I like bombing foreigners as much as the next guy. Hell, more than the next guy! A lot more. War and conflict, it fills the lonely, bitter emptiness in the depths of my soul. I'm a warhawk as bright nutty as the rest of them, ok? So get that through your head first. I wanted to bomb Assad. I still want to bomb Assad. I wanted to bomb him when the civil war started, I wanted to bomb him before the red-line, during the red-line, and after the red-line. So get this through all of your heads before you read further: Long ago I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.
Ok? Ok. So now let me tell you a history of inconvenient facts. The United States has, legally, no right to bomb Syria. None. Chemical weapons provided an "eh, sorta", but I tell you every single fucking dove, skeptic, and russian crawled out of every single spot in the internet to shout to the heavens to stop. "THE EVIDENCE IS NOT YET CONCLUSIVE" they said. "IT WAS FAKED BY THE US MILITARY", they claimed pre-emptively (boy that claim sure look as dumb as a sack of bricks in hindsight doesn't it? But I bet no one would admit to saying they believed that). "NO MORE REGIME CHANGE", the Russians whined. And whined. And the democrats whined. And the Republicans whined. And Obama sits at the center, dealing with the fact that Assad was actually crazy enough to pass the red-line that Obama set down literally as far as it could be from the fucker while still being technically reachable. What was he going to do? Bomb Syria. Who? Syrians. Was it going to be enough? No. What justification did he have? Congress sure as hell wasn't going to authorize it. And you can't just go bomb a country you aren't legally at war at, no matter what the loonies on the internet say. The words International Law people throw at each other matter, and what people on the damn internet and press ignore as soon as it hurts their side is that bending a law is different from breaking it. A world of difference.
Even if Syria was using Chemical Weapons, then what? Just blow up a few things and leave? Use up all that political capital for nothing? Hooray? But what are your other options. Bomb them until the rebels win? Well hey, that's what everyone wanted him to do, so lets say he does that: Ok great job genius, three more problems now:
- Iraq 2.0: America is now the big bad agressor, faking chemical weapons as an excuse to bomb another middle eastern dictator they don't like.
- Airpower cannot win a war alone
- But in case it can; Wait, which rebels win?
So lets' take these in order. So we decide to bomb them, because we might as well while we're in the area, rihgt? But wait, that's not how the international commnity sees it. Some were skeptical of the evidence, and others were convinced of the evidence but not of America's right to do anything about it (Fun fact: despite wide belief to the contrary, America does not actually hold the position of World Police). You said "hey we are going to bomb you because you used the bad weapons" and then, instead of doing that, bombed them until they were defeated in a civil war and replaced (or at least that's what you are trying to do). That's falls under "Not what you are there to do." Therefore,
highly fucking illegal, but also the worst kind of illegal: the kind that makes you look bad. Look really, really bad. Putin will whine and complain about the "horrible plot by america to destroy their enemies", the anti-war people pick it up, and now boom: Putin is the darling of liberals the world over again for daring to stand up to big bad Amerca, with their "regime change" and their "supposed chemical weapons". Putin will lose this round, but he'll be twice as mad as after Libya (and boy, what I've heard about how pissed he was after that), and he'll take it out on the US. How? Hacking, maybe. Smuggling firearms. But believe he will drag America through the motherfucking mud, claming the high-ground all along. And who will join him? Iran. Hezbollah. Everyone on *that* side of the Sunni-Shiite curtain. Whom, incidentally, we are all at war with right now inidrectly. Yeah. Fun.
What's next? Oh, right, Airpower. It doesn't actually win you the war. True, the battleground would certainly look different today, but given that the response every time one side has wobbled near defeat, their regional (Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia) and international (US and Russia) patrons just give them more money, supplies, and etc. I doubt Putin would have felt safe to intervene as he had in Syria in this timeline, but smuggling arms and money is still plenty. And Iran doesn't give a shit anyway. The No-Fly Zone will not win any wars in Syria. In Libya, there was no greater conflict. Here, someone else will fill in the gaps. Unless the US decides to really commit and just bomb Syria into the ground (great visuals by the way; imagine the bombing of that Doctor's without Border's incident, played over and over and over, and maybe you'll get a sense of what is going to happen), he's just committed us anyway without making us win. Hooray for intractable wars and endless suffering.
