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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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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 |
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...........................
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AA:-
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. |
Wow, a connection between a secterian civil war and UK mil airworthiness. Almost like a Godwins Law of pprune nowadays....
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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!
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Originally Posted by SASless
(Post 8032082)
The Japanese conducted a limited Air Strike only.....no Boots on the Ground attack a while back at a place called Pearl Harbor as I recall.
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.
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OK, pushing the point, but what do you think SASLess meant?
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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".
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. |
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. :p EDIT 2: Easy Street, loved the linked article. Well put. :ok: |
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." |
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 |
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. |
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. |
It is getting ugly over this Syrian thing.....
https://sphotos-b-atl.xx.fbcdn.net/h...23170871_n.jpg |
Strange, I heard he'd just grown a pair.
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Easy.......just which set of Boots do you want to wind up "King of the Mountain" in this thing? |
Afghanistan was going pretty well with just a few western SF on the ground; it was dumping in all the other "boots on the ground" that sent it pear-shaped. |
Strange, I heard he'd just grown a pair. |
Lone Wolf, what I suspected and we are of like minds then.
Except you need one helluva lot of boots that western powers don't have and the civil populace doesn't want and the host country hates. |
Ahhh... Yes, the old Balls for Brains Syndrome... The dopey old bastard is a 15 year old run by his hormones again... You and him would be mates... |
There are many rebel groups: Syrian opposition - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fighting rebels number about 150,000. Many of which are local militias. The salafists are mainly in Al Nusra and number 6-7 thousand. However they weren't extreme enough for many and there was a rift. The jihadist nutters left to for ISIS, which conducts most of the ethnic cleansing type atrocities. They want to create a Sunni Caliphate. Because the nutters left Al Nusra it became a lot more moderate and became more friendly with the FSA. Against whom it had sometimes been skirmishing. ISIS will fight anyone who doesn't support their world view. Then there is YPG in the north trying to create a de facto Kurdish enclave, which the Turks don't want. There has been a lot of fighting between the YPG and the jihadists. Today the YPG won three villages back. The ultimate resource for on the ground news (and propaganda) is: https://twitter.com/PicoBee/syria-en...g-rpts/members Good explanatory diagram: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BTbdKHVCUAEOwG0.jpg:large |
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This is now all shaping up rather nicely...
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In a related story, China today toughened its rhetoric on Syria, warning President Barack Obama that, “Military action would have a negative impact on the global economy, especially on the oil price – it will cause a hike in the oil price.” |
We made the exact same mistake in Afghanistan we did in Vietnam....and for the exact same reasons....the US Army focused upon Conventional Warfare, structured itself for Conventional Warfare, and Generals who command Corps and Divisions don't want to be left out of the the fight. Thus....large unwieldy units get shoved in to the mix for intra-Army political reasons and not for Tactical or Strategic reasons.
Both Vietnam and Afghanistan were Insurgencies....and when they were being fought that way....were going along in a reasonable manner. The North Vietnamese did not begin moving main force NVA units south until we started our Troop Buildup and changed the War from a Insurgency to more of a conventional war. The NVA were doing quite well with their efforts, but if the Americans had promptly and effectively trained and armed the South Vietnamese, and not gotten involved as we did.....it may very well have turned out much differently than it did. We wasted four full years before we got around to building up the Vietnamese Armed Forces.....and sadly when we did....we built them into a mirror image of our own Conventional Force. If we look to Syria.....if we are to get stuck in there....why not copy the Afghanistan model but keep our conventional units out of the fight.....and stick to Naval, Air, and SpecOps units....and a very strong CIA Paramilitary presence to ensure the Arms and other support gets to the "good" guys in the opposition. The question now is what are Russia and China going to do....the Russians seem to be matching our Navy ship for ship (less Carriers) and now the Chinese are showing up with a single surface ship (any guess how many Russian and Chinese Submarines are in the area). This is beginning to turn into a Big Dick Contest. |
Broadsword:
Perhaps their sincerity would be more convincing if they sent a warning to the gasser-in-chief of Syria. I really hope the three "stars" behind your aggressive nom de plume does not indicate the pinnacle of your career... Your lack of critical thinking implies that your decision making for those beneath you could be less than beneficial for them. You've shown several times now that you don't really "grasp" the complex issues being discussed here - and several others have pointed it out to you. Can I suggest, for your own mental health, taking that "quiet corner" I suggested earlier... Just a thought... :ok: |
Where, exactly, is your proof that Assad did anything more than drop a good fart? Show us all, please, this definitive proof that the government of Syria did this. |
Really? At least with China and Russia, the 'prove he did it' posturing is for geopolitical reasons. What's your excuse? My "posturing" is because I don't know who farted... Was it Assad or was it one of the numerous "funnies" that we probably don't want to be associated with? Until you know that teeny little detail you really don't know who to bomb do you? Unless you, the great three star Broadsword, has information you are keeping from us... Pray tell, oh great one... Illuminate us.... Grant us the benefit of your godlike knowledge... I think I just found a sandal...Is it Broadsword's? No, his mummy says we should leave him alone - he's a naughty little boy... :rolleyes: |
So more pieces to the puzzle.
