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PhantomViper wrote:
Also I'm sorry to say, but the US really isn't the world's super-hero... For starters almost everyone that you guys tried to "help" in the past few years (to continue the analogy), has came out of it worse than they were before US intervention, so I think its time for the US to hang up its mask and concentrate on just being another reporter (where the hell has this analogy taken me?! ).

I'd have to agree that those were like the What If? where Wolverine killed Dracula, but then wound up building a vampire army way worse than the original Dracula's. I'm not sure who Dr. Strange and the Punisher are in this analogy, but it eventually worked out OK.

Except all the people who got killed by mutant vampires, those guys got screwed.

 Seaward wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:
For starters almost everyone that you guys tried to "help" in the past few years (to continue the analogy), has came out of it worse than they were before US intervention, so I think its time for the US to hang up its mask and concentrate on just being another reporter (where the hell has this analogy taken me?! ).

Such as?

We went into neither Afghanistan nor Iraq to help. Those weren't humanitarian interventions.

I didn't state "help" as in humanitarian interventions, I only said "help" to continue the super-hero analogy.

Besides, I thought you guys stated that the objective of the invasion of Iraq was to rid the Iraqui people from a horrible dictator? And the occupation of Afghanistan was to bring democracy to its masses and rid the people of the Taliban?

Now you are saying that they were only for your own interests?! I'm shocked!


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 Ouze wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:
Also I'm sorry to say, but the US really isn't the world's super-hero... For starters almost everyone that you guys tried to "help" in the past few years (to continue the analogy), has came out of it worse than they were before US intervention, so I think its time for the US to hang up its mask and concentrate on just being another reporter (where the hell has this analogy taken me?! ).

I'd have to agree that those were like the What If? where Wolverine killed Dracula, but then wound up building a vampire army way worse than the original Dracula's. I'm not sure who Dr. Strange and the Punisher are in this analogy, but it eventually worked out OK.

Except all the people who got killed by mutant vampires, those guys got screwed.

You made me laugh out loud in the office, have an exalt!

WW2 was (partially) the result of doing nothing and pretending that the problem would just go away on it's own (England had a prime minster who said as much, IIRC). A lot of the same reasons were given before the outbreak of the war in Europe (and even after in the US) of why it was someone else's problem, and if we don't get involved it will all blow over. My point is that while, as certain posters like to point out, times that the US intervened were bad, the times they did nothing until it was pretty late in the game turned out much worse by several orders of magnitude. While in this case, it's unlikely that Assad will suddenly invade Poland, there's still the likelihood that doing nothing comes back to bite the US in unforeseen ways as well as the more obvious ones.

Humanitarian intervention is pointless. No conflict has ever been stopped or helped by any.

 Ouze wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:

 xole wrote:
I'm not getting the comparison to WW2. COmpletely different opponents with completely different potential outcomes.

Its called "appeal to emotion". Since BaronIveagh doesn't really have any logical argument to support his position, he is relegated to saying things like "if we don't attack Syria then the Nazis will kill 6 million Jews" to try and garner support for it.

I don't agree with BaronIveagh's stance at all, but I did think some of his arguments in the thread were compelling (some were less so, such as the US constitution ones, not to rehash that). Specifically why bombing the areas would be a bad idea, and the general argument that, to sum it up pithily, all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

While I disagree - in my experience evil prevails anyway regardless of what you do - I think it's a fair argument too, the with great responsibility one. As a kid who grew up reading Spider-Man it certainly resonated with me, as well as that sometimes you have to protect a world that fears and hates you for your mutations, and that even if you have a bad heart or dead parents, you can still do great things if you have a giant boat of money... Look, any analogy breaks down if you take it too far, but I don't think they were all just appeals to emotion.

I don't think Spiderman would have supported rebels that torture and kill their prisoners on video, eat their hearts, forced conversions and parading nuns around like prisoners of war.


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 Mr Hyena wrote:
Humanitarian intervention is pointless. No conflict has ever been stopped or helped by any.

We could just nuke all these sites from orbit. That would take care of it.
Often civil wars are good things.

Often civil wars are good things.

not if you ask the thousands apon thousands who died.

 Mr Hyena wrote:

Often civil wars are good things.

not if you ask the thousands apon thousands who died.

A blowoff statement. Usually there is a reason there is a civil war. Syria is one example.

Russia it seems asked Syria to surrender its WMD(?) I see a discount in Arms sale for Syria and Russian troops guarding WMD sites

PhantomViper wrote:
I didn't state "help" as in humanitarian interventions, I only said "help" to continue the super-hero analogy.

