It seems like people will be pissed at us no matter what we do or don’t do. To me, that argues against caring about worldwide public opinion and just bearing down and making pragmatic decisions that have a prayer of working. Doing ineffectual things that anger people just to satisfy other people who won’t actually be satisfied seems like a bad way to go.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Sort of the same thoughts occurred to me this morning when some young talking head on MSNBC was saying that the delay in getting a Congressional vote will strengthen the opposition to a reprisal against Assad as the Administration hasn’t been able to articulate a military strategy to Congress and the American people that has a discernible benefit. Maybe true, but it does seem that one wouldn’t necessarily want to publicize that much about the strategy if it has any hope of working.
Which is just fine with me. If Kerry wants to share his information with the public, please do, he still hasn’t connected the deployed sarin to Assad.
Not even addressing the reports of sarin in the hands of the rebels is the tell for me. Yeah, it makes the argument more complicated, but war is complicated.
I’m also not clear that Obama necessarily wants to bomb Syria. It’s a good move to hand it off to the do-nothing Congress.
“We have intelligence that leads us to assess that Syrian chemical weapons personnel – including personnel assessed to be associated with the SSRC – were preparing chemical munitions prior to the attack. In the three days prior to the attack, we collected streams of human, signals and geospatial intelligence that reveal regime activities that we assess were associated with preparations for a chemical weapons attack.”
So 3 days preparation not doing it for you?
There are two problems there. The first is that claiming to have evidence and actually showing evidence are two different things.
The second is that if one is using a responsibility-to-protect argument for intervention and one knew that a chemical attack was imminent because the munitions were being prepared prior to attack, why did one not intervene to prevent the successful conclusion of that preparation? Why did one not intervene to prevent the attack? Or call attention to the preparations? Or was the information so ambiguous that only a hindsight analysis identified what was going on?
If ambiguity was a problem, what is the reason for certainty that the hindsight analysis itself is correct?
Adlai Stevenson had the evidence of Soviet IRBMs in Cuba. Colin Powell faked the evidence of WMDs in Iraq. What is the evidence in question and how can we independently verify that it is not faked?
The absence of evidence is what is not doing it for me..
Are you still seriously disputing that there are hundreds of people dead from a chemical weapons attack?
That was unresponsive, Shaun. Why don’t you respond to the actua
Margument?
“Colin Powell faked the evidence of WMDs in Iraq,” was cited as part of the argument.
What would you call Colin Powell’s performance at the UN?
Now I’m defending Powell? Go back and read my comment.
expectations on the part of many that we will see evidence that could burn both methods and sources. I also see a lot of denial going on from those who don’t want intervention as the problem. I don’t know if intervening in Syria is the right course of action but from what has been released so far I am certain Assad used Sarin on his own people. To me that argument is settled and those who are still claiming there hasn’t been enough evidence to settle that argument are not wanting a serious debate about this issue. They just want to bury their head in the sand because as long as they can claim the argument isn’t settled they can say we shouldn’t even think about intervention.
Like I said to me it is settled so now it is time to debate the next steps and as I said I have no idea what those are. Those who are serious about this issue will do exactly that. Those who are not will continue to claim there isn’t enough evidence.
The general notion that the NSA collects signals intelligence on everyone is already out there. Providing verbatim text and voice to support the assertions with translations would provide a way for folks to evaluate the evidence. Transcripts of human intelligence have been provided in the past with source information (including contextual clues) and methods redacted. The US has for a long time provided aerial reconnaissance information to support claims and others have comparable imagery that could be compared to validate the assertions.
The “sources and methods” excuse IMO is a dodge to get away with exaggerating or with fabricating evidence.
We shouldn’t think about military intervention for two very precise reasons–mutual defense pacts between Syria and Iran and Syria and Russia. A limited strike becomes a high-stakes gamble. We shouldn’t think about military intervention because the collapse of the Assad regime does not produce a government; it produces an even more complicated civil war.
There is a reason that people are urging caution. The context and interests of the other players in the region make intervention in Syria much more complicated than was the case in Iraq and Iraq was an almost eight year involvement.
The argument in fact isn’t settled just because the US intelligence community makes an assertion without showing the evidence.
What we know with a degree of confidence is that there were at least 650 and maybe (if the US statement is to be believed) up to 1500 people killed by a chemical attack of some kind. We know from MSF what symptoms the people taken to their hospitals suffered. That is is the total of what we know from independent sources.
Everything else the public knows is either intelligence analysis that does not present evidence or speculation or propaganda.
The crucial information is in the on-site investigation notes and photos of the UN inspectors and their laboratories.
Yeah, and once upon a time you also collectednstreammof human, signal, and geospacial intelligence that revealed regime activities that you assessed were associated with all different kinds of non-existant WMD’s. In Iraq. Why, Colin Powell even had pictures, diagrams, audio and.a vial of fake sarin to prove it.
