I really don't think bombing Syria would hurt anyone

[Taverner]

These bombs are bombs of liberation! The Syrians will rejoice when the depleted Uranium falls on their heads.

They will cry tears of JOY when their villages, their homes and schools are vaporized.

They'll be flying American flags and singing "Dixie" when they read stories of scores of civilian casualties

I tell you, we will be greeted as LIBERATORS!!!!!

Oh, and if I really need it...

[KittyWampus]

1. As I said earlier, some DU'ers will be genuinely sorry if there is no strike on Syria. And I don't

refer to the very few "hawks" on DU.

[Taverner]

2. Don't you mean Syria

I mean, yeah, it's hard to keep track of who we want to kill these days

[KittyWampus]

3. yes, exactly.

[Chuuku Davis]

4. Stay the fuck out

Not our problem right now

[Taverner]

5. I...I thought the sarcasm tag would be enough

Sigh

[Bluenorthwest]

6. Not just bombs of liberation, they are smart, surgical, precision bombs that hurt only

bad people while offering innocents chewing gum and candy.

[shenmue]

9. Yeah, he doesn't just want to bomb chemical plants like he said

He has a Secret Plan to kill every kid in the country first.

Every President is just the same, and just as bad.

Meanwhile, there is no Assad in the room! There are no dead Syrians! Those videos are fake!

[David__77]

29. Where does he say "bomb chemical plants?"

Actually the indications are there would be no attempt to bomb such "plants," if they exist, nor to bombs chemical munitions stores, if they exist, precisely because such a thing (if there are indeed such chemicals), would potentially cause many more deaths among civilians.

I don't think you're making your point very well here.

[HardTimes99]

14. They don't kill children; they only kill terrorists disguised as children :sarcasm: <--Poe's Law-nt

[L0oniX]

24. Our wonderful military calls them "bug splat". Sick fuckers!

In the US, mass child killings are tragedies. In Pakistan, mere bug splats

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/17/us-killings-tragedies-pakistan-bug-splats

[L0oniX]

25. Kinda like a piņata bomb?

[shenmue]

7. What depleted uranium?

Do you believe everything you're fed?

Oh, right - I forgot whom I'm asking.

[Taverner]

10. Please Read

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium

We used them in Iraq and Libya

We will use them in Syria

[Recursion]

18. You know depleted uranium isn't used in bombs, right?

I mean, seriously, you know that, right?

It's used in discarding-sabot armor-piercing rounds. Large javelins, essentially, that knock holes in tanks or bunkers.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

8. I'm going long on sweets and candies!!!!

[libdem4life]

11. Probably rules out the "hearts and minds" as well

(if needed)

[Deep13]

12. Exactly. What can possibly go wrong?

[L0oniX]

23. Pull my finger and find out!

[Deep13]

28. It's not like Russia and the USA still have nuclear weapons...

...and that both governments are on opposite sides of this Syria thing.

Wait, what?

[HardTimes99]

13. It will be a cakewalk. :sarcasm: <---Poe's Law - nt

[backscatter712]

15. Of course, we'd never use white phosphorus...

And didn't you know, even if we did, it'd be OK, because WP isn't a chemical weapon.

[Recursion]

19. It's not a chemical weapon. I don't see why this board has such conceptual difficulty here

It's an incindiary. It sets things on fire. We also have a bomb that releases a cloud of petroleum and lights it. Also horrifying, also incindiary, also not a chemical weapon.

[L0oniX]

22. Please pass the cluster bombs and jelly. n/t

[Go Vols]

16. If there will be

no throwing of flowers at our feet for being the " liberators",I say fuck it.

[reusrename]

17. They'll be singing "Dixie?"

Really?

Syria seems more "Yankee Doodle" to me.

[L0oniX]

21. Our soldiers will be playing music for them ...Jump'n Jack Flash ....is a gas gas gas. n/t

Maybe McInsain will make an appearance and sing a little Bomb Bomb Bomb ...bomb bomb Iran too.

