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Post by MMAJim on Apr 7, 2017 8:19:24 GMT -5
I was locked in a battle with 20 foot tall styrofoam buildings, endless extension cords, and shiny paper last night setting up for my daughter's ice show, so I missed the live action news on the Syria airstrikes. The biggest shock to me has been news outlets (BBC) www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-39527554 actually are addressing the old "Red Line" statements and the failure of USA to follow through and do anything in Syria during the previous administration.
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Post by Premier on Apr 7, 2017 8:28:04 GMT -5
We were talking about it in the Russian thread. But cool to have its own thread.
Facebook Liberal on Tuesday and Wednesday were like "Pray for Syria, what is Trump going to do? The twins in the fathers arms, the US MUST DO something"
Now the same liberals are sharing memes about Trump starting WW3
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Post by slaytan on Apr 7, 2017 10:21:17 GMT -5
I just heard that a Russian warship was steaming towards the ships which launched the missiles.
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Post by MMAJim on Apr 7, 2017 10:53:31 GMT -5
Yep, we're heading towards a bit of a showdown here. I can't say that we're at Defcon 4 yet, but it isn't exactly all warm and fuzzy just yet either.
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Post by Baph on Apr 7, 2017 11:00:53 GMT -5
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Post by Baph on Apr 7, 2017 11:01:08 GMT -5
Collusion, tho . . . remember?
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Post by PatSox on Apr 7, 2017 11:08:10 GMT -5
This is why Obama is smarter than Trump. He would have just used drones, so there wouldn't be any warships for Russia to approach
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2017 12:26:12 GMT -5
This is why Obama is smarter than Trump. He would have just used drones, so there wouldn't be any warships for Russia to approach Do you honestly think Obama would have done anything (he faced this situation only about 5x worse) and did nothing? Also, do you honestly think using drones would have just made Russia say "fuck it... lets go eat some Knish."?
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Post by PatSox on Apr 7, 2017 12:46:07 GMT -5
This is why Obama is smarter than Trump. He would have just used drones, so there wouldn't be any warships for Russia to approach Do you honestly think Obama would have done anything (he faced this situation only about 5x worse) and did nothing? Also, do you honestly think using drones would have just made Russia say "fuck it... lets go eat some Knish."? Honestly? No Trolling to get a reaction out of you? Yup
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Post by Baph on Apr 7, 2017 14:24:12 GMT -5
So help me out here. Rough outline. Just trying to get the lay of the land.
It's Iraq-like in power structure. The two factions of Islam. Sunni and Shiite. The minority, population wise, has a monopoly on political power. They get fairly aggressive with it. Rebellions and tribal spats ignite. Get heated. The dictator uses brutal means to squash them and maintain control. This is literally the Iraq story word-for-word.
The complexity of Syria is that a faction of the rebellion got radical, ISIS, and now it's like a 3-sided (for simplicity's sake) open fight with differing power centers backing various factions (Iran, China, Russia, US). So it's sufficiently complex at this point. There's also a breakaway state in the north run by the Kurds which appears to be the most sane group in the whole mess. I just learned about this today. What a cluster fuck.
So Assad, Iran, and Putin are fighting ISIS, but also fighting the rebels that we back. Rebels who will likely never stop rebelling against a Shiite minority which controls 100% of the political power in the country and has a history of repression and chemical attacks against Sunnis. And at the end of the day, we're centrally located between Iraq and the Mediterranean where a huge portion of the worlds oil exports, so people aren't exactly backing off on this one.
What are your options? Stay totally out of it. Let Iran/China/Russia work to dominate the region and the world's energy supply? Get involved in Iraq 2.0? Split Syria into two states and keep the warring tribes apart, like we should have done in Iraq? Or are we just blindly swinging in the mosh pit of tribal war, oil, and geo-political power plays?
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2017 14:33:20 GMT -5
So help me out here. Rough outline. Just trying to get the lay of the land. It's Iraq-like in power structure. The two factions of Islam. Sunni and Shiite. The minority, population wise, has a monopoly on political power. They get fairly aggressive with it. Rebellions and tribal spats ignite. Get heated. The dictator uses brutal means to squash them and maintain control. This is literally the Iraq story word-for-word. The complexity of Syria is that a faction of the rebellion got radical, ISIS, and now it's like a 3-sided (for simplicity's sake) open fight with differing power centers backing various factions (Iran, China, Russia, US). So it's sufficiently complex at this point. There's also a breakaway state in the north run by the Kurds which appears to be the most sane group in the whole mess. I just learned about this today. What a cluster fuck. So Assad, Iran, and Putin are fighting ISIS, but also fighting the rebels that we back. Rebels who will likely never stop rebelling against a Shiite minority which controls 100% of the political power in the country and has a history of repression and chemical attacks against Sunnis. And at the end of the day, we're centrally located between Iraq and the Mediterranean where a huge portion of the worlds oil exports, so people aren't exactly backing off on this one. What are your options? Stay totally out of it. Let Iran/China/Russia work to dominate the region and the world's energy supply? Get involved in Iraq 2.0? Split Syria into two states and keep the warring tribes apart, like we should have done in Iraq? Or are we just blindly swinging in the mosh pit of tribal war, oil, and geo-political power plays? Or.... Stay out of it and tap our own oil reserves? Didn't Tony say something a while back about us having a shit load of oil that we could use rather than worrying with the Middle East?
