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[smjjames]

child sub-munitions? wut Max?

-snip-

Um, Shazbot, that link (and map, though that map might be older) is almost two years old, MUCH has changed since then. The fact that the Kurds have been carving out a region is nothing new, they've been doing that since the civil war erupted.

[Greiger]

So what if we drop a school on a Syrian base and Assad hits the child sub-munitions with Sarin? Who is the bigger monster here, Assad, Hitler, or Spicer who would briefly get to be correct when he pointed out Hitler never dropped schools on anyone?

Ghandi for saying his words are backed by ORBITAL ELEMENTARY SCHOOL DROPS!

[Frumple]

No, the situation has changed in Syria. ISIS, Syria Assad the Kurds have settled out into geographic regions. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-22798391 [snip]

Yeah, I'd bet 20 without hesitation less than a third of those polled is aware of any of that. Almost certainly significantly less. So... no. So far as the US electorate is concerned, the situation is largely identical.

[sluissa]

So what if we drop a school on a Syrian base and Assad hits the child sub-munitions with Sarin? Who is the bigger monster here, Assad, Hitler, or Spicer who would briefly get to be correct when he pointed out Hitler never dropped schools on anyone?

Still not true.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Sandhurst_Road_School

[Helgoland]

If anything, the case for intervening in Syria is weaker now than it was in 2012: The Russians are involved, the opposition is much less secular, and Assad's stocks of chemical weapons are less than they used to be. It's a great example of how the Democrats are actually interested in a functioning Republic, while the Republicans ironically appear not to give a flying fuck about it.

So what if we drop a school on a Syrian base and Assad hits the child sub-munitions with Sarin? Who is the bigger monster here, Assad, Hitler, or Spicer who would briefly get to be correct when he pointed out Hitler never dropped schools on anyone?

Still not true.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Sandhurst_Road_School

Ah, but this is the other way around.

[martinuzz]

Obviously, Assad must be punished for using refugees of mass destruction against Europe, by showering him with kindergartens with toddler MIRVs, and end it all in a big baby boom.

[misko27]

I don't intend to pick on you Shaz, but you keep posting things I want to respond to.

Life is making the least-bad decision and then you die.

Counter-point: life is making any decision, including no decision at all, followed inevitably by death regardless of your decisions or lack thereof. Clearly, nothing matters, so we can safely retire this thread as fundamentally unnecessary given an uncaring universe and our finite, ultimately meaningless lives.

Which is an odd combination of signals.

Odd to you, but Trump doesn't care about that. You hit the nail on the head already and didn't even notice.

thoroughly signal that Trump's foreign policy is not Obama's foreign policy.

I'd bet this is the overriding concern for Trump. He's acted inconsistent because he's promised inconsistency,  and he promised inconsistent things because the only consistent thing he is is "anti-Obama", but that's impossible. You can't be more reserved than Obama, while also being more aggressive than Obama. So it looks weird attempting to put this into practice, because it is weird.

Trump isn't crazy.

Debatable, but nevertheless, it does not follow that because he isn't thoroughly insane that his actions make sense or answer to an overarching policy plan. Even if he does have a plan, it could be poorly executed, or based on incomplete information, or simply fanciful.

After Libya was torn apart by Hillary, Obama's international reputation was shot, he drew a red line, he balked when Assad violated that red line, punted to Congress, Congress punted back, he punted to Russia, Russia smiled that Putin smile and now they've just burrowed in like ticks into Syria which has not gotten rid of its gas weapons.

? This tells me your indulging a little too much in hindsight. At the time the intervention was as popular as any intervention is: received the backing of the UN, seemed to have been successful without committing the US to anything that comes after, and Obama received a fairly substantial boost for a while, domestically and internationally. That's the freaking gold standard for interventions right there. You're actually forgetting a crucial bit of the timeline here: everything in Syria occurred after Libya. Libya was 2011. The situation in Syria took a while to properly escalate into a full-fledged civil war; the war is considered to have broken out in July 2012, a full year after Libya. In fact all of the bad sides of Libya wouldn't be seen for years, after the Syrian war, the refugee crisis, and the Islamic State started coming to the fore. The reason Putin resisted Syria initially was precisely and for no reason other than the fact that he received a black eye through the fall of Gadafi and was determined to prevent it from happening again.