Besides, I thought you guys stated that the objective of the invasion of Iraq was to rid the Iraqui people from a horrible dictator? And the occupation of Afghanistan was to bring democracy to its masses and rid the people of the Taliban?

Now you are saying that they were only for your own interests?! I'm shocked!

They were largely but not exclusively for our national security interests, certainly.

There is always going to be an element of self-determinism to the outcome even of humanitarian interventions, however. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink, as the saying goes. If your populace is deeply, deeply committed to factionalizing and killing each other, success on our part is going to be limited at best.

 Mr Hyena wrote:
Humanitarian intervention is pointless. No conflict has ever been stopped or helped by any.

Are you not old enough to remember the mess following the dissolution of Yugoslavia?

 sebster wrote:

 AndrewC wrote:
This started because of the heavyhandedness of the Assad regime resulted in protests calling for his resignation after protesters calling for a revolution were arrested, tortured and killed.

Democracy is the last thing that started this.

Large numbers of protestors called for the leader's resignation, and were violently persecuted.... and that has nothing to do with democracy.

What the hell?

You're mis-interpreting my post. The protestors were not on the streets demanding proportional representation or free and fair elections monitored by the international community. They simply wanted Assad out of power.

Now you and I probably have different baselines as to what democracy means in this instance. You are implying that the people demanding a resignation is a democracy, you could also use that standard to imply that a lynch mob is also a democratic proceedure. Parlimentary Democracy, which is what BaronIveagh is talking about had nothing to do with that original protest. It may have ended with it two years down the line, but the cynic in me thinks that that is a sop to the west to garner support.

Cheers

Andrew

 Frazzled wrote:
I’ll bite:
Korea: bloody draw. We’re still there, trapped in this weird dance of craptown with a psycho in a 5th world country.
Vietnam: How’d that turn out?
Somalia: Bad
Kosova: Bad to midlin. drug lord and slavers run the place.
Afghanistan 1: Beat the Soviets but helped form AlQaeda. I’d rather have the Rooskies. At least they were sane.
Afghanistan II: We did ok going after AlQaeda. Then it turned into “lets build a country” Crap fest we’re being run out of.
Iraq 1: We went after the wrong guys.
Iraq 2: We went after the wrong guys (again) and now the bad guys effectively run most of the country.
But not to be outdone:
Libya: helped change that from a dictatorship to Somalia lite. Awesome job there Ricky.
Egypt: Mmmm. Helped kick out a military dictator, replaced by an Islamic dictator, not replaced by…a military dictator.
Syria: Islamofascists who kill prisoners and persecute Christians on one side, Nazi dictator (look up the structure of the Baath party) on the other.

Crazily, just staying out of everyone’s affairs might have been a better course…

Frazz, you've conveniently forgotten America's aborted invasions of Canada!

But it's a fair point. It's been pointed out before, that unless the British are either a) enemies or b) allies, then the USA rarely succeeds in war. Now that Parliament has voted against British involvement, it's a sign that America will fail in Syria if ever one was needed.

And finally, I just heard something weird on the news: John McCain caught playing online poker in the senate during a debate! WTF?

PhantomViper wrote:

Its called "appeal to emotion". Since BaronIveagh doesn't really have any logical argument to support his position, he is relegated to saying things like "if we don't attack Syria then the Nazis will kill 6 million Jews" to try and garner support for it.

Wow, nice fail to read and snidely dismiss all at the same time. My point was that doing nothing has, on the occasions it was tried, led to worse outcomes than doing something (WW2 being an exampl of what happens when nations try to avoid involvement until it's too late).

To borrow Ouze's Spider-man analogy so that you all understand: WW2 was sort of like that time Peter sat by and didn't stop the robber, who then gunned down Uncle Ben.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:

Its called "appeal to emotion". Since BaronIveagh doesn't really have any logical argument to support his position, he is relegated to saying things like "if we don't attack Syria then the Nazis will kill 6 million Jews" to try and garner support for it.

Wow, nice fail to read and snidely dismiss all at the same time. My point was that doing nothing has, on the occasions it was tried, led to worse outcomes than doing something (WW2 being an exampl of what happens when nations try to avoid involvement until it's too late).

To borrow Ouze's Spider-man analogy so that you all understand: WW2 was sort of like that time Peter sat by and didn't stop the robber, who then gunned down Uncle Ben.