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Post by Baph on Apr 7, 2017 14:38:57 GMT -5
So help me out here. Rough outline. Just trying to get the lay of the land. It's Iraq-like in power structure. The two factions of Islam. Sunni and Shiite. The minority, population wise, has a monopoly on political power. They get fairly aggressive with it. Rebellions and tribal spats ignite. Get heated. The dictator uses brutal means to squash them and maintain control. This is literally the Iraq story word-for-word. The complexity of Syria is that a faction of the rebellion got radical, ISIS, and now it's like a 3-sided (for simplicity's sake) open fight with differing power centers backing various factions (Iran, China, Russia, US). So it's sufficiently complex at this point. There's also a breakaway state in the north run by the Kurds which appears to be the most sane group in the whole mess. I just learned about this today. What a cluster fuck. So Assad, Iran, and Putin are fighting ISIS, but also fighting the rebels that we back. Rebels who will likely never stop rebelling against a Shiite minority which controls 100% of the political power in the country and has a history of repression and chemical attacks against Sunnis. And at the end of the day, we're centrally located between Iraq and the Mediterranean where a huge portion of the worlds oil exports, so people aren't exactly backing off on this one. What are your options? Stay totally out of it. Let Iran/China/Russia work to dominate the region and the world's energy supply? Get involved in Iraq 2.0? Split Syria into two states and keep the warring tribes apart, like we should have done in Iraq? Or are we just blindly swinging in the mosh pit of tribal war, oil, and geo-political power plays? Or.... Stay out of it and tap our own oil reserves? Didn't Tony say something a while back about us having a shit load of oil that we could use rather than worrying with the Middle East? Fracking is evil. Pipelines from Canada are evil. And offshore drilling is evil. Do you even news, bro?
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2017 14:41:06 GMT -5
Do you honestly think Obama would have done anything (he faced this situation only about 5x worse) and did nothing? Also, do you honestly think using drones would have just made Russia say "fuck it... lets go eat some Knish."? Honestly? No Trolling to get a reaction out of you? Yup No reaction out of me... just curious. There are lots of people that think Obama using drones was somehow different than launching Tomahawks from a destroyer.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2017 15:03:40 GMT -5
This is why Obama is smarter than Trump. He would have just used drones, so there wouldn't be any warships for Russia to approach Do you honestly think Obama would have done anything (he faced this situation only about 5x worse) and did nothing? Also, do you honestly think using drones would have just made Russia say "fuck it... lets go eat some Knish."? Let's not rewrite history here. Obama actually WANTED to get into it with Syria but backed off when most Americans-red and blue-expressed a strong desire to NOT get involved. You can blame him for a fuck ton of shit, but not dealing with Syria isn't really on him.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2017 15:06:45 GMT -5
Or.... Stay out of it and tap our own oil reserves? Didn't Tony say something a while back about us having a shit load of oil that we could use rather than worrying with the Middle East? Fracking is evil. Pipelines from Canada are evil. And offshore drilling is evil. Do you even news, bro? Well, that just shows you how out of touch liberal minds are. We need to be the humanitarian that protects precious children (just not babies) but not get in wars with the people murdering said kiddos. We cry for Syria but attack the president for retaliating. We say we are just in these wars for oil but vote against tapping our own oil reserves to wean us of the Middle Eastern power teet. It is fucking absurd.