[reusrename]

26. Yep, that's the real theme song for this war.

It's so damn obvious.

[L0oniX]

20. They'll be throwing flowers in the path of the US liberaters and Democracyersersersssssspreadersssss

[DirkGently]

27. Most importantly, bombs protect children from dying some other way!

[The Straight Story]

30. And doing nothing will save how many lives?

I swear, Assad could fire up camps and herd people into them and gas them all day long and people would just shrug it off.

"Well, if we try to stop him, someone could get hurt!!"

Next time I witness someone trying to kill some folks, like say a shooter in a school, I sure won't call the cops because that might result in the shooter killing more people.

Obama was CORRECT - if we don't do something about assad's use of chemical weapons then we are sending a message to anyone who wants to use them that no one cares, gas away.

I am not a pro-war person, but I am also not a person who is willing to see our country do nothing when we could be doing something ---- and don't say we have not tried, we have tried already through the UN:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-14703995
and
http://www.neontommy.com/news/2013/08/timeline-chemical-weapon-reports-syria

We have worked with the UN elsewhere as well, ala the Congo where 5.4 million people have died - and the UN has been there for 14 years.

It IS our business because if we allow this crap to pass why in the hell should anyone, anywhere in the world, take the whole idea of not using chemical weapons seriously???

And to boot - there are more people upset that WE might act in a way to take out some strategic military targets than there are people upset over what assad has done.

It is truly sickening at times watching people turn a blind eye like they have in the past (which I thought we had learned from) to the gassing of civilians.

No wonder some dictators can get people to go along with the wholesale slaughter of others - those with power will ignore it, solves their issues by getting rid of undesirables, and the only hope at helping is portrayed as worse than gassing (hey, if we help them, someone might get hurt - we don't want people to get hurt, well...unless it is their owner/dictator hurting them, then we are ok with it).

A sad world indeed when we get more outraged over dog fighting, cats being killed, etc and blow off the slaughter of men, women, and children by chemical weapons.

But that is the state of 'progressive' America today.

Obama is not bush. This is not Iraq. But people refuse to see that and replace Obama in their mind with bush.

All to easy and in the end, bush really did win because he convinced us to do nothing when we should do something.

[ocpagu]

31. When was the US elected the "world police" again?

No, this is NOT US responsability, this is NOT US business. If something needs to be done, let the UN, the international community deal with it.

Nobody will be blaming you for not acting. Quite the contrary. Obama would win a lot of respect from the international community if he DOESN'T start a war and the US could start regaining some credibility. If he goes to war, yes, he'll be forever Bush III. The war hasn't even started and the entire planet is saying "there goes the United States bombing another country to steal oil".

[The Straight Story]

32. My view

With great power comes great responsibility.

We ARE a super power in the world. Who else is going to act, Brazil? Sweden?

How many times have I read stories over the years here on DU (and elsewhere) where we were shocked that people turned and walked away from someone being raped/murdered - people who probably had the same mindset: "I am not the police, that is someone Else's job, not mine"

You said "Obama would win a lot of respect from the international community if he DOESN'T start a war and the US could start regaining some credibility." - OK...to what end? Assad is doing what he does and no one gives a damn. No one is doing jack about it - and you want me to care what these other countries think when it comes to us doing something?

Why should we? What are they going to do about it? Whine? Write a strongly worded letter? Hell, they won't do anything about this situation (that has been going on for years, and when the UN was involved Russia and China vetoed our peaceful efforts to deal with it, see my timeline links in previous post).

We CAN do something about it. We have the ability to do so. The argument is "Let's not get involved, not our people dying". Well hell, I though progressives saw beyond the whole "My people" argument and actually saw the worth of humans beyond just those who live here. Obviously that is not true.

We might as well take out some headlines that say "The one super power in the world who can do something about the use of chemical/biological/nuclear weapons has agreed not to interfere with those who use them. Please proceed." because that is the message being sent.

