It’s fun to watch the Brits when it’s war time, because they’re always first in line and ready for a show. And, just like the schoolyard runt who does the bully’s homework in return for protection, they’re going to do all the dirty work in the UN:
Britain will try to get the United Nations security council to authorise military intervention in Syria, David Cameron has said.
He made the announcement on Twitter after the Labour party decided overnight to toughen its stance on the issue, making support for the government in Thursday’s Commons vote conditional on Cameron’s seeking the involvement of the UN.
If the plan in Syria is to lob a few Tomahawks in the general direction of the bad guys, the US Navy can do that without any help from the leaking rustbuckets that the Royal Navy puts to sea. But Bieber knows that when it’s time to let loose, there’s going to be at least one or two Royal Navy Tomahawks falling short of their targets or crashing harmlessly into the ocean, because they may not be the most able member of “coalition of the willing”, but they sure as hell are willing.
raven
President McCain and Joe are banging the prez and the drum.
Botsplainer
More derp-y than your usual offerings Mix, and that’s saying something.
MattF
Also, France:
http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-europe-syria-20130826,0,4996897.story
And François Hollande is a Socialist, which demonstrates… something-or-other.
NotMax
Clueless.
Tell it to the Argentines.
HomerUK
File this in the damned if you do and damned if you don’t. The thing under Bush was (in part) don’t start international military engagements without an international coalition (e.g. Bush Pappy did much better in Iraq 1). But when an international coalition (including btw Germany and France, two countries opposed to Iraq 2, as well as the Arab League) is established, here come the posters saying it’s either just for show or that there’s something wrong with it. On the one hand the US is not the world’s policeman but on the other, international coalitions aren’t worth anything.
I haven’t commented for ages; consider myself a liberal; opposed Iraq 1 and 2 and Afghanistan. I do think, however, that use of chemical weapons changes the game. So long a taboo but now just relegated to ‘just another weapon’. I don’t know what the answer is and I don’t think there are anything but bad choices; but we should recognise that doing nothing is also one of those bad choices.
President Obama has historically refused to get drawn into unnecessary conflicts and has done a pretty good job of pushing back on the bomb everything caucus so I cannot believe that he would go into any military action (whatever that may be, if anything) without having considered all the alternatives. I’m curious to hear from the cynical caucus as to why people think that he is considering doing anything given his history?
HomerUK
@raven: Really? what is the evidence for this, given that McCain has consistently wanted military intervention in Syria for the past year or so and PBO has resisted nonetheless.
MattF
@HomerUK: I’d say he’s boxed himself in. Obama drew a red line and Assad crossed it, deliberately.
cvstoner
Vonnegut said it best:
I really miss that guy.
Barry
From British Bulldog to English poodle.
It’s amazing how the elites of England will degrade themselves, to feign relevancy.
some guy
just because we are giving support to Al Qaeda in Syria doesn’t make us bad people, per se.
just because we helped Saddam use chemical weapons against the Iranians doesn’t make us bad people, per se.
some guy
@MattF:
and we didn’t bomb our allies in Al Qaeda when they used chemical weapons in Syria why, exactly?
BruinKid
What do people make of the story of the intercepted phone call from Syrian officials to a chemical weapons unit? Seems like they think the question is if this was ordered by the Assad regime, or if it was the work of a rogue Syrian officer.
HomerUK
@MattF: Oh please! “red lines” are drawn all the time and do not necessarily mean military action. Arguably the red line was crossed the last time chemical weapons were used in Syria and still nothing. Also if you look at that quote, PBO did not commit to anything just said it would change the equation. He’s smart enough to give himself some wiggle room. “Boxed in” implies that he is now forced to do something just because he said “red line” – I don’t happen to think that’s the case and I bet he doesn’t either.
MattF
@some guy: I think you’ve over-snarked here. FWIW, I agree that our policy on the use of chemical weapons is inconsistent, to put it mildly.
Litlebritdifrnt
I am sure that the dead members of the UK armed services who served in Iraq and Afghanistan are reading your words and wishing they could come back if only to punch you in the fucking face.
Sure we don’t spend an inordinate amount on our military any more, but at least we don’t have tens of thousands of our citizens dying each year because they can’t afford basic health care while having a military industrial complex that is the equivalent of the US waving its dick around every chance it gets.
I didn’t expect that kind of dick waving from a FP here though.
some guy
funny how few stories we read in the papers about the sectarian massacres in places like Latakia. I guess war crimes committed by our allies in Al Qaeda in Syria aren’t as important as Miley Cyrus?
some guy
@HomerUK:
that previous red line was crossed by our allies in Al Qaeda, so it doesn’t really count.
Suffern ACE
@MattF: how often does it come up? Every 30 years? It’s highly unusual for chemical weapons to be used this way.
grass
That’s a pretty snide and petty post mistermix. Perhaps France and UK should abstain from international diplomacy and politics until they spend 5% of GDP on their militaries like the US. Aircraft carriers entitle you to opinions.
