line

Obama is obviously compelled by more than having his bluff called. Had Obama never uttered the phrase "red line," he'd still be under public and personal moral pressure to act given the images of the attack. (Not to mention the private pressure from his U.N. ambassador Samantha Power.) Then again, those norms don't always force action. The United States did not respond when Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds in 1988, even though, as Foreign Policy reported this week, the United States knew it was being done.
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But here again, If Obama doesnt strike, then he was able to get himself out of the corner he painted himself in, but he would have been painted in either way.

IF Obama never tried to back down Assad with drawing the line, Assad would have still used them. If Assad used them and the images were leaked to the world, as they would have been, then pressure to strike would have built up. Believe me, does anyone not think that if the President showed reluctance to strike that all these GOP'ers now resisting a strike, would have been demanding he attack and calling him weak if he didnt? Of course they would have.

The "mistake?" Obama made was asking Congresses permission. But why do that? The people in WH can count votes. They must have known Congressional Approval was at best an iffy thing. They must have seen the public opinion polls. They didnt even hurry to call Congress back and let it sit for 9 days. Seems like the WH was buying time. Probably buying time to find a diplomatic solution.

Heres the final point... Dont you wish we had this choice before GWB invaded Iraq? Is there anyone one of us who wouldnt wish he would have taken it.

Saddam Gassed the Kurds.. What did Reagan get out of him after he did it? GHWB? Maybe if one of them backed him down and got him to give up his chemical weapons he wouldn't have gotten such big balls with Kuwait.
 
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Karloff_sl

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Half the problem is that a good portion of folks want Obama to cut off his nose in spite of his face. They don't want us to stack Syria but want Obama to fail so maybe attacking Syria is a good thing.

I'm just happy we aren't going to war, like I truly care what Russia thinks about the US.
 
Tuco

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AladainAF_sl said:
Yes this as well.

And Tuco, that's ridiculous. The alternative, as I stated before in this thread, was just to not make comments at all. Like Khalid and Arbitrary have both said -- it's his mouth.
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You're no fun! Fine we'll do this slowly. If he said nothing at all do you think Syria would be signing the chem weapons treaty with the UN?
 
AladainAF

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Lleauaric_sl said:
The "mistake?" Obama made was asking Congresses permission. But why do that? The people in WH can count votes. They must have known Congressional Approval was at best an iffy thing. They must have seen the public opinion polls. They didnt even hurry to call Congress back and let it sit for 9 days. Seems like the WH was buying time. Probably buying time to find a diplomatic solution.
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So you think that he should have just acted?

Sorry, but all I got out of your post was "Reagan and Bush didn't do anything when Saddam gassed the Kurds, so it's okay that Obama didn't do anything this time". You're talking about a different era. I mean, airplanes were much more prone to terrorist attacks in the 70s and 80s and we never did shit about it either.

My only point is that Obama's foreign policy was a shitstain on Syria. Kerry was making the case. Things were ready. If we had authorization of congress shit was going down. But Kerry made a slip of the tongue, and Putin acted on it, and ultimately with far, far superior diplomacy than Obama or anyone else in his administration showed, thus ultimately bailing Obama out of a bad situation. It made both America look weak, and the President itself, which is why Putin very very aptly rubbed both Obama's and Americas face in it with his NY Times Oped.

If he said nothing at all do you think Syria would be signing the chem weapons treaty with the UN?
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Are you saying that Syria is signing it because he DID say it? lol.

edit:lol. it's as if he reads rerolled.
 
kudos

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AladainAF_sl said:
I'm not going to armchair President on the rerolled forums, but I think we already established the fact that Obama seems completely incapable of keeping his mouth shut, and like the shit that preceded this (i.e. Gates and the Trayvon Martin comments), he should have just kept his mouth shut with the whole red line garbage. He bluffed. Syria called it. And Putin was the dealer who cleaned up the mess and made the two children sit down, shut up and play nice.
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Barry seems too occupied with sensational media and bullshit gossip and not enough on world politics and economics. He's a fucking fail president who would rather play basketball or get Jay-Z off the hook for a Cuban vacation than do any actual hard work.
 
tad10

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kudos_sl said:
Barry seems too occupied with sensational media and bullshit gossip and not enough on world politics and economics. He's a fucking fail president who would rather play basketball or get Jay-Z off the hook for a Cuban vacation than do any actual hard work.
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Obama was (is) an amazing campaigner. His 2012 campaign is arguably the best run campaign ever (or at least the best run of the modern era - difficult to compare his to Grover Cleveland's).

He was unstoppable and indefatigable on the campaign trail, yet in office he just fucking golfs. He's the oddest president ever - he clearly enjoyed campaigning for president, he likes the social aspects of being president (parties as often as he can) but he doesn't seem to actually like the day-to-day job of president (see the anecdote of him just playing cards for the majoriy of the Zero Dark Thirty hit on Osama).

The only comparable public persona that I can think of Thurgoode Marshall, who was one of the most brilliant lawyers in American History but once elevated to the Supreme Court became a forgettable justice. Like Marshall, Obama enjoyed the fight, but when elevated to a position above "the fight" (be it SCJ or President) found themselves bored.
 
Big Phoenix

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Is that surprising for someone who didnt serve even a full term as Senator and before that was a "Community Organizer"?
 
iannis

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Tuco_sl said:
You're no fun! Fine we'll do this slowly. If he said nothing at all do you think Syria would be signing the chem weapons treaty with the UN?
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Fair. Because that's the one thing his policy did accomplish, and that probably would not have been accomplished without insane threats.

But... does that accomplish his stated goals of 0 tolerance chemical weapons use in this war? He already had Assad backed into that corner with the threat of force months ago, there is still no conclusive public proof that it was Assad to begin with. Maybe there's top secret proof -- but the committee that was shown to didn't seem to find it entirely convincing, so my guess is all we have is circumstantial evidence. He spent a lot of President Points here to get something that he already had, and he's made the reward even higher for being able to successfully conduct a false flag chemical attack in the war he's trying to reduce their involvement with.

I don't know every (or even most) of the options available to the POTUS. But now it seems to me that for results this flimsy he made some very public statements, and an even more public show of force. He devoted a prime time speech to this issue. That's a serious thing. Something a bit more circumspect seems to have been in order.

Fair question, but I think I agree. He was backed into a corner by his own rhetoric and tried to salvage something from a defeat. It's different than winning. So basically yeah. A continued policy of carefully ignoring the situtationwouldhave been better. It's easier to make the domestic argument that your very own proof is inconclusive and not worth starting a war over than it is to make the international one that your very own proof is inconclusive and worth starting a war over.

I think international reluctance to engage the issue might have surprised him, and I think Britian voting "fuck off cunt" probably blindsided him.
 
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