Here it comes: Syria
But in a region where people remember the betrayal of the Sykes-Picot agreement as though it was yesterday (Great Britain and France secretly carved up the Middle East between them after World War One), and regard the Crusades as though they happened last week, it is the long history of American and other Western actions that burdens the U.S.
Fox:
As I read it, he's saying that the blame from there to here, directed at America, to be expected and valid. I don't buy it any more than I buy the idiot line popular around 2002/2003 that somehow Saddam was complicit in 9/11.
The opinions of the ignorant ought not be endorsed, nor apologized for.
As I read it, he's saying that the blame from there to here, directed at America, to be expected and valid. I don't buy it any more than I buy the idiot line popular around 2002/2003 that somehow Saddam was complicit in 9/11.
The opinions of the ignorant ought not be endorsed, nor apologized for.
I agree about the "expected", but not the "valid".
I do, however, accept your interpretation as possible. Do we know his views from other articles? I'll have a check sometime in the next few days.
I do, however, accept your interpretation as possible. Do we know his views from other articles? I'll have a check sometime in the next few days.
For all my nagging, his article is a good one, in terms of his policy critique.
As I said, he more or less hit the G spot on that one.
As I said, he more or less hit the G spot on that one.
Last edited by Lonewolf_50; 5th Sep 2013 at 14:52.
After watching Sky News early this afternoon of the truck drivers being slaughtered on the grounds of not being the right sect of this terrible religion (not shown due to sensitivities) but seen by Sky's foreign editor Tim Marshall, to my opinion the only answer is nuclear weapons, lots of them in a lillypad formation.
Kill this now before it spreads otherwise this will happen for years and spread like a cancer, and the only way to kill cancer is cut it out, burn it with radiation or poison it, otherwise it kills you.
Kill this now before it spreads otherwise this will happen for years and spread like a cancer, and the only way to kill cancer is cut it out, burn it with radiation or poison it, otherwise it kills you.
We discuss Obama's speeches and pressers and what message they are sending......should we not be paying attention to what Putin is saying....and not saying!
Putin calls Kerry a liar on Syria
Putin calls Kerry a liar on Syria
Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: London
Posts: 7,072
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Of course there are a lot of "undecideds" - these are people who will have to be "incentivised" to come and vote - a bridge here, an airbase saved there, a special tax exemption for green widget makers in another place...........................
AA:-
Not sure about the last point, AA, other than the futility of giving such an order. As to the former, absolutely correct. It is an offence under UK Military Law both to give and to obey an illegal order.
Catch 22 then applies though, as the higher the rank of the officer issuing the order, the more likely that upon review it is declared legal by his superiors. In the UK that likelihood approaches 100% at or above 2* level. Does that make any difference to your actions? It shouldn't, and that is why everybody in the armed forces should rehearse their own response to receiving a clearly illegal order.
A previous poster said that it was mostly a matter of common sense, ie just don't shoot POWs. If only! Many of the airworthiness threads here centre around the infamous order issued to an IPT team member to ignore the mandated airworthiness regulations (that it was their duty to comply with) but to sign them off as complied with anyway, ie "just" paperwork. Those threads account for 62 deaths in airworthiness related aircraft accidents. That order has been confirmed as legal by succeeding Air Officers, Senior CS's, Ministers and SoS's. It was issued by an RAF 2*. It has been referred to both the Civil and Service Police. No action has been taken. That is what you could also face. A moral as well as a legal dilemma indeed.
Oh, as has also been pointed out, if you take the easy way out and simply obey such an order you might then have to face the ICC, as it lies outside of the all encompassing malevolent shadow of the MOD.
The Frost-Nixon interview has been re-aired on UK TV recently, following the death of David Frost. In it, the latter puts it to President Nixon that he issued an illegal order. "Ah, but if it is issued by the President then it is legal", was the response. It seems that in retrospect he was greatly in error.
It is worth noting that all superiors have a duty not to issue an order to their subordinates that they know to be illegal. I believe the it may also be true in the British military that they must not issue an order they know will not be obeyed but I stand to be corrected on that.
Catch 22 then applies though, as the higher the rank of the officer issuing the order, the more likely that upon review it is declared legal by his superiors. In the UK that likelihood approaches 100% at or above 2* level. Does that make any difference to your actions? It shouldn't, and that is why everybody in the armed forces should rehearse their own response to receiving a clearly illegal order.
A previous poster said that it was mostly a matter of common sense, ie just don't shoot POWs. If only! Many of the airworthiness threads here centre around the infamous order issued to an IPT team member to ignore the mandated airworthiness regulations (that it was their duty to comply with) but to sign them off as complied with anyway, ie "just" paperwork. Those threads account for 62 deaths in airworthiness related aircraft accidents. That order has been confirmed as legal by succeeding Air Officers, Senior CS's, Ministers and SoS's. It was issued by an RAF 2*. It has been referred to both the Civil and Service Police. No action has been taken. That is what you could also face. A moral as well as a legal dilemma indeed.
Oh, as has also been pointed out, if you take the easy way out and simply obey such an order you might then have to face the ICC, as it lies outside of the all encompassing malevolent shadow of the MOD.
