Syria: White House Beats War Drums Before Congress

[Graham Kennedy]

Pearl harbour. No doubt.

You know there are people who think the US allowed the attack to happen on purpose?

[Teaos]

There are also people who think the world is flat, thats not doubt, thats mental illness. Scientific doubt if you want to be pedantic.

[Graham Kennedy]

There are also people who think the world is flat, thats not doubt, thats mental illness. Scientific doubt if you want to be pedantic.

Or "reasonable" doubt, in other words.

[Tyyr]

If the Oompa-loompa thinks that Obama's reasoning is sound it's probably pretty damn solid that it was the regime. That said, at this point I'm not sure what it is we expect to accomplish. The minute the word got out that Obama was seriously considering launching an attack the Syrian command, control, communication, and intelligence C3I system, should have gotten the hell out of dodge. Get out of any above ground, exposed location and retreat to bunkers or hidden locations.

We're not sending in the Marines. We're probably not even talking airstrikes (I'm sure the Russian's have sold the Syrians more than a few SAMs). It's probably going to be cruise missiles from ships in the Med or Gulf. What are cruise missiles really shitty at hitting? Hardened targets or dispersed targets. They're great point weapons but if if 1,000lb of high explosive isn't going to take out a target they're kind of impotent.

So more than likely if we do launch an attack now all that's going to happen will some empty buildings will be blown to hell. It's a gesture, a very expensive one. If you really wanted to stop chemical attacks any chemical stockpiles would get blown up and any unit even suspected of using chemical weapons would be annihilated. The problem with that? To do that is a months, possibly years long commitment of manpower. You'd need constant surviellence as well as attack jets on station ready to go. Escorts for them, tankers, probably a carrier or two in the Med, flights out of nearby allies. The real killer is there's no way Assad would allow it so to start with we'd have to lay waste to the Syrian Airforce and their air defense network. All of which is risky business. We'd do it, but we'd lose men in the process. It would be a major commitment of forces.

And the biggest problem? No one really gives a shit about Syria. The Russians and Chinese don't. The Russians just want to keep their port there and a customer in arms. The Chinese want to keep a customer as well. Also, they tend to care more about stability than oppression. Assad is a shithead, but he's a shithead who's on their side. Neither of them is going to do much more than bitch in the UN about what happens. However the American people don't really care about Syria either. I think most people would agree that Assad is worthy of a Ghadaffi style Bowie knife enema but half the guys fighting on the rebels side are people we'd likely be bombing in any other circumstance. So Assad's a shithead, but so are lots of the rebels. So do we even want to pick sides? Not really. The only thing there's any real unity behind is that using the chemical weapons was wrong and shouldn't be allowed but how do you do anything about it? Especially when the American people don't want to get embroiled in yet another Middle East conflict and the first shot down pilot POW who showed up on our screens would likely make our resolve evaporate.

So yeah, shit situation all around. We don't want to see chemical weapons become something that's seen as an acceptable weapon but the only thing we could really do to stop their use would be commiting ourselves to months or years of involvement and likely result in US servicemen's deaths, something we have no stomach for now, not over Syria.