BBC News - UK has new Syria chemical evidence - David Cameron IMHO, this actually adds nothing to the debate which is based on one one of the following scenarios: 1. There was no chemical weapons attack in Damascus. 2. The Regime forces used chemical weapons against the rebels. 3. A Regime Commander used chemical weapons against the rebels without the authority of Al Assad. 4. The rebel forces used chemical weapons either by accident or on purpose. The possibilities and outcomes of these scenarios, again IMHO are: 1. There was a chemical weapons attack in Damascus. The fact that we are awaiting the results from Porton Down or from the UN Weapons Inspectors is almost superfluous. The fact that there was some sort of chemical weapons attack has never really been in doubt. I suppose the US and those clamouring for action are trying to strengthen the case for military action of some sort by building up the evidence piece by piece. 2. This appears to be the stance by those advocating some sort of response against the Al Assad regime. The Germans, who want action but will not act themselves, have evidence of a Hizbollah commander reporting to Iran that Al Assad panicked and ordered this attack in response to attacks against Regime forces in Damascus. Hearsay or more evidence? The French, against all public opinion in France are ready to act with the US. The US are willing to act, partly based on Israeli intercept of a panicked Syrian MOD phone call asking a chemical weapons unit WTF just happened. This could be evidence of Al Assad ordering an attack without the MOD knowing .....or.... 3. I imagine that Al Assad would have sole responsibility to order such an attack which makes the rogue officer scenario unlikely. That said, if this was a rogue officer interpreting orders incorrectly, does this make the case for military action against the regime? 4. There are just as many reports out there which suggest that this may have been mishandling of chemical weapons by rebel forces. There are fewer reports which indicate that rebel forces may have used these weapons on purpose.Either way, given this nightmare scenario, how would the world act? Which ever way you look at it, with the US fleet, Russian fleet and now the possible arrival of a Chinese vessel, things are certainly hotting up. I do not envy Barrack Obama. That said, I certainly don't envy the Syrian people who are the losers whatever happens, unless we actually think that a surgical strike would somehow enable a regime change leading to democratic elections and a peaceful Syria. Somehow I can't see this happening in the short term. |
Pray tell, oh great one... Illuminate us.... Grant us the benefit of your godlike knowledge... Don't worry though, I'm sure we'll all see it soon enough, once one of your loyal compatriots has slapped it all over Wikileaks. |
Broadsword:
once one of your loyal compatriots has slapped it all over Wikileaks Funnily enough, I don't have access to US classified intelligence material, but clearly it was good enough for Obama's most implacable opponents on the Hill. You're all a bit out of your depth here aren't you... Don't worry, this is difficult stuff... Sit and watch for a while, you'll get the hang of it... :ok: |
I can actually understand why the USA is a bit reticent about handing over their intel, no point letting the world know your capabilities, or they will know where to close those breaches.
The whole thing just seems now to be becoming a willy waving contest to see who's got the biggest without fixing the problem. |
Nutloose:
The whole thing just seems now to be becoming a willy waving contest to see who's got the biggest without fixing the problem. |
I'm English... It was??? Bugger me... I missed that... I thought America's great leaders are still on holiday and haven't expressed their opinion by vote yet. (Inane smiley goes here.) |
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