Syria Situation.

This may seem insensitive, considered the content in your post but...I think we should get involved in Syria.

The civil war in Syria has a death tool either approaching or over 100,000 (I don't know exactly what it's up to now) and a lot of those casualties have been civilians. Women, children, etc. Now Bashar al-Assad has murdered 1,400 people in one night using chemical weapons that are banned by international law, and it isn't the first time he's used them in this conflict. 600 of those casualties were children.

We have an ethical obligation to step in and enforce the laws that we helped to create. We have a moral obligation to put an end to the genocide and slaughter of innocent people that is taking place there. To say that this isn't our problem and that we should let them continue the bloodshed is, to me, the height of selfishness and displays a sickening amount of apathy.

Strategically speaking, we cannot let ruthless dictators openly flaunt their disobedience of international law and publicly taunt us like they have been doing. Iran is building nuclear weapons to use against our allies, North Korea has intentions of pointing nuclear weapons our way, and terrorists the world over are just waiting to stick it to us any way they can. Weakness spawns aggression, and we cannot afford to be weak in the face of so many threats. We have to show the world that we are indeed a world superpower that stands behind the principles and ideals on which we claim to uphold, and let the evil factions of this world know that we aren't going to let them get away with murder, so to speak.


The biggest problem right now is Russia, who won't get behind any military action against Assad without undeniable proof that he broke international law and without U.N. approval of military action. Which is just BS anyway, they just want to keep selling arms to Assad's regime.
The other problem is if we take down the Assad regime, then there is a very good chance that the rebels, whose ranks are increasingly populated with Sunni jihadists that are sympathetic to al Qaeda, will take control of the country; and that does not bode well for either the Catholic peoples and other religious minorities inside of Syria or for Israel with whom Syria shares its borders.

For these reasons, limited precision missile strikes seems the best plan, not to remove Assad from power, but to send the message that we will only tolerate so much. However, 'limited' missile strikes will probably only have just that effect. Limited. But doing something is better than doing nothing I suppose.

 

Personally Im against the war on Syria and luckily David Cameron has confirmed that Even if the US and the rest of the western world goes to war. Britain will not. I've even got a little bit more trust in the government because a while ago DC sided with america but because Labour and some Conservatives voted no to war (with a difference of 13 votes). Some faith has been restored. Also fun fact: This is the first time that a British Government has been blocked from executing a military deployment.

 

Britain don't have the money or the troops to get involved.

Let them sort their own **** out. It's not anyone elses dispute but their own.

 

I've read in a few places that the Middle East is the way it is because of how Britain intentionally drew the borders to make tribes and sects fight each other, since a colony fighting within itself is easier to subjugate. Same thing happened in Africa with all those warlords.

 

And look at Britain now, the tweedy little nerd of all the countries!

:I

 

Well seeing as LiveLeak is getting a bit like YouTube lately, an influx of Syria action would be a welcome thing.

But seriously, I'm all for letting them sort it out for themselves. At face value it does seem the FSA and all the other small groups are fighting a losing battle, but they are dealing a fair amount of damage.

> Look at Libyan Civil War

 

I really think that Canada should sent soldiers to help.
We can't let Syria use it's weapons against the US, Since Canada will most likely be it's next target. And, millitary speaking, we're not really threatening. Thanks to Harper (wich we all hate), we now have more tanks. But we're far from being able to defend ourselves against Syria's attacks, if they come to us.
So, as selfish it might sound, we can't just stand there and wait. Barack Obama should try to convince the UN to send soldiers there, or at least stop the civil war. Or else, we might be targeted too.
And i'm pretty sure Stephen Harper won't do a thing to help the US, until an attack is made. Our governement is acting like a bunch of wimps in front of a 6 grade bully. They're too afraid of being targeted if they help, even peacefully. Anyways, i don't know enough about all the recents events, so i'll get myself more informed before i can trully state my opinion. (Might as well erase what i've just said and fill it with ''sample text - sample text - sample text''.)

 

Do you realise what state the Syrian Army is in? At the moment saying they are going to attack Turkey would be a laughable statement, and that's a ground mobilisation. Now Syria sending ICBM's over to the American continent and invading? k.

 

Europe was largely responsible for the divisions in Africa, but the United States also played a huge role in the creation of Israel as a nation (the lines of which were drawn by the United Nations sometime after WWII), which is mostly why we continue to associate so closely with them. Israel's creation can be cited as one of the most controversial border drawings in all of the Middle East. It has affected all of the surrounding nations hugely.

If you or anyone else is intrigued by the sources of these international conflicts, "How Societies Change" by Daniel Chirot has a lot to say regarding the conflict between the West and the Middle-East as a function of the differences in the ways they have developed over the last two thousand years.

 

Relevant.

[youtube]kIPI1mYapJQ[/youtube]

 

So let me try and work out this logic...100,000 people died, so what's 1,400 more. So, if there was say, a hostage situation at a bank and the bad guys already executed ten hostages and only 4 were left, you'd say "oh well, most of them are already dead, what's 4 more lives?"

Joseph Stalin once said, "A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic."

It's easy to think of 100,000 or 1,400 people in some far away place that you don't know personally as just numbers, but those are people's fathers, people's sons, their mothers and daughters. If your neighbor was brutally murdered in his/her home, it would probably disturb you. Now imagine that almost all of the people in your entire town were brutally murdered. People you talked to, people you knew, people you loved. 1,400 is a lot of lives permanently altered or destroyed.

Did I mention that 600 of those 1,400 were children? Remember Sandy Hook elementary school? Yeah, that was only 28 deaths. Just a statistic though, right?


To the people saying that America has to stop being the world police, let me recite you the words of Spiderman. With great power comes great responsibility. If you had the power to change the world, could you really just sit back and do nothing?

We are one of the very few nations in the world that have that power. And yet, we choose to do nothing.




You know guys, some 60 years ago there was another evil dictator that committed heinous acts of genocide and murder against his own people. He used chemical weapons in war, and sent millions of innocent lives to their deaths. And we chose to do nothing, to stay out of it until it seemed the entire world was screaming for our help.

That man was Hitler. Was our finally getting involved in that conflict a waste of time?



Think about it. You know, for more than two seconds.

 

I truly believe the U.S. should stay out of it especially after sending a vast majority of troops back home already from the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts. Not to mention how long it would take to pay off another costly military operation.

Oh and a fun fact frost if Hitler had not declared war on the United States during the 1940's the U.S. would not have even shown up in the European theater.

 

Yeah the US's presence in Europe was also pretty minimal. Most of our fighting was done against Japan.

 

As i said, i haven't really followed the news.
Still, i don't think our government will be show any support, not until something happens.
And, what about that move they did with the anti-missiles missiles they launched? That was so... ''Amateur''.
And, i finally finished to read a few articles on the subject.
And i read you guys posts above.

Okay, the US should let the UN do it's job and take care of the civil war, then the US should come in and investigate about the chemical weapons PEACEFULLY. If they find some, we'll see about the war. It wouldn't necessarilly mean they'll target the US, anyways.
As for the talk about US being the police force of the war, give me a break. UN aren't some little kids with plastic guns, they're suppoed to be the world police. US is known to have the world-known biggest military power, just ahead of the russians if i remember my world politic classes lesson well.
Now, i understand that all of those deaths are bad news. The more there is, the most likely US will get involved. And as Dark Samus said, we have no proof of anything. I really start to think that the US are giving excuse to get rid of a potential threat, because they want to keep their world influence of military power, and economical power. Maybe it doesn't look that way, but they spend so much money on military power, training and research. They should stop to throw money in this and take care of their hospitals a bit, as well as giving a little money in their education system. There's enough deaths like this in Syria, and their reputation in Canada isn't that perfect (even if i know brilliant people from the US, doesn't mean everybody in my country does. The image of the US is to hard to mention here, and too out-subject anyways.).

And don't take anything i said personally or offending: i'm just stating a few facts and making a few obvious connections between my little information i could find in a few Canadian newspapers. And we really don't know much here.

 

Actually, Stalin didn't say that. That comes from Französischer Witz by Kurt Tucholsky in 1932.


Hitler also used chemical weapons before they were outlawed. Keep in mind that Americans used flamethrowers and other torturous methods of killing back in the day too.


I honestly don't know what America should do, but no matter what, people will dislike Obama for it.