They've both been bombing various factions, that's direct involvement. The both also have troops on the ground, the US has them in the north with the Kurds and the Russians had personnel at the very airbase that was bombed.
All we need now is an arch duke in an open top car.
1. The US is also fighting ISIS. Despite the popular saying, "the enemy of my enemy" is not the same as "my friend".
2. Assad is also someone who uses chemical weapons on his own people. (All right, the other side of a civil war, but still citizens of his own nation.) He's a guy who turned protests into a civil war by his brutality in response. "Secularist and modernizer" isn't the same as "good guy".
Append to 1.: "moderate rebels," like Al-Nusra Front, who were actually caught in Turkey with chemical weapons [1].
Ron Paul is questioning the origin of the attack, but here we are.
The Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia is moving forward as of earlier this week, and the Turkish stream pipeline can't move forward until the Syria question is settled. Add to that in late March Russia announced it was coming up with an alternative to the SWIFT banking system. Collision course.
Vlad doesn't seem like the kind to back down. Not looking forward to this one bit.
And yet just today Rand Paul told Trump not to take unilateral military action, that he needed to clear it with Congress first. (Maybe Trump briefed them. Maybe that's good enough, but I think the idea was that Congress needed to have a chance to vote.)
This would be Rand "Republicans don't investigate Republicans" Paul? I can see why any words of warning he issues to Trump would be received a wink and a nod, even if not explicitly issued with them.
Political idiot here, is that like threatening your parents that you'll hold your breath until you get your way or are there actual checks and balances at play?
Only Congress has the power to declare war. That's the actual check and balance. But if I understand correctly, in a situation like this[1], the President has authority to authorize military force. He just can't continue to use it for more than 90 days (in the same situation) without congressional approval[2].
But no, Republicans in Congress are not going to magically force Trump to un-fire the missiles. Nor are they going to impeach him over this. (If he violates the 90 day limit, it is somewhat more likely that there will be some kind of action, but still far from certain.)
[1] For some value of "like this" - a situation where, in the President's judgment, military action is urgently needed, where it can't wait for days or weeks while Congress debates and goes through all the procedural motions.
[2] The 90 day limit is there because the Vietnam War came out of a situation like this - a presidentially-authorized use of force that never was a declared war, that turned into nearly a decade of US involvement and 55,000 US dead.
Wonderful news! Finally, someone standing up to Assad and Putin! Who would have thought it would be the US president who Putin "absolutely didn't" put into office?
Wonderful news! Finally, someone standing up to Assad and Putin!
Except for the fact that the move indicates nothing less than complete and utter chaos in his stance vis-a-vis Russia. And that it remains to be seen how Putin will decide to "stand up" for his symbolic ally in response.
Who cares if his stance on Russia is inconsistent, if it used to be "let Putin do as he likes" and it's now "don't let Putin's proxies commit war crimes"? I'm not going to attack someone for flip-flopping from a terrible position to a promising one.
What I am not sure I understand is why anyone cares what happens in Syria, save maybe Israel. It's not an oil producer, and it has been a shitshow, rather than a regional power for 20+ years.
Human rights more than anything else; Assad's response to the Arab Spring was a pretty ugly one, especially by the standards of people who weren't overthrown. (The other issue is that Russia really likes that naval base. Wouldn't it have saved time to just give them the city and get them to stop interfering with the rest of this?)
I think Putin had a lot to do with Trump getting into office (we know he had Republican National Convention e-mails too, and didn't leak them), so it's a very pleasant surprise to see Trump standing up to Putin in spite of that.
And see that Politico article linked to elsewhere in this thread: Putin responded to the missile strikes by suddenly discovering that he, too, had a problem with his ally using chemical weapons! He certainly didn't say that in 2013!
We could always give it all to the Kurds -- which is what's going to happen anyways, at the rate things are currently going. (The PKK has secured their home territory, and is now conquering their neighbors to create facts on the ground and get more out of the peace settlement.) Alternatively, I could envision partitioning the country along its existing ethnic lines, to avoid a situation where Alawites, Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities end up in a majority-Sunni country. There are plenty of alternatives other than control by one or another pack of exceptionally ugly monsters. (I say "exceptionally ugly" because even the Kurds have committed some atrocities. Not without provocation, but still.)
Which Kurds? You mean the Kurdish Islamic Front (KIF) which wants to extend Shariah across Syria?[0]
Try not to be so explicitly racist in your analyses. Kurds are an ethnic group of 40 million people with different ideologies, interests and goals. Saying "give it all to the Kurds" says more about your racism towards other regional ethnic groups (Arabs, Syriacs, Turks) than some grand understanding you have of the Middle East.
> I could envision partitioning the country along its existing ethnic lines
Nobody except casual MSM observers wants this racist, separatist outcome and anybody with any understanding of the country would know that the country doesn't have "ethnic lines" that you can just build a wall across and somehow produce mini-states that will be economically successful, productive and start working in harmony with their new neighbours.
As for the rest, the pro-Assad forces are mostly Alawites (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabiha) and Christians (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_militias_in_Syria), organized along ethno-religious lines. Incorporating them into Lebanon, or creating a "coastal Syria" with a minimum of Sunnis in it (and probably under Russian tutelage, since the Christians are Orthodox and the Alawites have reason to see Russia as a protector) would allow them to live without either being tyrants or being tyrannized.
Neither does the PYD. Mainstream Kurdish nationalism involves Kurdish independence (which the PYD is opposed to) and are largely capitalist (see Iraq).
> As for the rest, the pro-Assad forces are mostly Alawites
Really? The overwhelming majority of Syrian soldiers are Sunni. Alawites are overrepresented in the Syrian Air Force, but underrepresented in the general military. Pro-government auxiliary forces like the Lebanese Hezbollah are certainly not Alawite, neither are the Iraqis and others that support the Syrian government.
> and Christians
"Christians" what? There are Christian Arabs, Kurds, Syriacs and Armenians. They're not a single group. Even between the Syriacs we see pro-government and anti-government divisions (Sutoro vs Sootoro).
> organized along ethno-religious lines
No, they're not.
I don't think the Syriacs in North East Syria want to be forcefully relocated to Lebanon or Coastal Syria, I think they want to stay at home. I also don't think ethnically cleansing Sunnis from Coastal Syria is any sort of move, let alone a justifiable one.
I'd like to continue this conversation but I'm afraid I'm going to withdraw myself here.
I'm not interested in continuing this conversation either, but I'm glad to see that you're willing to discuss things in ethno-religious terms, despite accusing me of being a racist for using the same terms earlier. It gives me a pretty good sense of where you're coming from.
I agree, this is excellent news. Assad's regime is directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians, the torture of children, the setting up of torture chambers in hospital wards, and much, much worse. The blatantly repeated use of chemical agents on non-combatants isn't helping Assad's case either. He is the definition of human scum, and I'm glad to see the US finally step in.
> He is the definition of human scum, and I'm glad to see the US finally step in.
I agree with the "scum" part.
For the "step in", hmm ...? If are trying to civilize Assad and/or his enemies, then that looks hopeless.