To be serious, US would not do anything, at all, if it was the only one advocating actions. It needs not only assets such as access to the Suez from Egypt, airstrips in Turkey, the RAF base in Akrotiri but support on the security council and in the UN in general.
mistermix
@NotMax: You mean the battle of the third-rate and second-rate powers that was the Falklands war? That shitshow had a lot of British resilience and ingenuity, but the equipment they used was old and/or inadequate. It mainly showed the gigantic, all-out national effort required by the Brits to accomplish any military action without US assistance.
MattF
@HomerUK: Well, we shall see, won’t we? Obama’s a smart guy, but his adversaries aren’t interested in his IQ, they’re interested in weakening him and making him look ineffective. This is not a test, this is politics.
some guy
not a real big fan of Baathist dictators, but even less of a fan of murderous jihadists funded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar overthrowing regimes. even less of a fan of Tomahawk missiles. a US attack on Syria does not aim at ending the war in Syria; it aims at prolonging the war.
fka AWS
@mistermix: The Falklands war was 30 years ago.
Baud
@HomerUK:
I know. There is no shortage of good arguments against intervention in Syria, so I’m somewhat surprised to see a blasé attitude toward chemical weapons as one of them.
I wonder if Obama had announced that the US would no longer adhere to the chemical weapons ban, we’d be seeing the same “so what” attitude.
mistermix
@grass:
Maybe France and the UK should take diplomatic positions consistent with their military abilities. I’d be much happier if we didn’t spend 5% of our GDP, of course.
Bobby Thomson
“first and line”? Who the hell even thinks that way before it hits the page?
Belafon
I don’t know about anyone else, but this does feel more like Libya than Iraq/Afghanistan. We’ll fire some missiles, drive the leadership out of power, have a famous diplomat killed in Tartas, and the Republicans will have hearings while people look up where the country is.
Omnes Omnibus
Not mistermix’s best effort.
Bobby Thomson
@some guy: Not a real fan of some guy, but he’s been making a lot of sense when it comes to Syria.
Suffern ACE
My guess is that the UN will say no because the Russians will not budge. The red line will mean more arms to the rebellion and that’s the end of it. It won’t be sufficient for “regime change”, but I can’t see the US under Obama pulling out of the UN for the sake of rescuing rebellion.
Baud
And of course, everyone is ignoring the real scandal here:
Just like Churchill would have done.
Gex
It’s an interesting preview as to what the US might be like after the end of the empire. “Look! We’re relevant!!!”
mistermix
@Bobby Thomson: “First in line”. Fixed.
@fka AWS: Yes, and UK military spending in inflation-adjusted terms is roughly where it was in 1980. So there’s no reason to think that UK capabilities are any different than they were back then.
http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/spending_chart_1980_2015UKk_13c1li111mcn_30t
grass
@mistermix:
Opinions like “Ooof, we’d really rather you didn’t gas people indiscriminately… but it’s your business. Jolly good show, pip pip etc.”
Marc
@Litlebritdifrnt:
This sounds suspiciously like the “You oppose the war? Why do you hate our troops?” bullshit that every Iraq war critic got hit with.
Belafon
I’m also not liking the attitude a lot of you are having with respect to the use of chemical weapons. “Oh, if it’s true, it was only a small number of people.” There’s a reason there were treaties put in place regarding their use: They are nasty ways of killing people, even worse than guns.
The attitude here seems to be the military equivalent of “the 1930s weren’t so bad, the stock market was going up.”
hrumpole
Great. Britain now led by one of the few people dumber than bush.
mistermix
@grass:
The military action being contemplated is basically this, with a few bombs thrown in. There’s no reason to think the Assad regime will be budged by a couple of days of bombing of what will almost certainly be peripheral military targets. So, yeah, this would be a better outcome in my opinion because it acknowledges our essential powerlessness over the Assad regime rather than pretending that military action at the level the US can tolerate will accomplish anything.
gene108
I just want to point out that Syria’s neighbor, Lebanon, had a civil war that lasted a really long time.
I don’t hear any recriminations by the left that Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Sr. and Clinton let the conflict rage on and on, as we largely stayed out of it. Reagan got roped into some intervention and than cut and ran as quickly as possible, when U.S. troops got killed.
So far Obama’s not gotten involved in the mess that’s followed the Arab Spring. Even after getting “dragged” into intervening in Libya, at the behest of European allies, we aren’t picking sides on who should be in power there. The same with Egypt and their current coup.
I really do not know enough about what our response to Syria will be. So far Obama has not gotten us entangled in the thousand conflicts that are sprouting up, city by city, because of the Arab Spring.
Even if we launch a strike against Assad, because of his use of chemical weapons, we are still a long way away from getting boots on the ground or trying to do more to stop the civil war. We let Lebanon’s civil war rage on for decades.
I don’t see why people are getting so agitated over the thought of our government following through with some retaliation over the long standing ban against the use of chemical weapons?
We are more than capable of not getting mixed up further in a Middle East civil war, despite a brief attempt at intervention, as the Lebanese civil war showed.