The Frost-Nixon interview has been re-aired on UK TV recently, following the death of David Frost. In it, the latter puts it to President Nixon that he issued an illegal order. "Ah, but if it is issued by the President then it is legal", was the response. It seems that in retrospect he was greatly in error.
Last edited by Chugalug2; 5th Sep 2013 at 18:21. Reason: "entire" becomes "a team member"
Wow, indeed, when the stove pipes get to be kicked down. Airworthiness seems at least to share one thing in common with International Law among some who post here though. Contempt!
I don't own this space under my name. I should have leased it while I still could
Had they put boots on the ground and succeeded in isolating Hawaii from the Union it would have pushed your forward bases back rather a lot.
Are you suggesting, as I read it, that failure to put boots on the ground ultimately led to failure? Not to put boots on the ground in Syria . . .
OTOH you did put boots on the ground in Vietnam, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Pontius, what do you mean by boots on the ground in re Iran? If you are referring to the Desert 1 raid, that has BFA to do with anything like Pearl Harbor or Viet Nam. It was a raid/rescue mission. Let's stick with apples to apples, if you please.
I thought I was being tongue-in-cheek when I pointed out that we should expect the same from the Islamic world in its 1434th year as we behaved in AD 1434... perhaps AD 1634 is more like it. A good blog by Anatole Kaletsky on Reuters - "Syrian intervention invokes Europe's history".
Incidentally, the Peace of Westphalia was the first time that a multilateral diplomatic negotiation had brought about regional peace, and marked the point at which national boundaries in Europe began to reflect the demographic realities rather than the wishes of the ruling emperors. Clearly those boundaries were subject to some to-and-fro over successive centuries but they have broadly stuck. Hopefully we won't have to wait another 200 years for something similar in the Middle East.
Which brings us back to possible parallels with Europe’s Thirty Years’ War. Why did a war apparently motivated by religious differences — not only between Catholics and Protestants but also between Protestant Lutherans and Calvinists — kill more people in Europe than previous conflicts caused by economic interests and territorial disputes?
Partly because religious fanaticism can inspire hatred, legitimize violence, turn cruelty into self-righteousness and devalue the lives of unbelievers. But probably more important was the way that religion could disguise the true motivations — economic, territorial or dynastic — of outside interests exploiting the anarchy in central Europe for their own gains. What prolonged the religious wars in Europe for so many decades was not just spiritual fanaticism. It was the persistent intervention of external powers — Austria, Spain, France, Sweden, the Papacy, Turkey and Denmark — that found irresistible opportunities to fight proxy wars on German territory, instead of their own land.
These external powers created an unstoppable war machine, by feeding in mercenaries, money and weapons into the collapsing German principalities long after their domestic human and economic resources were exhausted. Without external support, the feeble German princes might have fought themselves to a standstill in years or perhaps even months, rather than decades — and would have found it physically impossible to keep fighting after so many of their citizens had been killed. But as long as the money and mercenaries from Madrid, Paris, Vienna or Rome kept flowing, the killing just went on and on.
It was only after all the great powers of Europe had gone bankrupt, that the fighting in Germany gradually subsided and the Peace of Westphalia was agreed. Meanwhile, England, the one major nation that stayed out of the conflict, emerged as the world’s dominant economy and superpower.
It is better to learn from history than to repeat it.
Partly because religious fanaticism can inspire hatred, legitimize violence, turn cruelty into self-righteousness and devalue the lives of unbelievers. But probably more important was the way that religion could disguise the true motivations — economic, territorial or dynastic — of outside interests exploiting the anarchy in central Europe for their own gains. What prolonged the religious wars in Europe for so many decades was not just spiritual fanaticism. It was the persistent intervention of external powers — Austria, Spain, France, Sweden, the Papacy, Turkey and Denmark — that found irresistible opportunities to fight proxy wars on German territory, instead of their own land.
These external powers created an unstoppable war machine, by feeding in mercenaries, money and weapons into the collapsing German principalities long after their domestic human and economic resources were exhausted. Without external support, the feeble German princes might have fought themselves to a standstill in years or perhaps even months, rather than decades — and would have found it physically impossible to keep fighting after so many of their citizens had been killed. But as long as the money and mercenaries from Madrid, Paris, Vienna or Rome kept flowing, the killing just went on and on.
It was only after all the great powers of Europe had gone bankrupt, that the fighting in Germany gradually subsided and the Peace of Westphalia was agreed. Meanwhile, England, the one major nation that stayed out of the conflict, emerged as the world’s dominant economy and superpower.
It is better to learn from history than to repeat it.
Last edited by Easy Street; 5th Sep 2013 at 19:49.
Pontius:
I think SASless is singing the same tune McCain sang in the early 1990's in re Bosnia. We had a lot of arguments in the US before we finally put our feet down in 1995, under a NATO flag. IIRC he made the same argument in re Kosovo in 1999, but the infamous "we won it all with airpower" operation went off anyway.
