Arathain Kelvar wrote:
Diamondeye wrote:
Müs wrote:
Is there an option for pull all our **** out and let the rest of the world deal with it for once? We need to stop sticking our dick into every hornet's nest that presents itself.
We're really not "in" physically yet at all, and as for letting everyone else deal with it, Obama pissed that away when he started talking about red lines. I'd have been happy to sit back and let the French spend their money shooting missiles for a change, since they're even more eager than we are to do so, but that ship sailed months ago.
I really don't understand this approach. I think we both agree that Obama should have kept his mouth shut initially, but what's the point in throwing a few missiles? It's not going to do any real damage, and is accomplishing nothing more than saving some face on our end to show we weren't talking out of our ***. When in reality, if all we're willing to do is take out a couple of buildings, start some fires and kill a few people, we are talking out of our ***.
If we are going to engage in war - go to war. Don't play. If you're not willing to do that, stay home.
Mainly because we aren't trying to engage in war, we're trying to engage in a punitive strike.
Also, while westerners like to talk about actions to "save face" as if they were petty and silly, in middle eastern cultures, must like many far eastern ones, saving face is a big deal.
Wasta is very important. If you say you're going to do something, then you do it, or you lose immense respect. That tends to provoke opportunism and aggression. This is true both between individuals and between nations.
I'm oversimplifying this immensely, as it was something I learned as part of a fairly long training course on the situation in the middle east, but in any case the goal here is not to simply adhere to an arbitrary standard of "if you're going to war, go all the way or don't go." That's (usually) good advice, but that time is already past, and decisions now muct be made based on the reality of the situation.
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I think the phrase being used to describe the impending attack is:"just muscular enough not to get mocked".
Not exactly fear inducing.
Probably not, but I don't think at this point the goal is to induce fear in Assad; the goal is to show that there will be retaliation for the use of chemical weapons. The message is really aimed at anyone else that thinks "Assad got away with it, maybe I can too" and not necessarily aimed at their own people, either.
Europe is starting to come face to face with the reality that if it wants to establish standards of world behavior (which it does, since diplomacy dominate by a European voting block is a cheap way to maintain European hegemony) that it will have to do more than sit around ***** about the actions of other countries and demanding more diplomacy, more sanctions, and generally whining about human rights. People like Assad are going to just do whatever the **** they want.
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Sure, if they really do just fire off a small number of missiles at relatively unimportant and/or easily replaced targets, that's a waste of time, money and lives. I doubt that's what they'll do though. My guess is that it will be a fairly significant round of bombing focused on air defenses and command-and-control facilities, so that (i) the "price" paid by Assad for using chems actually outweighs the benefits and (ii) if/when further escalation becomes necessary, the ground has already been prepared for us.
Oh that's definitely going to be the case. There's no point at all in just flinging Tomahawks around randomly. However, I think at this point they are going to avoid attacks with manned aircraft, at least those that require an aircraft to actually penetrate whatever defenses Syria has.
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