Ash Can
Via a fcommenter at LGF, Al Arabiya English has tweeted that the US “has ruled out unilateral military action against Syria.” This would certainly be in keeping with this WaPo excerpt that mistermix posted yesterday morning. Combine this with this latest bit about Cameron taking the case for military intervention to the UN Security Council — which includes members from China and Russia, and which undoubtedly collectively recalls what happened the last time the US and Great Britain were (or, for purposes of comparison here, sounded) gung-ho about intervening militarily in the Middle East, and I don’t see how anyone can reach a conclusion other than that the US and its allies (viz., at least, Britain) will run around making a lot of noise, doing a lot of dick-waving and threatening and expressing outrage…and ultimately do jack shit. And I have to say, that doesn’t strike me as a bad thing at all. What’s happening in Syria is godawful, just like what was happening in Iraq when Saddam was gassing Kurds was godawful, but the ease with which things become horrifically worse after intervention should at this point be obvious to the aforementioned national and world leaders, if not to various and sundry morons among the American electorate and press.
weaselone
@mistermix:
Oh FFS, the US is the only nation on the planet that has significant conventional force projection capabilities. If diplomatic positions are contingent on having a military that can level a 2nd rate power on the other side of the planet by conventional means, you’ve essentially acknowledged that the US has the unilateral power to decide on whether military intervention is warranted.
LAC
@Omnes Omnibus: I know…I had to read it twice and the second time I realized I was making a face. Someone’s coffee curdled this morning.
mistermix
@Litlebritdifrnt: It’s a goddam tragedy that your leadership jumped into the Iraq War and hung around while we fucked up Afghanistan by moving into Iraq. Unfortunately their desire to tag along on every global escapade, which you rightly characterize as “dick waving”, will probably continue to get soldiers killed.
joes527
@Baud: Dude. When drones dropping death out of the sky isn’t even war — it’s just another day at the office, I’m having a hard time getting all hot and bothered about the mechanics of killing people.
Dead is dead.
some guy
I still recall the howls of outrage that arose a few short years ago when the NY Times put a photo on page A1 that day picturing the IDF using chemical weapons against civilians in Gaza. and that Tomahawk missile we later sent in to destroy their chemical weapons factory in Tel Aviv sure showed the Israeli’s that we simply would not tolerate the use of chemical weapons. Obama really has no choice here, if we are going to punish the IDF for using chemical weapons against civilians surely we will do the same to the Syrians, right?
Baud
@joes527:
Wow.
mistermix
@weaselone:
Yes, and If you accept that we’re the ones with the power, then Britain talking about “going to war” is like the Cayman Islands talking about “going to war”. A pointless sideshow.
Omnes Omnibus
@mistermix: Do you think that the US, UK, and France are going to act without UN approval? Do you think that Russia and China will sign off on action? I think the answer to both questions is no. If that turns out to be the case, the US, UK, and France will have made a public demonstration that they are opposed to the use of chemical weapons and that they sought, within the bounds of international law, to do something in response to the use of the weapons.
Ash Can
@mistermix: It’s one thing to call Cameron an ass for beating the war drum, and another entirely to gratuitously dump on the British forces. Litlebrit (who IIRC is a veteran of the Royal Navy herself) is right to be pissed off.
MomSense
So the President’s gangsta red line warning to Assad, also to the other players on the ground, was about moving and/or deploying chemical weapons. The big consequence was changing his calculus, his equation. Wait, what?? That’s it?
So scary Spock President said that the use or movement of chemical weapons would cause him to change his assessment. Wow, I just love how people on the left totally buy in to the right wing framing while promoting their emo-prog Obama is just like Bush evaluations of his foreign policy. Do you realize how schizophuckingphrenic this nonsense is??
Really, this is pretty pathetic. How about we hold off on the wild speculation and see what the President says about this.
Belafon
@joes527: Actually, no, not all deaths are equal. If they were, we’d still be using the electric chair. It’s sad that we are even comparing this – I would prefer no deaths at all – but would you rather die quickly or from asphyxiation?
joes527
@Baud: srsly?
Call me when we sign the land mine treaty. Then I’ll climb on the high horse with you.
JPL
@Belafon: Although I agree with you, Reagan seemed to think the use of chemicals was just dandy. Besides Foreign Policy Magazine, I haven’t seen further reporting about our involvement with Iraq and the use of chemical warfare.
Bill
Let’s bring back the draft to add a little clarity to the thought process of how to proceed here, huh?
Baud
@joes527:
Wait, what? You care about landmines? What happened to dead is dead?
gene108
@some guy:
Of for fucks sake, I’m all for some good times Obama bashing, but save it for shit he’s really screwing around with like education policy or his Administration’s dicking over legal immigrants on work visas.
We aren’t officially supporting anybody in Syria.
Also, too it’s fucking racist as hell to assume all the Assad opposition forces are fucking Osama bin Laden wannabes. Syrian opposition groups
amk
@MomSense: preemptive poutrage is a bj hallmark. If the kenyan muslin hadn’t drawn a red line, the same shitheads would whine saying what would it take the usurper to draw a line.
mistermix
@Ash Can: Spare me your equivocation on the term “forces”. I did not dump on British soldiers. I ridiculed their equipment, with a concrete example (follow the link), which shows that their nuclear subs are leaking coolant and are a danger to the sailors who run them.
