Not a bad speech. A few thoughts:

1. I actually like that he is taking it to congress for approval. What's too bad is that he felt the need to clarify that he would be within his rights to initiate the attack without congress if he wanted to. It's as if he's trying to juggle giving a nod to the ideals he used to endorse as a candidate while simultaneously justifying his betrayal of those ideals in the past as president.

2. I'm not buying the whole 'threat to our allies' argument. The fact is, the entire situation is a threat to Israel. It's looking like a no-win situation for them just like us. There's nothing to be done about that. But I don't think Assad is very likely to attack Israel or Turkey or any other US ally.

You could make the argument that terrorists might get their hands on the weapons and use them (as Obama did mention), but I guess I'm just unaware of how a missle strike would help prevent that and not really willing to take Obama's word for it that it would.

3. When he was making the statement about what other kind of international norms we're going to allow regimes to ignore, including regimes developing nukes, I couldn't help but think he was hinting at Iran, which was ironic since we look the other way for Israel, Pakistan, India... and we do nothing about North Korea.

It sounds like a powerful statement to say are we the kind of country to sit by and watch this horrible **** happen, but that's exactly what we do. The world police mentality is an unrealistic way of dealing with geopolitics and inevitably falls back on selective displays of symbolic justice.

Warning: death


‫

very surreal and jarring to see this

i saw that video a few days ago and a lot of other sniper videos of people catchin em in the face and stuff. i dont know what i think about syria right now but from watchin all of these syria war videos i can say im tired of hearing allahu akbar lol

Interesting change of events.

Kerry makes an off the cuff comment and Syria/Russia jump all over it!




Then Putin decides to write an OP Ed piece or get someone to write it for him to make America look like crap. He always wants to offer up Russia like it's the super power alternative to America.

i actually think putin is probably playin his cards right here if im readin things correctly. basically bad mouthing the us but not too harshly. cause of course he must show his people he is strong and not a pussy but also knows that outright blastin the US would be stupid. the US would destroy anybody in a war, we are kind of the big kid on the playground

Since I live in Israel, and I am relatively close to Syria where the civil war is ongoing, the whole thing truly concerns me. I was even scared it would spread to here, but I soon realized thats not gonna happen.....

Like most people(unless you are sadist) it is sickening for me to see the videos and photos of people being killed in various methods during the civil war over there. There is an urgent need for American interference over there and the news Ive heard lately about Obama considering to attack there soon, and then saying he's gonna wait instead afterwards.....I gotta admit that this cant wait. He should have ordered an attack long before even the chemical attacks in August occurred, since from what Ive heard.....they have already used chemical weapons in the civil war even before August 21.

Besides that, I have heard in the news that rockets were launched towards the northern part of Israel, but since I live in the central part it cannot reach the area that I live in.

thats some scary stuff man



i think the syrian government is in the wrong but also dont want to aid some of the groups on the rebels side. seems to me like this has turned into another ****e/suni war and groups are aligning kinda based on that

As much as the US gets called the world's police and yadda yadda yadda. The American public as even evidenced in this thread is tired of the US getting involved in other countries business especially while we still have two conflicts still ongoing. That's one of the main reasons why the US hasn't gotten involved in it until chemical attacks were done.

Putin is so full of it.

"I'm not protecting Assad, I'm protecting international law. International law states you can only attack by decision of the Security Council, which won't happen cause I'll use Russia's veto power to block any attempt to do so."
The problem is we can't fix the civil war with bombs. I don't think it would reduce the causalities nor make you any safer to do so.