Such is the influence of Putin's propaganda that he has managed to shift the debate so much. He loses too, but he spins his losses to look like wins. But for anyone who can remember the distant era of 2011, it's clear that Putin's policy, while somewhat more consistent than the US, has been based on the overriding goal of creating conflict regions to drag out wars by supporting one side just enough and calling that a win, rather than the business of actually winning and thus accepting that the results of winning sometimes suck (as the US learned in Libya). From a literal perspective, the US has done very well in Syria. It's cost the US nothing, and the people who have to pay (Europe, Syria, rebels, Turkey, Iran, Russia, Assad, etc) are all very clearly Not America.^TM If I was an America First politician I'd say job well done. Iraq and ISIS complicated things a bit, but ISIS is being pushed back steadily and will soon be a non-factor. It's only because America continues to bother itself with Syria in this half-hearted matter that we haven't "won". There is a lot of talk about Trump's "America First" mindset, but in truth it seems the country is unwilling to really consider things in that light. We've got a powerful reluctance to intervene filtered through a mindset of intervention.

[Max™]

child sub-munitions? wut Max?

Pretty sure part of the discussed destructiveness of dropping schools vs tomahawks hinged on the havoc which unattended children will produce inevitably.

So what if we drop a school on a Syrian base and Assad hits the child sub-munitions with Sarin? Who is the bigger monster here, Assad, Hitler, or Spicer who would briefly get to be correct when he pointed out Hitler never dropped schools on anyone?

Still not true.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Sandhurst_Road_School

I mean, kinda, but it's not fully air-dropping a school on a different target, so much as it was dropping a school on stuff inside the school, but still awful so I'll give Hitler half-credit and Spicer the other half?

[Neonivek]

Someone seriously needs to take the president's twitter away... like now!

[Max™]

Someone seriously needs to take the president's twitter away... like now!

Spoiler: I say... (click to show/hide)

...jolly good idea, chap!

[WealthyRadish]

I like Treet's twumps, personally. It's permanent and documentary evidence that we can pull up decades from now when young people ask if we really were that stupid, and ask why Dad swears so much when I bring him up I'm just trying to write a paper, please dear don't get him started again why don't you go help with the dishes?

[Flying Dice]

Forget the twitter, I'm getting great laughs out of Meme Spicer saying that "Even Hitler didn't stoop to using chemical weapons" when delivering a press conference about Assad and Syria.

[Frumple]

I think the most "fun" thing about that one is that it's apparently getting people to remember a time hitler's lot gassed some russians. So, like. Even if you do give that the gas chambers don't count (so you can whatabout the US or whatever), Spicer's still wrong, the people that's saying he's technically right look like they're wrong, all of it's just a kinda', "Yeah, no, no, y'dun fucked up." The timing is just icing on the metaphorical cake.

E: And now that I think about it a lil', that the target for that use was russian troops, of all things, given this particular situation, is definitely some kind of thing. What kind, I'm not sure, but some kind.

[Dunamisdeos]

I think the most "fun" thing about that one is that it's apparently getting people to remember a time hitler's lot gassed some russians. So, like. Even if you do give that the gas chambers don't count (so you can whatabout the US or whatever), Spicer's still wrong, the people that's saying he's technically right look like they're wrong, all of it's just a kinda', "Yeah, no, no, y'dun fucked up." The timing is just icing on the metaphorical cake.

E: And now that I think about it a lil', that the target for that use was russian troops, of all things, given this particular situation, is definitely some kind of thing. What kind, I'm not sure, but some kind.

+1.....Even though he was trying to imply military use, it is monumentally insensitive/inappropriate.

Also wrong.

[Neonivek]

And EVEN if Hitler didn't use chemical weapons, rewriting history... Would anyone honestly believe it would have been out of some shred of morality?

Might as well go "Even the Zulu never resorted to chemical weapons!" or "Even Julius Caesar never resorted to Chlorine Gas!"

Not that Hitler was pure evil and couldn't think of anything except in terms of how to do evil... But chemical weapons in WW2 was hardly the moral event horizon just so we are clear.