But wait, there's more. Let's say we actually win.
What fucking now? Even if, in this alternate timeline the most liberal elements of the FSA take control; what then? What do they do about the Kurds? What do they do about Al Quaeda? And what about the Islamic State? Remember that? Sure you do. About a year from this point they decide to proclaim their caliphate, [ur=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Mosull]shortly after being thrust into international headlines by seizing Mosu[/url]l, and start beheading Americans soon after. Roughly six months after Obama does not bomb Syria, ISIS breaks from Al Qaeda and all of the other rebels, seizes their territory and becomes its own thing. Who knows what they do in this timeline, but the fact that ISIS was still part of Al Qaeda (which was and is still to some extent part of the rebel forces) means we only make them stronger sooner. Hooray, right? People say the worst case scenario is Libya. I disagree. I think Libya is one of the better scenarios that result here. Worse is loss of most of Syria and Iraq to Islamic State, Al Qaeada, or its descent into lawless anarchy (more so then today, I mean). Hope you like refugees, in any case.
So that's not a fun option. What else is there? Well, you could, you know, just do what we said we wanted to do. Still barely legal, but legal enough, and if it stops there then people won't mind as much. Right? WRONG. I think you all forget how deeply, deeply opposed the public was. I remember SalmonGod in particular, actually, claiming the Media was beating "the drums of war". EVERYONE was a critic. Regardless, despite the Obama Administration's determined advocacy, and the efforts of all the great Hawks in the Senate, nothing was budging. You gotta remember: this was before Americans started getting beheaded. Back when "keeping us out of Iraq and Syria" was still the thing that most people agreed with the President on. Back when Debt was a big part of American discourse, and a solid year before politicinas brushed off their "Strong on Terrorism" credentials. So despite the wacky team-up of the
Obama Administration and all the biggest Hawks in the senate (who, of course, wanted more intervention, but settled for this), neither
liberals nor
conservatives were buying this, including Congress. You guys weren't buying this. I sure as fuck was. I was out there trying to convince people of the moral deficiency of Assad (a lot easier now!) and of the importance of early intervention, and upholding the idea that America stands by what it says.
Republicans now led on a platform of not making stupid mistakes, and democrats were highly reluctant to break with it. Liberals in foreign countries again raised the specter of US intervention because of OIL (because OF COURSE) or the US's "history of agitation against Syria" (actual quote from the Guardian article I linked, actually), and of course because this was before
Putin lost the heart of millions of naive liberals the world over by annexing Crimea (which, hey, also happened the following year; wtf 2014). Obama was in a hole, and considering legislative trickery that would let intervene anyway (can you have imagined the shit storm?). He'd have to provoke a constitutional fucking crisis to do this now! And why? Because EVERYONE thought it wouldn't end at just "surgical strikes". And hey, they were right, they were just wrong that it was a bad idea. Everyone was saying "This can't be isolated!" And "Soon they will want us to go to war for real!", and of course "Iraq/Syria is not our problem". There was no appetite to go in in the first place! Imagine if, after all that, Obama confirmed their suspicions and said "hey we are going to destroy Syria now mmkay bye" (Obviously, it was soon these very people banging the drums of war for intervention against ISIS. Flies out the fucking window when every hick's jihadist nightmare comes to life in ISIS, and all Obama needs to start strikes
next time was "The Yazidis are dying! Won't someone please think of the
Yazidis?").
Again, no one was buying it. Obama don't know what to do. Onion article of the time: "
Obama carefully deciding between authorizing missile strikes, authorizing missile strikes, and authorizing missile strikes So what is a President to do? Provoke a constitutional crisis to get the authorization to bomb Assad for 60 days and then go home, having achieved nothing but burning himself in the press? Bomb Syria to the ground, preventing the public from ever realizing how fucked they all almost were and go down in history as bloody madman? Or go back in time so that there are no red-lines in Syria to begin with(this is, actually, my preferred option if-and-when I become Barack Obama)? Maybe he should admit defeat, but instead of doing so quietly, he should rant and rave that one day his opponents would know the error of their ways? Actually, if he *had* done that in 2013, he'd be seen as a brilliant man who saw everything coming, even though at the time it would be the ravings of a looney.
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Topic: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American: T+0 (Read 1412370 times)