Syria conflict: 'Chemical attacks kill hundreds'

[Takeda Shingen]

Originally Posted by Tchocky

I love the argument that because nobody stopped Saddam in the 80's we have a responsibility to do nothing now.

It's a moronic argument that avoids thinking about the current situation.

Not to mention the fact that it had absolutely nothing to do with my statement about official policy and why the administration took action in the first place. It was like a very juvenile game of one-upsmanship.

[Tchocky]

Goes without saying

[August]

Originally Posted by Tchocky

I love the argument that because nobody stopped Saddam in the 80's we have a responsibility to do nothing now.

It's a moronic argument that avoids thinking about the current situation.

This ^

[Tchocky]

August - real life intruded, forgot to respond to your last.

All good points, to properly remove Assad's CW capability would take more resources than anyone can prudently commit to something that truly isn't their fight. I'm holding to the hope there is a distinctive effect to strikes. Make it cost anyone to do this kind of thing and hope the other crackpots get the message.

Again, nowhere close to perfect but still better than nothing.

Skybird - you say that doing nothing to counter Saddam in the 80'S was tacit approval.

If that applied then, it applies now.

[Skybird]

Active assistance is not just approval. Morally it is the same as if doing the act oneself. The US has no moral highground to claim. It accuses Syria of what it has previously done itself.

Obama has no mission here. He has pulled it down to internal powerpolitics only, to limit the damage he brought about himself by showing too big a mouth.

[Tchocky]

Exactly. If you do the wrong thing thirty years ago you lose the right to do anything now.

For the eighth time - that's a moronic argument.

Originally Posted by Skybird

Morally it is the same as if doing the act oneself. The US has no moral highground to claim. It accuses Syria of what it has previously done itself.

What utter nonsense
A thief can still tell a thief that stealing is wrong.
The only person with no ground at all is Skybird, after all his twisted idealism means that in conflicts slaughtering civilians or using chemical weapons is perfectly acceptable as there should be no laws at all covering these things.
By Skys own moral standards Saddam was right to gas the Kurds and the west was also right to help him as there is nothing wrong in those actions in his dreamworld.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Tchocky

Exactly. If you do the wrong thing thirty years ago you lose the right to do anything now.

For the eighth time - that's a moronic argument.

The Japanese claim to have worked up their past role in WWII is intentionally doubted, for they deny certain crimes their troops committed until today, hide them, ignore them, or relabel them as something positive, from mass killings in conquered territories to massraping women.

America until today poses as the moral messiah and loses no word about its active assisting of gassing the Iranians. Not the ideal moral position to start a moral lecture from.

And there are other such stories. The funding of contras by selling drugs to the blacks in America back then. The lies of 2003. And we do not know how many other black ops that no doubt took place. Not to mention the active funding of regimes that finances terrorism, like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

As long as these things are still done, and done acts are not openly admitted and worked up, America has no credible moral position to argue from.

And argument that I already made ten years ago in the forum war about the Iraq war. Obama's moral credibility is in shambles. He is about limiting the damage to himself. And that is the only real imperative of American "policy" now. He shouldn't have taken his mouth that full last year. What he is about to do now, is giving support to terrorists, radical fanatics and right those people that America claims to wage a war against, this ominous war on terror, and who themselves represent groups and parties that on their behalf also have declared they see themselves at war with America.

And the real reason why we are here today, right at this point, so far has not even been mentioned in this 900+ postings long thread. If the West would not have encouraged the Arab "spring" and the Syrian uprise as well, and would not have silently supported the opposition with money that was channeled to them via dark channels, the uprise would have come to an end after some months at the latest, and the war since long would be over already, and many people would still be alive, and AQ and other radicals and fundamentalists would have no foothold in syria, and Iran and Hezbollah likely would not have risen their profile in syria that much, too. Syria would not have been any more democratic, but that is unimportant. More important would have been that it still would have been stable, predictable, and AQ and radical djihadists having no strong platform there.

It was idiotic and reality-denying wishful thinking and daydreaming by Western escapists who enabled this conflict to go for so long and lasting until today.

But of course, we have had good intentions. We only meant it oh so well, didn't we. We had hopes. We supported democracy.

Write all these precious excuses on a leafs of paper and sell it as toilet paper. Wiping anuses at least is more a useful purpose than all this wonderfully working diplomacy and fantasizing and reality-denying and hiding one's own share of moral guilt. It's not too long ago when Assad still was a darling when it came to selling him the ingredients for the weapons one now is complaining about. After all, money does not stink.

[Oberon]

I think that you would be hard put to find a nation on this planet that would be able to throw stones without being in a glass house.

[Tchocky]

So the Americans are on the hook for the UK supplying precursor chemicals? Get it together.

[August]

Originally Posted by Tchocky

August - real life intruded, forgot to respond to your last.

All good points, to properly remove Assad's CW capability would take more resources than anyone can prudently commit to something that truly isn't their fight. I'm holding to the hope there is a distinctive effect to strikes. Make it cost anyone to do this kind of thing and hope the other crackpots get the message.

Again, nowhere close to perfect but still better than nothing.

I disagree. Doing nothing is vastly preferable than making an ineffectual military strike that doesn't accomplish anything besides civilian casualties.

[Tchocky]

I'd say that there's a greater risk by not responding to the use of sarin.

Certainly a response could be ineffectual.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Oberon

I think that you would be hard put to find a nation on this planet that would be able to throw stones without being in a glass house.

Ohhhh yesss...

Not that it stops them trying nevertheless...

[Tchocky]

It's always better to be consistent and wrong than hypocritical and right.

Never forget.

[August]

Originally Posted by Tchocky

I'd say that there's a greater risk by not responding to the use of sarin.

Certainly a response could be ineffectual.

But use of Sarin by who? Assad? Maybe some underling acting without authority? or even Al Quaeda? So far i'm hearing lots of unsubstantiated claims but no hard evidence as to who exactly lit off that gas bomb.