Elections do have consequences...
Lucky for the Syrian people, election do have consequences.
This week, we saw the reversal of our foreign policy in dealing with Syria.
The crisis in Syria has been going on for 6 years.
I guess, Barack Obama was right after all. "Elections have consequences..."
Our past policies lead to the death of thousands and millions of refugees...
We sat silent while ateocities were committed by the Assad regime.
The red line was crossed numerous times...
The election of Trump changed all that. For better or worse, he acted decisively.
It was Edmund Burke who said: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men should do nothing"...
How true under the Obama Administration.That statement by Burke , seems totally lost on liberals , liberal teachings and liberal politicians . I truly believe that these liberals will casually await the day terror , or war aggression's by other nations arrive at our US. borders before blaming the" leaders "of BOTH ideologies for the very fact that it DID !
I say , Better in another country than our ownSo you accept the "America First" foreign policy platform Trump ran on was misguided then?
Not really. You can have both. America first is more of an economic policy that put trade and jobs and borders ... you can still be for good government and defend human rights around the world and stop tyrants...
Does not the amount of resources, whether monetary or lives, spent playing policeman of the world have a large effect on our economy?
Yes and no. Would you rather spent a little up front to prevent and deter tyrants and stop terrorists, or pay the price later of funding 100 thousand refugees...? Or worse suffer a terrorist attack on the order of 9/11 ?
Well, we just spent 60 million, and didn't accomplish slowing down terrorism at all. For that 60M, we got nothing in return; no roads, no cars, no refrigerators - it vanished into a black hole, but a hole we continue to fill with money produced by our economy.
I'm also a little curious as to the price later of funding 100,000 refugees; that hardly fits with Trumps "America First", and in addition it seems rather presumptuous that we have to fund even one. Much like assuming we are responsible for making the world into another copy of our own culture - something I at least would argue against.Under Obama, didn't we accepted 10,000 refugees from Syria and Hilliary Clinton promised more if she was elected President? How soon we forget?
The Syrian refugee crisis was our doing. The fall of Libya was our doing. Benghazi was our mistake.
The rise of ISIS was caused partly by our early withdraw from Iraq...
The last 8 years has been one crisis after another.
North Korea and Iran...terrorist acts around the world and domestic...
Elections do have consequences and we are seeing how they play out.
With each day, Trump is demonstrating how to conduct ourselves effectively while Obama's legacy is drifting into obscurity.No, the refugee crisis was not our doing. Nor the fall of Libya. Nor was the rise of ISIS our fault, unless you count playing policeman as causal to ISIS.
While I can support taking action against chemical warfare, I do not see us as the world's policeman. We do NOT have a "duty" to police the world, and we do not have a "duty" to turn our country over to refugees.You are not connecting the dots. How did the refugee crisis occur? If not because of the rise of ISIS, and who allow ISIS to flourish? What did Benghazi have to do with all this you ask? The administration with the CIA, were trying to funnel weapons to the rebels in Syria against our laws... The lie created about the video was trying to distract and dis information about why the Ambassador was there in the first place...
I agree we don't want to be the world's policeman but unfortunately, sometimes we are the only one that can do it. If not us, then who? When there is a vacuum of power, someone else will fill it. That is exactly what happened in Iraq, when Obama pulled all our troops out. Isis and Iran took over and now we are going to go back to root them out...
How did the lead from behind policy of Obama help in all these situations? Iran, North Korea, Syria, Libya, Russia and China...Who "allowed" ISIS to flourish? The people that succored them, that gave them money and a place to exist. Again, it is not our responsibility to police the world - perhaps it is the duty of the UN, or perhaps the EU (as large as the US), but it is not the sole responsibility of the US to spread our way of life throughout the earth.
No one is proposing spreading our way of life to other parts of the world.
I recall a few years ago when President Obama decided to pull all the troops out of Iraq against the recommendations of all the generals...
He called ISIS that was just forming the JV team... do you remember?
At the time, the military tacticians recommended that we take them out by bombing their convoys of trucks... it would have been an easy operation, a few air strikes...
We chose not to. Once ISIS reached the cities and embeded with the civilians, it became much harder to deal with... That is how inaction at a critical point lead to ISIS to flourish...
I know this is hard for you to take since it is an indictment of a fail President who did the minimal.
He was keeping a campaign promise to end the Iraq war. His inexperience cause us plenty...
The Syria refugee crisis started with the rise of ISIS. Who do you blame?But Jacklee, everything you say says that WE are responsible. We didn't kill a bunch of people in trucks in a foreign country, so we are responsible for ISIS. We didn't kill ISIS before the cities gave them life, so we are responsible. Because we didn't kill a foreign group of people (ISIS) we are responsible for the refugee crises.
No. No, we had, and have, no innate responsibility for actions taken in other countries. If ISIS builds nukes and destroys the world, we are not the cause of that and are not at fault, for it is not our responsibility to police the world.
