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US Strikes Syrian Base With Over 50 Tomahawk Missiles (nbcnews.com)
mi writes: Two U.S. warships in the Mediterranean Sea fired 59 Tomahawk missiles intended for a single target -- Shayrat Airfield in Homs province in western Syria, the Defense Department said. That's the airfield from which the United States believes the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fired chemical weapons on Tuesday. There was no immediate word on casualties. U.S. officials told NBC News that people were not targeted and that aircraft and infrastructure at the site, including the runway, were hit. Slashdot reader Humbubba shares a similar report from Washington Post, adding that Thursday's strike was the "first direct American assault on the government of President Bashar al-Assad since that country's civil war began six years ago." The report also notes that the strike "dramatically expands U.S. military involvement in Syria and exposes the United States to heightened risk of direct confrontation with Russia and Iran, both backing Assad in his attempt to crush his opposition."
It was only a matter of time before Tump started another war in the middle east.
Neat, more than $93M ($1.59M unit cost according to wikipedia) gone in a single (non war related) strike. /s
Thanks goodness he saved money by cutting the budget of EPA and NSF!
Yeah, cause removing the only source of stability is such a great idea. Just look at Libya now.
Libya is so freee now! So cool
Why are Tomahawk missiles so expensive? Can't the US get a bulk discount at this point?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
These actions seem to be yet another thing that run contrary to his rhetoric. I'm not commenting on whether that is good or bad, I'm just saying, he sure doesn't seem to be a man of his word.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Agreed. I want the US to have nothing else to do with Syria. But using chemical weapons is simply too awful and too horrific to ignore. We can't stop parties from making or using the things, but we can damned well make sure there are painful consequences to doing so.
If not Assad, then who? The Russians aren't this stupid.
Also there was very little US reaction to the earlier chemical weapon attacks in Syria so that reason sounds incredibly unlikely. Elvis alive today riding on a unicorn unlikely.
OK - you probably worked that out long ago but some many out there do not understand that Trump can never be taken at his word. He seems to have broken it more than kept it which is why US Banks wouldn't touch him in the last decade.
“False flag” does not answer “then who”, but more importantly, what war crime can't be written off as a false flag operation? If an army bombs a hospital either by mistake or as a tool of terror, just label it as “false flag”. It would be stupid to do it, so someone else did it. Who exactly? I dunno, must be the enemy.
Using gas to poison your own population makes twisted sort of sense — use terror to subjugate people. The more horrific the crime, the more effective it is. I personally don't believe it is true, but this line of thinking is rather widespread. Using such terror tactics is risky because of repercussions from the “international community”, but a week ago Syria had direct support from Iran and Russia, diplomatic support from China. From the west, Assad was already isolated and no one was interested in “Starting WW3”, especially since Trump had taken the “Stay out of Syria” line. If there ever was a time to use chemical weapons, this was it.
Just slap an arduino on the missiles and make it IoT or something and bob's your uncle.
Good thing everyone voted against Clinton and stopped her from starting another war in the middle east. Oh wait...
You didn't get any "insight" mods, but I think yours was one of the better comments so far. However, you did leave out some of the key players in the mess.
In particular Iran was the big winner of Dubya's war against Saddam, and they seem to be playing a similar game in Syria now. Basically just laying low and moving into the power vacuums that appear. They would gladly consolidate a Shia caliphate if they could. Turkey is quite nearby and extremely concerned, though it is hard to tell if they are more concerned about getting more involved or about the situation getting more out of control. Meanwhile, the Saudi Arabians are pumping money into the mess and might get desperate if their "proxy warriors" in the region are being exterminated on a wholesale basis.
#PresidentTweety has not done anything to improve the situation, but it's unclear if the launch of roughly $100 million of fancy missiles is going to make things worse. Hard to see how things could get worse (especially in Syria and North Korea), but I keep getting surprised in the worst way... (I just hope Bannon is really on his way out rather than on route to greater mischief.)
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Stability Putin-style comes from establishing a de-facto monarchy and wrapping the cowardly russians in ever-increasing layers of obfuscation and propaganda. "stability" indeed.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Agreed. I want the US to have nothing else to do with Syria. But using chemical weapons is simply too awful and too horrific to ignore. We can't stop parties from making or using the things, but we can damned well make sure there are painful consequences to doing so.
Why is it too awful? The death toll from this particular attack is a lot less than from many conventional airstrikes. The fact that people are somehow less accepting of chemicals than of just bombing people to death with explosives is insane.
'Slashdot reader Humbubba shares a similar report from Washington Post, adding that Thursday's strike was the "first direct American assault on the government of President Bashar al-Assad since that country's civil war began six years ago."'
That's odd. Here was I thinking that the NATO air strike on Syrian Army positions last September, which killed about 100 Syrian soldiers and wounded about as many more, was a "direct American assault". It was immediately followed by a mass terrorist attack that overran the Syrian Army positions - which had previously held out stubbornly for years. Almost as if the terrorists had known about the air strike before it happened.