Ok, I'll byte. What nation avoided involvement in WW2 until it was too late? Or are you advocating that France and Britain should have just invaded Germany before it all started?

WW2 was more like the time where we quit selling lube to Doc Ock for his arms because we were mad when he punched up an old lady, so he punched us in the face for sticking our nose in. His compadre The Mad Bomber Wuz Bomz at Midnite then called us a poopy face.

neither of them realized however that, Spidey was channeling the Spirit of Marshall Cogburn, who proceded to shoot them both with Colt Peacemakers while riding on a pale horse called JUSTICE!!!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

PhantomViper wrote:

 BaronIveagh wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:

Its called "appeal to emotion". Since BaronIveagh doesn't really have any logical argument to support his position, he is relegated to saying things like "if we don't attack Syria then the Nazis will kill 6 million Jews" to try and garner support for it.

Wow, nice fail to read and snidely dismiss all at the same time. My point was that doing nothing has, on the occasions it was tried, led to worse outcomes than doing something (WW2 being an exampl of what happens when nations try to avoid involvement until it's too late).

To borrow Ouze's Spider-man analogy so that you all understand: WW2 was sort of like that time Peter sat by and didn't stop the robber, who then gunned down Uncle Ben.

Ok, I'll byte. What nation avoided involvement in WW2 until it was too late? Or are you advocating that France and Britain should have just invaded Germany before it all started?

I think he's impugning that if only Ecuador had invaded Yugoslavia, Hitler would have written a different book while in prison: Memoirs of a Geisha, or something.

 Mr Hyena wrote:
Humanitarian intervention is pointless. No conflict has ever been stopped or helped by any.

The deeply nuanced historical insight in this post is stunning.

PhantomViper wrote:

Ok, I'll byte. What nation avoided involvement in WW2 until it was too late? Or are you advocating that France and Britain should have just invaded Germany before it all started?

The United States was the one I was thinking of, but an argument could be made for waiting until Hitler invaded Poland on England and Frances part. Simply allowing Germany to have an unimportant nation like Czechoslovakia sent the wrong sort of message to Berlin.

The US attempted to enforce a policy of isolationism (which was popular with the public after WW1). However, this policy not only failed to keep the US out of the war (spectacularly) but also cost it some important allies in the short term and gave it's adversaries the means to achieve some important victories.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:

Ok, I'll byte. What nation avoided involvement in WW2 until it was too late? Or are you advocating that France and Britain should have just invaded Germany before it all started?

The United States was the one I was thinking of, but an argument could be made for waiting until Hitler invaded Poland on England and Frances part. Simply allowing Germany to have an unimportant nation like Czechoslovakia sent the wrong sort of message to Berlin.

So completely ignoring the small fact that if the US had declared war on Germany in 1939, you'd have been crushed and would probably would have let the Pacific wide open to the Japanese, I'm guessing that you think that the world would be a much better place today if the US had just invaded Turkey, Russia, Cambodia, Rwanda, Congo, South Africa and China, along with every other country that committed any type of atrocities during the 20th century?

 BaronIveagh wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:

Ok, I'll byte. What nation avoided involvement in WW2 until it was too late? Or are you advocating that France and Britain should have just invaded Germany before it all started?

The United States was the one I was thinking of, but an argument could be made for waiting until Hitler invaded Poland on England and Frances part. Simply allowing Germany to have an unimportant nation like Czechoslovakia sent the wrong sort of message to Berlin.

The US attempted to enforce a policy of isolationism (which was popular with the public after WW1). However, this policy not only failed to keep the US out of the war (spectacularly) but also cost it some important allies in the short term and gave it's adversaries the means to achieve some important victories.

So its your opinion the US should have attacked in 1939? With what? We didn't have anything. Ok we had an excellent navy and some B-17s. Not sure where you would fly the B-17s from. I guess we could have shelled the German coast or tangled with the German surface navy. While Epic on paper (now we'll show you what carriers do to battleships you nazi swine!) not exactly the brightest thing to do.

When did this become a thread about WWII? Take it to a new thread!

 Username Invalid wrote:
Okay, I'm a little confused. I understand opposition to full scale invasion and boots on the ground, etc. I understand that even if the majority of rebels can be considered "good guys" they have some nasty friends, so backing and supplying them is a questionable endevour.

