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Thread: The WaPo is upset that Obama hasn't intervened in Syria

  1. #1
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    Default The WaPo is upset that Obama hasn't intervened in Syria

    As Obama administration officials have frequently said, the longer Bashar al-Assad’s regime survives, the worse the outcome will be for Syria, its neighbors — all of which are U.S. allies — and the United States. Failure to back more moderate forces, which have been chronically short of effective weapons, will prolong the war and could leave the United States and its allies confronting a postwar Syria in which they have no friends and al-Qaeda and other extremists are ascendant.

    So why was the Petraeus plan rejected? According to the Times, Mr. Petraeus and Ms. Clinton were rebuffed when they presented the plan to the White House. At the time, Mr. Obama was in the midst of an reelection campaign in which he frequently assured voters that “the tide of war is receding.” Hopes of reviving the plan after the election were thwarted when Mr. Petraeus resigned and Ms. Clinton was sidelined by illness.

    Mr. Obama’s reasons for quashing the Syria plan were surely not purely political. But the president’s only public explanation for his resistance, in a recent interview with the New Republic, amounted to excuse-making. He wondered why he should concern himself with Syria and not the civil war in the Congo, as if the United States cannot intervene in any war unless it does in all; he asked whether providing weapons to rebels would “trigger even worse violence,” ignoring the testimony of his own aides that, under his present policy, the carnage “every day . . . it gets worse,” as new Secretary of State John F. Kerry put it.

    http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2...plan-civil-war
    What if we arm the rebels in Syria and they still get their butts kicked. Then what?

    After the mixed results of our Libyan intervention, you would think there would be more reluctance towards arming rebels with ties to Islamists...

  2. #2
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    I have no problem staying out of Syria. Syria's conflict is internal, and does not threaten our interests. We should have kept out of Libya's as well. What good did we do deposing Ghaddafi? Syria is an area in which the administration has it right.

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    Quote Originally Posted by cprenegade View Post
    Syria is an area in which the administration has it right.
    Well Obama has it right. His advisers seem to disagree with his decision to stay out of Syria.

    It has also been reported that Obama was reluctant to get involved in Libya and that Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton lead the effort to get him off the fence...

  4. #4
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    I say whoever wins is gonna hate us anyway. Best stay out of it. Not worth a pinprick of American blood. Obama has got this one right. He does learn from his mistakes.

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    The problem with Syria is it is not just about how bad Assad is. It concerns Turkey, Israel, Iran, China, Russia, and various Islamic groups, some of which hate us.

    The problem with Syria is there are essentially no good outcomes. So we can train and arm or even participate and get a bad outcome or we can sit on the fence, say how terrible it all is, and get a bad outcome.

    Syria sucks no matter what. Best to stay out of it. Hopefully Obama has learned his lesson from Libya.

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    Enough.

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    Quote Originally Posted by ms maggie View Post
    Enough.
    Moar!!!!!!!!*












    *scotch

  8. #8
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    The editorial page has taken a decidedly neoconservative slant since Fred Hiatt took it over.

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