Syria

[waggy]

Everything I'm seeing about this, our involvement makes no sense. It's a very confusing region though, and everything I've seen and read, while they appear to try to make sense of it, and seem satisfied with themselves that they do make sense of it, they don't actually do it. But Obama won some sort of prestigious peace prize, and went to some school that smart people go to, so I trust he's got it all figured out. Anyone here in the know? In my view, the best case scenario is that the US and Russia are in collusion for some war game fun. And that is decidedly a very very crappy scenario, but, it only goes downhill from there.

[XUOWNSUC]

In my view, the best case scenario is that the US and Russia are in collusion for some war game fun.

It sounds like we already are going to war with Russia over a Super Bowl ring:

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/06/17/putin-denies-stole-super-bowl-ring-from-new-england-patriots-owner/

[Snipe]

If Iraqis and Afghans had thanked us maybe I would sing a different song.

These people don't like us on both sides. I think many of them hate us. Even if we help them they will hate us.

I am antiwar more now than ever. I don't see the purpose of it when the people hate us. Even the South Koreans protested against us, and they are one of the most wealthy nations in the world. They are wealthy because of us. Blood and treasure for people that could give a flying frack about you.

Easy choice in my opinion, let the barbarians kill themselves.

[Masterofreality]

If Iraqis and Afghans had thanked us maybe I would sing a different song.

These people don't like us on both sides. I think many of them hate us. Even if we help them they will hate us.

I am antiwar more now than ever. I don't see the purpose of it when the people hate us. Even the South Koreans protested against us, and they are one of the most wealthy nations in the world. They are wealthy because of us. Blood and treasure for people that could give a flying frack about you.

Easy choice in my opinion, let the barbarians kill themselves.

This.

And as far as the Koreans are concerned, Psy makes millions off of Americans, but apparently hates us too.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/12/11/controversy-over-psys-anti-american-lyrics-might-be-based-on-shoddy-translation/

Allegedly.

By the way, the Iraquis are doing a fine job of slaughering themselves without our involvement.

[waggy]

It think all the "angst" you see between the US and Russia right now is manufactured and a smokescreen for the fact that both sides want to sell weapons.

[muskiefan82]

When looking at why the U.S. may or may not enter a conflict, do not look at the moral implications or the righteousness of the action. Only look to what might be gained from such an endeavor. This will help explain why the U.S. involved itself in Somalia and not the rest of Africa and why, when that failed, it became necessary to help poor Bosnia-Herzegovina. (if you want a further explanation, just let me know) Now that we are pulling out of Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. needs someplace to be able to manifest power quickly near Israel and the I's (Iran and Irag). Assisting Syria represents the best reason to keep projected power in the region. The U.S. doesn't care about the Syrian government or the rebels. They only care about having a legitimate reason to have weapons nearby.

[GoMuskies]

You're so cynical.

[muskiefan82]

True, but having been part of the military for many years, I have come to understand that our government does not enter into conflicts because of the goodness in our hearts. There is ALWAYS a reason (most of the time there are several), and 'doing the right thing" is nice to be able to label something, but it's rarely the truth.

[Snipe]

When looking at why the U.S. may or may not enter a conflict, do not look at the moral implications or the righteousness of the action. Only look to what might be gained from such an endeavor. This will help explain why the U.S. involved itself in Somalia and not the rest of Africa and why, when that failed, it became necessary to help poor Bosnia-Herzegovina. (if you want a further explanation, just let me know) Now that we are pulling out of Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. needs someplace to be able to manifest power quickly near Israel and the I's (Iran and Irag). Assisting Syria represents the best reason to keep projected power in the region. The U.S. doesn't care about the Syrian government or the rebels. They only care about having a legitimate reason to have weapons nearby.

We do lots of stupid things, and Bosnia and Somalia are two of them. Somalia is a cesspool of humanity. If you want to fix Somalia we should just nuke it and give it 30 years to cool down and start from scratch. Even God burnt down some towns, and that pillar of salt threat wasn't just a threat, it was for real.

We import a ton of Somalians. That is histerical. They are "refugees" which means that they are so low Somalia does't even want them. Some of the government social work handouts say things like "Don't assume that because there is a doorknob that they know how to open a door".

Really.

Shouldn't refugees be sent back? Isn't that the point? They seek refuge for now, but they want to return to their homelands? We import a mountain of genetic suck. I wonder how that will all play out.

[sweet16]

We import a mountain of genetic suck.


Outstanding wordsmithing!

[waggy]

Does anyone really believe that chemical weapons have been used?

[MHettel]

Does anyone really believe that chemical weapons have been used?

Yes. I was a chemical officer in the US Army, and had extensive training on the use of chemical weapons. We've known of chemicals in the region since before we invaded Iraq, and the chemicals in question were probably previously part of the Iraqi arsenal before they smuggled them out.

That region is a mess. But the US has an interest, and it's necessary for us to exert our military might in cases like this. Just reality.

[GoMuskies]

Does anyone really believe that chemical weapons have been used?