If are trying to deter Assad from more use of ugly chemical weapons on babies, maybe that can work, a little, for a while.
If trying to replace Assad, then an early question has to be -- with whom that would be better? The replacement should be better, and in such situations that ain't nearly guaranteed.
I'm no expert, but it may be that Syria divides into people who (A) more or less like Assad, at least will let him get by with rigged elections without being really bitter about it, and (B) hate Assad and all the people in (A) and would eagerly torture and murder all of them by the most brutal methods they could implement. Yes, the people in (A) might be equally eager to murder all the people in (B).
That is, first-cut, we're talking a lot of people who still are back in essentially Medieval times, maybe as if they were still fighting over very limited water and grazing land, and still isolated from the lessons from the religious, etc. wars of Europe of the past 1000 years, e.g., separation of church and state, basic humanism, etc., lessons not well honored in Europe even as recently as Hitler.
Hitler was brutal, in Medieval terms, including with gas, likely also on children and babies. So, is it too surprising that maybe a lot of people in Syria are Medieval, brutal, inhumane, etc.?
To me, from about 1/4th the way around the world away, one of the big lessons needed in the Mideast is separation of church and state, and I can't believe that any significant separation will take place there for at least another, say, 200 years. E.g., apparently one of the main recruiting attractions of ISIS -- in Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc. -- is a closed, isolated, Medieval, brutal, sectarian dictatorship. So, that stuff still gets lots of people over there to vote with their feet, lives, etc.
Over there, maybe they were having wars and, there, killing babies, etc. going way back. Some of the situations and scenes in the movie Lawrence of Arabia, a side-show of WWI, seem to suggest so.
In such situations, there is an approach to peace, that of the grave.
I do suspect that with some well placed bombs from the US, it is possible to send a message that even the most dedicated sectarians can hear, the parties can understand the message, calm down for a while, sign a deal, get some strong geographical lines of separation, maybe monitored by the UN, and, then, live essentially in peace for some decades, say, until there is another ambitious, bloodthirsty, leader eager to take over territory and willing to exploit religion to do so.
I was genuinely worried that basically all HN users lack any insight on this topic. It's great to be proven wrong! And thank you for being humble about it. Most other commenters spew out bullshit as if they were an authority on the topic. It's funny how ignorant the average HNer becomes when they're not discussing the latest JS framework.
I essentially agree with your reasoning. It's a very delicate situation, but Assad, Iran, and Russia have gotten away with too much. The US and its allies have to show them that their actions have consequences. You can't just use chemical weapons over and over again without repercussions.
As for the long term, it's very difficult to tell what will happen. The way I see it is dialogue is the only way forward. Both sides have to figure out an arrangement that ends up benefiting the Syrian people. Otherwise, this war is going to become irreversible, if it hasn't already..
Yup, they seem to believe that they have some strong interests in common. First cut, from the campaign and the terrorists attacks, the US is mostly interested in stopping terrorism, in particular just ending ISIS. For that, a guess so far is that Assad, Iran, and Russia see no real gain and a lot of pain in the back side from ISIS and will be eager enough to see the US, Turkey, Baghdad, if it is now not too close to Iran, and maybe even Assad kill off ISIS.
How far Assad, Iran, and Russia can get with a coalition for geography, power, and money I don't know; my guess is that once ISIS is dead, the US will have more important policy items than Assad, Iran, and Russia in the Mideast and will have friends in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and Israel.
Just from a glance at a map, easy enough to understand why Russia might want a warm water port. E.g., the US has warm or even hot water ports all along both coasts and the Gulf of Mexico with all of those ports a lot of deep water away from adversaries.
There may be some neo-cons around who never want to pass up an opportunity for another foreign advanture and saw Trump's shooting 59 cruise missiles as a big day for neo-con goals -- here I believe that the neo-cons will be wrong.
I hope Trump still wants to stay the heck out of foreign adventures, be President of the US and not the world (his saying "God bless the world" alone is okay), stop Assad from using gas, kill off ISIS, organize an effort in the Mideast, with funding from the Saudis and Gulf states, for a refugee area, help draw new lines to keep the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds separated, get all that done quickly, and then just come home and concentrate on jobs, the wall, trade deals, replacing Obamacare, getting the economy going, e.g., fast enough to generate the needed tax revenue, energy independence, etc.
Trump has talked a lot about the $6 T or so we have spent in the Mideast, and I hope and believe that he won't spend even another $1 T there -- his big infrastructure program is supposed to be only $1 T. If we throw $1 T at a time over and over at the Mideast, after a while it adds up to real money we would have liked to have spent here.
> Both sides have to figure out an arrangement that ends up benefiting the Syrian people.
Kill off ISIS. Have a Sunni area cut from the current Syria and Iraq and get Assad, Baghdad, and Turkey to go along. Have a Kurdish area cut from Syria and Iraq, and tell the Turks that, no, we don't want a greater Kurdistan. Tell Assad he can rule half of Syria or none of it -- his choice.
Well I expect the Doomsday clock will be getting an update soon.
I'm still not convinced that the Chemical Weapons where from Assad or the Russians attack and the probability of them actually being in a weapons store the rebels held, to me seems if not equally probable. Mostly from the aspect that Chemical Weapons in the form of landmine dispersol have been used by ISIS in Iraq. Now the aspect that such types of weapons as a Chemical Weapon dispersal is not one we know that well. So an airstrike upon a weapons depot that had such landmines, could most likely cause the mines to release the chemical weapon. Many experts have said that an airstrike upon a chemical weapon store would destroy the chemical weapons. But we are talking about mines as storage. A factor that may well be overlooked or a large unknown in how they react to airstrikes.
What we will know eventually is if they fingerprint the chemical weapon in this Syrian event and compare to that used by ISIS in Iraq then if they are the same.
So given how Russia and indeed Assad reacts will prove most telling. I also believe Assad would be totally foolish to use Chemical Weapons, more so with Russian support and no need to use them. This and already gave them up, via Russia and again. There was no need for them and they would know the response if they did, and I don't believe even Russia or Assad would be that silly.
So from that perspective, Trump just updated the Doomsday clock.
Completely agree. It almost seems like there is a set of individuals in the US gov that have a personal grudge against Assad and have been trying for years under various administrations to take him out. They don't even seem to consider the possibility of Islamist involvement.
Nothing to do with Russia. Assad is an ally of Iran, and rather than having a politically stable and militarily capable nation in that area of influence, Israel and Saudi Arabia (among others) would rather have a chaos-ridden post war Iraq or Libya. But they prefer to have the dirty job done by the US- usually it doesn't take much, a bit of lobbying and tons of newspaper articles about the cruel dictator usually do the trick.
For Trump, those who are most vocal against him are equally more inclined to be against Assad and those vocally supporting Trump, will be almost celebrating. It also helps defuse Russian ties a little, as some will view this action.
So It will be interesting to see how his approval rating goes over the next few days.
I hope they are not rushing in without all the facts and that is my fear, and maybe they know something that is not public. Time will tell, as always.
