'He Gassed His Own People'

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Last edited Thu Apr 6, 2017, 11:01 PM - Edit history (2)

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It is illegal for President Trump to unilaterally wage war just to punish Syria. It is required by law that there be some demonstrable threat to the U.S. or our allies, or some imminent attack, in order for the CiC to unilaterally order the use of force.

In 2013, then-President Obama faced the same decision whether to punish Syria's government for chemical attacks blamed on Assad. At that time, the U.N. envoy to Syria asserted that military intervention would need U.N. approval:

____ U.N.’s special envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, spoke to reporters in Geneva as a U.N. inspection team was investigating the alleged poison gas attack near Damascus on Aug. 21 and momentum built for Western military action against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime in the civil war that he called the most serious crisis facing the international community.

‘‘With what has happened on the 21st of August last week, it does seem that some kind of substance was used that killed a lot of people: hundreds, definitely more than a hundred, some people say 300, some people say 600, maybe 1,000, maybe more than 1,000 people,’’ Brahimi said.

‘‘This was of course unacceptable. This is outrageous. This confirms how dangerous the situation in Syria is and how important for the Syrians and the international community to really develop the political will to address this issue seriously, and look for a solution for it,’’ he said.

Brahimi also said that any U.S.-led military action must first gain approval from the 15-nation Security Council, whose five permanent members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — each have veto power.

‘‘International law says that any military action must be taken after’’ Security Council approval, he said. But, he added, President Barack Obama’s administration is ‘‘not known to be trigger-happy.'

"He gassed his own people."

That's the refrain Bush used to keep Americans chastened enough to allow him to use the force and threat of our military to meddle in Iraq's political affairs. It's, perhaps, coincidentally, the same hook the Obama administration used to try and assuage Americans' and our legislators' ambivalence about unleashing our own destructive violence in response to another nation's leader's alleged violence inside of his own country.

'Syria isn't Iraq or Afghanistan,' goes the defense against such comparisons. 'Bush lied about WMDs in Iraq,' or something to that effect, 'and, Obama told the truth about chemical weapons in Syria.

Yet, it makes no difference at all that one justification for the use of military force abroad is a lie and the other isn't. BOTH distort and misrepresent the actual threat to our national security for the exact same reason.

BOTH Bush and Obama made their representations of the threat to the U.S. in order to declare and secure their unilateral authority to use our military forces (at least initially) any way they see fit, without congressional pre-approval - justified almost entirely in their view by their opportunistic declarations that our security is threatened.

That was the slippery slope that Bush used to war. That's the slope that Pres. Obama used to escalate Bush's Afghanistan occupation far beyond the former republican presidency's limits - with the catastrophic result of scores more casualties than Bush to our forces during this Democratic administration's first term and scores more innocent Afghans dead, maimed, or uprooted.

In pressing forward with a U.S. military response to the atrocities committed within Syria, the Democratic president lost almost all of the ground we thought we'd covered in repudiating the opportunistic Bush wars. Bush's were waged, certainly, for oil and other greed; but just as certainly to effect U.S. expansionist ideals involving regime changes and 'dominoes.'

This republican administration, like the Obama WH, is looking for a military wedge inside Syria to effect much the same idealistic set of political aims in that country and the region that the Bush leadership was obsessed with. It's carried forward by this self-important notion that the U.S. is in a position to dictate to other nations it's own versions of opportunistically constructed democracies which serve to elevate one U.S.-interested ideal over other equally pernicious and malicious ones.

Military intervention in Syria isn't going to be 'limited' to a few days, restricted to 'targeted sites', or, just a 'shot across the bow, like Pres. Obama asserted at the time.

The former president insisted that it wouldn't be "a repetition of, you know, Iraq," but, its that very naivete (or bullshittery) that makes the prospect of a military strike in that country as full of as many unanswered questions and pitfalls as Bush's own assertions about his intent to deploy our military resources to defend our national security against a very similar set of unproven allegations about WMDs.

And, what of evidence? It already sounds like the Trump administration is relying on the process of elimination, rather than hard evidence; claiming that the Assad regime is the only actor there capable of delivering a chemical attack in the way this one is alleged to have occurred is not the same as providing definitive proof; not the kind of definitive proof that should be required to attack a nation across its sovereign borders.

Dismissing the possibility that a U.N. inspection team, for example, would be capable of uncovering the truth in Syria - even before one has been deployed - is a signal to Syrians and others that this administration has a pre-determined mindset against that nation which is never going to recognize the truth behind whatever evidence is ever uncovered.

Talk of a 'limited' military strike that sends a 'message' to the Syrian regime ignores the almost certain blowback the regional allies like Israel will experience almost immediately after a U.S. assault. Does President *Trump really believe that Syria and their allies will be so impressed with our display of military might that they'll just fold and surrender? Not many folks think that's likely to happen.

More chance that a U.S. attack will embolden and validate those views in Syria and the region that it's really just American influence behind the opposition, rather than interests more dedicated to what Syrians actually want for their own country.

We can certainly argue and debate about the differences between Syria and Iraq - for instance, the size and potential of Syria's much more equipped and capable forces. Yet, it is this administration's (as was Obama's) determination to sell military intervention in Syria as a cakewalk that most reminds of Bush's own assertions about invading Iraq.