The Japanese follow up to Midway was to have been with troops/boots on the ground, which got queered when their fleet suffered a massive defeat. The Pearl Harbor raid, as predicted by Yamamoto, provided a brief advantage for Japan, but Pearl remained the hub of the US fleet in the Pacific. Had boots on the ground been a follow up, US fleet hub moving east might have had a serious negative impact on operations, particularly the submarine force's ops and offensives (all crappy torpedoes considered).
As to Syria, as was shown during the Clinton era vis a vis Saddam, and even the Tomahawk launch on Al Q's ops in Afghanistan, 1998, lobbing Tomahawks doesn't tend to solve your problem. It just makes a bunch of stuff blow up. While that by itself isn't a bad thing, it doesn't do what putting bayonets and boots on the objective does.
The Marines and the Army tend to agree on the old adage:
"You can bomb and strafe all day, but until you put boots on the objective, it isn't yours."
EDIT:
The major exception to that is use of nukes, at which point if you nuke the objective, you don't want it, or at least you don't want to occupy it any time soon.
EDIT 2:
Easy Street, loved the linked article. Well put.
I think SASless is singing the same tune McCain sang in the early 1990's in re Bosnia. We had a lot of arguments in the US before we finally put our feet down in 1995, under a NATO flag. IIRC he made the same argument in re Kosovo in 1999, but the infamous "we won it all with airpower" operation went off anyway.
The Japanese follow up to Midway was to have been with troops/boots on the ground, which got queered when their fleet suffered a massive defeat. The Pearl Harbor raid, as predicted by Yamamoto, provided a brief advantage for Japan, but Pearl remained the hub of the US fleet in the Pacific. Had boots on the ground been a follow up, US fleet hub moving east might have had a serious negative impact on operations, particularly the submarine force's ops and offensives (all crappy torpedoes considered).
As to Syria, as was shown during the Clinton era vis a vis Saddam, and even the Tomahawk launch on Al Q's ops in Afghanistan, 1998, lobbing Tomahawks doesn't tend to solve your problem. It just makes a bunch of stuff blow up. While that by itself isn't a bad thing, it doesn't do what putting bayonets and boots on the objective does.
The Marines and the Army tend to agree on the old adage:
"You can bomb and strafe all day, but until you put boots on the objective, it isn't yours."
EDIT:
The major exception to that is use of nukes, at which point if you nuke the objective, you don't want it, or at least you don't want to occupy it any time soon.
EDIT 2:
Easy Street, loved the linked article. Well put.
Last edited by Lonewolf_50; 5th Sep 2013 at 19:52.
As to Syria, as was shown during the Clinton era vis a vis Saddam, and even the Tomahawk launch on Al Q's ops in Afghanistan, 1998, lobbing Tomahawks doesn't tend to solve your problem. It just makes a bunch of stuff blow up. While that by itself isn't a bad thing, it doesn't do what putting bayonets and boots on the objective does.
The Marines and the Army tend to agree on the old adage:
"You can bomb and strafe all day, but until you put boots on the objective, it isn't yours."
The Marines and the Army tend to agree on the old adage:
"You can bomb and strafe all day, but until you put boots on the objective, it isn't yours."
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Australia - South of where I'd like to be !
Age: 59
Posts: 4,261
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Execution of Syrian Army prisoners by Syrian Rebels, the one's the west want to arm and support.
Stripped, bound and shot in the head: Horrifying fate of Assad¿s soldiers executed on camera by Syrian rebels | Mail Online
Stripped, bound and shot in the head: Horrifying fate of Assad¿s soldiers executed on camera by Syrian rebels | Mail Online
500N,
Those poor guys were lucky.
Way too many times they merely get their heads hacked off.
Both sides are brutal nasty SOB's.....and more than a few of the Opposition have received such treatment after being captured.
There are websites that show plenty of these kinds of acts by both sides.
The International Media do not show them because they are "Too Graphic".
Easy.......just which set of Boots do you want to wind up "King of the Mountain" in this thing?
Assad....the Butcher.....or the Al Qaeda Butchers?
If we do nothing....one side will finally win.
If we stay out of this....at least we don't give the Radical Islamists yet another rallying cry.
Those poor guys were lucky.
Way too many times they merely get their heads hacked off.
Both sides are brutal nasty SOB's.....and more than a few of the Opposition have received such treatment after being captured.
There are websites that show plenty of these kinds of acts by both sides.
The International Media do not show them because they are "Too Graphic".
Easy.......just which set of Boots do you want to wind up "King of the Mountain" in this thing?
Assad....the Butcher.....or the Al Qaeda Butchers?
If we do nothing....one side will finally win.
If we stay out of this....at least we don't give the Radical Islamists yet another rallying cry.
Last edited by SASless; 5th Sep 2013 at 20:21.
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Australia - South of where I'd like to be !
Age: 59
Posts: 4,261
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Yes, I know both sides do it and I didn't mean to infer
that only the Syrian Rebels do it.
I was just using it as an example.
I do look up the videos and watch them occasionally
and they are very brutal.
that only the Syrian Rebels do it.
I was just using it as an example.
I do look up the videos and watch them occasionally
and they are very brutal.
It is getting ugly over this Syrian thing.....
