Alien Space Bats wrote:Big Brain City wrote:... I watched MSNBC last night, specifically All In With Chris Hayes, and he was right to say that the argument of "war or nothing" is a false choice. He suggested that we could support the refugee flood from Syria, and give them a faster path to citizen-refugee status here, as has Sweden. We could have not ordered the 200 Tomahawks or spent their hundreds of millions of dollars' worth on helping the UN take care of the refugees. That is a good idea. It won't satisfy those who argue that war is the only choice. Furthermore, Hayes stated that if our goal is a political settlement, the rebels will be just like the Republicans after the 1860 election. The Southerners demanded concessions from them if they didn't want seccession, and the Republicans and their supporters were against it, stating that it was surrender to a defeated enemy. The Syrian rebels will be like that if we ask them to set down their AK-47s or whatever weapons they have and negotiate with Assad for peace in their country. They won't want peace, they'll want to kill Bashar the butcher.
I respect Hayes' position; it's basically why I don't believe that intervention is really going to help us resolve this conflict in any way that's going to be to our liking. But it is very much in America's interest to try and stop chemical weapons from proliferating, and one of the ways to do that is to make certain that there are severe consequences for their use (if not for the regime ordering their use, then for the military units responsible for carrying out the orders for their use; flattening a few headquarters units and missile batteries would certainly instill a strong sense of responsibility in the minds of the survivors of such strikes, don't you think?).
There's been a lot of focus on Iran and Hezbollah; I'm not especially worried about either becoming emboldened by the failure of the West to uphold the "red line" against chemical weapons use. No, it's North Korea that bothers me most, because they're the one nation in all the world most likely to employ them should they ever elect to cross the DMZ in force. If they do, our response is going to have to be brutal — and that's not something that I want to see. I'd rather they stayed on their own side of the ceasefire line and left matters as they are; but keeping them there requires deterrence, and if we don't act here, I rather suspect that deterrence will slip a few notches.
All I can hope now — since I don't think we're actually going to act against Assad — is that it doesn't slip enough to loose the dogs of war.
ADDENDUM: In the meantime, yes: We should absolutely do everything that Hayes proposed in his on-air opinion piece. The refugee crisis resulting from this war is already staggering — and it's going to get worse. Likewise, in the wake of our failure to act and the massive offensive I expect to see Assad mount against the rebels (with Putin's help), I would like to see us move two combat brigades to Turkey and increase our naval presence in the Black Sea. The idea here is not to threaten Russia, but rather to make clear that no effort to destabilize and/or intimidate our allies in Ankara will be countenanced. If Russia is going to go to the mat to maintain the status quo in Syria, they need to understand that we will likewise go to the mat to maintain the status quo where it matters to us.
Do you seriously think that how the west responds to Syrian chemical weapon use is going to influence how chemical weapons would be used by the North Koreans in a prospective North-South conflict?
I recall you assessing yourself, their only real hope to push past the DMZ is to create absolute chaos at the frontline.
The best way to do that is probably to chemical shell the airbases and counter-missile batteries, to permit chemical Scuds to reach Seoul, all the while throwing tanks at the line and infiltrating their "special forces" group into the rear area to weaken the anti-tank line.
I'm personally not sure that Korea could win or even make a rapid Pusan-like push (in that they do eventually lose) without the widespread use of chemical weapons. In places, they're just too outgunned.