How does everyone feel about us attacking Syria?

[_MeDotOrg]

Texted. Person is still stateside. Whew!

Syria has a pretty sophisticated anti-aircraft system, with late model Russian SAM batteries, and Russia has their own batteries in-country as well. They claimed to have knocked down 13 incoming Tomahawks, though I would love to see a little confirmation of that.

I don't think there is going to be much 'boots on the ground' here. Especially early on, expect Tomahawks and drones before you see any manned aircraft. It's possible that additional support units are sent, but I would think deployments would be to secured airfields.

[_Jersey Girl]

Texted. Person is still stateside. Whew!

Syria has a pretty sophisticated anti-aircraft system, with late model Russian SAM batteries, and Russia has their own batteries in-country as well. They claimed to have knocked down 13 incoming Tomahawks, though I would love to see a little confirmation of that.

I don't think there is going to be much 'boots on the ground' here. Especially early on, expect Tomahawks and drones before you see any manned aircraft. It's possible that additional support units are sent, but I would think deployments would be to secured airfields.

I wasn't referring to boots on the ground. I was referring to a Naval deployment aboard ship.

[_Res Ipsa]

Texted. Person is still stateside. Whew!

Syria has a pretty sophisticated anti-aircraft system, with late model Russian SAM batteries, and Russia has their own batteries in-country as well. They claimed to have knocked down 13 incoming Tomahawks, though I would love to see a little confirmation of that.

I don't think there is going to be much 'boots on the ground' here. Especially early on, expect Tomahawks and drones before you see any manned aircraft. It's possible that additional support units are sent, but I would think deployments would be to secured airfields.

Manned aircraft were used by all three countries, but they used only stand off weapons. They fired from outside the range of the SAM batteries. I think they said that the shortest range weapons used were the French missles: range 300 miles.

[_MeDotOrg]

Trump tweeted this morning 'Mission Accomplished'. The sorties hit their targets, so as long as that is how you are defining the mission, he is correct. I hope they have significantly reduced Syria's capacity for chemical warfare. Perhaps Syria will think again before using such weapons in the future.

But I think any President would be a bit more cautious, especially given the recent hollow ring of 'Mission Accomplished' in American history.

[_Res Ipsa]

We can all sleep better knowing that Assad has returned to butchering innocent civilians using conventional weapons.

[_DoubtingThomas]

We can all sleep better knowing that Assad has returned to butchering innocent civilians using conventional weapons.

For some reason the media isn't talking much about what is happening in Yemen. I am starting a new topic.

[_Gunnar]

We can all sleep better knowing that Assad has returned to butchering innocent civilians using conventional weapons.

According to Markos Kounalakis, a foreign affairs columnist for McClatchy News and visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution (see https://youtu.be/PC_2e8W5qho?t=67), a significant motivation for Assad to make this chemical warfare attack may have been to deliberately provoke the very response that we (that is, The UK, France and the U.S.) made to it. He apparently calculated that by our actions against him, we have essentially shot ourselves in the foot and helped Assad more than we hurt him, by getting Putin and Russia more aggressively involved in supporting him.

See the whole video. You may find it interesting.

[_Hawkeye]

Well according to several previous tweets by Donald Trump, Obama only attacked Syria to take focus away from his plummeting approval ratings. He also said he should never attack Syria without congressional approval.

I just think it is so cute that Republicans are drinking the fool-aide on this one, insisting it is about how much Trump cares for these children being attacked by chemical weapons. We accepted 11 Syrian refugees last year because of Trump. He is the reason they're still there being murdered. Apparently he just prefers they be murdered by conventional bombs instead of chemical weapons. I mean, what a saint this guy is.

[_subgenius]

He is the reason they're still there being murdered.

unless the subject of your pronoun here is "Obama", please CFR for your claim (which should be fun since your post is ignorant on the history of this topic, Obama, facts, and the history of Trump's statements on the matter)....but to be fair, I am willing to accept the fact that you likely have not been paying attention to this issue from 2012 to last week.

Also, please resolve this whole red-line thingy...hair-fire not required.

On August 20, 2012, then-President Barack Obama told a group of reporters the use of chemical weapons by Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria would cross his “red line.” A year later, almost to the day, Syrian forces killed over 1,400 people with sarin gas, a particularly horrifying chemical weapon that can cause paralysis, convulsions, or death.

Obama didn’t immediately respond. Instead, a month later he agreed to a deal with Russia to remove and destroy 600 metric tons of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile. That would, in theory, make it impossible for Assad to gas his own people, though he could still kill them using conventional weapons.

Obama and his second secretary of state, John Kerry, hailed the accord as a historic way to end Assad’s chemical weapons program without firing a single shot. “It turns out we’re getting chemical weapons out of Syria without having initiated a strike,” Obama told an audience in the Philippines four years ago. “With respect to Syria, we struck a deal where we got 100 percent of the chemical weapons out,” Kerry stated during a July 2014 appearance on Meet the Press.

Four years after Kerry’s Syria comments, President Donald Trump, along with allies France and the UK, launched 105 missiles on Friday at three Syrian targets to punish the regime for killing over 40 people in an April 7, 2018 chlorine attack. That was the second time Trump authorized strikes on Syria after a chemical attack.

Clearly, the Assad kept some of his stockpile, and continued to use chemicals with non-military uses — like chlorine, which can cause respiratory problems — on his people. Human Rights Watch has cataloged about 85 chemical weapons attacks in Syria since the August 21, 2013 strike, most of them perpetrated by the regime.

That makes one thing very clear: Assad’s continued use of chemical weapons offers even more evidence of how badly the Obama administration misjudged and mishandled the “red line” moment.
https://www.vox.com/2018/4/15/17238568/ ... ama-russia

[_subgenius]

Well according to several previous tweets by Donald Trump, Obama only attacked Syria to take focus away from his plummeting approval ratings.

If you are trying to infer that Trump is doing this, then you are necessarily conceding the fact that you believe Trump's accusations about Obama's motives here are true. But don't worry, it is clear that your posts are not really thinking any of this stuff through or with reason and factual foundations.