Middle East Thread of Despair: More Broken Than Syria

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Middle East Thread of Despair: More Broken Than Syria

Doctor Butts: May 21, 2002

Brother Jonathan posted:

And here is Rience Priebus on the issue:

I cannot find anything but four letter words to describe how worthless this man is.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2012 13:49

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 05:49

Doctor Butts: May 21, 2002

Mitt Romney posted:

Thanks for clarifying that. However, it leads to the question: If 99.9% of America didn't know about the tape, how did a TV station in the middle east come to it, and decide to play it on repeat?

It screams to me that this was an organized effort to spread this video tape to invoke these kinds of protests and destabilization.

Yea, seems strange.

Video, has, apparently been out for a while. No one ever heard of it, but all of a sudden it is translated into arabic and is on TV.

So, on one hand it does seem really fishy. On the other hand, our local media is always quick to spout bullshit like "THE ONE THING IN YOUR HOUSEHOLD THAT COULD BE TURNING ALL OF YOUR CHILDREN GAY, coming up later in our newscast"

But take my suspicions with a grain of salt because there was a short amount of time I couldn't believe that an airplane caused a building to collapse on itself.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2012 16:17

Doctor Butts: May 21, 2002

Sorry, hard to follow this thread and all of the hundreds of post within a few days. I saw as recently as two pages ago that people are advocating the bombing of chemical weapons sites. Isn't that dangerous?

# ¿ Aug 30, 2013 14:03

Doctor Butts: May 21, 2002

No, I mean, doesn't bombing the facilities risk releasing the chemical agents in the area?

# ¿ Aug 30, 2013 14:23

Doctor Butts: May 21, 2002

The-Mole posted:

Just a reminder that many of y'all are getting all triumphant about how we've now decided to deal with a guy who is responsible for over 100,000 of his peoples' deaths. And not mild deaths. Teenagers and kids being hacked into multiple pieces is this guys style.

Just a reminder that at best we would have bombed some of his poo poo but he would have continued doing this poo poo anyway, and we were never going to fight for the rebels, and we were never going to force a regime change.

So I don't know what victory you expected, because it wasn't going to happen.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2013 21:42

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 05:49

Doctor Butts: May 21, 2002

Juvenalian.Satyr posted:

While I don't think the Obama administration has been exactly super-competent here, I think that the belief that the diplomatic solution jumped on by Assad and Putin recently would have been possible without the very same telegraphed threat of force people are criticizing is near delusional. Assad is concerned about self-preservation, and it was obvious that intervention would escalated to regime change in short order. This is a way for them to preserve their status without American intervention while satisfying the outraged morality of the international community.

We haven't seen the posturing shake out yet, and I agree that Russia comes out looking good right now because of the "gotcha!" moment, but what follows next is a lot more important, whether they and Assad follow through with it, and if unintended consequences arise.

This also serves to obfuscate, as the op-ed indicated, the involvement of the Assad regime in the chemical attacks. Whatever the results of the UN inspection, there's no conclusive evidence against the regime. There's military intelligence indicating as such but at this point, what good is there in prosecuting it? I think that's a real victory for Assad and his supporters. They effectively sidestep having to answer for their crimes by crying "mea culpa" and offering up the lamb of their chemical weapons to the nebulous international authorities, so that it doesn't fall into the hands of extremists.

While it would be net objective good to remove the chemical weapons from Syria. I fear that it might actually be a stalling tactic to kill the already sickened political will for intervention in the cradle and never follow through. Even if Assad never uses his chemical weapons again, I think he could get away with never releasing them, using their existence as a threat in the safety of their bunkers, and be poised to crush the opposition while he receives outside funding and support and the opposing forces don't.

That fear might be unreasonable, and I don't think that fear alone is justification for strikes now, which is why I think the administration's guarded stance is the most realistic one right now. I'm not sure what people expect them to do, at this point, differently.

I am quoting this because I think this is a really good post.

Personally yea, I think Obama/His Administration isn't acting as 'one', and hasn't made a coherent plan of what they want to happen- or what their policy is and how far they will go to enforce it.

On the other hand, there's really no better way this situation could have been handled from anyone's perspective unless Obama threatened to bomb Syria if they didn't release their chemical weapons to the UN. Even then, that's bombing without UN support.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2013 19:40

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Middle East Thread of Despair: More Broken Than Syria