But I fail to see the downside of limited cruise missile strikes. Will they achieve anything? Not really, but that's sort of the point isn't it? Obama is a Democrat, he doesn't want to risk American lives and he doesn't want to start his own Iraq. Missile strikes run neither of these risks. Assad simply has absolutely no way whatsoever of retaliating.

As far as I can see, lobbing a few missiles and drones at Assad's forces wouldn't significantly change the strategic situation on the ground and would serve as an effective reminder to Assad that he's allowed to massacre his own people and such, but he has to do so according to the rules, and the rules say no chems.

As to the cost, a few tens of millions is less than the tiniest drop in the world's largest bucket, so again, I just don't see the problem. If the only downside is cost, it's the equivelent of spending weeks arguing over a few pennies.

I'm open to the possibility I'm wrong, so I welcome criticism.

I have to agree with you. Really there are no good options, this seems like the least bad one.

The world would have been a better place if we'd listened to Patton and went straight though Berlin and only stopped when Patton put a boot on Stalin's throat in Moscow.

 Frazzled wrote:

So its your opinion the US should have attacked in 1939? With what? We didn't have anything. Ok we had an excellent navy and some B-17s. Not sure where you would fly the B-17s from. I guess we could have shelled the German coast or tangled with the German surface navy. While Epic on paper (now we'll show you what carriers do to battleships you nazi swine!) not exactly the brightest thing to do.

Well, one, the USN's Atlantic fleet joining up with RN would have roflstomped the kreigsmarine even at that point. As far as where to fly B17s from, I might point out that England and France would have been good locations. (Remember that the fall of France was not until 1940).


However this is getting OT.

And?
Now that you've sunk a few Uboats (or they a whole lot of you), now what?

IIRC we had 200 B-17s at the start of WWII, many of which were at Pearl and the Phillipines. It would not have made a material difference.
ON the flipside, it might have concentrated German efforts to knock France and Britain completely out of the war. A fully mobilized Germany with no Western front might have been enough to turn the tide on the USSR.

Erm... couldn't we just bomb Assad just to spite Putin?

http://en-maktoob.news.yahoo.com/russia-not-keen-u-n-syria-resolution-frances-155009322.html

Russia not keen on U.N. Syria resolution: France's Fabius
PARIS (Reuters) - Russia is not keen at this stage for a binding U.N. Security Council resolution that would provide a framework to control Syria's chemical weapons' stocks, France's foreign minister said after talks with his Russian counterpart on Tuesday.

"As I understood, the Russians at this stage were not necessarily enthusiastic, and I'm using euphemism, to put all that into the framework of a U.N. binding resolution," Laurent Fabius told French lawmakers after a telephone conversation with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Joking about my first sentence...

Probably some mumbo-jumbo to ensure that the eventual resolution is nicely watered down before the Security Council votes.

After the vote in the UK, I saw an interview with one of the MP's who had voted yes for intervention. He was notably quite, well, upset and concerned about the result, quoting several reasons that I, personally, agreed with.

The reporter then asked him, "so, why haven't you done anything about Rwanda then?" In an attempt to catch him out... Then, in a remarkable display of consistency from a MP, it turns out that he had been campaigning for Rwanda... stuff (sorry, I was only half watching it).

So, what are the similarities / differences between the Syria situation and the Rwanda situation?

From my complete ignorance of what's going on, I thought one of the big things was, "UN agreed that Rwanda stuff was bad, so the UK is helping out via the UN."

But, is that assumption actually true?

 Compel wrote:

So, what are the similarities / differences between the Syria situation and the Rwanda situation?

The UN found out in advance that the Rwanda genocide would take place, and UN command felt that intervening would be too risky. So French and Belgian blue helmets had to stand there and watch as a million people died. So anythign in Rwanda wit hthe UN is more a guilt trip than anything else. Their failure of the Rwandan people was spectacular.

Similarities: Both Rwanda and Syria had civilians being exterminated by a totalitarian government to put the screws to a large scale rebellion. Whether it will be similar in that the rebellion eventually wins has yet to be seen. What is certain is the same sort of mass exodus is taking place in both locations, which in Rwanda had a destabilizing effect on it's neighbors. It could be argued that the current situation in the Congo is fallout from the Rwandan Genocide.