British soldiers are among the best in the world. Too bad their leadership wants to throw them into every goddam war that comes down the pike, and puts them in ships that should have been mothballed years ago.
ed_finnerty
so they go to the security council and get a majority vote in support. Then Russia/China veto. They say they have the support of the UN. This protects the arab league postion.
hoodie
@mistermix:
Tomahawks are American made, they’ll work just fine. If you bothered to read the article, the problem with those subs is embrittlement of the reactor systems, not any problems with the weapons systems. Britain’s biggest problem is that they keep on insisting on building their own hardware instead of buying American or Russian. They could have bought Virginia class subs from EB (we would have eagerly sold them) and retired these old subs years ago. Notwithstanding all that, as a major member of the EU they’re still relevant in Europe and the Med, and what happens in the ME is arguably more important to Europe than it is to us. Just because they can’t project force worldwide like the US doesn’t mean they can’t be involved. Hell, I’d rather have British and French pilots flying missions in Syria than US pilots.
Poor effort on this. You guys increasingly seem to be trolling the readership out of boredom.
amk
Also. Too. The funding for the war should come taxing the top 10% percenters. That might shut up the msm assholes pimping the war.
some guy
@gene108:
George Sabra, hee. you really are what Lenin would call a “useful idiot” aren’t you?
MazeDancer
The Prime Minister of Great Britain called for war on Twitter? Twitter??? Did he make a 6-second Vine video or did he stay old-school with 140 characters that historians can cite in years to come?
Tweet an invasion. Next, Justin Bieber YouTube’s his ideas for Peace Treaties and Fall Fashion endorsements.
joes527
@Baud: If we lived in a world (or even a country) where there were standards other than “what works for us is good” then I’d be with you. All sorts of shit (including gas) should be beyond the pale.
I’m just having a hard time getting all high and mighty over their atrocities, when we are so good at excusing our atrocities.
Call my outrage a casualty of the perpetual war that we wage.
Tone in DC
@Ash Can:
For all of our unmatched force capabilities, we cannot fix anything and everything in the world. It’s damn near delusional to think that we could. Assad’s Syria, SoDamn Insane’s Iraq, Rwanda and so many other places show that way too many people feel that what should be the last resort is the first. And only one.
Emma
@MomSense: Why? It’s so much more fun to tear down a Democratic president. That way, when the country elects a Republican, Mistermix and his ilk can go back to their favorite political stance — pure martyrs to the Evil Empire.
El Cid
(1) The UK gov’t appear to me to prefer to assert an international role which has it at the center of diplomatic action.
(2) I believe UK gov’ts continue to believe that they can play a useful taming & modifying role on US actions, the idea being that without their calmer, more refined input, the US would go much more ham-handedly wild than it eventually does.
There are many other factors.
Belafon
@JPL: Luckily, Obama isn’t Reagan.
@joes527: You do know why the US hasn’t signed that treaty, right, beyond the fact that one of the two parties would never go for it? And, once again, the comparison between weapon types is not equivalent.
I realize we’d all like to live in a world where “if not everyone can have an atomic bomb, then no one can”, which would certainly make arguing easier. But we don’t. If we did, then we wouldn’t be talking about a government gassing it’s own people. But, just like having rules for war, there are some things we have agreed go beyond the pale.
negative 1
@mistermix: So how does this not make your reaction that this would be better if we used more force?
Here is what I don’t get. Obviously you are against US military intervention. This means I can only see the following positions leading to it —
1. Use of chemical weapons against civilians is not something that should demand military intervention.
2. Military intervention is OK, but we shouldn’t be the ones who intervene (i.e. the UN only should dictate this)
3. The Syrians themselves will take action to stop it, they don’t need us.
4. Our intelligence is bad, or we’re lying, but chemical weapons were not used against civilians
Based on this post and a few of your comments, it seems #2 is out for you. So which of the remain ones is it?
gene108
@some guy:
No.
Just respectful enough of other nationalities to realize not everyone in the Middle East wants to be the next Osama bin Laden.
mistermix
@hoodie: All Brit Tomahawks are launched from nuclear attack subs so I think an article about their aging nuclear attack fleet is pretty relevant.
http://www.armedforces.co.uk/navy/listings/l0037.html
peach flavored shampoo
It’s Syria, FFS. Who cares?
Ash Can
@mistermix: And you can spare me your ass-covering. Your prose was worded in such a way as to immediately piss off an actual, real-live Royal Navy veteran — as opposed to eliciting a response along the lines of “You’re absolutely right, mistermix, they really screwed us over on that crappy equipment” — so there was obviously something wrong with it.
Omnes Omnibus
@negative 1: 5. There is no proportional military option that will not do at least as much harm as it does good.
Chris
@BruinKid:
Outside of the movies, I’ve always thought “rogue officer” was a government’s way of doing something unpopular and then saying “oh dude, TOTALLY wasn’t us!” Course, most governments aren’t falling apart, so there’s that.
mistermix
@negative 1:
5. We have no military alternative that we are willing to stomach that will be effective in stopping Assad from using chemical weapons. So the military option we are contemplating will show us to be just as weak as if we did nothing, since it is not an effective deterrent. It will also expose us to the possibility of getting dragged into an ugly civil war, and will probably increase anti-US sentiment in Syria and elsewhere if there are civilian casualties as a result of our intervention.
joes527
@negative 1: You left out:
Yes, it is broken. But for all our good intentions we don’t have the power to fix it.