Whether the chemical weapon in question is stored in individual mines or steel containers isn't really an issue compared to other factors like where they're stored (above-ground in a building versus a deep bunker, etc.) when they're planning an airstrike for something like this. A conventional Tomahawk carries ~1,000 pounds of high explosive. In the initial 5 seconds, the explosion's temperature can reach above 263 °C to 290 °C.[0] The boiling point for sarin is 147 °C, and it decomposes very quickly at that temperature. If you can penetrate to where it was stored, the odds are very good that sarin (along with most other chemical weapons) will decompose immediately in the explosion, or at the very least, have the process greatly accelerated.
Yes the aspect about how it was stored is a factor and if ammo box with mines, that is a lot of thermal shielding and maybe enough to enable the contained Sarin to avoid direct exposure and enough thermal insulation to curtail reaching that magic 147°C. Even the aspect of how stored, could increase the prospect of some being thrown clear by the initial impact/explosion. Let alone what was used in the airstrike and its characteristics.
So still reasonable doubt.
I really hope they do a forensics upon that impact sight of Chemical Weapons and get to the truth sooner rather than later.
Perhaps. Compared to how the OPCW suggests that chemical weapons are normally incinerated and/or neutralized, airstrikes are by no means the preferred solution. But when you don't have physical access, and your main concern is preventing their use against civilian populations, they're one of your few tenable options. The number of missiles used might indicate that stockpiles were targeted multiple times to compensate for such possibilities. That said, the mission planners would likely--as a worst-case scenario--prefer to have the Syrians have to cordon off a contaminated base than risk the possibility of a future CW attack on civilians.
> I'm still not convinced that the Chemical Weapons where from Assad or the Russians attack and the probability of them actually being in a weapons store the rebels held, to me seems if not equally probable.
I wasn't aware that the rebels controlled fighter jets?
> I also believe Assad would be totally foolish to use Chemical Weapons
This is not the first time Assad uses chemical agents...
I'm honestly quite surprised to see such a display of mental gymnastics being upvoted on HN.
> This is not the first time Assad uses chemical agents...
The situation has changed though. His regime's prospects of surviving are the best they've been since the war started. Why risk upsetting the current situation for such a small gain?
Do you seriously think that Assad thinks about stuff like that? This guy repeatedly allowed the use of chemical agents on his own civilian population! He is the definition of evil, so using them again is just natural.
He has absolutely nothing to gain from using chemical agents when he is already winning through conventional means. Even more so considering he probably doesn't plan individual strikes
Much more likely this is a false flag pushed by Israel/Saudi Arabia because Assad's regime is an ally of Iran - their biggest rival in the region.
Let's suppose for a moment that Assad's regime was responsible for the use of chemical weapons on civilians, and that he did not individually, specifically authorize this attack.
If he didn't authorize it directly, it doesn't matter - his regime is set up in such a way that actors under his authority used chemical weapons on civilians.
The justification of a response is not impacted by whether or not he was individually responsible.
>I wasn't aware that the rebels controlled fighter jets?
They don't and afaik no one is claiming that they do. The Syrian government isn't denying a bombing. They're saying that they bombed using conventional munitions but hit a chemical weapon stockpile.
And we're supposed to believe the claims of a government that has used chemical agents on civilians multiple times? Have you heard of 'the boy who cried wolf'?
What you dont get it, is that russia is a terrorist state with a lot of money and nuclear bombs. They bomb their own people even, and don;'t give a shit about them. Their FSB (KGB) killed opposition party leader, ambassadors, journalists... It's biggest MAFIA in the world and you are saying that common sense should work here and it would be a death note for yourself if you will attack with chemical weapons,. But there is no common sense, they are terrorists and they dont give a shit. The biggest problem with western people, that they can't even understand how that would be possible, so you start thinking and logically that no, they can't do that. But they can, they are different how western people think or see things. That's the biggest weapon of russia, that West just won't get it and they can do whatever they want, everyone is either afraid or just think we still might be friends, or better be friends, because it's useful since they have lots of money. If you want to survive in this world having dictators like Putin, Assad, Lukashenka, Kim Jong-Un, you not just sit and express your concerns like Obama did about what happened, but you act and punch back. They understand only power and actions. If you sit doing nothing it means green light, i can do it. Look what Russia did, when everyone was just raising concerns about what Russia is doing in Crimea and Ukraine, They took Syria too, and started bombing children and Syria people. No one gives a shit and everyone is just concerned. Dictators will stop when you will punch back hard into their face, that's what they understand and only then you can negotiate.
> the probability of them actually being in a weapons store the rebels held, to me seems if not equally probable
I'm far from an expert here but I read in one report that Assad generally doesn't store the Sarin gas in its final form as it's highly unstable but instead stores one of the precursor chemicals which takes little effort to convert. Doing this would mean a strike on a warehouse wouldn't release the deadly gas.
I think it's slightly less probably given that the rebels would have had to made a conscious choice to convert the chemical to Sarin and store it. Do the rebels have any history of using it?
It would have been nice if the US hadn't been a direct actor or accomplice in every destabilizing event in the middle east for the past 50 years. isis and the civil war did not emerge out of the vacuum.
I'm not sure that the civil war in Syria comes from US intervention, or even from ISIS. ISIS tried to take advantage of an existing situation, which was triggered by Assad's brutality to (initially non-violent) protests of his regime.
It was Assad's brutal suppression of protests that started the civil war; ISIS (formerly al-Qaida in Iraq, formerly Tawhid wa-Jihad) moved into the east once it was under way.
I don't think it would've been very different. There would have probably been an Islamist insurgency in that region anyways (Sunnis in arms, especially against secular rulers, tend to be Islamist these days), and it would've probably been about equal to ISIS in ability: less of ISIS' evil "star power", but more military ability since they wouldn't have everyone on the planet bombing them.
There are many factions in the Syrian civil war, not just Assad and ISIS. I'm sure many an ISIS fighter would just join another faction, e.g. Al Qaeda affiliates, had ISIS not arisen.
You say there would have been an insurgency anyway, but daesh was precisely the insurgency that formed from the conditions that made it favorable for such an insurgency to form. These ideologies always exist in a latent form, but they take socioeconomic upheaval to turn into a self sustaining rupture in the political order. The United States both in the short term and the long term has incubated these movements with its ill planned policies and wars.
Like, coordinating coups and dropping bombs over and over again tends to have that effect.
DAESH/ISIS didn't form in the civil war; they renamed themselves that, but they already existed as al-Qaida in Iraq. A native east-Syrian Islamist insurgency would probably have been more benign; they certainly wouldn't have had eight years of war with the US to refine their tactics, write The Management of Savagery, develop a webzine, and so on.
The US has been financing and training the "rebels" for years. Had the US sided with Assad from the start, the war would have been over in two weeks, and costed 500 times less victims.
The problem has never been the war, the problem is that "Assad must go". For the strategies and gains of the US and a number of its allies. Any excuse and any false flag will do, and any amount of victims is acceptable to this end.
Maybe get all the parties to the fighting to get serious, sit down, shut up, listen up, and make a deal.
For the first part, the "get serious", have some bombs wake them up and get their attention.