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Post by Angelo on Apr 7, 2017 15:08:56 GMT -5
Or.... Stay out of it and tap our own oil reserves? Didn't Tony say something a while back about us having a shit load of oil that we could use rather than worrying with the Middle East? I've said, said it for years. We already do not use any Middle East oil domestically, and haven't in a long time. We do accept some to use in trade agreements but it goes elsewhere, not here. News reports are still mixed but a few interesting things I've seen repeated from "both sides of the aisle" 1. Russia at first claimed they were shutting down the deconfliction channel (that thing we used to warn the Russian of our attack), and now are backpedaling. I'm betting the backpedaling is due to the now public failure of their "top of the line" missile defense system that was in the path of the tomahawks. Their newest system is supposed to be able to take down any US missile traveling 11,000mph (about 20x the speed of the slow-ass Tomahawk) @70% for each shot. @70% with 59 tomahawks, they should have shot each one 4 times at least from a single Growler (and they probably had at least 4 of them there). 2. I still don't think it was Assad that used the chemical weapons. I'm betting an interior rival to make him look worse, or the Russians to test Trump. 3. A lot of people seem to be forgetting this isn't Trump and the Republicans finally doing what Obama couldn't do. Obama wanted to bomb Syria the first time they used the Sarin. Instead of ordering the strike though, he put it up for vote, and the Republicans were the one that shot it down (along with Trump on Twitter saying not to attack them).
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2017 15:17:42 GMT -5
Do you honestly think Obama would have done anything (he faced this situation only about 5x worse) and did nothing? Also, do you honestly think using drones would have just made Russia say "fuck it... lets go eat some Knish."? Let's not rewrite history here. Obama actually WANTED to get into it with Syria but backed off when most Americans-red and blue-expressed a strong desire to NOT get involved. You can blame him for a fuck ton of shit, but not dealing with Syria isn't really on him. He sat by idle and let massive deaths stack up. I am not saying I wanted him or currently want Trump to get involved with those assholes... but if he wanted to do something about Syria he could have just done it... like all of his actions in Pakistan, Afganistan, Iraq and Benghazi. I am not even blaming any of the deaths on Obama at all, and I am happy to see these fucktards do some population control at times... but you can't say Obama's hands were tied since he was able to perform actions in other countries under the same premise.
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Post by Hypocrisy on Apr 7, 2017 15:48:50 GMT -5
I honestly see no difference from the people dying of chemical attacks or those dying from regular bombing or drone strikes... Innocent people dying are innocent people dying. Do you think their relatives care how they died?
Trump's drone strikes have increased over Obama's. He too will be at war for his entire presidency. Nothing new. Money could be better well spent but call be a socialist
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Post by Angelo on Apr 7, 2017 16:07:18 GMT -5
I honestly see no difference from the people dying of chemical attacks or those dying from regular bombing or drone strikes... Innocent people dying are innocent people dying. Do you think their relatives care how they died? Trump's drone strikes have increased over Obama's. He too will be at war for his entire presidency. Nothing new. Money could be better well spent but call be a socialist 1. The people killed at the airbase were not innocent. The people killed (at least most of them) by the chemical attack were innocent. 2. Trump's drone strikes has only increased over the official reported number of Obama', though with a small collateral damage rate. It is still a far cry under the "unofficial" rate that Manning leaked.
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Post by Baph on Apr 7, 2017 16:12:39 GMT -5
Correct. Both the Manning leaks and the internal financial accounting put the number of actions at a much greater number than the reported strikes. Fact is, we just don't know.
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Post by Deaf boy on Apr 7, 2017 17:03:29 GMT -5
I honestly see no difference from the people dying of chemical attacks or those dying from regular bombing or drone strikes... Innocent people dying are innocent people dying. Do you think their relatives care how they died? Trump's drone strikes have increased over Obama's. He too will be at war for his entire presidency. Nothing new. Money could be better well spent but call be a socialist 1. The people killed at the airbase were not innocent. The people killed (at least most of them) by the chemical attack were innocent. 2. Trump's drone strikes has only increased over the official reported number of Obama', though with a small collateral damage rate. It is still a far cry under the "unofficial" rate that Manning leaked. I'm talking about the innocent people dying at the hand of the US. Many more that the chemical attack... Many many more
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2017 17:35:26 GMT -5
1. The people killed at the airbase were not innocent. The people killed (at least most of them) by the chemical attack were innocent. 2. Trump's drone strikes has only increased over the official reported number of Obama', though with a small collateral damage rate. It is still a far cry under the "unofficial" rate that Manning leaked. I'm talking about the innocent people dying at the hand of the US. Many more that the chemical attack... Many many more The intent of the US is to use military action to overthrow a leadership detrimental to the health and safety of its people. Yes, innocent people die during those actions. The intent of Assad using Serine gas on his people what to fuck them up and make sure they know they are peasants and under his thumb Surely you can see the difference and if your town was getting gassed by some dictator you would be okay with a foreign entity coming in and bombing the shit out of their military bases, collateral damage and all.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2017 17:36:08 GMT -5
I honestly see no difference from the people dying of chemical attacks or those dying from regular bombing or drone strikes... Innocent people dying are innocent people dying. Do you think their relatives care how they died? Trump's drone strikes have increased over Obama's. He too will be at war for his entire presidency. Nothing new. Money could be better well spent but call be a socialist I am pretty sure from the Manning reports that Obama's drone strikes were 4-5 times what they reported
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Post by adamg01 on Apr 7, 2017 17:40:23 GMT -5
1. The people killed at the airbase were not innocent. The people killed (at least most of them) by the chemical attack were innocent. 2. Trump's drone strikes has only increased over the official reported number of Obama', though with a small collateral damage rate. It is still a far cry under the "unofficial" rate that Manning leaked. I'm talking about the innocent people dying at the hand of the US. Many more that the chemical attack... Many many more As long as it's us doing it and not them, it's ok.
