Senate Foreign Relations Committee votes to give President Obama the power to launch

[aowen]

Most dictators are anti-west, otherwise they'd be social democrats instead of fascists authoritarians. Instead of bombing Syria, we could withdraw support for Israel and have like 1000x the diplomatic and security success with the region.

It is not our job to go leveling playing fields with bombs in sovereign entities, using human rights sporadically to justify it. I don't know how we haven't figured out to just leave the place alone, we just picked up where the British left off fucking all the people around.

[aowen]

Lest we forget the one semi-sane democratically elected leader in Iran we overthrew, resulting in a snowball of shitty regimes, fundamentalism, and anti-westernism. Stop selling weapons to those fuckers too, always bites us back when things inevitably go down the shitter.

[Daldolma]

it's not really a matter of it being our job. it's a matter of national interest

we have an interest in keeping syria destabilized

also our support for israel is our in with the whole middle east. we basically have american sparta in the center of the most oil-rich region on the planet for the cost of relative pennies. we give more to pakistan plus egypt than we give to israel, and we could launch a war from israel. pakistan wouldn't even give us osama. if we could buy pakistan as cheaply as we bought israel, we would

[Orruar]

Originally Posted by Daldolma [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

overstating your point. and you're conflating chemical weapons with terrorism.

...

I didn't conflate anything. I said the two are similar in one respect. That would be like if I said dogs and cats are similar because they both have four legs, and you came back and said "you're conflating dogs with cats". Learn the difference between comparison and conflation. You are conflating the two terms.

[Daldolma]

^ p true, was skimming and missed the sentence re: similarities.

doesn't impact the gist of the argument though

[Orruar]

Originally Posted by Daldolma [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

^ p true, was skimming and missed the sentence re: similarities.

doesn't impact the gist of the argument though

Well, it sort of does the impact the argument, since the entire argument was based on the notion that I was conflating the two terms.

[Daldolma]

Originally Posted by Orruar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Well, it sort of does the impact the argument, since the entire argument was based on the notion that I was conflating the two terms.

literally none of the argument is reliant on that

you asked what makes chemical weapons "special", which i took to mean more flagrantly unacceptable than conventional weaponry. i explained the material differences between chemical and conventional warfare.

you then ascribed condemnation of terrorism to a desire to keep poor people from evening the playing field. i explained that a) that's incorrect and b) the underlying principle which condemns terrorism is the same underlying principle that demands american restraint and has greatly benefited the other side of the "war on terror" for the duration of this conflict

you're free to disagree, but none of the points that followed were founded on a conflation of the two

[Nirgon]

Of all chemical weapons expert opinions in here, I like the one from gotrocks. His posts are usually great too.

[aowen]

Originally Posted by Daldolma [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

it's not really a matter of it being our job. it's a matter of national interest

we have an interest in keeping syria destabilized

also our support for israel is our in with the whole middle east. we basically have american sparta in the center of the most oil-rich region on the planet for the cost of relative pennies. we give more to pakistan plus egypt than we give to israel, and we could launch a war from israel. pakistan wouldn't even give us osama. if we could buy pakistan as cheaply as we bought israel, we would

Actually it's not in our interest. Stable governments facilitate trade and business. Assad is not even winning, and I wouldn't put Iran on the list of highest plausible threats.

However, the bigger points I'd like to make are about Israel. Israel is not at all in our interest. While at one point you could argue that Israel was our door into the Middle East, now it is a source of tension with some of our closest allies, and strains our relations worldwide. It harms our relations with other countries in the Middle East, and implicates us in human rights violations. We have used so so many UN vetoes to trump even our Western allies. Israel also now serves as little economic interest to us in the international arena, but bears some economic importance domestically pertaining to maintaining the support from the Israel and Jewish lobbies. Israel has turned into a liability, alienating us from others, requiring foreign aid, and creating imbalance in a region that may have been on its way to healing wounds long ago if it wasn't constantly being interrupted.

Additionally, I do not support destabilizing a region and causing death to better one's own position. While I already said I don't think it does better our position, I wouldn't support the policy even if it did. Blatant imperialism is out of style, subtle economic manipulation is in, didn't you hear?

[Stinkum]

yea im not sure at all why daldolma went on a random israel tangent there, but his post overall sounds like it was copy-pasted from something written in the cold war era. the geopolitical chessboard has changed drastically, and israel is a strategic liability at this point.