Or may want a BATNA -- best alternative to a negotiated agreement -- to be much worse than so far. Or, call it making the parties motivated.
Or, maybe the attack with the 50+ cruise missiles was to "make an example".
Why try to make the parties more motivated -- could that help? Well, easily enough, there are enough people among the parties who are willing to have that several sided civil war continue at the current level of bloodshed for a long time. But, maybe by making the war more costly to selected parties, can get a deal.
I don't know enough of the details to have any idea if any of the above would be realistic, feasible, correct, etc. Instead, I'm just floating some of what might be part of the situation. Or as General Mattis explained, a war is not over until the enemy says it is -- the enemy also gets a vote. So, for a war to be over, all the sides need to be motivated to agree it should be over.
Does the all run on autopilot? It's like this stuff was on the timeline no matter who got elected. They've been deploying all over the South China Sea and Eastern Europe and it all went along smoothly on autopilot right through the election and transition.
More than the deep state, there must have been very powerful actors behind the scenes pushing the US for intervention in Syria for all these years. After all, US's direct interest in the Middle East is limited. These are wars made on behalf of someone else, someone in the region.
I don't think they necessarily have to be powerful as much as they have to have the means. At present, two countries off the top of my head that do are Saudi Arabia and Israel. The latter has enjoyed a direct diplomatic line to the US president (no matter who), but I'm not sure what they'd gain. The former has gifted candidates on both sides of the isle with various odds and ends for years, and in spite of their own local economic problems, they have a keen interest in US politics as well. They might stand to gain more in the short term, but it seems like an unnecessary long term gamble.
There's a conspiracy that's been floated for a few years and is resurfacing that the Saudis and Qataris have been pushing for a pipeline from Qatar to Turkey via Syria, and Assad has been a thorn in their side preventing diplomatic means to get it done. But there's also sound arguments against this [1], although the source I found suggests that this is directly tied to US access to bases in the area (possible) and thus aligning with SA, Qatar, and Turkey (perhaps in opposition to Russia/Iran/Syria). I'm not sure anyone really knows what's going on at this point. If I had to guess, it probably ties into everything from oil to archaic alliances dating to the Cold War and even military expenditures.
The Israelis may have a part to play in all this, too, but in my mind, I don't see what benefit they'd gain by continuing to destabilize the entire region. Then again, I guess you could argue the same point for every other actor, and perhaps there's an advantage behind encouraging your adversaries to go for each others' throats every few years (dangerous!).
Another protracted war in the Mideast is the last thing we need... sigh.
(Note: I'm just speculating here based on what I've read over the years and my own opinions and biases. This is probably entirely wrong.)
Israel has clearly a strong interest, as it's demonstrated by the number of times Netanyahu has called on the US to attack Syria (and he's of course cheering now that his wish has been granted).
The reason? I'd say at least two. First, if you want to be a regional power, you need to be stronger than your neighbours (especially if they're not aligned with you). Which means that you need to have a powerful military and/or that your neighbour must be weak. And there's nothing like war and political chaos to weaken a country. Notice how many countries around Israel are either aligned with the USA (and therefore Israel) or piles of rubble.
Second, Israel already illegally occupies a portion of Syrian territory, the Golan heights. And has no intention whatsoever of giving it back. A torn country is the best way to make sure that the Golan Heights will never go back to Syria (which might not even exist anymore) (check [1])
The other reason I just found it in the news this morning, though it doesn't surprise me in the least. "Prime minister Netanyahu is pressing to ensure that any agreement that will end the war in Syria will include buffer zones on Israeli borders with Syria and Jordan. [2] " Now, we know what Israel does with "buffer zones". The West Bank is, technically, a buffer zone. They're just moving their own civilian population in it.
I don't think it's fair to say "no matter who got elected". There are minor political parties that are all about non-interventionism. "no matter who got elected out of the major parties" is more accurate.
There are also sets of volcanos on this planet which can effect weather. So perhaps a more accurate statement would be "no matter who got elected out of the major parties along + no volcanic activity."
Those volcanoes aren't the result of voter actions though so I think it's reasonable to not point them out.
The comment I'm responding to makes it sound like this stuff is beyond democracy and voters have no choice. That's not true at all. Voters just consider bombing others to be an important activity.
<comment deleted since people are apparently going to down vote without reading and I'm not interested in ill thought out flame wars based on superficial party affiliation>
Sincere question: how did you find such professions credible given how frequently and baldly Trump lied about basically everything? In other words, how can anyone be surprised by this or any other lie he tells?
But you know what, I come to this site for tech and science type things. But a large contingent appear to be bent on using it for a political platform. My opinion is they are badly damaging the site. I've tried to register my opinion on things or talk about topics in what I perceive to be an objective manner only to be trolled, flamed and down-voted into oblivion. At this point I'm not going to bother with anything remotely political. If people want to make another ideology bubble fine. It's just not worth the struggle at this point.
I understand your reasons- Trump definitely seemed a safer choice in this respect.
However, that probably shows that it's not enough to say you have an opinion or a stance on something; you can only be trusted to keep it if you are already aware, at the moment of expressing it, of all the arguments and forces that will push you in another direction. Three months (of undoubtedly powerful lobbying) have been enough to sway Trump from "no more wars" to "yes let's start another one, possibly with Russia".
I'm confused how this is so much more controversial or scary than the drone strikes that have occurred over the last number of years by the US that violated the sovereignty of other countries and resulted in unfortunate death of civilians. For the record, I'm not trying to compare Obama to Trump but rather the fact that the US has a long history of exerting its will in a methodical way, so I'm unclear why this is more... serious? Is it because of potential ramifications from Russia? I can't quite imagine that they really want to be involved in a hot war with the US and it's allies.
It's the Russian ramifications -- not least because of the Russians' "firehose of falsehood" media (http://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html). Russia's initial response here suggests that Putin won't dare to start a nuclear war, if it comes down to that (in Lithuania, for example); but talk is cheap, and he and his minions certainly know how to talk a good game.
Certainly Putin wouldn't dare to announce "hey I'm going to start a nuclear war, ok?" However, an ICBM launched from a sub in the Atlantic would reach NYC in, well, less time that it would take for the guys watching the early warning radar scopes to get in touch with the President. There would be no hard evidence linking the source of the attack. With Manhattan pulverized, the US thrown into total chaos, what's Trump going to do? A response would bring total war and the destruction of everything. Both Trump and Putin know this. Trump would have to accept the loss of one city. The US would effectively be off the world stage forever. Putin just may risk this in order to stop the US from meddling in his affairs once and for all. Dr. Strangelove, except orders given by the Kremlin.
Anyone find this plausible or should I turn off the computer and go to sleep?
In the age of fake news, denial and misdirection would work in Putin's favor. All he needs to say is let's send a team to conduct an “impartial, objective, honest investigation.”
Meanwhile, the US collapses.
I mean sure we can say we have hard evidence that the warhead was launched from a Russian sub, but RT will report things differently and half the world won't believe anything the US says anyway.
Honestly this is a serious risk and the only thing we can do is elect a batshit crazy leader who can convince Putin he's stupid enough to push the button. Oh I see...