Yes, but I'm not convinced it was the Syrian government who used them. Either way, this planned bombing announced a week in advance with no real purpose to it (we're not trying to help the rebels win) just seems bizarre to me.

[Masterofreality]

Keep our asses out of it.

If the UN is too chicken-sheet to do anything about it, why should we?

[RealDeal]

Yes the region is a mess, so can we get the fuck out of it already? Why is this our problem?

World police, fuck yeah!

[Masterofreality]

Obama tries to blame the sequester on why there is no Cleveland National Air SHOW...

BUT...He somehow could find the money for the Syrian National Air STRIKE!

YEAH!!!!

[XUFan09]

Are you new to America? There's always money in the defense budget, even with a sequester. It probably helps that the defense budget is massive. :-P

Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using Tapatalk 2

[JTG]

Yes the region is a mess, so can we get the fuck out of it already? Why is this our problem?

World police, fuck yeah!

This region is a problem to us because of all Obama's idiot environmental buddies who don't want domestic oil production when we have enough oil right here for most of our lifetimes and beyond. We need a stable middle east because the Al Gore's of the US are against domestic oil production.

[mohr5150]

This region is a problem to us because of all Obama's idiot environmental buddies who don't want domestic oil production when we have enough oil right here for most of our lifetimes and beyond. We need a stable middle east because the Al Gore's of the US are against domestic oil production.

The US had the biggest jump in oil production in 2012 in the history of oil production. How does this reflect that Obama and his environmental buddies are holding oil production down? We are producing almost three million more barrels a day than we did in 2008. I may be a simple minded hillbilly from Southern Ohio, but your comments don't sound like they are backed by facts.

[BandAid]

The US had the biggest jump in oil production in 2012 in the history of oil production. How does this reflect that Obama and his environmental buddies are holding oil production down? We are producing almost three million more barrels a day than we did in 2008. I may be a simple minded hillbilly from Southern Ohio, but your comments don't sound like they are backed by facts.

I don't follow politics particularly close, because I have other things to do with my time. But I've had people tell me that is due to initiatives started during the Bush administration. Is this true?

[Snipe]

I don't follow politics particularly close, because I have other things to do with my time. But I've had people tell me that is due to initiatives started during the Bush administration. Is this true?

The increase in our oil production has little or nothing to do with Bush or Obama. It has been an advance in technology that was spurred in part by the high price of Oil.

A Republican President would presumably be friendlier to oil production, and Obama hasn't done much to help out oil and gas exploration. American output is soaring due to hydrolic fracturing, or fracking, as well as horizontal drilling (drilling many wells from the same well head).

Meanwhile, Oil and Gas production on Federal lands is at a 10 year low, and gulf permits are slow and expensive and they basically aren't drilling any new wells there so production there is either flat or declining. North Dakota is booming, with new millionaires being made and some counties have an unemployment rate of less than 1%.. Wyoming is getting in on the act. Texas is also doing a major part of the work, with the Eagle Ford and Permian Basin fields. Job creation in Texas is through the roof. Even Ohio and Pennsylvania and investing billions and finding the shale rich in gas and liquid hydrocarbons. And a lot of it is happening in our poorest counties, so it is great for the state.

The US used to import natural gas. Now we are starting to export it. We are self sufficient and an net producer and supplier. They say that we will be able to do the same thing with oil within the next decade. It is going to shakeup OPEC, because we won't need their oil. I say screw them, and let someone else police them (China). It is a topic that really deserves its own post. The energy story in this country may be the biggest story in the past decade, but it is seldom given the prominence in the news that I think it deserves. Incredible things are happening in America.

[Snipe]

As for Syria, some problems have no good solutions. Syria is a dirt poor country with lots of hungry people who have little hope for a better life. In the past year they have culled over 100,000 of them and destroyed most of the infrastructure. I didn't like their chances before they tore up everything, now I like them less. Syria is a failed state.

Syria and Egypt can't be fixed
By Spengler (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-01-170613.html)


Syria and Egypt are dying. They were dying before the Syrian civil war broke out and before the Muslim Brotherhood took power in Cairo. Syria has an insoluble civil war and Egypt has an insoluble crisis because they are dying. They are dying because they chose not to do what China did: move the better part of a billion people from rural backwardness to a modern urban economy within a generation. Mexico would have died as well, without the option to send its rural poor - fully one-fifth of its population - to the United States.

Not every country can be as lucky as Mexico, which would have already collapsed if we didn't take in all of their poor and put them on welfare and food stamps.


It was obvious to Israeli analysts that the Syrian regime's belated attempt to modernize its agricultural sector would create a crisis as hundreds of thousands of displaced farmers gathered in slums on the outskirts of its cities. These facts were in evidence early in 2011 when Hosni Mubarak fell and the Syrian rebellion broke out. Paul Rivlin of Israel's Moshe Dayan Center published a devastating profile of Syria's economic failure in April 2011. [1]

Sometimes countries dig themselves into a hole from which they cannot extricate themselves. Third World dictators typically keep their rural population poor, isolated and illiterate, the better to maintain control. That was the policy of Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party from the 1930s, which warehoused the rural poor in Stalin-modeled collective farms called ejidos occupying most of the national territory. That was also the intent of the Arab nationalist dictatorships in Egypt and Syria. The policy worked until it didn't. In Mexico, it stopped working during the debt crisis of the early 1980s, and Mexico's poor became America's problem. In Egypt and Syria, it stopped working in 2011. There is nowhere for Egyptians and Syrians to go.

