The only thing surprising is that Lyndsey wasn’t with them:
Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) visited a Syrian refugee camp on the Turkey-Syria border Tuesday, as they accused the international community of failing the people of Syria and called for military action against President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.
***The senators have led the call for more action in Syria, including supplying arms to the opposition and air strikes. The Obama administration has opposed supplying arms to the rebels, warning that it could cause further militarization.
McCain and Lieberman said that the international community is “failing the people of Syria” by only providing humanitarian aid. While they acknowledged that the Obama administration was now providing communications equipment to the opposition, they said, “that doesn’t do much against tanks.”
Putting aside the fact that these warmongers think the solution to everything is air strikes, what is horrifying is how irresponsible it would be to do what they want. Arm the rebels? They can’t be serious. Here is the rundown on the current Syrian military:
10,885 Armoured Fighting Vehicles:
4,950 Main battle tanks (including 1,150 in storage)
1,125 Amphibious Armoured Scout Cars
2,950 Infantry fighting vehicles
1,860 Armoured personnel carriers
4,815+ Towed Artillery Pieces:
1,010+ Mortars
2,130+ Gun/Howitzers (400 in storage)
1,675+ Anti-aircraft guns (300+ in storage)
1,136 Self Propelled Artillery Pieces:
485 Self-propelled howitzers
650 Self-propelled anti-aircraft guns (240 in storage)
6,890+ Anti Tank Guided Weapon Launchers (4,290 in storage)
500+ Multiple Launch Rocket Systems
102+ Surface to Surface/Ship Missile Launchers:
86+ Tactical ballistic missile launchers
16+ Anti-ship missile launchers
4,235+ Surface to Air Missile Launchers:
4,000+ MANPADS
235 Self-propelled air-defence systems
Clearly, chucking a few arms and tanks (that they would not know how to use, would have no resupply or logistics, and so on) would really be useful.
Silver
What a crappy turn of events this whole Syria thing is. Who do we outsource our torture to now? We’re going to have to cut a deal with Putin soon if this shit keeps up.
Chris
I think I loathe Joe Lieberman more than any single Republican politician in the entire nation, and I thank you for giving me another reason why.
The sight of a man who so doggedly defends the Iraq War to this very day talking about “failing the people of Syria” should be nauseating even by modern U.S. political standards.
Culture of Truth
There is no military action these guys do no support except for Libya which was totally different because shut up that’s why
Narcissus
Blood for the blood god
gaz
You know, because supplying arms to guerrilla forces in one of the most war torn, impoverished and unstable regions in the world has never come back to bite us in the ass before, ever!
My god, this man is inexcusably stupid.
Loneoak
Details, shmetails. American power is projected by assertive manliness alone, not logistics. All we need is adequate jowls, cushy Alexandria VA offices, and a nice big strut on the Sunday talkies and the world will be ours!
Brachiator
Where do you get this “would not know how to use” shit?
It is one thing, and reasonable, to say that conservative saber rattling is stupid. Yeah, these morans have a serious hard on for war. But Assad is kicking the shit out of his opponents, and slopping over into Turkey, which may create its own set of problems.
And Syria is not getting weapons from a wacky semi-working Middle Eastern weapons factory.
There is no simple answer to this, but the misery caused by merchants of death, arms merchants, idependent agents and sovereign nations, is a problem that goes far beyond jibes at McCain and other American politicians with military fetishes.
Mike E
@Chris: Joe Liebermann is the answer to the trivia question, “How high can you stack shit?”
And, to the follow-up, “What does a stack o’ shit look like in a Brooks Bros suit?” Also.
LanceThruster
Hey Mitt!
I’m sure our armed forces can make room for your five sons and any grandkids of legal age. Nothing like having a little skin in the game when you go saber rattling.
Senators Droopy Dog and Maverick can rustle up some of their kith and kin for the meat grinder as well.
Maybe we’ll only be sent as “advisors.”
General Stuck
With the Ryan taxcut and the Lords of Neocon chaos on the warpath, it’s almost like old times. And will be once, and if, they get the Kenyan smartypants out of the WH. President Romney won’t fuck around with the UN and appearances kept up, and will just declare peace through war for any country or region with oil.
If you can’t get elected, you can’t bomb them and get rich in the process
Soonergrunt
@Brachiator:
He probably gets it from the whole “civilians generally don’t know how to drive tanks, operate mortars, or maintain tracked AAM launcher systems in appreciable numbers” thing.
There was a study on it.
redshirt
Good news for Syrian John McCain!