Subs aren't made for first strikes. The point of them is to hide and launch their nukes to enforce the MAD doctrine. the important parts of the oceans near the US and Russia are guarded quite well even according to publicly available information.
I can't really predict or imagine what would happen in the event NYC was hit with a nuclear missile, but my gut says we'll be back to sticks and stones, regardless of who launched it. A bomb could be blamed on terrorists. Not an ICBM.
You really think that Russia could nuke NYC and it wouldn't invite a retaliation? It's trivially easy to identify it as Russia - the only other countries that could do it are Britain & France (our allies) and China (who has no motive as of yet, and can just barely reach NYC with land-based ICBMs). There's no way that Trump is would let a nuclear attack on a U.S. city go unpunished, and so his very next step would be to nuke Moscow. From there, the countries have a showdown: either they continue retaliating and that's the end of life on earth as we know it, or they let it stop at one city and both countries have their most populous city reduced to rubble.
Both countries know this, which is why neither Trump or Putin are going to launch the missiles.
And exactly why the President has ordered this action (presumably). There are those who have demonstrated that they have no such restraints. They, Assad included, are the wild card that threaten long term stability.
"There would be no hard evidence linking the source of the attack."
If are willing to take seriously a movie, Sum of all Fears, then for each ball of plutonium, just take the distribution of its isotopes. If have a catalog of all such balls of plutonium, then, for any one ball of plutonium, its distribution, looked up in the catalog, will identify where and when that plutonium was made. Similarly for any bomb from such a ball of plutonium -- just get the distribution of the isotopes in the fallout from the explosion, look up in the catalog, and know the source of the plutonium. Maybe from the nuclear weapons treaties, the catalog was developed.
If all that is approximately the case, then whenever a plutonium bomb goes off, will know the source.
Next, it may be the case that,
if a missile is launched at sea, then US satellites will detect the launch and start a search -- e.g., by air, dropping sonar buoys with active sonar -- to find the submarine.
It may be the case that the submarine trying to get away is limited to a speed of only about 6 knots since going faster might generate enough flow noise for the submarine to be heard and located nearly anywhere in the ocean. If the submarine is limited to such a slow speed, then it would appear that the airplane and sonar buoys would be able to find the submarine easily enough.
Next, it may be the case that the US knows the location, 24 x 7, of every submarine in the world able to launch a nuclear missile.
Net, for a missile with a plutonium warhead to be launched at sea and the submarine to get away without being detected might be nearly impossible.
Beware of war propaganda. A quick reminder about the first Iraq war and how they lied about Saddam killing babies and used a PR firm in Congressional hearing [0] to build public outrage.
"Lantos was a strong supporter of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. During the run-up to the war, the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, of which Lantos was co-chairman, hosted a young Kuwaiti woman identified only as "Nurse Nayirah", who told of horrific abuses by Iraqi soldiers, including the killing of Kuwaiti babies by taking them out of their incubators and leaving them to die on the cold floor of the hospital. These alleged atrocities figured prominently in the rhetoric at the time about Iraqi abuses in Kuwait. The girl's account was later challenged by independent human rights monitors.[30]"
"Nurse Nayirah" later turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States."
So basically what just happened with the gas attack and all.
Yes...this is the same blueprint on Iraq 2, Libya and now Syria.
With Syria they got even better by using social media. Example is the 7 year old who writes better twitter post than many native English speakers. She writes very touching yet concise and to the point twitter posts [0]
It's obvious that elements of US government in both parties have been captured by the business of war, for a long time now. I could argue until I'm blue in the face about this, but now I'm mostly just tired. These people are twisted and they need to pay for their crimes. I'll die happy if Bush, Obama, and Trump all spend the rest of their lives in prison. I don't believe a fucking thing from any of these bastards, their PR teams, their 'intelligence' agencies, or their media surrogates.
Your defamation of Bana, a girl who lived under siege, had her house bombed, narrowly escaped being killed and/or raped by Assad and/or Iran's death squads, and is probably still traumatized from the experience, is sheer depravity. Bana was photographed and interviewed inside and outside Aleppo.
That aside, Google translate can probably help you write "better twitter post" than many native English speakers. Bana's mother may also be helping her, but that doesn't make her fake.
Hypothesis: this is a message to Xi and North Korea. Syria is a consequence-free zone. Unless we depose Assad and commit to nation building, this has limited non-humanitarian consequence. Bonus: decisive action right after McMasters consolidated Bannon's NSC influence.
Fifty missiles, in an area where US aircraft can operate unfettered if they so choose, seems like a statement that one side doesn't want to risk its own people.
Even the US has limits. There are only so many Tomahawks ready to go. 59+ is a significant reduction in that number. They won't do this again as I doubt they could mount a third such salvo. They need to keep a substantial number of missiles in reserve for taking out air defences in support of a broader air war or special forces operation. The next "message" will therefore come via manned aircraft. That's where things between the Russians and the US get tricky. There is only so much airspace over syria.
Of course they aren't all deployed in the Middle East and won't each have 90 of the missiles ready to go, but 50 doesn't seem like a huge stretch of capabilities.
There are numerous attacks of more than 150 missiles and several thousand available (which I agree doesn't necessarily mean they are all ready for use):
But how many are actually there today? The fleet must keep in reserve enough missiles to address more pressing issues. Take the 60 missiles to take out a single airport. They probably want to keep twice that many in case they want to strike another airport, perhaps a Russian base. So 60 empty tubes, plus 120 ready to attack another base. Then how many do they need to take out all the air defences should a wider air war start? And then all the deep targets that they wouldn't want to risk manned aircraft to reach during the first wave. Say there are 5 ships x 50 missiles, that's only 250 to spread across all those missions.
I;m interested in how many ships actually fired. Whether one ship fires all/most of them, or whether the tasking was spread amongst the fleet, speaks to the potential timeline. If it all came from one ship, and that ship is now racing back to port to rearm, that says to me that they expect to do this again sooner rather than later as that would get the fleet back to full capacity more quickly than waiting for many ships to rotate out.
A Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser usually carry ~26 Tomahawk missiles in their standard loadout. The US Navy has over 3,500 Tomahawks stockpiled. Firing off 59, even in one attack, won't cause an issue.
It was on the front page for about 20 minutes before it started sinking rapidly. Perhaps it was reflexively flagged by users for some reason or perhaps the mods buried it intentionally.
Doesn't HN automatically flag/throttle articles if its heuristics detect a possible flamewar or potentially hot button issue? I might be misremembering this.
I remember hearing that too. If the algorithm works that way, it would be easy to manipulate. Start a flame war and watch the subject of your choosing receive only limited coverage and commentary (e.g. a competitor's product, bad news about your company, the US war machine, etc.).
The ugly truth is that if you want to change a culture you must permeate it. This requires a multi-generational commitment. You can not assault an opposition into compliance. You must defeat its leaders and its men and then squat upon its culture until its children know nothing other than your own culture. This is what our grandfathers understood when they placed multi-generational bases in Germany and Japan. Today's metro-sexual culture does not have the understanding nor the resolve for such a commitment.