You are a US citizen are you not? The point is sound but I don’t think any of us here are representing the US government.
Damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t…
Not a fun place to be, but I think that makes it easier to do the right thing, assuming you can figure out what that is.
Boohoo hoo. The US government’s immature leadership got itself into it. Can’t sympathize.
US policy in the Middle East is in disarray. And that’s because Bush’s intervention in Iraq and the Arab Spring have transformed realities from what they were in 2000. But the old hands in the State Department, military, and intelligence community are still operating out of old ideas, some even still fighting the Cold War. That is not the President’s failing.
The President’s failing (or is it that clever strategy) is the vagueness of the evidence about the chemical attacks as compared to the certainty of the conclusions and the fact that a limited strike as an actual deterrent to further chemical attacks is not credible to a whole lot of people. First that it would be sufficient, and second that it would remain limited.
We have to consider the views of folks like Erdogan, but we don’t necessarily have to follow his policy. However we should be sensitive to the instability that Kurdish involvement in Syria brings.
Likewise with the other folks that the article claims we are not pleasing.
By your reasoning it is the president’s failing that a shell-shocked American electorate can’t tell the difference between intervening irresponsibly against a dictator where there isn’t a violation of the ban on WMDs and irresponsibly failing to intervene against another when there is.
That is much too simplistic a reading of what I said.
Now you know what it feels like to have been discussing this with you for over a week.
Retry
There is a reason that I keep saying that he should fire his communication staff.
I keep arguing that the details matter, but the details have come out slowly and begrudgingly from the Administration. And other nations have been slow to add to the details. But more information is coming out.
I have argued that a limited strike that Assad survives will not deter him, if he ordered the attack, from further attacks (unless those strikes destroy his chemical weapons capabilities). That shouldn’t be hard to understand. That seems to be a widely held opinion now as Congress gets ready to consider the very broad AUMF.
Well forgive me. It took several days to get the majority of this blog to acknowledge that the attack was not just a moon-landing fraud.
Sorry. But it has been frustrating. A copy of Richard Lamb’s The Drift to War 1922-1939 I’ve been reading is sitting on my desk and I’m just shaking my head.
It also seems to be happening on some progressive blogs I know.
He seems to have become some sort of incompetent. No matter what he does, one third says it’s the wrong thing. It’s not just republicans that have Obama derangement syndrome.
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Armchair righteousness seems to be easily applied to this topic. Nalbar, take note of which blogs are saying that.
As I see it, the war party in the permanent government wants us to aid the Saudis’ allies in Syria. It appears that Obama is flipflopping, but I believe he’s doing his best to stay out of this mess and the permanent government is getting angry.
He certainly seems to be upsetting the military industrial complex and all their minions.
But I was talking about more than Syria.
Marijuana? ‘OMGZ!, he’s practicing nullification! What a tyrant, picking which laws to follow’
NSA? ‘OMGZ!, non constitution tyrant!, looking at my phone records!
Manning? ‘OMGZ!, tortured, poor soul gets far too many years from the whistle-blower hating Obama!’
And that is THIS blog. It seems like many want a pony….but let me tell you a secret…..there are no fucking ponies!
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It seems to me that ponies would be cheaper than cruise missiles.
And the pony reference comes up in a story that Ronald Reagan told about why a little boy was motivated to clean a barn. With all the shit, he figured there was a pony in there somewhere.
I get your point. There are folks who have personalized their complaints about the way government is working to complaints about President Obama. And there are folks who take it farther and do their pop psychology analysis of Obama’s character and motives.
When what is broken is the system of checks and balances, the electoral system, and the power of the military and intelligence community. But, those things are all still trending in the wrong direction and citizens who have been trying to halt that destruction are still getting arrested, increasingly getting inflated charges, and that is occurring under a media blackout.
Getting into another war and having to guard against more blowback and racheting up the national security and police state will not turn that around. It will increase the authoritarianism.
And if we want to send a message to Assad, instead of missiles, can’t we use social media?
Instead of creating some, or a lot of, potential “collateral damage,” why doesn’t everyone in America just “de-friend” Assad – I’m looking directly at you, Senator Paul!!!
Yes, do lets send him a sternly worded letter for breaching the chemical weapons ban. That should really make him think twice about using them again on his enemies.
We could write it all in caps.
First neo-con to mention Munich
Godwin appears early.
We beat him by days and days.
And extra points for Abyssinia I reckon.
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From article …
“Kerry also said that Israel, America’s closest ally in the region, backed the need for a U.S. military response.”
Right, once again going to war for Israel and the Arab Gulf states. Fighting Iran in Syria.
○ UK ‘approved nerve gas chemical exports to Syria’
○ Mondoweiss: Dubious Intelligence and Iran Blackmail: How Israel is driving the US to war in Syria
Nice conversation 🙂 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mokoolapps.bugspuzzles