Same thin thread of proof; same rosy set of assumptions about a 'limited' military action; same ignoring or dismissal of the Syrian response; same clueless denial about who our military action would actually be serving in Syria.

Unless this administration steps back and approaches this issue with a deeper mindset than Bushian-variety arrogance and bluster, we're going to find ourselves on a slippery slope to a widened war.

So far, President Trump looks eager enough in his own belief in the efficacy and effect of deploying our military defenses to cause Syria to change their behavior. I believe strikes will just inflame and exacerbate whatever divisions exist there today. No 'shot across the bow' will automatically end them.

It's incredibly sad to see so many folks I viewed as progressive allies giving in to an appeal to strike Syria with the devastating force of our weapons. I view it as a capitulation to every wrong instinct that the Bush administration exercised; every wrong instinct about the limitations, risks, and consequences of our nations use of military force abroad that most of us thought we had repudiated with the exit of Bush.

Now we have an entirely new set of justifications for authorizing the president to war against Syria which borrows on almost every one of Bush's imperialistic justifications for his own out-of-control military ambitions. We'll be told that their every militaristic instinct is born out of their desire to address Syria's chemical weapons capability, but we won't see any abatement at all in their drive to further war.

Already, in the past few months, Trump has quietly deployed hundreds of U.S. troops on the ground in Syria, directing numerous airstrikes against 'ISIS targets.' We're already bombing Syria under a loose definition of our 'national security.'

Now, there are breaking reports that Tomahawk missiles have already been fired into Syria tonight, possibly hitting a key airstrip, without even a hint of a nod to Congress giving their approval, as Obama sought and was denied by a republican-controlled body.

We are now a nation being determinately driven to war by the man most of us are convinced already views militarism as an indispensable part of his foreign policy. Any 'diplomacy' practiced toward Syria is nothing more than an ultimatum by this President- a coercion behind the devastating threat of our military arsenal.

We are undone, as progressives; as Americans; by capitulation to military strikes. We will scarcely hope to restrain this administration as they prosecute war, and, in accepting military strikes as just, we will have lost every instinct or instigation away from the precipice that Obama took the nation to in 2013 and pulled back from; one that almost certainly Trump will never recognize or acknowledge.

The results, worldwide, of contemporary U.S. interventionism, speak for themselves. The *Trump administration, almost blithely, is hoping that their Syrian 'misadventure' says something uniquely democratic and inspiring to countries which pose no actual threat to our nation. I'm afraid that all any one outside of this country will hear is 'empire.

[chelsea0011]

1. MSNBC is talking about that now. There are legal issues as to if trump can do this.

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2. thanks, chelsea0011

...I guess we'll hear more about the legalities.

So many wanting to believe this is just fine to unilaterally attack sovereign nations without congressional or U.N. approval...without definitive proof.

[malaise]

3. Excellent post

This unhinged fool is a maniac

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8. why progressives would trust him to be restrained in the use of our military?

...every capitulation an invitation for Trump to more trampling of our military across sovereign borders.

[malaise]

9. It's effin' crazy

and illegal

[KittyWampus]

4. This is not war. It's largely a symbolic act.

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6. tonight it is

...but, as I pointed out, Trump has already inserted troops into Syria without any public notice, and has already been launching airstrikes.

Allowing Trump to unilaterally launch attacks with impunity, without Congress approval, without U.N. approval, absent a clear threat to our national security, is a SURRENDER of any hope of restraining this president or any other from the unilateral deployment of our military forces across sovereign borders, in Syria or elsewhere.

[Cha]

14. Right.. if he can do it with Syria he can do it anywhere and

even without provocation.

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15. I'll bet he has the cic bug this morning

...strutting around like Patton.

[ismnotwasm]

5. Because it's Trump---I expect some sort of clusterfuck

I knew --I think we all knew--in our guts that war is the only way to any kind of perception of competence from Trump. It was a matter of time. But Lord in Heaven there is going to horrific fallout. He just made Isis stronger.

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7. there's no clear strategy in place

...only this nebulous sense that many are positing, including Trump today, that we need to 'do something.'

I'm looking at Sen. Rubio right now stating this is a step toward regime change.

[Tatiana]

10. I think Rep. Schiff agrees with you.

I'm listening to Tweety now, and he also seems very skeptical.

I don't think this action alone means we are at war with Syria, but I do believe this is a slippery slope. We cannot be in the regime change business. It has never worked for us, not in South and Central Americas, nor in the Middle East.

Our ease with interventions is a bit disturbing. We must always use force with extreme caution. What if we were invaded or bombed by France or Germany or Great Britain to remove a leader they viewed as a hostile threat (Trump)? Would that be OK?

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11. I was listening to him just now

...I immediately think of Russia and their insistence they have the right to intervene militarily in Ukraine.

We've lost any moral ground or ability to lead by our example, first with Pres. Obama's insistence he had the authority to unilaterally launch strikes, and now Trump's, essentially codifying the weak justifications for decades to come, and further limiting our ability to restrain Executives from warring.

Link to tweet

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16. kick

[L. Coyote]

17. Fisrt determine who did the atrocity? Or accept what the M$M tells us to think. WMDs redux?

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