News of the day

CPicard wrote: The T wrote: timothy leary wrote: If America could take time out from watching Miley Cyrus twerk they would realize the country has become the world's great punisher. Seems the only ones immune from punishment are politicians and movie stars. Very telling no other country besides France wants anything to do with punishing Syria. Listen to the American people for a change and let someone else take Syria to the woodshed. We could also send Miley Cyrus to Syria. Cheaper, cheaper weapon, same results, an actual gain for American taxpayers. Her and Robin Thicke.

I would suggest sending any and everyone associated with the "VMA Awards", but I am not sure Syria has done enough for such punitive measures. We are, after all, a civilized country.

What puzzles me about the Syrian War To Come is that everyone is talking about a military intervention (and also bombing, just like it was a brilliant strategy), but I don't see anyone talking about sending the "Blue Helmets" and creating some sanitary corridor between each warring faction.
What about sending humanitarian help with these troops? Too difficult to operate, maybe? Do our governments only want to shoot the Bad Guy and, then, come back home, happy to bring Syria the gifts of freedom and democracy?

I wonder why the US always intervenes in that area of the world but when worse atrocities (well, similar atrocities) happen elsewhere, nobody says sh*t about sending someone to help.

Epignosis wrote: Syria, like many of our recent foreign "endeavors" is but another dog and pony show to distract / entertain voters.

Let's not forget Obama is Christian and there does seem to be a tendency among US presidents, presumably God-fearing all, to intervene in the Holy Land.   Though his parents were not religious, Obama is apparently quite devout.

Atavachron wrote: Let's not forget Obama is Christian and there does seem to be a tendency among US presidents, presumably God-fearing all, to intervene in the Holy Land.   Though his parents were not religious, Obama is apparently quite devout.

When it suits him. There's a lot of good reasons to believe he's not religious. But anyway, that doesn't have a lot to do with the situations we get involved in.

I think the options on the table are designed to cripple Assad's military. They've said they won't send in troops and they won't topple Assad, and the display would be a message that a nation cannot use chemical weapons withgout repercussion.

Look, I think it's easy for all of us to say that we don't want a war and that we want to stay out of another country's business. But what if they actually did use gas on civilians? Should we just do nothing? The West's options in this case are all terrible.

Concerning the Syrian civil war and potential Western intervention in it, here's an interesting editorial on the subject.

I find Spiked! very hit-and-miss in general, and Brendan O'Neill's articles in particular, but he makes a good point there: That very few advocating for intervention have a well thought-out plan for exactly what the endgame of such an operation should be let alone how to achieve it. If NATO aren't careful they might end up with another Iraq or Afghanistan if not something even worse.

(O'Neill still shows his usual tendency to see deliberate ulterior motivations where at worst ideological blind spots exist, though this is the kind of debate where it might be prudent to watch out for hidden agendas)

  Probaly some jihadists  are behind the gas attack. In order to lure the US into the conflict they used the gas attack to topple the Assad regime, create a power vacuum which they would fill.
A further escalation of the conflict could mean an end of Christianity in Syria, Midlle-eastern Christians are the most suffeing group in the conflicts of the last couple of years.
Obummer is about as Christian as his North Korean comrades...

Obama wants to go and is ready to go, but just punted to Congress.  Congress will debate and vote. 

"Atrocities cannot just be investigated, they must be confronted"