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Missing the point Kyle
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Post by Missing the point Kyle on Apr 7, 2017 17:51:51 GMT -5
I'm talking about the innocent people dying at the hand of the US. Many more that the chemical attack... Many many more The intent of the US is to use military action to overthrow a leadership detrimental to the health and safety of its people. Yes, innocent people die during those actions. The intent of Assad using Serine gas on his people what to fuck them up and make sure they know they are peasants and under his thumb Surely you can see the difference and if your town was getting gassed by some dictator you would be okay with a foreign entity coming in and bombing the shit out of their military bases, collateral damage and all. Why leave the dictators of Saudi Arabia in power? Surely they are no better than Sadam or Assad? If my town was getting bombed my America it wouldn't matter if it was chemical, drone or any other method. America kills plenty of innocent people to throw tantrums over others doing it. I'm sure Saudi Arabia kills more guys than those killed in the chemical attacks. Yet the US does nothing, they're obviously scared of daddy
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2017 18:14:24 GMT -5
I'm afraid Trump got played.
There are multiple reports of chemical weapons being found in Iraq from 2004 to 2011. (As per the NYT), with verified examples of ISIS using the weapons they found in Iraq against US soldiers. So...ISIS has Sarin.
Peace talks were set to begin in Syria, then- this happens.
If I'm correct,(and I hope I'm not)- ISIS just got the US to take out a base for them and dragged us into a potential shit storm.
I'm done reading about this for the night. Hope I wake tomorrow to find I'm wrong.
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Post by slaytan on Apr 7, 2017 18:22:37 GMT -5
I'm afraid Trump got played. There are multiple reports of chemical weapons being found in Iraq from 2004 to 2011. (As per the NYT), with verified examples of ISIS using the weapons they found in Iraq against US soldiers. So...ISIS has Sarin. Peace talks were set to begin in Syria, then- this happens. If I'm correct,(and I hope I'm not)- ISIS just got the US to take out a base for them and dragged us into a potential shit storm. I'm done reading about this for the night. Hope I wake tomorrow to find I'm wrong. This was my thoughts
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Post by ocmmafan on Apr 7, 2017 18:34:19 GMT -5
We hate ISIl. Assad hates ISIL. Assad and the Russians are with us on strategy to eliminate ISIL. Out of fucking nowhere Assad gases his own people? Did he claim responsibility for it? What's his connection to Hezbollah, Muslim Brotherhood, ISIL, etc? He fights with all of them? Who can keep any of this shit straight on "good guy" or "bad guy". They all seem like terrorist scum yet we end up supporting them all and fighting them all.
I haven't paid a ton of attention to this other than seeing it on the Fox ticker and reading what you guys have written (life shit getting in the way of my OD time). But it all does seem odd and it's not out of the realm of possibility someone staged it to set up Assad, Trump and force war.
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Post by Baph on Apr 7, 2017 19:36:21 GMT -5
Here's a fun one that just popped into my head:
Trump did collude with Russia and it's about to come out, jeopardize entire electoral system and legitimacy of government. Obama did spy on Trump and it's about to come out, jeopardize the legacy, party, even legal status of many elites.
So they both decide to let/help/make some shit pop off in Syria and now nobody's talking about nothing.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2017 19:47:20 GMT -5
We hate ISIl. Assad hates ISIL. Assad and the Russians are with us on strategy to eliminate ISIL. Out of fucking nowhere Assad gases his own people? Did he claim responsibility for it? What's his connection to Hezbollah, Muslim Brotherhood, ISIL, etc? He fights with all of them? Who can keep any of this shit straight on "good guy" or "bad guy". They all seem like terrorist scum yet we end up supporting them all and fighting them all. I haven't paid a ton of attention to this other than seeing it on the Fox ticker and reading what you guys have written (life shit getting in the way of my OD time). But it all does seem odd and it's not out of the realm of possibility someone staged it to set up Assad, Trump and force war. I think Assad said he attacked something and the chemical weapons he didn't know about exploded or some shit.
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