Originally Posted by
Broadsword***
Do you think issuing an unequivocal public warning to someone whom you suspect is about to use chemical weapons is a bad thing?
What has that to do with my observation of, the warning having been issued last year, telling someone what your plan details are is stupid. "We intend to hurt you, but not very much:" That's the message being sent by intentions of limited strikes. Sorry, that's stupid. You may recall that limited strikes on Saddam during the 90's regarding his various misdeed in re UNSCRs did **** all to get him to change his course.
As to warning and threatening ... and then not backing it up, it does make one look quite the fool. I suspect you agree.
I don't need you to lecture me on Ethiopia and the Italians: I was fully aware of that in grade school, and have noted on this forum and others the parallels. While an Imperial expansion and a civil are are two different things, the impotence of international bodies seems to be "the same old thing."
I think that in re LoN and UN you and I agree.
I saw Secretary Kerry try to call what's up coming with Syria a "Munich" moment.
He's wrong.
Hitler's Germany was a Major Power.
Syria? Not quite.
His sense of scale is way off. Syria is more like Czechoslovakia, then, or Poland, or Austria, or even Spain ...
The Powers are not about to face off with each other just yet.