Contrary to you may have learned from the way countries act, not all problems can be solved by bombing the shit out of people. And bombing the shit out of people actually does have a downside.
negative 1
@Omnes Omnibus: We can’t do better then indiscriminate chemical attacks on civilians?
edited to add: Since war is apparently raging anyway, doesn’t the question become does our intervention prolong or shorten it?
Possibly related, what is your status on the never-ending war in Sudan/Darfur/Central Africa?
Ash Can
@hoodie:
They had so much fun with us with the Snowden-Greenwald-NSA kerfluffle that it’s hard to stop, I guess.
Emma
Lately every time I post I’m getting into moderation. No matter if all I’m saying is “sorry for your loss.” Is this a warning not to mess with the pure heads or is the system seriously screwed up?
mistermix
@Ash Can: Yeah, if someone somewhere can take what I wrote the wrong way, there’s [ominous bold text] clearly something wrong with it [/ominous bold text].
Long Tooth
Screw lining up votes in the UN.
The US Congress should fulfill their oaths of office, and cast a vote on whether or not to declare war on Syria. I want them all on record.
Interrobang
@hoodie: Explain to me why a country wouldn’t want to build its own military hardware, rather than buy yours.
Speaking as a Canadian, I would much rather our military-industrial complex dollars — which our Prime Minister, in his infinite lack of wisdom, insists on spending — went into jobs here at home than enriching your arms dealers. If the problem is just that they don’t build good hardware, that’s fixable without outsourcing…
Omnes Omnibus
@negative 1: Lobbing a few Tomahawks at the Assad regime will have no real effect on its use of chemical weapons. Are we going to invade? No. Are we going to go all in backing the rebels? I doubt it. Too many iffy groups involved.
ETA: In response to your ETA, we have ruled out regime change. What action could the US take that would shorten the war? I think proponents of action here need to make a positive case for that action.
Soonergrunt
@BruinKid: If we don’t hear about it from Glenn Greenwald, it didn’t happen. Haven’t you gotten the memo?
Long Tooth
@Interrobang: It’s talk like that hastens the day we annex “your” country, Interbobo.
joes527
@Interrobang: Be careful what you wish for.
One of the reasons why the US is pushing 5% of GDP on defense spending is that it is so profitable for certain US firms.
mistermix
@Soonergrunt: Maybe you should write a post about it.
Cacti
Drop pants and crap all over the Royal Navy for a matter over which their members have zero say.
Good show, mistermix. Your post reeks of sass, class, and sophistication.
Do you normally blame the soldiers/sailors for military intervention?
Botsplainer
@Ash Can:
He’s in one of his shit moods, and can go full-on contrarian in ways Cole can only dream of. I get that reasonable people can differ over whether the shitstorm from inaction may be better than the shitstorm from action, but he’s managed to raise the bar on how reasonable people can differ without rancor, and made it far more difficult.
hoodie
@mistermix: The RN has deployed two Astute class subs that are Tomahawk equipped, and I bet these would be used in an operation against Syria, rather than the older subs. They’re supposed to be comparable to US attack subs, superior in some respects. The point it is, your characterization of Britain is cartoonish and irrelevant to the question of whether or not we or they should intervene in Syria.
different-church-lady
@Soonergrunt:
I’m surprised he hasn’t already tweeted his outrage over our spying on the Syrian military.
Cacti
@hoodie:
He forgot his Seroquel this morning.
negative 1
@mistermix: So why would Assad stop gassing his own people?
MomSense
@Emma:
We don’t even need to wait until the next Presidential election, we can just tear down our Democratic President now before the midterm elections and then act shocked, shocked, shocked when turnout is low and we lose the Senate and keep the crazies in charge of the House.
Omnes Omnibus
@negative 1: He probably won’t.
raven
@Omnes Omnibus: Maybe we’ll axe his ass by accident?
negative 1
@Omnes Omnibus: How about obliterating the chemical weapons arsenals? If it didn’t shorten the war wouldn’t it stop the slow genocide he’s currently undertaking?
Soonergrunt
@Interrobang: Actually, the US buys quite a lot of military equipment from Canada. About 80% of the Stryker Infantry Fighting Vehicles were built there, as were almost all of the variant models.
See also LAV family of vehicles for the USMC.
Canada sold $276 million in armaments to other countries last year according to Wikipedia, primarily to the US, Australia, New Zealand, and several Pacific rim countries.
Death Panel Truck
No one’s picked up on the Clash lyric?
Soonergrunt
@mistermix: I just might. For right now, I’m a tad busy at the moment, so commenting is all I have.
joes527
@MomSense: or we could just tell everyone who might be critical of some aspect of the administration to just STFU, and then act shocked, shocked, shocked when turnout is low and we lose the Senate and keep the crazies in charge of the House.