The US has been trying to stem the tide of death there (again, see our previous attempts with the UN/etc). Now it has been ratcheted up a notch and the peaceful ways we have tried have not worked.

As far as the entire world....where was Costa Rica in trying to get the UN to intervene. Sweden. Lothoso. Russia (vetoed). Etc and so on. If anything THEY have lost credibility because they choose to ignore the wholesale slaughter of people and stay cloistered in their own little cocoons and do nothing.

My how we have railed about the state of evil in the world over what happened in ww2 and how people did nothing.

And yet, we here who call ourselves progressives are doing the same thing. Not our business. Ooooh someone might not like us if we do something. Let's focus on something else and pretend it is not happening because it is not happening to us here.

Ignore it all. Assad owns those people, they are his to do with as he pleases. They are his property to gas.

Will be a cold day in hell before I call myself a progressive and feel that the right course of action is to do nothing - and I will state again that we have tried peace, have been for YEARS if you read the time lines I posted. At some point you have to intervene and try something different - unless, of course, those people mean nothing and their deaths don't bother you.

They bother me elsewhere in the world as well (congo/rwanda/etc) and when we can act together with the UN/etc and find peaceful means to fix things I am all for that. We have tried that. It has failed.

If the most powerful nation on the world gives you a pass to do as you wish with weapons that 98% of the world has condemned...well then we have no right to say a damned thing when every other country in the world seeks out such weapons and use them.

You draw a line. You stand by it. Or you turn away and become an isolationist and then wonder why, later, the world has went to hell.

Obama is not bush. This is not Iraq. And if people want to make it something it is not there is nothing I can do to convince them.

[ocpagu]

33. And who should stop the US?

How about we stop pretending that this is about altruism? The US is not in the conditions of claiming such moral authority, I must say...

The United States is still the only nation in the world that has ever used nuclear weapons against civilians. Twice.

The United States has deposed democratically elected presidents and replaced them with fascist dictatorships and also trained foreign militias to kill opponents, causing the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens. In dozens of countries.

The United States has used chemical weapons, deliberately infected people with syphilis in Guatemala,, and committed serious war crimes in several opportunities since WWII.

Should the world retaliate? Should the world bomb American cities to show to the US government that such abuses will not be tolerated?

The US has great powers, no doubts about it. But responsability is something it has almost never shown. Why would it be different this time.

No, the world has not lost credibility. The US has. Each one of the countries that you have mentioned, Brazil, Sweden, Costa Rica, Lesotho, Russia, enjoy smore credibility before the international community. They are not getting involved in a war every week. I certainly would trust a lot more an intervention being conducted by the UN and led by a country like Brazil or Sweden than with the puppets of the MIC in the Pentagon calling the shots. And I think I speak for the majority in the planet when I say that.

Before preaching to the others, the US has to do its own homework. Nobody is asking for "help". The kind of "help" the US could provide is something that no one is interested in.

And, no, it's not progressive to cry out for a war. A progressive person would insist in a peaceful resolution until the last minute.

[ladyVet]

34. I was going to post a flippant reply, in accordance with the OP,

but the way this thread turned, I'd just like to say "I agree with this."

We should be supporting UN action, not rushing in to start another war with some Middle Eastern (AKA brown people) country, regardless of what's being done there.

Yes, it's horrible. It's inhumane. It should be stopped. Geez. Does it even need to be said?

But why do we only seem to focus on things that are wrong in countries that have something we want? Or that aren't big enough to blow us up in return?

M O N E Y

[Taverner]

35. Look - they kill one thousand, we bomb and kill ten thousand

You don't solve murders with more murder

[The Straight Story]

36. Again, go back to congo

We and the UN had limited involvement and 45,000/month are dying, 5.4 million so far.

And who says we will be bombing buildings full of civilians?

Do we call it murder when cops shoot an armed gunman? I suppose if someone was running around shooting up kids in an elementary school your plan would be "Don't do anything, shooting him won't solve anything, someone else could be shot by accident".

Yeah...that works.