Of course, maybe some Americans think that killing a mere 100 soldiers and wounding another 100 doesn't really amount to an "assault". After all, they are Asian Muslims, aren't they?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
"Throughout 2016 we were told that Clinton would 'declare a no-fly zone over Syria'... "
Hopefully you noticed that one of the people who told us that was Hillary Clinton herself. It wasn't speculation by pundits or her political opponents, she said it directly on multiple occasions.
"and cause a war with Russia"
You tell me. Russian planes were flying missions in Syrian airspace. How do you think the Russians would have responded if the U.S. military started shooting down their planes?
There were plenty of reasons to vote for someone other than Clinton(like Gary Johnson), but yes, her stance on Syria was, by itself, a 100% compelling reason.
A great many people (at least one, here on slashdot in reply to me) however used that as a justification to vote for Trump. Because apparently it makes some sort of moral difference WHICH brutal dictator you suck up to and which you oppose (hint: it doesn't - a good president would be opposed to and, if need be, willing to go to war with BOTH Russia and Syria) ?
We were told that her tough stance on Syria was a reason to vote for Trump, because, his voters seemed to believe: he would stay out of the Syrian mess and not provoke Russia.
He has now BOMBED Syria. Do you seriously think Russia is happy right now ?
Isolationism is an incredibly stupid idea, both times America ever tried it there was a world war, one of those times ended with the largest military attack on home soil in history. Now I won't say that hte US hasn't thoroughly fucked up in it's international role since world war 2 sometimes - hell I've repeatedly cited the fuckups, like removing a democratically elected leader in *insert list of over 50 countries here* to install a dictator, going to war in Iraq etc.
But, and this matter, over-all they global liberal order has stood - there has not been another world war. The US has kept wars local in this time, to it's own and the world's benefit.
Isolationism would dismantle all that, and almost certainly lead to a new world war.
Now the truth is also that the world, over the past 3 years, have reach the closest point to a world war since the last one ended. Tensions have not been this high in 70 years. Countries around the world are flexing their muscles and itching for a fight. I'm not a Clinton fan (I WAS a Sanders fan) but I did think she had the knowledge, experience and acumen required to hopefully keep a lid on things and calm things down. It was a longshot but it was also the ONLY shot. The one thing I was sure of was that a blustery buffoon like Donald Trump was the absolute worst possible person to have in charge of the US military at a time like this. A brash, loudmouth, egotist with authoritarian and fascist tendency who appeals to ethno-nationalist sentiments - worst possible person for the job.
Nobody saw world war 1 coming, the markets didn't even shift until 3 months after the events that started it. The tensions were there, the build-up is obvious in retrospect, but it was not visible at the time.
Now though, with the benefit of having seen it there - I see the same patterns in global geopolitics today. And it takes extremely skilled leadership to steer through this without igniting another one. No rash decisions can be made. 99.9999% very careful and skilled diplomacy, and the tiny 0.000001 surgical precision military strikes - that's what could keep things calm and resolve these tensions without breaking out.
Trump has none of the qualities required. Clinton did - she'd STILL be a longshot because of the other world leaders out there Merkel is ONLY other one who is up to the task. Could the two of them keep things calm ? I don't know - but there was a chance. With the election of Trump - there is no chance. Indeed a no-fly zone over Syria with diplomatic pressure to force Russia to accept it could potentially have been exactly the right approach. It would certainly have reduced the likelihood of bombing Syria today.
Do not be surprised if, in future decades, historians refer to this week as the week world war 3 started. And no, the poison gas attack would not be the start- Asad's been doing that for ages. It's this strike, this morning. This strike could very well be the first strike of world war 3.
I hope it isn't, I hope there is no world war 3. I hope that the leader of the free world Angela Merkel (oh remember the good old days when that title belonged to whoever was POTUS ?) and the leaders in her European alliances (France, the Netherlands, Scandinavia) have the wisdom (and the scars) to manage to keep a lid on things even in a world where Trump has the big red button.
It's not a big hope, but it's hope and I cling to it. I have never so badly wanted to be wrong.
I just fear I'm right, because it's far more than a possibility, it's a strong probability.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
In other news this morning:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...
You are welcome on my lawn.
By "get out" I mean no military intervention, no foreign aid (except for emergencies like natural disasters), no weapons sales, and no immigration by mid-eastern nationals (except for very select cases).
1) Money, and weapons, always end up in the wrong hands.
Hamas is getting their money from Qatar. The US gave Qatar $11 billion. We might as well have given the money directly to Hamas. ISIS is using US military equipment. There are many more examples.
2) The US will be blamed, and hated, even more than it already is, by everybody in the world, especially Muslims.
Any military intervention will be called an invasion. The US will be accused of killing civilians to steal the oil of whatever mid-east nation we are "helping" this week. If we help tribe A, tribe B will hate us even more. Then tribe A will hate us as soon as we stop helping them. All casualties will be blamed on the US, even if most casualties are the result of Muslims killing other Muslims. And there is always that one-in-a-million soldier that does something completely out of line, and that is all the media will focus on.
