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[misko27]

I see someone on my overly liberal campus decided to put up a big sign saying the US intervention in Syria is Imperialism.

It boggles the mind that people who were alive during the invasion of Iraq can say these things with a straight face. I wonder if the intervention in Yugoslavia was imperialism.

Because in hindsight the issue with Libya was the lack of regime change and bombing of government forces.

Are you really prepared to argue that the alternative would've been better?

In terms of GDP, HDI, or general warzone qualities?
[/quote
Because Muammar's Libya was superior in all those terms. He even built the world's largest man-made aqueduct for the people he was "dictator" of to have running water. I'd rather not get into my bad guy vs your bad guy comparison for a number of reasons, but Assad's Syria isn't throwing gay people off buildings, that's Saudi Arabia, a "peaceful" "ally" of ours, which is exporting it's virtuous visionary culture to the other Muslim diaspora.

Well since you did bring it up, I'd like to ask if you are familiar with Flight Pan-Am 103.

Gadaffi amassed a significantly larger kill count of Americans than Syria. And for your scarequote "dictator" (as if he wasn't a dictator? A dictator isn't necessarily evil in-and-of-itself, but that doesn't mean you're not a dictator when you are one.) And as for Libya in general, the most important thing to remember here is the US did not start the fire. It didn't start anything in Libya, Syria, Bahrain, or any of these other countries. The cost of intervening was very low. This wasn't the US barging in to midwife an unwilling democracy out of happy citizens, the Libyan Civil War was happening anyway. It's still happening. What's changed? Well Gaddafi, a man with the blood of over 187 Americans (and, incidentally, my mother's fiance) on his hands, and general thorn in the US's side, is gone. The massacre of civilians we wanted to stop was prevented successfully. And it was all done with the blessing of the UN. I, for one, think we got a decent return on our rather minor investment.

[Frumple]

Maybe back then they were saying it was imperialismer? Which sounds like some kind of magic spell, now that I type it out. Or an elder scrolls race.

[Sergarr]

So that inane conspiracy theory that I posted here a couple of hours ago about that Tomahawk attack being a dual-sided Russia-Trump conspiracy has now got some support being it on highly dubious "media" networks. Apparently, Trump notified Russians before Congress on that strike.

There are obvious logical justifications behind it (informing Russians prevents WW3, informing Congress does jack shit as they don't really matter and would've agreed with it anyway), but to some people, everything looks like dirty commies evidence of Russia puppeting Trump. We'll see how that'll turn out.

[alway]

http://fair.org/home/the-return-of-the-dangerous-obama-did-nothing-narrative-on-syria/
On how the corporate media whitewashed all prior intervention in syria to push a pro-Trump, pro-war agenda.

[sluissa]

Syrian Human Rights Observatory reports Syrian planes are taking off again from the attacked airport, and flying missions over Homs.
According the Russian Ministry of Defense, only 23 out of 59 missiles hit their targets. Several buildings and one radar installation was destroyed, as well as six old Mig-23 fighters that were stationed in a hangar for repairs.
No runways or taxiways were (seriously) damaged. None of the 33 parked Su-22s were hit, nor were the couple of parked Su-24s. Eleven out of forty hangars were destroyed. Of those eleven, 7 were supposedly empty.

What if this was just a false flag, with Putin's full knowledge and approval, to divert attention from accusations of Trump and staff being Russian puppets.. Note that the Kremlin has put the blame on the old military establishment (leftover from the Obama administration), and not on Trump.

Sidenote, at 1.6 million per missile, the attack cost nearly 100 million dollars in munitions alone.

The 1.6 million number is a bit on the unfair side. That's the 2014-15(depending on source) estimate for a new top of the line missile. The 1999 estimate was closer to 600,000. Wikipedia suggests there's about 2.3 billion wrapped up in a total of 3,500 stockpiled tomahawk missiles of varying types. That would put the avg cost of one somewhere between 600,000-700,000.

In addition, all of these missiles are already purchased. And the Navy is still purchasing them. That's one of my big gripes with cost analysis on weapons use. The military is going to buy weapons. They're especially going to keep a significant stockpile of anything that's consumable and they feel they'll have a use for in the future. (Especially when they're given line item budgets for a given item and not purchasing it means losing the budget money in the future.) This means that whether they go off and explode somewhere or sit in a tube on a ship, or rust in a hangar somewhere, the cost is essentially the same either way.

There's an argument to be made that an unexploded missile is still an asset in inventory and might be sold off later... But the military has shown it's incredibly bad at managing that sort of thing, being more likely to use them as target drones, or give them away to "allies" once they're obsolete, or just let them sit in a warehouse somewhere until they're completely unsalvagable for anything but scrap. Hell, maybe the San Diego public school system would like some Tomahawk missiles to back up their fire sale priced MRAP.

As for the 23 out of 59 number. That's almost certainly bunk. I won't say it's the full 58-59 out of 59-60 that the US is claiming(although I won't say it's not true either). But http://q13fox.com/2017/04/07/satellite-images-show-beforeafter-of-us-missile-strikes-on-syrian-air-base/ sat images fairly clearly show at least 40+ clear signs of damage at the airbase.