A civilized culture must abhor violence. But it must also be ready to use it when the alternative is to ignore the suffering of others.
As a Syrian-American who voted for Clinton, I am incredibly happy that Trump has shown resolve where Obama failed to.
This may not directly cause the downfall of the abominable Assad regime, but at least it will make Assad think twice before using chemical weapons again. Hopefully, it will be followed by safe zones and arming the Free Syrian Army.
This is nothing new though, Obama committed extensive bombing in Syria too. Obama's initial reason for involvement was alleged chemical weapons. I don't see how this qualifies as direct action while everything else we've been doing there for the past 5+ years is not. Still, that's not to say this isn't horrible.
Here's a reminder for people of what Obama was up to:
166 comments
[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 335 ms ] thread(Dated today.)
All we need now is an arch duke in an open top car.
But usually they think about the long-term strategic consequences of doing so, before acting. For like at least 5 minutes or so.
2. Assad is also someone who uses chemical weapons on his own people. (All right, the other side of a civil war, but still citizens of his own nation.) He's a guy who turned protests into a civil war by his brutality in response. "Secularist and modernizer" isn't the same as "good guy".
Ron Paul is questioning the origin of the attack, but here we are.
The Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia is moving forward as of earlier this week, and the Turkish stream pipeline can't move forward until the Syria question is settled. Add to that in late March Russia announced it was coming up with an alternative to the SWIFT banking system. Collision course.
Vlad doesn't seem like the kind to back down. Not looking forward to this one bit.
[1] http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-syrian-rebels...
Sorry all. That is what I felt on reading this. We just don't need war.
http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/603497/trump-syr...
Only Congress has the power to declare war. That's the actual check and balance. But if I understand correctly, in a situation like this[1], the President has authority to authorize military force. He just can't continue to use it for more than 90 days (in the same situation) without congressional approval[2].
But no, Republicans in Congress are not going to magically force Trump to un-fire the missiles. Nor are they going to impeach him over this. (If he violates the 90 day limit, it is somewhat more likely that there will be some kind of action, but still far from certain.)
[1] For some value of "like this" - a situation where, in the President's judgment, military action is urgently needed, where it can't wait for days or weeks while Congress debates and goes through all the procedural motions.
[2] The 90 day limit is there because the Vietnam War came out of a situation like this - a presidentially-authorized use of force that never was a declared war, that turned into nearly a decade of US involvement and 55,000 US dead.
@realDonaldTrump 30 Aug 2013: "The President must get Congressional approval before attacking Syria-big mistake if he does not!" [1]
[1] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/37358152840590540...
Except for the fact that the move indicates nothing less than complete and utter chaos in his stance vis-a-vis Russia. And that it remains to be seen how Putin will decide to "stand up" for his symbolic ally in response.
Well there's this thing known as "empathy", in regard to those who are suffering. You might want to look into it sometime.
(Then again, with a handle like yours...)
And see that Politico article linked to elsewhere in this thread: Putin responded to the missile strikes by suddenly discovering that he, too, had a problem with his ally using chemical weapons! He certainly didn't say that in 2013!
Try not to be so explicitly racist in your analyses. Kurds are an ethnic group of 40 million people with different ideologies, interests and goals. Saying "give it all to the Kurds" says more about your racism towards other regional ethnic groups (Arabs, Syriacs, Turks) than some grand understanding you have of the Middle East.
> I could envision partitioning the country along its existing ethnic lines
Nobody except casual MSM observers wants this racist, separatist outcome and anybody with any understanding of the country would know that the country doesn't have "ethnic lines" that you can just build a wall across and somehow produce mini-states that will be economically successful, productive and start working in harmony with their new neighbours.
[0] http://carnegie-mec.org/diwan/54367?lang=en
As for the rest, the pro-Assad forces are mostly Alawites (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabiha) and Christians (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_militias_in_Syria), organized along ethno-religious lines. Incorporating them into Lebanon, or creating a "coastal Syria" with a minimum of Sunnis in it (and probably under Russian tutelage, since the Christians are Orthodox and the Alawites have reason to see Russia as a protector) would allow them to live without either being tyrants or being tyrannized.
Neither does the PYD. Mainstream Kurdish nationalism involves Kurdish independence (which the PYD is opposed to) and are largely capitalist (see Iraq).
> As for the rest, the pro-Assad forces are mostly Alawites
Really? The overwhelming majority of Syrian soldiers are Sunni. Alawites are overrepresented in the Syrian Air Force, but underrepresented in the general military. Pro-government auxiliary forces like the Lebanese Hezbollah are certainly not Alawite, neither are the Iraqis and others that support the Syrian government.
> and Christians
"Christians" what? There are Christian Arabs, Kurds, Syriacs and Armenians. They're not a single group. Even between the Syriacs we see pro-government and anti-government divisions (Sutoro vs Sootoro).
> organized along ethno-religious lines
No, they're not.
I don't think the Syriacs in North East Syria want to be forcefully relocated to Lebanon or Coastal Syria, I think they want to stay at home. I also don't think ethnically cleansing Sunnis from Coastal Syria is any sort of move, let alone a justifiable one.
I'd like to continue this conversation but I'm afraid I'm going to withdraw myself here.
I agree with the "scum" part.
For the "step in", hmm ...? If are trying to civilize Assad and/or his enemies, then that looks hopeless.
If are trying to deter Assad from more use of ugly chemical weapons on babies, maybe that can work, a little, for a while.
If trying to replace Assad, then an early question has to be -- with whom that would be better? The replacement should be better, and in such situations that ain't nearly guaranteed.
I'm no expert, but it may be that Syria divides into people who (A) more or less like Assad, at least will let him get by with rigged elections without being really bitter about it, and (B) hate Assad and all the people in (A) and would eagerly torture and murder all of them by the most brutal methods they could implement. Yes, the people in (A) might be equally eager to murder all the people in (B).
That is, first-cut, we're talking a lot of people who still are back in essentially Medieval times, maybe as if they were still fighting over very limited water and grazing land, and still isolated from the lessons from the religious, etc. wars of Europe of the past 1000 years, e.g., separation of church and state, basic humanism, etc., lessons not well honored in Europe even as recently as Hitler.
Hitler was brutal, in Medieval terms, including with gas, likely also on children and babies. So, is it too surprising that maybe a lot of people in Syria are Medieval, brutal, inhumane, etc.?
To me, from about 1/4th the way around the world away, one of the big lessons needed in the Mideast is separation of church and state, and I can't believe that any significant separation will take place there for at least another, say, 200 years. E.g., apparently one of the main recruiting attractions of ISIS -- in Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc. -- is a closed, isolated, Medieval, brutal, sectarian dictatorship. So, that stuff still gets lots of people over there to vote with their feet, lives, etc.
Over there, maybe they were having wars and, there, killing babies, etc. going way back. Some of the situations and scenes in the movie Lawrence of Arabia, a side-show of WWI, seem to suggest so.
In such situations, there is an approach to peace, that of the grave.