MattF
Also, there’s the question of where any arms that are ‘sent’ to the rebels will actually end up. I can think of a country whose name starts with ‘A’ and ends with ‘n’ where, once upon a time, a lot of weapons went in and then, well…
Linda Featheringill
I think it is entirely possible for Lieberman to start yet another shooting war in the Middle East. Hell, he could start the Armageddon. I hope he is well chaperoned over there.
David Koch
How dare Lieberman criticize Israel
Richard
Hey man, without war, how would we use up all those bombs, missiles, bullets and equipment? It’s our patriotic duty to keep those defense contractors flush with cash with more orders.
Calouste
For comparison to Syria 3,800 active main battle tanks, the US has close to 9,000, Russia has about 2,900 active (but far more in storage), and the larger European countries have about 300-400.
jlow
Sounds like a good plan to me. The Bay of Pigs worked out just fine didn’t it?
Brachiator
@Soonergrunt:RE: Where do you get this “would not know how to use” shit?
You know better than to suggest that there is only a simplistic binary opposition between Assad’s military and untrained civilians.
The Syrian opposition is ragtag and apparently very poorly trained, but they are not just ordinary civilians.
And the main point is that a one-sided war in which Assad ignores attempts at UN sponsored mediation and kicks the shit out of his people is still a war.
Too many Balloon Juicers think wars only count if the US is involved or a major sponsor. Yeah, McCain and Liberman are boneheads, and the Obama administration has done a good job in keeping calm and trying to support alternatives, but this is cold comfort for those who have been killed or pummelled into submission.
Narcissus
what does john mccain know about war anyway
i mean he was only in one and he wasn’t any good at it
les
@Richard:
Good point; and we likely have some lightly used inventory just laying around Iraq we could get off the books, make room for new.
David Koch
We should listen to McCain, his judgment was proved beyond reproach when he selected a plucky maverick from Alaska to be his running mate.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I curious why anyone thinks Russia is going to just sit quietly by and let the US destroy one of it’s major arms customers.
Mino
Serious question, ok. Do you think Turkey might be NATO-authorized to intercede if this civil war continues and the West gets tired of the headlines?
John Cole
@Brachiator: Every now and then you just have to try and outdo yourself with Slate-like contrarianism.
I had to spend 14 weeks of rigorous training to even be allowed in a unit near a main battle tank, and then I still didn’t know my ass from a hole in the ground as far as the tank goes. It took a year of every day on the job training with my unit before I probably knew a third of what it could do. These are highly sophisticated vehicles that require a great deal of experience to use. You don’t just put a round in the breech, point the turret, and WIN! As just an example of how complex these vehicles are to operate, how many of you are aware that each time you upload ammunition, you have to enter the lot number into the ballistic computer, because each lot of ammunition is slightly different from the last, and that is just one of hundreds of things you need to know.
As to them just not being ordinary civilians, you’re further showing your ass. You could give a bunch of M1’s to an elite unit of the 82nd Airborne with years of training and experience, and they wouldn’t have the first fucking clue what to do with them.
And then let’s get into the logistics. We would burn through 500 gallons of jp8 or diesel every day. For every hour of use, you have 12 hours of maintenance needed to keep them going. They require a constant steady stream of parts and very technical maintenance. There are entire MOS’s in the military dedicated to simply being turret mechanics. There simply is no way for the rebels to provide the kind of logistical support necessary.
You just don’t know wtf you are talking about. Unless you are suggesting by “arming” the rebels, we should give them m-16’s and SAWs and a few mortars so they can go get mowed down by the Syrian armor.
Culture of Truth
We must not allow a MANPAD gap!!!!
Comrade Dread
We should, instead, show our support by blowing quite a few of them up with bombs, wrecking their infrastructure and plunging them into years of political uncertainty and lingering violence and bloodshed as various factions fight for power in the vacuum created by Assad’s inevitable toppling after our sustained air campaign.
Hey, maybe the Russians will get upset about losing their proxy (and only warm water port) and kick off that whole WWIII that these clowns have been so dying to see.
Comrade Dread
@Mino: Maybe, but I doubt they would agree to be our proxy in another Middle Eastern war, unless Assad does something really stupid like committing an act of war against Turkey.
Mike in NC
Because military action against the Syrian government would be an excellent dress rehearsal for taking out Iran! America, fuck yeah!
Culture of Truth
electric saws or the handheld kind?
Kathy in St. Louis
The both look as though they wear about a 36 short in a uniform. Suit em up and send em out.
danimal
At what point do the Senate’s Three Stooges become their own parody?
