gut;1846317 wrote:You do realize Assad gassed 100 people, including dozens of childrens, with chemical weapons he wasn't supposed to have?
Of course I do, and I remember hearing the statement that we got "100%" of them out of there, so it's fairly obvious he wasn't supposed to have them.
However, Myanmar/Burma has been just as brutal to many in its citizenry for decades, and it's murdered far more than 100 people. The active oppression of Mugabe on the people of Zimbabwe has resulted in far more deaths, as well. The adoption of Wahabbism by the Saudi leadership has resulting in a pretty brutal brand of oppression, not to mention sympathies toward certain radical groups ... but we've been rather friendly with them, have we not? And let's not get into the history of executions of citizens without due process in North Korea.
My point isn't to suggest that Assad isn't such a bad guy. My point is that we didn't suddenly get a bleeding heart. We didn't choose Syria because Assad is especially bad among despots. He makes a convenient enemy, and anyone who perceives himself as a hero needs a good enemy (see a good portion of Trump's political activity -- other Republicans, the "fake news" media, Obama, HC, etc.).
SportsAndLady;1846318 wrote:Yeah not sure how you can possibly be against these bombings. I mean, I get some people don't want the US involved in wars against countries that are essentially no threat to the US, but when we tell a country's evil leader not to use chemical warfare or we'll bomb you...and then he does it...well, we have no choice.
Well, we do. We could, you know, not bomb them, since they're not attacking the US (and, thus, our actions wouldn't fall under even the broadest definition of national "defense"). Still not as good as NOT saying we would in the first place, but someone thought it was a good idea to sail that ship.
Nobody's saying Assad is alright. He's the definition of a despot, and I don't mourn anything he loses in the mess. Even feeling a little sadistic about what he might lose, but that still doesn't mean I think we should be involved. That's not the purpose of a national defense.
Frankly, I'm a little curious as to why Assad would have done this. Has there been some accusation he brought against the people he killed?
The US has no business being in Syria to begin with, whether openly, or by covertly supplying training, money, weapons, etc. to "terrorist" mercenary proxies.
There is one allowance for waging war by the Federal government, and that requirement has not been met since WWII.
Trump seemed to oppose this sort of thing when someone else was in office, and it isn't as though we didn't hear about how bad a villain it was that made us do it then, either:
Over the last several decades (at least as far back as Desert Storm, which is as far back as I can remember, being 33), anytime the US demonstrated interest in military conflict, they ALWAYS gave us a villain.
We went into Iraq (both times) because Hussein was EVERY bit as bad as Assad (if we're talking crimes against his own citizens, Hussein had a higher body count, I believe). We dropped bombs in Syria over the last several years before Trump took office because ISIS was there, and ISIS was a group of murdering oppressors.
Now, I'm certainly not suggesting that any of these examples are NOT, in fact, villains. They're terrible. Hussein, Assad, and ISIS are/were all oppressive, violent, and murderous. Assad is bad, but he's not demonstrably "worse" than any of the other villains we've suddenly had the itch to go after, nor is he necessarily worse than some of the ones we've never gone after.
What of North Korea? Zimbabwe? Myanmar/Burma? Saudi Arabia? They've all been oppressing and killing their citizens for years and/or decades. We've just never felt the need to scratch that itch.
If we're doing this because we're trying to bring freedom to an oppressed and victimized people, we certainly do seem to have an awfully convenient conscience when it comes to target and timing.