I do suspect that with some well placed bombs from the US, it is possible to send a message that even the most dedicated sectarians can hear, the parties can understand the message, calm down for a while, sign a deal, get some strong geographical lines of separation, maybe monitored by the UN, and, then, live essentially in peace for some decades, say, until there is another ambitious, bloodthirsty, leader eager to take over territory and willing to exploit religion to do so.
I essentially agree with your reasoning. It's a very delicate situation, but Assad, Iran, and Russia have gotten away with too much. The US and its allies have to show them that their actions have consequences. You can't just use chemical weapons over and over again without repercussions.
As for the long term, it's very difficult to tell what will happen. The way I see it is dialogue is the only way forward. Both sides have to figure out an arrangement that ends up benefiting the Syrian people. Otherwise, this war is going to become irreversible, if it hasn't already..
Yup, they seem to believe that they have some strong interests in common. First cut, from the campaign and the terrorists attacks, the US is mostly interested in stopping terrorism, in particular just ending ISIS. For that, a guess so far is that Assad, Iran, and Russia see no real gain and a lot of pain in the back side from ISIS and will be eager enough to see the US, Turkey, Baghdad, if it is now not too close to Iran, and maybe even Assad kill off ISIS.
How far Assad, Iran, and Russia can get with a coalition for geography, power, and money I don't know; my guess is that once ISIS is dead, the US will have more important policy items than Assad, Iran, and Russia in the Mideast and will have friends in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and Israel.
Just from a glance at a map, easy enough to understand why Russia might want a warm water port. E.g., the US has warm or even hot water ports all along both coasts and the Gulf of Mexico with all of those ports a lot of deep water away from adversaries.
There may be some neo-cons around who never want to pass up an opportunity for another foreign advanture and saw Trump's shooting 59 cruise missiles as a big day for neo-con goals -- here I believe that the neo-cons will be wrong.
I hope Trump still wants to stay the heck out of foreign adventures, be President of the US and not the world (his saying "God bless the world" alone is okay), stop Assad from using gas, kill off ISIS, organize an effort in the Mideast, with funding from the Saudis and Gulf states, for a refugee area, help draw new lines to keep the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds separated, get all that done quickly, and then just come home and concentrate on jobs, the wall, trade deals, replacing Obamacare, getting the economy going, e.g., fast enough to generate the needed tax revenue, energy independence, etc.
Trump has talked a lot about the $6 T or so we have spent in the Mideast, and I hope and believe that he won't spend even another $1 T there -- his big infrastructure program is supposed to be only $1 T. If we throw $1 T at a time over and over at the Mideast, after a while it adds up to real money we would have liked to have spent here.
> Both sides have to figure out an arrangement that ends up benefiting the Syrian people.
Kill off ISIS. Have a Sunni area cut from the current Syria and Iraq and get Assad, Baghdad, and Turkey to go along. Have a Kurdish area cut from Syria and Iraq, and tell the Turks that, no, we don't want a greater Kurdistan. Tell Assad he can rule half of Syria or none of it -- his choice.
I'm still not convinced that the Chemical Weapons where from Assad or the Russians attack and the probability of them actually being in a weapons store the rebels held, to me seems if not equally probable. Mostly from the aspect that Chemical Weapons in the form of landmine dispersol have been used by ISIS in Iraq. Now the aspect that such types of weapons as a Chemical Weapon dispersal is not one we know that well. So an airstrike upon a weapons depot that had such landmines, could most likely cause the mines to release the chemical weapon. Many experts have said that an airstrike upon a chemical weapon store would destroy the chemical weapons. But we are talking about mines as storage. A factor that may well be overlooked or a large unknown in how they react to airstrikes.
What we will know eventually is if they fingerprint the chemical weapon in this Syrian event and compare to that used by ISIS in Iraq then if they are the same.
So given how Russia and indeed Assad reacts will prove most telling. I also believe Assad would be totally foolish to use Chemical Weapons, more so with Russian support and no need to use them. This and already gave them up, via Russia and again. There was no need for them and they would know the response if they did, and I don't believe even Russia or Assad would be that silly.
So from that perspective, Trump just updated the Doomsday clock.
Those at the top play games, those at the bottom die for it. It's all a way to strengthen the loyalty of voters.
So It will be interesting to see how his approval rating goes over the next few days.
I hope they are not rushing in without all the facts and that is my fear, and maybe they know something that is not public. Time will tell, as always.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-4_(explosive)
1. https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/sarin#section=Odor
So still reasonable doubt.
I really hope they do a forensics upon that impact sight of Chemical Weapons and get to the truth sooner rather than later.
I know why they do it, and wars are alas still measured upon how many combatants you loose, over any innocents loss of life. That needs to change.
I wasn't aware that the rebels controlled fighter jets?
> I also believe Assad would be totally foolish to use Chemical Weapons
This is not the first time Assad uses chemical agents...
I'm honestly quite surprised to see such a display of mental gymnastics being upvoted on HN.
The situation has changed though. His regime's prospects of surviving are the best they've been since the war started. Why risk upsetting the current situation for such a small gain?
He has absolutely nothing to gain from using chemical agents when he is already winning through conventional means. Even more so considering he probably doesn't plan individual strikes
Much more likely this is a false flag pushed by Israel/Saudi Arabia because Assad's regime is an ally of Iran - their biggest rival in the region.
We don't know that, especially when it comes to using chemical weapons. And even if he doesn't, he definitely delegates to representatives he trusts.
> Much more likely this is a false flag
I'm honestly speechless.
If he didn't authorize it directly, it doesn't matter - his regime is set up in such a way that actors under his authority used chemical weapons on civilians.
The justification of a response is not impacted by whether or not he was individually responsible.
They don't and afaik no one is claiming that they do. The Syrian government isn't denying a bombing. They're saying that they bombed using conventional munitions but hit a chemical weapon stockpile.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destr...
I'm far from an expert here but I read in one report that Assad generally doesn't store the Sarin gas in its final form as it's highly unstable but instead stores one of the precursor chemicals which takes little effort to convert. Doing this would mean a strike on a warehouse wouldn't release the deadly gas.
I think it's slightly less probably given that the rebels would have had to made a conscious choice to convert the chemical to Sarin and store it. Do the rebels have any history of using it?
The U.S. does nothing: Innocent people continue to die
The U.S. does something: Innocent people die (It is war, after all)
Whats worse, is what'll happen when one of the strikes inadvertently hits some of Russia's troops?
Whats the solution to all this?
Like, coordinating coups and dropping bombs over and over again tends to have that effect.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-cr...
And the US had been covertly funding the opposition for at least 5 years before the war erupted:
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/terrorism-security/2011/0418/...
The problem has never been the war, the problem is that "Assad must go". For the strategies and gains of the US and a number of its allies. Any excuse and any false flag will do, and any amount of victims is acceptable to this end.
Maybe get all the parties to the fighting to get serious, sit down, shut up, listen up, and make a deal.
For the first part, the "get serious", have some bombs wake them up and get their attention.
Or may want a BATNA -- best alternative to a negotiated agreement -- to be much worse than so far. Or, call it making the parties motivated.