Omnes Omnibus
@raven: Well, that is a possibility. As I have posted on innumerable threads on interventions, I tend to side with the liberal interventionists. In thus case, I just don’t see a military action that we can take the would arguably make things better, in Syria itself and in the region as a whole. But, as I said above, I don’t think we will do much of anything without the UN’s okay and we aren’t going to get it.
joes527
@negative 1: _very_ difficult to do in a way that doesn’t
a) just destroy some, leaving other, and further muddying the water about what there is where, and who controls it
b) causing release of the chemical agents, killing lots of people.
or
c) killing a lot of people with the massive amounts of truly nasty ordnance that would have to be lobbed in to be sure that the stuff all burned.
But I’m sure any number of casualties are just fine, so long as they are collateral casualties.
Omnes Omnibus
@negative 1: Where are the arsenals? Are there civilians nearby? Would blowing them up cause the chemicals to be released? Etc.
Mandalay
Jay Carney’s press briefing yesterday was chilling. He was repeatedly arguing that taking action against Syria is justified because chemical weapons were used in Syria, and therefore they violated the Chemical Weapons Convention, even though they are not a signatory!…
So Syria is legally bound to respect the Chemical Weapons Convention even though they never signed up? Of course our dozing media at the conference said nothing.
MomSense
@joes527:
I have never told anyone to STFU about being critical about some aspect of this administration. I just don’t see what purpose wild speculation and adopting right wing framing about the President serves other than to diminish support for him and Democrats.
raven
@Mandalay: No they are bound to get their ass blown away.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay:
One can violate international norms without being a signatory to a treaty.
Jockey Full of Malbec
@Belafon:
Haven’t you heard? “Nihilist Hipster” is the new Liberalism.
Chemical weapons? Meh. Oathbreaking? Meh, only chumps keep their oaths. It’s all gonna burn anyway. Where’s my asteroid?
As long as you top it off with some lyric from 30+ years ago, it’s all good.
Cacti
@Mandalay:
That’s a fairly terrible justification for rogue behavior.
Might as well say that no member of the Japanese Imperial military should have been prosecuted for war crimes, because the Empire of Japan hadn’t signed the Geneva Conventions.
joes527
@MomSense: Are you suggesting that the administration is not marching in the direction of War? Or are you pretending that there will be a public comment period after we declare that we will bomb the shit out of someone and before the actual bombing?
The time between “too early to get worked up” and “too late, you should have raised this issue earlier” in our politics is about negative 1 day.
Mandalay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Of course, but that is not the point. Carney said:
That’s simply not true. It has to be respected if you are a signatory, but Syria does not have to respect it from a legal perspective since it didn’t sign up.
I am not condoning any use of chemical weapons, but Carney is on pretty thin ice with that argument.
Draylon Hogg
Yeah and that’s why they’re probabl still telling your cannon fodder, the ones who are ‘special forces’ because they can tie their boots not to drink, gamble or fight with Brits.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay: Carney was saying that the fact that 98% of countries had signed the Convention was clear evidence that use of chemical weapons is violation of international norms. The violation in question is of international norms not the Convention.
Mandalay
@Cacti:
I’m not justifying any behavior from Syria. I’m saying that you can’t hold countries to international agreements if they didn’t sign up.
Cacti
@Mandalay:
Rubbish.
The norms of international law can be established by treaty, by custom, or by consensus.
Cacti
@Mandalay:
You’re just flat wrong on this one.
International law is not the same as intranational statutory laws of a nation state.
Gene108
@mistermix: outside of a brief intervention by Reagan, we stayed out of the Lebanese civil war and that war started when Ford was President.
Why does everyone think we’ll be getting heavily involved with Syria?
Other than Kosovo, after Vietnam, how many civil wars did we get involved with? Once the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan, we let competing factions alone as they launched into a civil war and we actually had a presence there before the civil war started.
Mandalay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Sure, it is cleatly a violation of norms, but Carney also went out of his way to explicitly state “the Chemical Weapons Convention…has to be respected“. That is simply false.
It only has to be respected by those who signed up. If not, all international law fast becomes meaningless. We can just selectively pick bits out of treaties and conventions we like, and use them as a justification for doing whatever we please.
Mandalay
@Cacti:
.
Norms are norms, and laws are laws. They are separate animals.
IANAL, so can you clarify what the “norms of international law” means in the context of legally justifying anything with respect to chemical weapons?
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay: The strictures of the Convention have become the international norm. As a result, a violation of the Convention equals a violation of international norms and vice versa. Respecting international norms means respecting the requirements of the Convention.
TriassicSands
Not letting the Brits share in the fun would be just plain cruel. They don’t get that many chances to beat up on others anymore.
Cacti
@Mandalay:
Cliffs Notes version: Modern international law grew out of the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, which laid out the basic concept of sovereign nation states. Because every nation state is theoretically an equal sovereign, there isn’t an international congress that drafts international statutes. The law of nations can come through treaty, through customary dealings between nations that have been tacitly accepted, and through global consensus (opinio juris). The international criminal court recognizes all of these as a source of law between nations.
For the longest time, there wasn’t a body to speak of that could put any teeth into violations of international law, that’s why the League of Nations and later the UN were formed.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay: This might help.