As far as major differences go: Rwanda was a pre planned mass killing of civilians. Syria is more spur of the moment. The major differences are religious rather than ethnic, and unlike Rwanda, the current regime in Syria has powerful allies in the UN. As far as raw numbers go, so far the Syrian business is about 1/3rd to 1/8th smaller as far as civilian body count.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
**snip**

No slight intended, just a factual statement of your modus operandi to date. It is so predictable I can almost set my watch by it

I notice that you just disregarded a classical text that still has truth while you prefer to regurgitate whatever soundbite you can find to support your position. Quite telling.
Nice to see you never miss an opportunity to miss the point. Maybe you missed the part where the Ghurkas and the FFL actually serve a country - not the coin. That is a substantial difference. So they are soldiers, not mercenaries. They are sworn to defend a country and form a part of its standing military. Not soldiers for hire in the pay of a private entity.

Now, your claim of 100,000 Irish mercenaries in Iraq is still not substantiated so lets look at your claim about Irish mercenaries in Syria shall we?
[quote=]One of the rebels tells the French reporter that “three former soldiers of the Irish military elite” provided training to Syrian rebels. It is claimed the Irish soldiers were acting as “independent mercenaries”. These “former soldiers of the Irish military elite” are acting in violation of international law.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

Now, your claim of 100,000 Irish mercenaries in Iraq is still not substantiated so lets look at your claim about Irish mercenaries in Syria shall we?

It's hard to when you keep inflating the number. I said 10,000, and Iraq, not Syria. Going back I might point out that I simply mentioned that Irish mercenaries were there, training Syrians, not that there were vast numbers of them there atm.. But please, continue to try and build your straw man, by all means.

And, they still swear an oath to a country not their own in exchange for pay. You can dress it up all you like, but it's still working as a mercenary. After all, if all it took was an oath to not be a mercenary, there wouldn't be any mercenaries. Indeed, I'll point out that many of the mercenaries that Machiavelli mentioned swore oaths to nations and or powerful nobles as part of the terms of their employment.

Also, that quote you got came not from Le Mond but from Global Research, who make Fox News look 'fair and balanced' since the hysterical title of it is 'Irish Mercenaries Training Syrian Death Squads'.

LeMond wrote:In the basement of a cave, the camp also features an holding cell "for unruly rebels," the commander said. "We wanted to form a real army with rules, order, discipline, " he recounted there. Three former Irish elite soldiers who became independent mercenaries gave a helping hand. "Out of sympathy," says Abu Mahmoud.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

Did you just tell me to join the 21st century for quoting Machiavelli (published in 1532), and you then quoted Sun Tzu (written in 500BC)?

Yeah, I did. Because the relationship between government and mercenary has changed a good deal since Machiavelli, where as the idea that getting an enemy to switch sides is better than wiping them out is still relevant. (Further, Machiavelli was clearly writing for the benefit of his sponsors, the Borgias, in that entry, as he particularly brings up the Sforza's failed use of mercenaries in Milan against the French [both sides hired the same mercenaries, who took the money and left both sides to sort out their own problems], without mentioning that the same Swiss mercenaries later came back and restored Milan to the Sforza afterward.)

 AndrewC wrote:

 sebster wrote:

 AndrewC wrote:
This started because of the heavyhandedness of the Assad regime resulted in protests calling for his resignation after protesters calling for a revolution were arrested, tortured and killed.

Democracy is the last thing that started this.

Large numbers of protestors called for the leader's resignation, and were violently persecuted.... and that has nothing to do with democracy.

What the hell?

You're mis-interpreting my post. The protestors were not on the streets demanding proportional representation or free and fair elections monitored by the international community. They simply wanted Assad out of power.

Now you and I probably have different baselines as to what democracy means in this instance. You are implying that the people demanding a resignation is a democracy, you could also use that standard to imply that a lynch mob is also a democratic proceedure. Parlimentary Democracy, which is what BaronIveagh is talking about had nothing to do with that original protest. It may have ended with it two years down the line, but the cynic in me thinks that that is a sop to the west to garner support.

Cheers

Andrew

Just to add to your statement, what real knowledge of democracy do people that live under a feudal or tribal system have? It's like giving a sports car to someone who has only handled Ox carts all their life.

Relapse wrote:

Just to add to your statement, what real knowledge of democracy do people that live under a feudal or tribal system have? It's like giving a sports car to someone who has only handled Ox carts all their life.

Wow. You'd never know Damascus has been a center of civilization and trade since they paid tribute to Thutmose III, Pharaoh of Egypt in the 15th Century BC...


You do know that there are no fewer than four accredited universities, six museums, and a sizable educational system there, right? I'll throw in that Aleppo is hardly a bunch of mud and grass huts either.

And in honor of Putin sweeping in on a white bear to fix the issue: