USA Politics

I agree (NATO) .. I think that would be more likely to a) happen and b) be a success with US involvement than without. If NATO cannot show a united from on this, what can it show one on. It does not need to mean sending in troops, it can be something similar to Libya
 
There must be an alternative to violence. I'm not going to accept that this is the only option.
 
So, Foro, you like the idea of the potential deaths of innocent civilians for the sake of giving Russia the middle finger?
 
Perun said:
There must be an alternative to violence. I'm not going to accept that this is the only option.
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I am not sure what other options there are. I suppose sine the UN inspection team is there, they should be given time to find out what they can find out. But at this point it seems whoever is using these weapons do not seem to care about international complications or opinion.

Which to get back to how this started .. the "Red Line" leading to no real actions has if anything harmed the situation. Is Obama going to say, "this time I really mean it if you use them again"
 
I don't know. If the UN were to take possession of all the chemical weapons, if both sides agreed to peacekeepers and to democratic, UN-run elections, sure. But I have a feeling that will not happen.
 
I don't know what other options there are either. But I don't think there aren't any. That's impossible.
 
I think any immediate goal should be to stop them from using weapons. If the Civil War continues without them being used, we should steer clear.

If we know where they are (or at least some of them) .. some kind of one time quick strike to neutralize the weapons (bomb them, go in and get them and leave with them) may be enough to stop them from being used again.
 
Perun said:
So, Foro, you like the idea of the potential deaths of innocent civilians for the sake of giving Russia the middle finger?
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Russia has disagreed more often when the West came into action. And they have prolongued this status quo long enough.

The body count is also counting without involvement. I can't believe that doing nothing is the best thing.
 
Perun said:
I don't know what other options there are either. But I don't think there aren't any. That's impossible.
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I am not sure we are using War the same. Would you be opposed to some type of very short term action to eliminate some of the chemical weapons. I am fine with that, not an ongoing ground war ... I am not sure there is a side that is worthy of being backed here.
 
I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I think that the evidence is insufficient to say for certain who used the gas. A UN team got shot at from unidentified snipers outside Damascus. What if a coalition strikes against Assad, and it turns out it was the rebels using chemical weapons after all?

Forostar said:
The body count is also counting without involvement. I can't believe that doing nothing is the best thing.
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I can't believe killing more people is the best thing either.
 
My thoughts are that a limited strike might not be sufficient unless we dismantle both sides. But how limited would that be? Ugh. It's not an easy situation. Do we trust the UN to determine who fired the gas?
 
Keep in mind that there is also no possible way of seeing the outcome of an intervention. It may be a limited action and remain limited, and it may start a wildfire if other countries decide to intervene in favour of Assad.
 
I do not trust the UN at all for this. It is a hard situation, because what is the point of having International Laws and treaties that ban certain weapons and actions if there is no force behind them? Also as Perun pointed out, there is a chance that the rebels are the ones using the weapons and I think at least a decent chance both sides are using them.

Perhaps a quick strike could work if we knew where at least a fair amount of these are located and take them out regardless of who is using them.
 
I wouldn't go that far saying I do not trust UN. I don't trust certain nations and that's why I am glad there's NATO and UN. They don't always function well, but the intend is good.
Perun said:
I can't believe killing more people is the best thing either.
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It isn't the best thing. But I think it's abhorrently immoral to do nothing.

There will be deaths with involvement, and there will be without (maybe even more).

We can't predict the future. We can only learn from the past and try to do things as well as possible.
But if we are more busy with the consequences than with what's going on right now, we could just as well wait till 2020 and see if anyone is still alive, worth fighting for.
 
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