www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Syrian Conflict Approaches Obama's "Red Line"

ناسف لعرض الصورة ولاكن يجب ان يعرف العالم ماذا يحدث بحق المسيحيين في الدول العربية .........

هذا هو ما يحدث لإخواتنا المسيحيين في سوريا: (
اغتصاب من قبل أكثر من 20 رجلا قبل قتلها ...هل سوف يستيقظ العالم ضد هذه الوحشية ؟؟هل وسائل الاعلام سوف تتحدث عن هذه القصص؟؟
Sorry for the picture display, but the world must know what happens against Christians in the Arabic States ... ... ...

This is what happens to our sisters in Syria: Christians (
Raped by more than 20 men before her murder.You will wake up the world against such brutality?Does the media will talk about these stories? (Translated by Bing)

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! VERY GRAPHIC AND UPSETTING PHOTO!

https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc1/395585_367742850011500_548817673_n.jpg

And to think that President Obama and YOUR TAX DOLLARS!!!!!! are supporting the perpetrators of this foul deed. And this scenario is repeated daily against Syrian Christians.

Freedom fighters my @*&! I say use all the sarin gas you want against the ^&%(&$!

Someone needs to add a "LIKE" button to this Forum, thank you to whoever shares this truth.

It's really our fault that al Qeada and the Syrians have a foothold in Syria today. There was a window of opportunity when we could have steered things our way, but we dilly-dallied ("leading from the rear", like the Duke of Plaza Toro), and geopolitics hates a vacuum. If we refused to take the opportunity, our enemies did not.

But the issue of Assad's chemical weapons is not connected with support for the rebels. We can ignore the rebels now, if we want. We cannot ignore his chemical stockpile, and it must now be destroyed or captured, along with Assad's means of delivering it. Once that is done, we can ignore Syria, if we are so stupid as to do so.


Vietnam was many things. Civil war it was not. Besides, a limited operation to destroy a limited selection of military assets is not "getting involved". It's called a "punitive expedition".

Your casus belli fools no one. If some Ugandan warlord was accused of this you would be spending your time on posts I enjoy reading about the Christian East. The veneer of morality here is quite transparent.

The idea that we could somehow go in and remove every trace of an alleged chemical stockpile from a country without taking sides in its civil war is beneathe your and our intellect. At what point, hypothetically, would you declare Mission Accomplished and come home?

Uhh, I think I saw a Like button on the bottom of this thread. I'm definitely clicking on it.

Not at all: the use of chemical weapons crosses a line, and we must intervene wherever it occurs. And, if you read my professional writings, you would see that I am not the kind of person who ignores genocide and crimes against humanity just because the victims are black. I was very much in favor of our intervention in Somalia (however botched it was by the Clinton Administration), as well as Bosnia and Kosovo. I also endorsed intervention in Rwanda (where the weapon of mass destruction was the machete) and in Darfur. We signed a convention against genocide, and we should live up to our responsibilities under it. Similarly, we signed the Chemical Weapons Convention, and we should enforce it.


Mybe not "every trace"--after all, Saddam was not able to remove "every trace" of his chemical stockpile from Iraq--but certainly enough that (a) it no longer poses a threat, either regionally or globally; and (b) the object lesson is driven home to all who would use chemical weapons: do this, and you will suffer great pain.

Also, for what it's worth, we have contingency plans and forces precisely for this type of mission, whether the WMDs involved are chemical, biological or nuclear. We have had them for quite some time. We rehearse these missions regularly, and their odds of success are pretty good. They don't involve boots on the ground, at least not for more than a few days.

Really, I should think anyone with a small child would recognize the paradigm. This is the rule. Break the rule, and I will punish you. If you say that, and the child breaks the rule, and you do not punish him, he loses respect for the rule, and for you.

Do you seriously believe there is some kind of threat to the United States mainland in Syria, which is in the midst of a civil war?

A country divided between two different ideologues fighting each other does not qualify as a civil war?


With no exit strategy and of course no blowback, right Stuart? I mean invading Syria and killing Syrians (and let's be real, innocent Syrians will get killed by our intervention) won't create a whole new group of angry people who hate the US, will it?

So, where exactly in the constitution of the United States does it say we can violate other nations sovereignty, without a deceleration of war, for a "punitive action?"

Maybe the US should stop making foolish pronouncements on things it doesn't know, let alone it has no intent to follow up on.

Weren't you the one who was talking about how many can get killed with sarin gas?

The US couldn't even keep tabs on Chechens on its own terrorist watch list, about whom the Russians warned it.

Unless I am misunderstanding Stuart, I believe he is refering to the fact that the majority of Vietnamese supported Ho Chi Minh and without outside intervention there would have been no waror a very short one.

Yeah, that has worked so well.

and what do you do when the "child" is all growed up, and knows you cannot enforce your rules in his house?

Close. Actually. the Vietnam War was largely an offensive war by the North against the South. The Viet Cong never had majority support in the South, which is why they ruled largely by terror. Without the support of North Vietnam (and by extension, North Vietnam's support by the Soviet Union and China), the VC would have collapsed by 1966 at latest. As it was, by 1965, most of the fighting was being done by North Vietnamese regulars. What was left of the Viet Cong was annihilated by the U.S. and ARVN during the Tet Offensive, and thereafter, it was a straight up fight by the U.S. and ARVN against the North Vietnamese Army. It's ironic (but not at all unexpected) that, after the final victory of North Vietnam in 1975, almost all of the surviving Viet Cong cadres found themselves in reeducation camps alongside the ARVN officers who had been their adversaries. Puts one in mind of how Stalin solved the "Polish Problem".

By that time, one hopes the child has internalized the rules and obeys them because he knows they make good sense. You know, the way in which we beat good sense into the Germans and the Japanese.

I hit return too quickly, and there is no correction button as of now. But, the point I was going to make was, "Yes, there are things happening in Syria today that pose a direct threat to the continental United States. Distance is no longer a barrier. From Damascus I can get a flight to Brussels, and from Brussels to almost anyplace in the world. A liter or so of binary Sarin can easily be smuggled into the United States, aerosolized, and converted into a terror weapon without very much trouble.

I'm surprised no home-grown terrorists have tried this, as anyone with a BS in organic chemistry can make the stuff, and packaging it in a perfume sprayer or flit gun is as easy as pie. But then, I'm surprised we got by so long without suffering the kind of backback bombing we saw in Boston. Imagine that, ramped up about two orders of magnitude, and that's the threat I see.

Time to get really, really serious about dealing with the problem of Islamic terrorism. Part of that problem is the underlying political structure of the Islamic world.