The Syrian War Is Spreading: Should U.S. Get Involved?

[Katzndogz]

Putting US boots on Syrian soil would be a stupendous mistake.

Let's hope Putin puts Kerry smack in his place.

 

[Desperado]

Uber-Neocons: The Main Architects of Post-Assad Syria at Work
Interesting read .
Sibel Edmonds' Boiling Frogs Post | Home of the Irate Minority

 

[Kondor3]

Will we get involved? My own Spidey-sense tells me: Yes - extent unknown.

Should we get involved? I really don't know - there are significant pros and cons to be considered.

We bailed-out on Lebanon and left it to the Syrians and that didn't work out too well.

It may be time to correct some past mistakes and help to stabilize the region again.

Then again, I smell an endless quagmire, and we haven't done any decent Nation Building since the Marshall Plan.

 

[Katzndogz]

Wasn't the Arab Spring supposed to involve the whole of the middle east? It's what obama wanted.

 

[georgephillip]

Uber-Neocons: The Main Architects of Post-Assad Syria at Work
Interesting read .
Sibel Edmonds' Boiling Frogs Post | Home of the Irate Minority

Wesley Clark had this to say in 2003:

"As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan."

This OP is flawed from the beginning.
The US has "been involved" in Syria long before Wesley had his chat in the Pentagon.
The CIA has been arming Muslim fundamentalists like some in the "Free Syria" movement since the Soviets invaded Afghanistan with the apparent goal of fracturing the Middle East and the Caucasus into warring enclaves with age-old hatreds willing to sell their martial services to western oil and pipeline companies.
So far, Iraq and Libya have fallen into place, and it's looking like Syria and Lebanon may be next; however, instead of worrying about US boots bleeding on the ground in Syria, worry more about blow-back over Boston and beyond.

 

[Katzndogz]

I hope you don't mean Obama cooked up the Syrian civil war.

Whoops, we just segued into conspiracy theory, like Bush did 9/11 or Obama did the Boston bombing. Time for me to go work on some garden stuff if the conspiracy theories are getting loose again.

obama didn't need to cook up a civil war. He chose a side, the al quaeda side, at the beginning and gave that side support. Had he not done that, Assad would have put down the rebellion in a few weeks, at most. Syria would not be back to what ever peaceful country it was. Those thousands of people would not have died. They'd be back living their lives.

What made obama monumentally foolish was thinking he ran the world. He didn't bother to consider that Russia had a vested interest in maintaining the Assad regime and would help him. Anyone with an ounce of intelligence would have realized that Russia was not going to let their nuclear naval base fall into terrorist hands.

Now, obama has basically forced Iran to publicly support Assad, while it is arming terrorists at the same time. Moreover, using the conflict in Syria to transport weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

This isn't a fine kettle of fish, but it is obama's kettle of fish.

I've begun to suspect you are a false flag operation, Katzndogz. You attribute everything, EVERYTHING, to Obama including when people get ants in their Frosted Flakes or run out of gas on the freeway or spill wine on a white blouse.

This is so absurd that I feel myself wanting to argue the other side, which would be the point of a false flag operation: getting us talking in Obama's favor because the other side just makes no sense.

Okay, none of this works for me. I'm after truth, hard enough to get hold of even when it isn't being run around the corral by conspiracy theory buffs.

This is absolutely his fault because it came right out of his failed policies. Had he done nothing, the conflict in Syria would have been over in a matter of weeks.

 

[georgephillip]

Putting US boots on Syrian soil would be a stupendous mistake.

Another stupendous neo-con mistake:

"A group of US foreign policy analysts called on President Barack Obama and his government to work towards drawing a common road map with Turkey that will help ensure the formation of a democratic, impartial government in a post-conflict Syrian."

Some of the same voices that lead the charge into Iraq and Libya are pulling the strings behind Syria.
Since the American people have had their full of war, it will probably be Turkish boots on the ground in Syria...and then Iran (where the Russians won't be bought off with dead Chechens)?