As far as spreading our way of life - ISIS would force every human being to conform to their ideas of religion. We say "No, you must allow others to live as they wish", forcing our culture of freedom onto them. Of course it's about spreading our way of life! We tried hard to institute our form of democracy in Iraq, with an almost total failure - the people there do not want it, yet we keep trying everywhere we go.I am sorry but you have a warped view of the world. You just equated our way of life with ISIS. That is not the right assessment.
If during WWIi, we had the same attitude about Nazi Germany, we may not be here today. They caused the Jewish refugee problem and applying the same logic, you would say too bad...it is not our problem.
ISIS is a potential existential threat to all the western world. As leaders of that world and the only super power, we have the responsibility to take them out not just for humanitarian purpose but for our own survival down the road.
You have the same view as President Obama and that they are not a threat so we can contain them...
How is that working out?
Look what is happening in Western Europe as we speak, Germany, Sweden, France, UK...are all dealing with an Islamic terrorist problem.
Sometimes, doing nothing has consequences far bigger than doing something.We went to war with Germany. Not with the intention of cleaning up a problem they were having with some of their citizens; with the entire country. That's hardly comparable with going into Syria, or Afghanistan, and killing some of the people they are sheltering.
But you have an interesting point in the question of "can we contain them?". And the answer is "No", not until we enter a country with the clear intent of waging war. Our every effort at "containment", at "police work" in foreign countries, has proven to be an abject failure every time we've tried it. Until the peoples of those countries decide, as a society, to contain ISIS it will not be "contained".So, what is your solution? I am curious to know. If no one play the role of policeman, what happens when an ISIS organization takes over a failed state like Syria or Iraq?
What do you so about North Korean? And Iran who is building a nuclear weapon as we speak...
It is easy to criticize but harder to come up with solutions.I don't know that the US can do much about ISIS. Keep chasing them, keep killing them, while we expend tremendous resources doing so and the rest of the world complains we are inhumane.
But I also think you and I mean different things concerning a police action. Chasing ISIS across multiple countries is not police work; it is war. So is North Korea and Iran. Syria, fighting amongst themselves in a civil war might be though.
So what is your solution? Attempting to control the world from the pentagon hasn't worked, isn't working and won't work in the future, so what is your concept? Keep doing it anyway?I don't claim to have a solution. I do think we have a moral obligation to do what we can to help the defenseless... In some cases, if an air strike can help, do it. In other cases, perhaps nothing can be done. You are damned if you do and damned if you don't.
I put ISIS in that camp where we need to act. Chopping innocent people's head off is barbaric.
In the case of Israel and Palestine, I don't believe there is a solution. They been at it for thousand years and we have no clue.
In the case of North Korea, I think working with China can contain it and wait for a regime change peacefully. Their current leader is a loon and one way or another will be removed.
Iran is a more difficult problem. The mullah have total control over the government. We may need to strike first to knock out their nuclear ambitions. That would be an insurance policy. I just don't trust them getting hold of any nuclear weapon. The Obama deal with Iran was the worst deal. IMHO"Chopping innocent people's head off is barbaric."
While I agree with you, what law or ethical code gives you the right to tell other nations, other peoples, that their culture will not be tolerated - that they must conform to your ideas of how people should live? While I agree that it is barbaric, and would do whatever I could to stop them if they were in my nation, including die for my country, I have a problem in declaring that their interpretation of what their god wants is automatically wrong and shall not be allowed in the land they live in. Bear in mind that the people there are allowing them to live and operate - that a significant number agree with ISIS's concepts whether they join ISIS or not.
You can't fix the middle east until you include the cultural and religious interests of the people living there. The West in 1916 secretly split up the region according to the spoils of winning the war against the Ottoman Empire. The secretive Sykes-Picot agreement between the French and British was always being worked on since 1914 before the war ended. "The agreement largely neglected to allow for the future growth of Arab nationalism," 1 With that very detail omitted from the agreement set in action with the Balfour Declaration basically establishing Israel in 1917. "His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country." 2.
We set this all in motion while traipsing all over the people living in the region. Where is it that Israel has adhered to the agreement whereby " it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine"?
So is extinguishing the problem we created over 100 years ago something we can do by still ignoring the source of contention and bombing the hell out of them and installing these dictators to fix it?
1. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-hist … -agreement
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_DeclarationThanks for the history lesson. I agree part of the problem is the results of actions of the colonial states in the past. That by itself is no excuse. You can point to other regions like China and India where similiar events have taken place. They have moved on and joined the civilized society. In the middle east, it is a different story. I don't know if there is an answer or what that may entail, but I do know this. ISIS cannot be justified in any form. They need to be confronted and iradicated. Other local conflicts can be left to the individual states, as in Syria but again within bounds. Unsing illegal chemical weapons is out of that bound and must be dealt with by the International community.
Really. Have we forgotten Pearl Harbor where we were invaded by another country? There are still deep feelings about the Japanese from this. How about China who were occupied by the Japanese? Of course we have the 911 attack in New York which still burns strongly in the ones left.