Even if you went by the Russian report, and even if you wanted to compare costs of losing consumable missiles vs durable equipment like planes. And all you wanted to compare was the 6 planes Russia confirms as lost vs the 60 missiles lost. Avg Mig-23 plane between 3 and 7 million. Avg cost of Tomahawk 700k.

Tomahawks $42 million
Planes between $18 and $42 million (or even 90 million if you wanna go by one 1992 number for a mig-23 I found which would also make it competitive with the price of 60 brand new tomahawks.)

So depending on how much Syria paid for those Mig-23s... (I'd venture towards the low end if Russia is giving them the friend discount, but who knows exactly...) it could be a fair trade just for those 6... But we also know there was more damage than just those 6 planes. It's easy to see from photographs there was infrastructure and building damage as well that's harder to put a price on.



TL;DR: Trump is probably a better businessman than he first appears. He might have actually gotten a good deal.

[TheDarkStar]

Trump could end up being like Nixon - a strong foreign policy but a weak domestic one. Except it might be even more extreme than that.

[smjjames]

Trump could end up being like Nixon - a strong foreign policy but a weak domestic one. Except it might be even more extreme than that.

It's too early to tell how strong either would be, however, things could change at any time. Remember how everybody pretty much thought George W. Bush would be mostly domestic policy? Then 9/11 happened.

Seems though that even if a President attempts to be mostly domestically focused, there's just too many things in foreign policy that demand their attention, whether the President wants it or not.

[Dunamisdeos]

I've seen reports that fuel depots were hit.

And again remember, this was a message meant to deter further chemical incidents. I don't think that looking at it in terms of raw attrition is the point of it.  We aren't at active war with them, and if they stop gassing folks then we achieved our objective.

[sluissa]

I've seen reports that fuel depots were hit.

And again remember, this was a message meant to deter further chemical incidents. I don't think that looking at it in terms of raw attrition is the point of it.  We aren't at active war with them, and if they stop gassing folks then we achieved our objective.

Exactly

[Frumple]

Poorly, and in a way that both depends entirely on assad (or whoever) rolling over instead of just mothballing the stuff for a few months or a year or whatever and then doing it again and put unnecessary strain on foreign relations on top of it. Little to no damage to actual capacity to use, no agreement between other nations to act should it happen again, no substantial actual consequence for those who decided to commit the act to begin with. Explicit demonstration that the president's word on things like military intervention is complete shit, as he's spoken openly against what he just did as recent as last year and been strident about not doing it since at least 2013, which will almost certainly kneecap all sorts of negotiations going forward and in theatres far beyond syria.

We made a punitive strike, at substantial cost material and particularly political, with its efficacy towards achieving a limited goal (that does basically fuck all to limit deaths in syria, to boot, and may actually result in more than not doing it would have) entirely in the hands of at this point entirely hostile actors. We have no apparent step two, no apparent goal besides punch them and hope they don't meet the raise in stakes, no indication of one bloody iota of foresight or planning, with even the sodding attack itself apparently being an obama administration plan pulled out and used.

If this is what we're going to use as the baseline for objective achieved, these next four years are going to fuck the US into the ground.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Gadaffi amassed a significantly larger kill count of Americans than Syria. And for your scarequote "dictator" (as if he wasn't a dictator? A dictator isn't necessarily evil in-and-of-itself, but that doesn't mean you're not a dictator when you are one.) And as for Libya in general, the most important thing to remember here is the US did not start the fire. It didn't start anything in Libya, Syria, Bahrain, or any of these other countries. The cost of intervening was very low. This wasn't the US barging in to midwife an unwilling democracy out of happy citizens, the Libyan Civil War was happening anyway. It's still happening. What's changed? Well Gaddafi, a man with the blood of over 187 Americans (and, incidentally, my mother's fiance) on his hands, and general thorn in the US's side, is gone. The massacre of civilians we wanted to stop was prevented successfully. And it was all done with the blessing of the UN. I, for one, think we got a decent return on our rather minor investment.

Notice you're citing an attack that was never proven to be undertaken by Gaddaffi and which was used as a reason to isolate, and then ultimately destroy the regime that was much more prosperous, stable, and peaceful than the alternative we see today which is various Islamic militias vying for supremacy.

And I'll draw a parallel between an attack being blamed on an inconvenient leader and being used as a club to pummel the country into submission and acceptance (at gunpoint) of an ever-changing objective of "securing freedom from oppression" and the leadup to a) Iraq b) Libya and now c) Syria and how those objectives lead to more chaos and Islamists ultimately seizing control. In Syria's case, they don't own it yet, but we're helping them in every way we can a la Libya.