Is there a foreign policy issue that can’t be solved by a few bombing runs?
merl
Let McCain pilot a plane over the Syrian forces. With his record he’d crash it right on top of them
Brachiator
@John Cole:
Nonsense. I am just asking you to think it through just (rightfully) knocking GOP warmongers.
It’s pointless to hold other rebel groups to the training standards that you went through, or to suggest that if they fail to live up to that standard, then they are simply civilians. And if you want to ignore news stories about the ability of these groups to fight back, then you are in effect left with the stance that it’s just tough shit if rebels are not equal to the military forces being launched against them.
And then there is this:
Nowhere did I suggest arming the rebels. Nowhere.
But the plain fact is that Assad is kicking the shit out of the people now. And has been for months. So either way, arming them may not do much.
Still, do you want to just score points against numbnuts like McCain and Liberman, or do you want to acknowledge the validity of efforts to achieve a cease fire? Or do you want to simply fall back onto a Ron Paul see-no-evil non-interventionist stance in which it sucks to be the Syrians on the receiving end of an ass kicking?
Also, too, there is that little issue of the arms trade. So unfortunately, you have to wander into some foreign policy issues. And you need something more than the implied notion that if the US can’t back the stronger side, as the Russians already have, then we should just butt out and let the one-sided butt kicking go on.
You could even spend a little time considering the cynical side of this, that previously the US and Israel cynically opposed arms sales to Syria by Russia not because they gave a shit about Syrian civilians, but because they were concerned about arms being controlled by Iran or Hezbollah.
So, bottom line, there is more to this story than simply reacting to GOP grandees with a hard on for war. As is too often the case, innocent people end up the puppets of larger forces. You got any solutions for that?
Villago Delenda Est
This is why McCain’s military experience isn’t worth jack shit in reality.
As a naval aviator, he was at the end of a very long and complex logistic chain, and had next to no appreciation of what it took to put him up in the air to crash land a multi-million dollar fighter or four.
Looserman is even more abjectly ignorant of the reality of things.
Russ
I’ll bet the Syrian resistance is right on the edge of their seats waiting for the “international community” to act once McCain and Liebrman get done.
John Cole
@Brachiator: What do you not understand? There is nothing we could do short of declaring total all out war with Syria that would help them. Nothing. Tossing them some small arms weapons would only delay the inevitable, which is them being crushed by a modern trained army with a formidable armor presence and air force.
You really don’t get it, do you?
AA+ Bonds
But it will totally work until the press gets bored with it, like Libya which is a real peachy place to live right now if you like getting your limbs chopped off
AA+ Bonds
Well I was going to tell Brachiator that
is getting really fuckin old and tired but he got JC out here on the floor so I got nothing now
AA+ Bonds
The proper way to view this is that intervening in Syria would be like if we really tried to get to the moon in the 19th century with a huge cannon: the gap between the technology we have and the technology we need would probably get a bunch of people killed
More to the point, it would be a giant goddamned waste of money and all those people would die on our dime instead of someone else’s
John Cole
@AA+ Bonds: Not to mention we aren’t going to just give away our top-secret weaponry to a bunch of rebels so it could fall into the hands of the Syrian government.
The whole thing is absurd.
General Stuck
Got to agree that any direct military action by us, or by arming the rebels with modern or not so modern weaponry is bound to fail. This is not Libya, as Syria has a world class military courtesy of their Russian and Iranian buds. And Syria is in the Middle East, a much much more complex and dangerous arena for the west to hands on operate in.
So whatever good comes out of this will be political concessions in nature, and not military. The Syrian batthists are ruthless, but they are not insane like Kadaffy, and have some sense of caring a bit about what the world thinks of them, at least up to the point they will do what is necessary to stay in power.
Commenting at Ballon Juice since 1937
It sounds like Bosnia all over again.
chrome agnomen
@Loneoak:
and a codpiece!
kmeyerthelurker
Liebermann … his answer for anything in the middle east is force. It’s as if one of the few things that make his face light up is the thought of hurting muslims. Does this clown want some sort of America Part Deux to be built there? What’s the endgame in his poor, strange brain?
Ah well. Only 7 more months of this clown. Good riddance.
Soonergrunt
@Brachiator: Sorry I didn’t get back to you earlier.
I’m sorry that Syrian people are being killed. But I also would like someone to explain how this is my problem. I am against intervention there for the same reason I was against intervention in Libya. Because there was no pressing US National Security issue to be solved by intervention, and the risks are far greater than the rewards. The fact that Libya appears to have worked is irrelevant to Syria, and also is an as yet unresolved issue itself.