3) The US can no longer afford the outrageous expense.
The US is drowning in debt. Our credit has been downgrading. Our economy is in the toilet. Yet we borrow more billions from China, to give to mid-eastern Muslim who hate us.
4) There are no "good guys"
Does it really matter if Syria, or Iraq, or whatever, is ran by insane Sunis, or equally insane Shites? Our friends today, are our enemies tomorrow. I believe both Saddam Hussan, and Osama bin Ladan where our buddies at one time. Between Assad and ISIS, who is the good guy? They all seem like murdering thugs, why pick sides?
5) Even if you win, you lose.
Over ten years, and I don't even know how many billions of dollars, or thousands of lives, or how much suffering, in Iraq. And now Iraq is being overrun by ISIS. Even before ISIS, it was non-stop terrorist attacks. If we stop ISIS than what? Peace for two weeks?
6) Other than buying oil, the US has no business there.
Clearly the US does not want another nation interfering in our politics. In only stands to reason that other nations do want the US interfering in their politics. The US may have good intentions, but other nations will not see it that way.
The International Red Cross agrees with my assessment, now calling the Syrian war an international armed conflict.
At this time, it is still unclear what exactly happened. The UN wants an investigation, the Russians claim that an islamist bomb factory was hit, causing the poison gas explosion, neither side can be believed because they are all far from independent.
What we do know is that Turkey is trying since 2013 to make the USA cross the red line, and has been caught selling poison gas (the same, interestingly, Sarin) to Syrian islamists before. Erdogan was the first to point fingers, and he has a massive internal politics reason to increase tensions, with his upcoming referendum likely going the wrong (for him) way. So a false flag operation is possible as well.
If you think false flag operations are a myth, never forget that WW2 was started by one.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Why are the West the bad guys for intervening against a war criminal, but Russia isn't a bad guy even though it's also carrying out war crimes by bombing civilian populations, by annexing sovereign foreign territory (Crimea), by shooting down an airliner full of civilians over the sovereign territory of a nation it is attacking, and by backing a war criminal?
Because we are the subject to propaganda no less than anyone else in the world. Let's dissect that statement:
"bad guy" is not a term likely to be found in any law book. So you are making a moral argument, but I was making a legal one.
Then you are mixing Syrian and Crimea as if they were the same thing. While western propaganda links them, there's no legal connection between the two.
Bombing of civilian populations is done by all sides in Syria, they all claim that they target military targets (or "terrorists") and that civilian casualties are unfortunate collateral damage. Whom you choose to believe and whom you call liars is an entirely political choice.
Shooting down an airliner is again Crimea, unless you are referring to SA 1812, which was shot down by the Ukrainian Air Force with 78 civilians on board (no survivors). Or maybe to Iran Air 655, shot down by the US with 290 civilian casualties. The unfortunate fact is that even if it was Russia that shot down MH17, a conclusion the international investigation did not make (they say russian missile system, probably operated by the rebels) - civilian airliners get shot down in war zones, and over the years everyone made that fatal mistake, including the US.
Backing a war criminal? Where is the investigation and conviction? Is Erdogan in Turkey any less of one, and the west is backing him? What about Saudi Arabia, the wests stronges ally in the region, whose government is comparable to the fucking Taliban? And wasn't Saddam Hussein backed by the west for decades, even after it was absolutely clear he is using poison gas in the Iraq-Iran war? Funny how being a war criminal only counts if you're inconvient to current politics.
Your final list is very nicely cut. It excludes such things as unprovoked invasions or bombings, which the west is a hundredfold guilty of, or the "temporary" (we are speaking years and decades) occupation of territory, all of which are illegal under international law. It ignores all the military interventions done on simiarly bullshit grounds, or even based on pure fabrications (Iraqs WMD). Nice parlour trick. You have a nice multi-color cake on the table, but you cut out only the white parts and then claim the whole cake was white. You really think that only 12-year olds read /. who don't immediately see through that trick?
Your "self-hatred" argument I left for last. This is censorship par excellence. By putting negatively connotated labels on criticism, you silence it. Chapter one in, ironically, the Nazi book on propaganda. This is literally the first thing they did - labelling things according to their perspective. This allows you to frame the entire discussion in your mindset.
But have you ever given a thought to the fact that the whole binary approach could be wrong? That in these questions maybe there is not one good and one bad guy? This is the real world, not a Hollywood movie! There can be two bad guys. Or three, or five. Or mixed guys - good intentions, bad methods. Or mixed intentions. Someone (forgot who, damn it) once said "Nobody is the villain in their own life story." and in the same way that Bush or Obama or Trump will be able to explain to you why everything they do is right and proper, I'm sure Putin can do the same. Or Assad. Or even these ISIS fanatics. And if you really listen, you would find that their argument is sound. It will be subjective, one-sided and leave out many facts and nuances, but it makes sense to them. And that is why we are in this mess, because eve
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org