Mandalay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Says who? Syria can certainly violate international norms on chemical weapons, but it cannot commit a “violation of the Convention” if they haven’t signed up to it. That’s just Calvinball.
Got a persuasive link?
feebog
The President has backed himself into a corner here. If we don’t respond to these chemical weapons attacks there are going to be consequences. The first consequence will be to embolden Assad to use chemical weapons again. At what point is the line drawn? When he gasses 10,000 civilians instead of a thousand? Would 50,000 dead be an appropriate number for retaliation?
The second point is that Mistermix and many other posters are assuming that retaliatory strikes on military targets will have little or no effect. Really? I seem to remember that military strikes in Libya were pretty damn effective. I know that there is no good outcome to be had here. Many more people are going to die. But the use of chemical weapons on civilians should be a line that no civilized nation crosses.
joes527
@Omnes Omnibus:
Nothing here about gas attacks. Though the war in Iraq and waterboarding seem to be on the list.
Mnemosyne
@Mandalay:
Way to ignore the actual question that was being answered:
It was a question about the existing stockpiles and what should be done about them.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay: Read the one I already gave you. Fundamentally, if enough counties buy into something it becomes an enforceable international norm. That has happened with the prohibition on chemical weapons. The fact that Syria hasn’t signed the Convention doesn’t mean that it has not violated an enforceable norm. The norm and the requirements of the Convention happen to be the same. Also, Rule 74.
joes527
@Omnes Omnibus:
citation needed.
(just kidding)
ottercliff
Calling Tony Blair……
Omnes Omnibus
@joes527: I provided a citation.
Mandalay
@Omnes Omnibus: Meh. Thanks for the link but I am wholly unpersuaded. As another poster has pointed out, the link does not even mention gas attacks or chemical weapons. Also…
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay:
It was intended to provide information on international norms as a source of international law. You had agreed above that the use of chemical weapons was a violation of international norms. International norms can be enforceable.
joes527
@Omnes Omnibus: No, you provided 2. One to a Wikipedia article on peremptory norm which did not back up your assertion that the prohibition on chemical weapons is a peremptory norm, and a second cite of an IHL rule.
If IHL rules are the standard for peremptory norms, then someone should have bombed the shit out of us for double tap drone strikes.
Mandalay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yes I did, but violation of an international norm does not mean that the violation is automatically legally enforceable based on jus cogens. From your own link:
So who has decided that going after Assad based on the domestic use of chemical weapons in Syria falls under jus cogens?
Let me guess…..a couple of lawyers in the Administration? This is Calvinball. John Yoo must be grinning.
Visceral
War Nerd keeps saying we’ve got the Brits all wrong. Before WWII finally broke them, they were the biggest and baddest and they weren’t the least bit ashamed of it. They like to fight, and underneath all that “sporting” nonsense, they like to win. Angry, hardscrabble Scots and Northerners are the real meat of the British military, not the toffs from the south … no, those guys are some of the best spinmeisters in history, able to work the homefront into a right proper state for war and empire and then hush up everything bad that happens. Karl Rove’s a rank amateur by comparison: handicapped by the need to be blunt and bloody and Jesus-y to satisfy his audience of rubes.
The British are the ones who invented the idea of a “splendid little war” for reminding the “primitive” tribes who’s really in charge, even if he can’t be arsed to keep his shiny riding boot on your neck all day long, with the bonus of lots of resume padding and medals to impress the society ladies.
People keep saying that America is fucking up the world, but we inherited the order that the British (and the rest of Europe) built; we were later to the imperialist party than Germany was.
different-church-lady
@Mandalay: You know what’s really chilling? That anyone would use that technicality to defend a government using chemical weapons.
Omnes Omnibus
@joes527: As I mentioned, the Wiki article was intended more as background on norms for Mandalay. I would suggest that the IHL rule is evidence of the existence of that norm. YMMV. Also, is anyone really arguing that there is not a norm against the use of chemical weapons?
joes527
@different-church-lady: Can you point to someone defending a government using chemical weapons?
chopper
@Mandalay:
i would figure russia and the us, as signatories, consider them inherently illegal. there are still stockpiles in both countries, but they are both currently in the process of being destroyed.
the us has already destroyed 90% of it’s chemical weapons. russia is at 60%.
joes527
@Omnes Omnibus:
We are cool with them when they suit our purpose.
MomSense
@joes527:
I am talking about the nature of the criticism. UK is the “schoolyard runt” doing the “bully’s homework”. I presume that the US is the bully in this description and I just don’t think that is a fair characterization of the President’s behavior regarding Syria. You characterized the President’s use of drones as just another day at the office–as if he is so casual about it even though that characterization is completely contradicted by the way he has discussed this very topic of use of drones.
I want to debate these issues and I get frustrated by the hyperbole that doesn’t contribute to the substance of the debate.
Mandalay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Not that I know of, but that is not the issue. The issue is whether there is any legal justification for taking action against Syria’s domestic use of chemical weapons, and there are people arguing that there is no basis.
Omnes Omnibus
@joes527: I would say we were wrong then. I would also say that the current admin is not the Reagan Admin.