I'd like to be proven that policies of interventionism in a chase of a questionable objective of projection of your virtuous morals onto others works in the long run, but you can't cite a case where that does work out for the better. Unless you really do think the current state of Libya is a sea change and "better" than the previous status quo. In that case our opinions are irreconcilable due to the mountain of evidence showing Libya as a failed state due to our meddling directly in the name of "stopping oppression". Because Islamic militias rounding you up isn't oppression.

Assad has protected Christian and Jewish minorities in the past, and those forces loyal to him and Russia are the only thing currently preventing ISIS from capturing, raping, and destroying more Middle Eastern people's cultures. To cast this aside in a utopian chase for an ideal moulded at the whim of intelligence agencies and the media will be what destroys peace and stability in the world in the long run.

Note: I am highly skeptical of claims Assad bombed people with gas. There is no evidence the airbase struck with Tomahawks in question ever held chemical depots of a military stripe. The airstrike in question on Tuesday(?) was directed at a stockpile of chemicals that were in the process of reverse engineering by ISIS affiliated terrorists, and the strike itself may have set off a reaction resulting in collateral damage. Or, alternatively, ISIS finished the process of reverse-engineering, and used those weapons in an attempt to claim Assad had gassed children (dear god, think of the Children!) and garner western support for bombing oddly specific military targets in the wake of an airstrike on what they had figured was their ace in the hole and resulted in them quickening the deployment of such methods.

What we can say with certainty is that 72 hours is not enough time to come to a conclusion in such a case. Not enough of a conclusion to risk drawing us into an actual world war.

[Dunamisdeos]

Poorly, and in a way that both depends entirely on assad (or whoever) rolling over instead of just mothballing the stuff for a few months or a year or whatever and then doing it again and put unnecessary strain on foreign relations on top of it. Little to no damage to actual capacity to use, no agreement between other nations to act should it happen again, no substantial actual consequence for those who decided to commit the act to begin with. Explicit demonstration that the president's word on things like military intervention is complete shit, as he's spoken openly against what he just did as recent as last year and been strident about not doing it since at least 2013, which will almost certainly kneecap all sorts of negotiations going forward and in theatres far beyond syria.

We made a punitive strike, at substantial cost material and particularly political, with its efficacy towards achieving a limited goal (that does basically fuck all to limit deaths in syria, to boot, and may actually result in more than not doing it would have) entirely in the hands of at this point entirely hostile actors. We have no apparent step two, no apparent goal besides punch them and hope they don't meet the raise in stakes, no indication of one bloody iota of foresight or planning, with even the sodding attack itself apparently being an obama administration plan pulled out and used.

If this is what we're going to use as the baseline for objective achieved, these next four years are going to fuck the US into the ground.

Yeah, see, the actions you seem to want amount to an actual declaration of war. That is what we call it when we gather allies, set terms, and make plans for future military strikes with the intent of destroying another party's ability to make war.

The rest of us aren't so cool with declaring war on Russia's allies, you see.

::EDIT::
Also, I'm glad we revised our stance once they started gassing human infants in the streets. That seems like a thing worth making an exception for.

[martinuzz]

The rest of us aren't so cool with declaring war on Russia's allies, you see.

So you're saying that the strike on the Syrian airport was a terrorist attack by the US, if you say it's not an act of war.

[Frumple]

Yeah, see, the actions you seem to want amount to an actual declaration of war. That is what we call it when we gather allies, set terms, and make plans for future military strikes with the intent of destroying another party's ability to make war.

The rest of us aren't so cool with declaring war on Russia's allies, you see.

::EDIT::
Also, I'm glad we revised our stance once they started gassing human infants in the streets. That seems like a thing worth making an exception for.

Mate, you've just made about a half dozen assumptions about what I was saying that I didn't say, and have previously stated things that should make it damn obvious I wouldn't agree with.

Seriously. Gathering allies, identifying desired terms, and planning for future action is also goddamn diplomacy, and what you do when you want to come to a negotiating table. How you show you're a rational actor that's willing and able to communicate through means other than force. You are the one that jumped straight to violent action and discarded the possibility of other means, even in the face of implying "other means" is exactly what you're supporting. And hey, you want to know an easy way to declare war on someone? Launch a surprise attack on a nation you're not in open conflict with, without making clear exactly what you want and what the consequences will be, while completely disregarding whatever procedure your previous agreements had laid out as consequence for violation. 'Cause I'm pretty sure the last agreement on this that was brokered -- through threat, diplomacy, and measured display of willingness to commit to action, not off the goddamn cuff near entirely symbolic bombing -- didn't have a clause in whatever the wording was that said, "Should this agreement be violated, the related party will be bombed without attempt at negotiation or any goddamn thing else."

You'll also note well I've said before that I wouldn't be entirely adverse to intervention, and I said fucking nowhere that gassing civilians isn't an act worth censure, military or otherwise. What concerns I have about that sort of thing are secondary to what my concerns about this particular bloody clusterfuck are.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Also, I'm glad we revised our stance once they started gassing human infants in the streets.

So, what evidence is there of this claim? I also agree ISIS gassing children to garner good PR for overthrowing a secular elected leader is a thing worth revising your stance over.