To Outlaw 09 RE: Syria
Outlaw,
Please excuse my parsing, which is done for brevity, clarity and greater readability of the thread i.e. occupying less of the page.
With respect to the Iceland reference, I am asking you if a country with no military has a duty to establish one for the purposes of humanitarian intervention. Having covered the legal side, on the basis of what criteria does the United States have a moral obligation to depose Assad but China, Brazil or Iceland do not?
I didn’t expect you to exposure yourself to me like that. You might as well be wearing a Trotsky t-shirt in Red Square in 1937.Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
At least 3 million civilians have been slaughtered in the D.R. Congo and to a lesser extent, Burundi, since 1996, during wars in which combatants were less than 10% of total fatalities. That is mass murder. That is genocide. In Syria, government and rebel forces have each lost more combatants than the civilian death toll, which is 20% to 32% of the overall fatalities.
To be frank, it is like speaking to someone from the 1930s who is eager to join the International Brigades in Spain to fight the Nationalists and demands that the League of Nations intervenes there, whilst millions of peasants are shot, bludgeoned, starved and worked to death in the Soviet Union, and hundreds of thousands of ethnic and religious minorities are murdered there. You claim to be separate from and superior to the mass mainstream media, yet you ignore the daily slaughter in Africa that they ignore.
That does Syria no good. I have no ability to influence events there or to impose my preferences on the war.
Perhaps it is fatigue? After all, intra-rebel fighting is nothing new.
This is interesting, because Hussein used chemical weapons against Iranians and Iraqis with relative impunity during the 1980s and 1990s, and Russia, Israel and the U.S. all continue to use cluster and incendiary weapons.
That is not fully correct, as Putin denounced Operation Odyssey Dawn, which was under a UNSC mandate, but was supportive of Operation Enduring Freedom, which did not. Rather than UNSC approval, which Putin did not seek for himself in Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine or Syria, Putin is primarily concerned with NATO: its continuing enlargement, its ABM program, and its use from 1999 to present as an offensive alliance and occupation force.
I do follow CrowBat quite closely, and we agree on much. However, CrowBat believes that an American intervention in Syria, whether in 2013 or 2016, would have gone unchallenged by either Russia or Iran, and that they would have stood aside. That is merely his more risky opinion and he is in no position to claim more insight than a risk-averse analyst. I fundamentally disagree with him here, and I believe that Putin would have welcomed the opportunity to counterpunch Obama and exposed the impotence of American power that had been heretofore unchallenged in the Third World. I argued with him about the details of how Putin could have counterpunched, and CrowBat was unable to allay my concerns or refute my arguments. Capabilities, are of course, not the same as intentions.
RE:
- Agreed. However, Assad could have launched chemical weapons by way of artillery
- Agreed. However, Russia has cluster and incendiary munitions, and only a fraction of the civilian casualties are caused by airpower
- Nyet. How would the U.S. have stopped Russia’s entry? Shot down Russian aircraft? Sunk Russian ships?
- Nyet
- Nyet
- Nyet
- Nyet. Most Syrian refugees became so prior to Russia’s direct intervention
Some commentators have argued that Syria is a proxy war between Iranian and Qatari pipelines, both of which were being proposed prior to the war. How can Russia collect on such a deal if Syria remains a failed state? Yet Russia is making no major effort to end the war and reconstruct the state.
This recent airstrike did not cause Assad to be overthrown. Only the Iranians can do that, and right now they want to reconquer the rest of Syria for him.
Obama’s so-called “red line” had no legal standing, either in the U.S. or internationally.
Obama stated in August 2012:
That statement barely hints at action, and neither a changing “calculus” or “equation” is suggestive of action or policy. The U.S. government expresses preferences on international crises all the time, and no scholar of international law would agree with you that the U.S. is “complicit” in the violation of these preferences if it is not willing to go to war to secure them.…a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized…That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.
The War Powers Resolution has been largely ignored: Clinton was not impeached for violating it multiple times, and Obama was not impeached for violating it in 2011.
Obama did not launch strikes against Syria because he did not want to: he procrastinated and hoped that refusal by the British and American lower houses could be blamed for inaction. Obama waited ten days before seeking Congressional approval whereas Trump acted within forty-eight hours. Obama avoided action because Syria was and is Iran’s deal, however much Putin showboats, and Obama wanted to seal the JCPOA.
Trump does not appear willing to tear up the JCPOA, but he is probably willing to tangle with Iran and force Teheran to choose between its bid for mastery in the Persian Gulf and the JCPOA. He seems to want to force Iran to make the first move to abrogate it.
When were Putin or Assad ever trustworthy?
I never believed that Assad ever fully surrendered his stockpile or dismantled his production capabilities: chemical weapons ensure the survival of his statelet. I believe that the Russians were aware of his duplicity but that they would not have countenanced the use of these reserves except as a last resort. I also believe that the Iranians suggested that Assad use them in Khan Sheikhoun in order to test Trump’s level of interest in the war and his resolve, as this would be preferable to shooting breaking out in the Strait of Hormuz.
Assad has yet to use Sarin again after the strike on Shayrat.
Nuclear weapons are far more destructive than chemical ones, which is why chemical weapons were banned. North Korea is led by a genocidal regime that has threatened to “preemptively” use nuclear weapons against other countries, including the U.S.
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