Analysts call on US to cooperate with Turkey toward new gov't in Syria

 

[richstacy]

Obama is no "neocon." Your preference is to let the oppressive government of Syria with its Iranian sponsors and Hezbollah clients run roughshod over Israel?

No "boots on the ground" please, But air support, drone strikes and no fly zone, yes!

 

[georgephillip]

Obama is no "neocon." Your preference is to let the oppressive government of Syria with its Iranian sponsors and Hezbollah clients run roughshod over Israel?

No "boots on the ground" please, But air support, drone strikes and no fly zone, yes!

I think your Syrian choice between Assad and al-Qa'ida is lacking some context.

In November of 2001 the Pentagon was making plans for the invasion of Iraq and six other Muslim states. So far, Iraq and Libya have fallen and Syria may well be next.

None of this is being done to advance freedom in the Middle East or the North Caucasus or southern Africa; it's being accomplished to facilitate western corporate control of oil wells and oil pipelines.

"Obama is simply the latest ghost in the machine.

"He's a tool just like Carter, Reagan, both Bushes, and (both) Clintons, used by bankers to fashion a New World Order where children die for money and market share.

Sibel Edmonds' Boiling Frogs Post | Home of the Irate Minority

 

[richstacy]

Obama is no "neocon." Your preference is to let the oppressive government of Syria with its Iranian sponsors and Hezbollah clients run roughshod over Israel?

No "boots on the ground" please, But air support, drone strikes and no fly zone, yes!

I think your Syrian choice between Assad and al-Qa'ida is lacking some context.

In November of 2001 the Pentagon was making plans for the invasion of Iraq and six other Muslim states. So far, Iraq and Libya have fallen and Syria may well be next.

None of this is being done to advance freedom in the Middle East or the North Caucasus or southern Africa; it's being accomplished to facilitate western corporate control of oil wells and oil pipelines.

"Obama is simply the latest ghost in the machine.

"He's a tool just like Carter, Reagan, both Bushes, and (both) Clintons, used by bankers to fashion a New World Order where children die for money and market share.

Sibel Edmonds' Boiling Frogs Post | Home of the Irate Minority

Now you are talking pure unadulterated nonsense. We are getting no Iraqi or Libyan oil nor Afghani oil either and we certainly won't be getting any Syrian oil. Thanks to American advances in technology, we will soon be among the world's largest exporters of oil -- once again. Those advances include a combination of fracking and directional drilling allowing us to develop domestic supplies heretofore not economically developable. We will soon be able to tell the Arabs to shove there oil.

 

[TakeAStepBack]

We're already involved.

 

[Mertex]

The U.S. should absolutely NOT get involved! That's on the other side of the entire planet! We need to get our own shit together before meddling in other people's nonsense.

I have to agree with you. Besides, Assad's enemies are Sunny Muslims. I don't understand the right's insistence that we help Muslims when they hate Muslims?

 

[georgephillip]

Obama is no "neocon." Your preference is to let the oppressive government of Syria with its Iranian sponsors and Hezbollah clients run roughshod over Israel?

No "boots on the ground" please, But air support, drone strikes and no fly zone, yes!

I think your Syrian choice between Assad and al-Qa'ida is lacking some context.

In November of 2001 the Pentagon was making plans for the invasion of Iraq and six other Muslim states. So far, Iraq and Libya have fallen and Syria may well be next.

None of this is being done to advance freedom in the Middle East or the North Caucasus or southern Africa; it's being accomplished to facilitate western corporate control of oil wells and oil pipelines.

"Obama is simply the latest ghost in the machine.

"He's a tool just like Carter, Reagan, both Bushes, and (both) Clintons, used by bankers to fashion a New World Order where children die for money and market share.

Sibel Edmonds' Boiling Frogs Post | Home of the Irate Minority

Now you are talking pure unadulterated nonsense. We are getting no Iraqi or Libyan oil nor Afghani oil either and we certainly won't be getting any Syrian oil. Thanks to American advances in technology, we will soon be among the world's largest exporters of oil -- once again. Those advances include a combination of fracking and directional drilling allowing us to develop domestic supplies heretofore not economically developable. We will soon be able to tell the Arabs to shove there oil.