Or, maybe the attack with the 50+ cruise missiles was to "make an example".
Why try to make the parties more motivated -- could that help? Well, easily enough, there are enough people among the parties who are willing to have that several sided civil war continue at the current level of bloodshed for a long time. But, maybe by making the war more costly to selected parties, can get a deal.
I don't know enough of the details to have any idea if any of the above would be realistic, feasible, correct, etc. Instead, I'm just floating some of what might be part of the situation. Or as General Mattis explained, a war is not over until the enemy says it is -- the enemy also gets a vote. So, for a war to be over, all the sides need to be motivated to agree it should be over.
It seems that certain interests will carry through no matter what.
There's a conspiracy that's been floated for a few years and is resurfacing that the Saudis and Qataris have been pushing for a pipeline from Qatar to Turkey via Syria, and Assad has been a thorn in their side preventing diplomatic means to get it done. But there's also sound arguments against this [1], although the source I found suggests that this is directly tied to US access to bases in the area (possible) and thus aligning with SA, Qatar, and Turkey (perhaps in opposition to Russia/Iran/Syria). I'm not sure anyone really knows what's going on at this point. If I had to guess, it probably ties into everything from oil to archaic alliances dating to the Cold War and even military expenditures.
The Israelis may have a part to play in all this, too, but in my mind, I don't see what benefit they'd gain by continuing to destabilize the entire region. Then again, I guess you could argue the same point for every other actor, and perhaps there's an advantage behind encouraging your adversaries to go for each others' throats every few years (dangerous!).
Another protracted war in the Mideast is the last thing we need... sigh.
(Note: I'm just speculating here based on what I've read over the years and my own opinions and biases. This is probably entirely wrong.)
[1] http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/37685-the-war-against-the...
Second, Israel already illegally occupies a portion of Syrian territory, the Golan heights. And has no intention whatsoever of giving it back. A torn country is the best way to make sure that the Golan Heights will never go back to Syria (which might not even exist anymore) (check [1])
The other reason I just found it in the news this morning, though it doesn't surprise me in the least. "Prime minister Netanyahu is pressing to ensure that any agreement that will end the war in Syria will include buffer zones on Israeli borders with Syria and Jordan. [2] " Now, we know what Israel does with "buffer zones". The West Bank is, technically, a buffer zone. They're just moving their own civilian population in it.
[1] https://www.google.nl/search?q=netanyahu+war+in+syria+golan+... [2] http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.782143
The comment I'm responding to makes it sound like this stuff is beyond democracy and voters have no choice. That's not true at all. Voters just consider bombing others to be an important activity.
But you know what, I come to this site for tech and science type things. But a large contingent appear to be bent on using it for a political platform. My opinion is they are badly damaging the site. I've tried to register my opinion on things or talk about topics in what I perceive to be an objective manner only to be trolled, flamed and down-voted into oblivion. At this point I'm not going to bother with anything remotely political. If people want to make another ideology bubble fine. It's just not worth the struggle at this point.
However, that probably shows that it's not enough to say you have an opinion or a stance on something; you can only be trusted to keep it if you are already aware, at the moment of expressing it, of all the arguments and forces that will push you in another direction. Three months (of undoubtedly powerful lobbying) have been enough to sway Trump from "no more wars" to "yes let's start another one, possibly with Russia".
Anyone find this plausible or should I turn off the computer and go to sleep?
There would be no hard evidence of a submarine launched ICBM pre-impact in the year 2017? I think you can stay up a while longer.
Meanwhile, the US collapses.
I mean sure we can say we have hard evidence that the warhead was launched from a Russian sub, but RT will report things differently and half the world won't believe anything the US says anyway.
Honestly this is a serious risk and the only thing we can do is elect a batshit crazy leader who can convince Putin he's stupid enough to push the button. Oh I see...
I can't really predict or imagine what would happen in the event NYC was hit with a nuclear missile, but my gut says we'll be back to sticks and stones, regardless of who launched it. A bomb could be blamed on terrorists. Not an ICBM.
Both countries know this, which is why neither Trump or Putin are going to launch the missiles.
If are willing to take seriously a movie, Sum of all Fears, then for each ball of plutonium, just take the distribution of its isotopes. If have a catalog of all such balls of plutonium, then, for any one ball of plutonium, its distribution, looked up in the catalog, will identify where and when that plutonium was made. Similarly for any bomb from such a ball of plutonium -- just get the distribution of the isotopes in the fallout from the explosion, look up in the catalog, and know the source of the plutonium. Maybe from the nuclear weapons treaties, the catalog was developed.
If all that is approximately the case, then whenever a plutonium bomb goes off, will know the source.
Next, it may be the case that, if a missile is launched at sea, then US satellites will detect the launch and start a search -- e.g., by air, dropping sonar buoys with active sonar -- to find the submarine.
It may be the case that the submarine trying to get away is limited to a speed of only about 6 knots since going faster might generate enough flow noise for the submarine to be heard and located nearly anywhere in the ocean. If the submarine is limited to such a slow speed, then it would appear that the airplane and sonar buoys would be able to find the submarine easily enough.
Next, it may be the case that the US knows the location, 24 x 7, of every submarine in the world able to launch a nuclear missile.
Net, for a missile with a plutonium warhead to be launched at sea and the submarine to get away without being detected might be nearly impossible.
When judging crimes, intent matters. EDIT: Even if you wish it wasn't.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Lantos#1991_Gulf_War
"Nurse Nayirah" later turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States."
So basically what just happened with the gas attack and all.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/07/world/middleeast/aleppo-t...
That aside, Google translate can probably help you write "better twitter post" than many native English speakers. Bana's mother may also be helping her, but that doesn't make her fake.
Even the US has limits. There are only so many Tomahawks ready to go. 59+ is a significant reduction in that number. They won't do this again as I doubt they could mount a third such salvo. They need to keep a substantial number of missiles in reserve for taking out air defences in support of a broader air war or special forces operation. The next "message" will therefore come via manned aircraft. That's where things between the Russians and the US get tricky. There is only so much airspace over syria.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arleigh_Burke-class_destroyer
(among other ships capable of launching them)
Of course they aren't all deployed in the Middle East and won't each have 90 of the missiles ready to go, but 50 doesn't seem like a huge stretch of capabilities.
There are numerous attacks of more than 150 missiles and several thousand available (which I agree doesn't necessarily mean they are all ready for use):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomahawk_(missile)#United_Stat...
I;m interested in how many ships actually fired. Whether one ship fires all/most of them, or whether the tasking was spread amongst the fleet, speaks to the potential timeline. If it all came from one ship, and that ship is now racing back to port to rearm, that says to me that they expect to do this again sooner rather than later as that would get the fleet back to full capacity more quickly than waiting for many ships to rotate out.
[1] https://news.usni.org/2017/04/06/breaking-u-s-destroyers-fir...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13857086
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13867739
(Flamewar was a bad example, I admit. Sorry about that.)
A civilized culture must abhor violence. But it must also be ready to use it when the alternative is to ignore the suffering of others.
Here's a reminder for people of what Obama was up to:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13595999