And Then There Was... Syria

[Tessera]

It is also a nice distraction from the whole invasion of privacy fiasco.

Agreed.

What did Bill Clinton do back in 1998, when he was being threatened with impeachment..?

ANSWER: he promptly invaded Iraq, even though there wasn't any significant new threat coming from the region.

And while that invasion was underway, Clinton's cronies... guys like Dick Gebhardt and others... were on the TV shouting
about how disgusting it was for the Republicans to be seeking impeachment when there was a war going on.

Same shit -- different day.  


For what it's worth, the latest polls show that more than 60 percent of Americans, including a large number of Republicans,
are opposed to us getting involved in Syria. Now watch them go ahead and start dropping bombs anyway.

We don't live in a democracy, folks. Not when Exxon and BP have a bigger say in government policy than the voters do.

[Tessera]

Here are the latest poll numbers, regarding how the American people feel about U.S. intervention in Syria:


60% of Americans are firmly opposed to ANY intervention of ANY kind in Syria.

9% of Americans are in favor of U.S. intervention in Syria.

31% of Americans are undecided.



Those are very revealing numbers. A pitifully low number of Americans want us to invade Syria. Less than 10 percent. On the other hand, 91 percent of Americans are either opposed to any intervention of any kind, or else they are undecided.

Hardly a call to action, eh..? And yet our politicians are running around on TV, beating their chests and saying shit like "This is what America wants" and "This is what America stands for." Huh..?! Exactly which America are they referring to..? Obviously not yours and mine, because 91 percent of us do not want the USA to get involved in yet another Mideast conflict.

Now watch our "leaders" do it anyway. And if you want to know why they are going to do it anyway, then just do a bit of research on Google... and search for the Obama/Saudi connection.

Once again, it's all about the OIL and the MONEY.

Welcome to the Corporate States Of America. Now sit down, shut up and do what the massa tells you to do. Or he'll take your Wal-Mart card away.

[Wormphlegm]

thats one of the reason why i don't like the USA

Well a part of the problem is that the rest of the free world, which includes Italy, seems to have appointed the USA to be the world police. Every time a problem occurs somewhere, the general world attitude is "Let the Americans fix it." So while it may be our guys who are doing the actual shooting, YOUR guys are the ones who keep giving us the green light to do so. As well as a fair amount of financial and logistics support.

Iraq and Afghanistan were both unilateral wars.
Oh, and Vietnam.
And Korea.

[Tessera]

We had international support in Korea. Supposedly.

But I agree that every single military conflict that the USA has been involved in since WWII has been unjustified.

There will always be bad people in this world. But whether or not WE should always be the ones who run off and start shooting at them is another matter entirely. I'm sick and tired... yea, disgusted... to see young Americans coming home in body bags, decade after decade, just so the military-industrial complex can stay in business.

HUMAN BEINGS ARE NOT A RESOURCE. Eisenhower warned America about this horrific bullshit all the way back in 1960... but apparently, very few people were actually paying attention to him.

[Ratcatcher]

Here are the latest poll numbers, regarding how the American people feel about U.S. intervention in Syria:

60% of Americans are firmly opposed to ANY intervention of ANY kind in Syria.

9% of Americans are in favor of U.S. intervention in Syria.

31% of Americans are undecided.

9% is more than enough considering that the 1% rule anyway.

[Tessera]

9% is more than enough considering that the 1% rule anyway.

Yeah, the 1% rule... until We The People get fed up and start shooting at limousines.

[Ratcatcher]

True, but we're not there yet.
So off to meddle somewhere else we go...

[Tessera]

Well, on Monday night, MoveOn is organizing nationwide vigils.

I'm not sure how much good it does to hold peaceful protests these days,
but it's a lot better than sitting on our asses and doing nothing.

[beetle]

Let the UN deal with this shit. We aren't the fucking world police.

[Tessera]

The U.N. has already said that they don't want us to go.

[ChaosArcher]

The U.N. has already said that they don't want us to go.

A roadblock for the president. Now is going to appeal to the public for support...

But based on polls (like the one earlier in the forum) Americans are against it.

Let us see how this turns out.

-ChaosArcher

[beetle]

Obama will still end up getting the US involved.

[Tessera]

Maybe... but thanks to public pressure, the majority of Congress have come out against any action in Syria.

It's not our war, man. I think what's happening over there is awful... but it's not our war. Nor should it be.

When we had our own revolution, back in 1776, we didn't run over to Syria and ask them to come save us
from the British. We took care of it ourselves. And that's what they need to do.

[beetle]

The French and Spanish did help us. The French even gave us military supplies. Which we are doing with Syrian rebels.

[Cylnar]

And...the French aid to the U.S. at the time was basically a way of fighting a proxy war with England, of crippling and weakening their archenemy without actually declaring war.

Of course, the French Revolution happened shortly thereafter and set them back years in the colonial games, long enough that Britain was eventually able to recover from its loss and (with European allies) smash Napoleon's war of conquest.

[Tessera]

What you two are saying is that the ONLY people who helped us were two nations which had a serious stake in the outcome. Check.

So what stake do we have in the outcome in Syria..? Anything..? If the status quo remains unchanged, then we have a brutal totalitarian state. And if the rebels win, then we have yet another oppressive Islamic theocracy, where the women are treated like animals and the men revel in state-sanctioned violence. All in the name of the mythical Allah.

Ever hear the expression "It's win-win..?" Well this is a situation where it's lose-lose. I see nothing positive in Syria and frankly, it's none of our business. Just more ragheads killing each other in the Mideast. Big fucking deal.

And I think we've all become so sick and tired of hearing about that entire region that, as I'm sure many would agree, I could care less if the entire sub-continent goes up in flames. We have enough real problems to deal with over on our side of the world. So let's focus our attention there, instead of focusing upon yet another endlessly violent Mideast shithole-in-the-making.

In short: fuck Syria. It's their problem, not ours.

[beetle]

What I'm saying is just what you are saying. We have no business being in Syria; and I feel that giving the rebels weapons will come back to bite us in the ass in the future. We helped the rebels in Afghanistan back in the 80's when they were trying to kick the Russians out and it came back to bite us in the ass in a big way. For our uninformed forum members those rebels were the Taliban including "freedom fighter" Osama Bin Laden. Interesting note one of the Rambo movies is dedicated to them.

Also; Cylnar said what I was hinting at. 

[Cylnar]

Yep. The age of the U.S. as the world's policeman has passed. I'm not saying we should take our ball, go home and seal the borders - the age of isolationism has also passed. But we can't douse every fire, either. Especially not by bombing the burning house.

There are things we can do that don't involve shoving our huge, veiny, steroidal fifty-percent-of-the-economy red-white-and-blue military-industrial cock into yet another unwilling Mideast asshole. We can provide humanitarian aid, to help the innocent people caught in the conflict. We can apply diplomatic and economic pressure (though we need to avoid as much as possible the crippling punitive Cuba-style economic sanctions of the past that only hurt the people and not the leaders). We can collect evidence and bring Bashar al-Assad up for charges of crimes against humanity before the World Court.

Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity. I think it was the late, great George Carlin that said that, but if I'm wrong, who cares, it's still true. We are members of a violent, aggressive, primitive species which has directly or indirectly developed most of its technology and culture from war, and I shall be extremely surprised if any of us survive long to evolve into something better.