@Mandalay: You are moving goalposts. For every legal issue, there are at least two sides.
joes527
@MomSense:
You misunderstood me completely. I wasn’t smearing that blood on Obama. I made no mention of Obama. I was smearing it on you and me. There’s no shortage. Plenty of blood to go around.
Mandalay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Bullshit! I raised the issue of legal justification when I posted details of Jay Carney’s press briefing (post #106). I still haven’t seen any persuasive evidence that there is a solid legal basis for intervention in Syria. To be clear, I am not endorsing the use of chemical weapons, and I am not automatically opposed to the US taking some action. But it seems very unlikely that anything will get past Russia in the UN, so having a legal basis for any action we take against Syria seems critical to me.
mistermix
@Visceral: Yep. That’s what I meant by them being first in line for any war. They just don’t have the resources to fight one anymore.
mistermix
@MomSense: “adopting right wing framing about the President ”
You objected to the “bully” analogy. The warmongering right wing does not consider Obama a “bully” in foreign policy. Quite the opposite, they consider him a squish.
This is what’s so irrational about you and the other Obots who scream bloody murder and call me a “bad Democrat” because I write about Syria or the NSA. The warmongering right wing agrees with him on both of those topics as far as he goes – they’re just concerned he doesn’t go far enough. (Libertarians disagree, but they are by far a minority in the Republican party and have never had a real voice.)
chopper
@mistermix:
i think the right-wing framing “MomSense the irrational Obot” was speaking of is the idea that because assad crossed obama’s ‘red line’ it means he wants to or will bomb the place.
Barry
@BruinKid: “What do people make of the story of the intercepted phone call from Syrian officials to a chemical weapons unit? Seems like they think the question is if this was ordered by the Assad regime, or if it was the work of a rogue Syrian officer”
What I make of it is that we saw this before in Iraq, where it turns out that an order to go through the scrap heap and check for forbidden junk was edited to make it an order to conceal stuff.
These people lie. Full Stop.
snarkyspice
I’m not sure why you feel so threatened by us, but your language every time you write about the UK betrays the fact that you do.
How any American can look down on us is utterly beyond me. Still, everyone here hates Americans just as much as you hate Brits, so there’s that.
mistermix
@chopper: Hmm, that makes even less sense.
chopper
@mistermix:
how so? all i seem to hear lately is how obama ‘boxed himself in’ to acting militarily.
MomSense
@mistermix:
The right wing framing on the “red line” comment is that the President threatened to blow Syria/Assad forces up if they used chemical weapons and is weak and a ditherer for not doing so at the first sign of chemical weapons use. The left riffs on this by first accepting the premise that Obama was issuing a threat to blow Syria/Assad forces up if they used chemical weapons. I have seen everything from simply that the President boxed himself in (a blunder because now Syria has called his bluff)to the President is behaving just like Bush did in the run up to the Iraq War, even to suggestions that the CIA may have staged the chemical attacks as a pretense for war. What the President actually said in his “red line” comment is that the use of chemical weapons is serious and would cause him to reevaluate the situation. He also said that there would be consequences to using chemical weapons. Just for the record, I did not accuse you of adopting right wing framing. You tend to catastrophize in a totally different way.
I don’t give a crap what the war mongering right think. They are not going to vote for Democrats for local, state and national races. I do care what permeates into the understanding of people on the left. Hearing Obama is a bully etc constantly is not a great strategy going into the 2014 midterm elections because we need to win them. I believe that we need to win them not because I am an Obot but because people are fucking suffering right now. People are suffering because Republican Governors and legislatures won’t expand Medicaid, won’t accept unemployment insurance, are taking away the right to access reproductive health services and making it impossible to vote. People are suffering because the asshole Republicans in Congress want to starve the government at the expense of head start children, seniors who receive meals on wheels, food assistance for poor families, and just the general unwillingness to do anything that might allow the unemployed to find a job. Then there are the issues of immigration reform, gun violence, Social Security, minimum wage, Medicare, and climate change!!
I would love to know why you characterize the US as a bully regarding Syria. I don’t see it at all. Even during the 2012 campaign season when Romney, Ryan and the Republican campaign machine made a big issue of Syria and Obama’s weakness in fighting our enemies, Obama didn’t bluster or bully or trash talk about it at all. He went to the UN like a good hippie, liberal, France loving wimp. And when the UN did nothing because of Russia, he still did nothing. He didn’t try and stand up to Putin (Romney sure as hell was talking tough about Russia). If ever there were a time to get his bully on, that was it. It didn’t happen. I’m not saying that I support military action in Syria. I’m not saying I don’t want to debate it on the merits. I am saying that we could be responsible and debate this like grown up people without the hyperbole and worse.
americanadian
I wouldn’t comment so much from the American perspective about British tomahawks falling short because the Brits are willing but not able. America is more than willing & able to drop bombs & missiles short anytime. I’m Canadian & more than once Americans bombed & killed our troops. Let alone innocent wedding parties with drone strikes. You guys are very able to drop bombs & fire missiles but many times you’re inept at hitting the target…or should I say the right target. Maybe it’s because you have endless money to piss into it & it doesn’t rally matter.
Your economy is a wreck because you’re so willing.