We were the world's largest oil exporter in the 1950s when Ike spoke about the greatest material prize in world history: Middle East oil. It was never about getting that oil for domestic consumption; it was and is about controlling who gets the oil and how much they have to pay for it:

"More generally, the September 11 terrorist atrocities provided an opportunity and pretext to implement long-standing plans to take control of Iraq's immense oil wealth, a central component of the Persian Gulf resources that the State Department, in 1945, described as 'a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history' (referring specifically to Saudi Arabia, but the intent is more general).

"US intelligence predicts that these will be of even greater significance in the years ahead.

"The issue has never been access.

"The same intelligence analyses anticipate that the US will rely on more secure Atlantic Basin supplies. The same was true after World War II. The US moved quickly to gain control over Gulf resources, but not for its own use; North America was the major producer for decades afterwards, and since then Venezuela has generally been the leading exporter to the US.

"What matters is control over the 'material prize,' which funnels enormous wealth to the US in many ways, and the 'stupendous source of strategic power,' which translates into a lever of 'unilateral world domination.'"

A Modest Proposal, by Noam Chomsky

 

[whitehall]

I Just don't trust the administration to ever do the right thing. I wouldn't want president Hussein to get involved in a dog fight much less a Mid-East crisis. He would screw it up like he screwed up Libya.

 

[Mr. H.]

george, maybe you can illustrate for us how we now have control of Iraq's oil.

 

[auditor0007]

The war talk against Syria is heating up in the U.S. administration, and also in Europe.

My analysis is that no one much cares if Syrians kill each other: Syrians are pretty much the enemies of everyone everywhere, so them killing each other does the world a favor. Certainly no one has bothered to intervene over the full year the war has been going on.

However, their Civil War is indeed spreading. Hundreds of thousands are now in Turkish refugee camps, and besides the obvious food and sanitation problems, the refugees have started to fight among themselves, in large groups. Also, there have been border skirmishes from Syria into Turkey. Turkey is of course a member of NATO, which potentially involves Europe and the USA if Turkey calls for help.

It appears Iran may have been making use of the civil war to supply Hezbollah with modern rockets and artillery to attack Israel; at any rate, Israel seems to have bombed these military supply lines twice this weekend, resulting in hours of explosions last night, presumably because they hit an arsenal that blew up.

So the war is spreading into Turkey, Israel, Lebanon, and Iran is messing around with it, as Syria is a client state of Iran's.

Does that give the USA a reason to go in, and if we do, on which side and what would be the war goals? Troops on the ground or air only?

Let them fight their own war. We need to stay out of this one.

 

[auditor0007]

I Just don't trust the administration to ever do the right thing. I wouldn't want president Hussein to get involved in a dog fight much less a Mid-East crisis. He would screw it up like he screwed up Libya.

Obama didn't screw up Libya. Gaddafi was going down and nothing was going to prevent that from happening.

 

[georgephillip]

george, maybe you can illustrate for us how we now have control of Iraq's oil.

"The Fifth Fleet of the United States Navy is responsible for naval forces in the Persian Gulf, Red Sea, Arabian Sea, and coast off East Africa as far south as Kenya..."

United States Fifth Fleet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[georgephillip]

I Just don't trust the administration to ever do the right thing. I wouldn't want president Hussein to get involved in a dog fight much less a Mid-East crisis. He would screw it up like he screwed up Libya.

What was the right thing to do in Libya?

"As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan."

Wesley Clark - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Mr. H.]

george, maybe you can illustrate for us how we now have control of Iraq's oil.

"The Fifth Fleet of the United States Navy is responsible for naval forces in the Persian Gulf, Red Sea, Arabian Sea, and coast off East Africa as far south as Kenya..."

United States Fifth Fleet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Protecting oil terminals and/or markets is not controlling, it's protecting. Not our oil but their oil.