Just get past something that lives in your face everyday is pretty cavalier in my estimation. The Arab States that were formed by the British cut across all cultural and religious sectors of the region. It placed people who were not acclimated to each other within their own communities. Then you have the US installing dictators like the Shah and Hussein in brutal regimes we wholeheartedly supported.with money and arms. You see the problem is that we do not learn from history so maybe we have to hear it some more.You are cherry picking. There are plenty of successes. How about Germany after divided for 50 years were reunited into one. We are trading with Japan after a horrific war with use of nuclear bombs. China and Japan are not friends but they are trade partners even after the atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers in Nanking. I feel like you ar making excuses why things are not better in the middle east. It is not our fault regardless what happen in the past. We are trying to stabilize the situation and even went to war in Iraq trying to change the status quo. We intervened in the former Yugoslavia and they are peaceful now. Even Vietnam is better today after we intervened and failed in a war. How did those people survive, regrouped and thrived?
Whether the intellectuals among us like it or not , there are third world nations that are primitive in culture ,, in their religious natures, in their political make up . These nations are , like it or not , lead by tribal leaders , often times nothing more than thugs in robes , tyrants in clown suits . Assad for instance the past leaders of Iraq , Libya , Syria how many times have we seen the Ghadafi's , the Hussein's , the leader of North Korea ,.............All of them no more than prehistoric war lords ,
It is far , far from being the outside sources , the super-powers that are the bad guys , it is the tyrannical leaders of the eleventh century levels of intelligence , thirteenth century levels of war-monging diplomacy of middle eastern leaders . By the way ---Now armed with the most sophisticate weaponry in the modern world.
Without the super-powers intervention in the middle east , the middle east would more than likely "glow in the dark of night " because a crazy in a white robe pushes a big red button . I don't understand why the intellectual minds of the "anti-war " crowd don't get this .I agree on most levels. I do wonder why we don't work within the old adage and not sell arms to heathens. The arms industry has some explaining to do.
I agree. The peace loving progressives like Obama has caused more pain for the people than their good intentions. When you based your world view on a false ideology, you get the worst of both worlds.
Exactly , all too many people think that the maturity levels , the consciences , the personal behaviors and sense of personal , professional ,political accountability is the same in Syria or Libya is the same as it is in the their own neighborhood . We are all human and act similarly but the cultural behaviors around the world are far , far different .
Obama wanted to bomb when the red line was crossed. He tried to do it the LEGAL way, by going through Congress, the way it's supposed to be done. Of course, the Rs wouldn't allow it. Trump broke the law, and also lied to his voters, as he was pursuing a sort of isolationist policy to put America first. How do all these hypocrites live with themselves?
I probably would have done the same thing, but now we may be a lot more involved in Syria than we wanted to be. Congress is pretty much dysfunctional.That is what he said he wanted. He did not want to act when the red line was crossed.
He used congress as a shield. If you read the wording of his appeal to Congress, it is a very limited scope. He basically used Congress to tie his hands so he could claim, I wanted to do it, but Congress won't let me... excuse
The prove is this...
He did many other things without Congress or the Courts with executive actions.
My personal assessment of President Obama is he was indecisive and weak as a leader. It is the same pattern when he was serving in the State legislature by voting "present" in many proposed bills.
As president, he chose to "lead from behind". It did not work too well. Many of our allies didn't trust in his leadership. The world became a more dangerous place in the last 8 years. Can anyone deny that statement?Don't forget part of blame diplomacy is a lame duck president "asking " congress to allow a military retaliation KNOWING they will refuse , why ? So the problem and the blame for that problem doesn't have to be his to own . I agree with you about congress being lame , weak and unproductive.
Jean: And those who forget these facts seem to be the very ones railing against "fake news". How inconvenient facts are when you don't like them.
That would be the "fake news" that congress must vote on all military actions?
There are often times when the military must take immediate action, and Congress is incapable of doing anything in less than weeks, thus the President's ability to take limited action without approval.Wilderness,
I agree that if we waited for Congress to do anything, nothing would get done. It's emotional when we see dictators gassing their own people. But I'm not sure we can keep getting involved in everyone's business either. And it's been discussed whether to take Assad out, but when we do stuff like that, there is often someone crazier to take their place.I absolutely HATE that we see ourselves as the policeman of the world. I also recognize that gassing civilians (or soldiers) requires a little more than a police action, and I don't object to what he did - I think it was very nearly the perfect response. An overwhelming barrage of missiles, without putting our soldiers in danger, to the location the gas came from. An excellent choice, IMO.
Can't see a reason to take Assad out, though - not only would it displease the Russians enormously, but we see what taking Saddam out did for the area. He, too, gassed his own people (I think - at a minimum he tried genocide as a solution), but now that he's gone they've probably killed more of their own people there than he did.
Here is the article in NYT back in 2013-
It seems even Democrats was not on board at Obama's proposal back then...
Hence nothing was done.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/world … syria.html
That is the fact, not fake news.- ahorsebackposted 7 years ago
0OH WOW , no comment ! Going back to Thomas Jefferson who had a very outspoken opine of everything politcal , resembling , by the way, ..... Trump !...................let's see , that is where every liberal from Whoopi to Juimmy Carter fails every single time ...................."No comment " Like a non- opinion actually wins the Cuppie doll.?
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