Nowhere to go but down! Some problems don't have solutions, at least not good solutions. Time to thin the herd.



It is cheap to assuage Western consciences by sending some surplus arms to the Syrian Sunnis. No-one has proposed a way to find the more than US$20 billion a year that Egypt requires to stay afloat. In June 2011, then French president Nicholas Sarkozy talked about a Group of Eight support program of that order of magnitude. No Western (or Gulf State) government, though, is willing to pour that sort of money down an Egyptian sinkhole.

Egypt remains a pre-modern society, with nearly 50% illiteracy, a 30% rate of consanguineal marriage, a 90% rate of female genital mutilation, and an un- or underemployment rate over 40%. Syria has neither enough oil nor water to maintain the bazaar economy dominated by the Assad family.

Both were disasters waiting to happen. Economics, to be sure, set the stage but did not give the cues: Syria's radical Sunnis revolted in part out of enthusiasm for the ascendancy of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and partly in fear of Iran's ambition to foster Shi'ite ascendancy in the region.

This won't end well.

[SlimKibbles]

90% female genitalia mutilation rate in Egypt? WTF? I thought that was only in sub-Saharan countries like Uganda?

[Snipe]

They are barbarians, and we shouldn't let any of their refugees into this country. They have 84 million of em too. That is a lot of inbred illiterate savages waiting in the bread lines. And the problem is they have been running out of bread.

Advanced countries have been taking crops and turning them into fuel. It takes a good amount of food off the market. Poor countries get squeezed. Higher priced oil has made the cost of food rise (and everything else). Egypt never had much oil, and what they have has been diminishing. They got money from oil and tourism. Tourism is dead and oil is heading that way. They also subsidize their gas prices, because dirt poor Egyptians can't pay $5 a gallon. Then enter Asia, who now has more money and is buying more food than before. Couple that with the crop diversion for bio fuels and the price increase due to Oil and Egypt can't feed itself in an era of rising food costs and scarcity. It was a recipe for disaster.

The "revolution" was never about Democracy. Those people are starving and sometimes the bread lines run out of bread. People get angry. You can't take 80 million welfare dependents off of your free government bread and expect to stay a nation. They are a failed state. And once you peek inside and see the inbreeding, the low IQs, the illiteracy, the lack of natural resources, and the savage barbarian mutilation of the female genitialia, maybe they don't deserve to exist as a state. Why even prop them up? Things that can't go on forever, don't. Egypt and Syria are learning that lesson.

It will not end well, and it doesn't matter who takes power or what democratic reforms they make.

Interesting to note that when the British ruled Egypt they could feed their own people, and Cairo was a cosmopolitan and exotic city. Perhaps one of the greatest jewels of the British Empire. They had a sizable White-European population, an influential Jewish population, and the percentage of Coptic Christians was much larger and they were heavily involved in commerce. The British Empire was all about the Commerce. It was a World City, one of the greatest. They had many wealthy people and a sizeable middle class. They had world class Museums. They had fine arts and even a burgeoning film industry. The American University of Cairo was founded in 1919, and it was a great time to be alive and be studying abroad in Cairo. The future was bright. How could anything go wrong?

Flash forward to today, and what has changed? No White Europeans and Americans, no more Jews, what is left of the Coptic Christians they are trying to exterminate before our eyes. No wealth outside of the connected elites, no middle class. Just a swarming horde of inbred illiterate low IQ muslims, all waiting in the bread line.

I know I am a bigot, but to reinforce a previous point, Demographics is Destiny.

You could probably surmise many reasons for Egypt's fall or why it sucks so bad, but you can't rule out this: Maybe Egypt sucks because it is chalk full of Egyptians. I don't want those inbred barbarians coming here on refugee passes. And you know the Democrats would love it, because they already have 80 million people on welfare and waiting in the bread lines every day. No way any of those people would ever vote Republican.

[Snipe]

I should also add some more gas to the fire. The library of Alexandria in Egypt was the greatest library in the world at one time. 2000 years ago Egypt was the place to go for literacy and scholarship. Half of Egyptians are illiterate today, but they probably aren't the same Egyptians. I doubt the bloodlines run true for antiquity.

You can go back 100 years and Egypt was better. You can go back 2000 years and Egypt was better. And with Egypt you can go further than that. You can go 4,000 years back and they were building pyramids. They didn't have 80 million people standing in the bread line, but they knew their shit quite well.

We all like to think from social studies classes that the Egyptians today had forbearers that built the pyramids. But is that true? I doubt it. Demographics is destinty. In 4,000 years, a lot of cultural and ethnic change can occur. Just in the last century, Egypt has transformed.

Does anyone here think that those inbred illiterate Muslims actually built the pyramids? I think they won in the war of reproduction.