Trump Thread

[Greyblades]

I do find it odd how the red line is one method of indiscriminate killing.

Smack to the jaw? Making Assad closer to Iran and Russia is smacking who in the jaw? Assad was killing civilians within a day or so - but thank goodness with conventional munitions. Surely Vietnam showed if nothing else that dropping vast amounts of ordinance by itself doesn't win a war. Yes, the bombs these days are more powerful and targeted, but so few in number.

I'm not going to talk the morality of being selective in which methods of killing is allowed; it's rather unimportant, the point is to show that america's promises and threats are worth something again.

Assad being driven closer to the russians and iran is also unimportant as it's too late for that; he's there already, bridge burned.

Obama shouldn't have mentioned red lines as he was outplayed by Russia.

Agreed.

Troops on the ground are courtesy of Assad, Iran and Hezbollah. They are doing a decent job of crushing the rebels in all the main centres whilst Russia bombs any things that are too tough. Given they have few qualms about overuse of force it'll probably continue to work.

A few cruise missiles made a very small local difference tactically - planes now have to use other bases until they rebuild. Russia might even give some some army surplus to help get it all up and running.

Which is good, the US doesnt want another somalia and the rebels are long past the point of being desireable puppets.

If Russia has troops in the ports they want, why need they go further? America has a base in Cuba that the locals didn't allow them to have.

They need to go further because the rebels wont let him keep the bases, Russia would have to either keep fighting off attempts to dislodge them for decades to come, or set up another proxy, in which case they might as well have kept assad.

[rory_20_uk]

I'm not going to talk the morality of being selective in which methods of killing is allowed; it's rather unimportant, the point is to show that america's promises and threats are worth something again.

Which is good, the US doesnt want another somalia and the rebels are long past the point of being desireable puppets.


They need to go further because the rebels wont let him keep the bases, Russia would have to either keep fighting off attempts to dislodge them for decades to come, or set up another proxy, in which case they might as well have kept assad.

That's the point - America's promise was they were not going to get involved in the Middle East. There was no threat, just action without warning. And now, no follow up or strategy. Amateur hour.

If the rebels are almost as bad as Assad then what is the point? Unless this is purely about the methodology of the killing. Nonsensical to me.

I am sure Russia can manage to protect bases if they want them. Rather like the Israelis have managed to keep the Golan Heights, Russia in Crimea and so on. Give some weapons to the nearby warlords to kill their enemies usually works.

Russia will back whichever puppet looks like winning in the areas of the country they wish to control, as will Iran. I doubt Russia has any loyalty more than a chess grandmaster does.

[Greyblades]

That's the point - America's promise was they were not going to get involved in the Middle East. There was no threat, just action without warning. And now, no follow up or strategy. Amateur hour.

That promise is likely why there is no follow up. As to strategy it looks to me like trump's going back to business as usual bombing isis. Which is good.

If the rebels are almost as bad as Assad then what is the point? Unless this is purely about the methodology of the killing. Nonsensical to me.

The point is that america made a promise to retaliate against syria if they use chemicals and trump unlike obama isnt too timid to fulfill it.

I am sure Russia can manage to protect bases if they want them. Rather like the Israelis have managed to keep the Golan Heights, Russia in Crimea and so on. Give some weapons to the nearby warlords to kill their enemies usually works.

Manage to, yes, want to, no.

It's cheaper to have a buffer that is allready friendly to you than hope the nearby warlords who replaces him isnt a raving islamic lunatic who cant be bought.

Russia will back whichever puppet looks like winning in the areas of the country they wish to control, as will Iran. I doubt Russia has any loyalty more than a chess grandmaster does.

No, russia will back whichever puppet will play ball with them, which right now is only Assad.

Sean Spicer says stupid things all the time and this wasn't even an exception since the point he did want to make was just as idiotic as any possible misinterpretation.

A boring response by all metrics, and one that ignores the point, he screwed up repeatedly but the anti trump brigade comes along and piles on crap, turning "Assad is worse than hitler" into "hitler did nothing wrong!!"

[Fragony]

Trump absolutily did something wrong, no way he could have known who is who and who did what and why who nobody knows why anybody did anything at all, a strike after one day?

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Trump absolutily did something wrong, no way he could have known who is who and who did what and why who nobody knows why anybody did anything at all, a strike after one day?

Do not dismiss the ability of national technical means and good image/technical record evaluators to quickly piece together what happened. The planes doing the strike were likely visible on satellite. The facilities used to load those planes were probably readily discernible. Any use of satellite phones, GPS signals, even cellular phone traffic can be monitored. The monitoring of that region of the world is near constant at the present time given the issues with Turkey, the Civil War itself, and the conflict with ISIS/DASH.

It is harder to presume that they were able to secure information on the "why" of it, but I suspect that the rest was pretty well evaluated.

As to the correctness of Trump's chosen response, that is a separate argument.

[Beskar]

Did anyone see the Interview? Trump was having a really big chocolate cake, most beautiful chocolate ever, then the generals came up to him saying the missles were locked and loaded. So he tells them to fire away! 59 missiles, all unmanned, from hundreds of miles away, hitting their target in Iraq... "Do you mean Syria?"... yes, hitting their target in Syria. It was beautiful.

[Husar]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video...02f_video.html

There's the relevant part of the video.

[Husar]

A boring response by all metrics, and one that ignores the point, he screwed up repeatedly but the anti trump brigade comes along and piles on crap, turning "Assad is worse than hitler" into "hitler did nothing wrong!!"

Yeah, Assad should have dropped the gas in a shower instead of a container to score more humanism points.

Or maybe the distinction was that Hitler "didn't use it on his own people" in the sense that communists, jews, gypsies and the disabled were not "his people", but then we've just reached a new level of despicable and racist. Or maybe he meant "Hitler didn't use it on the frontlines but only at home", to clarify this, Spicer said "Assad dropped it on innocent...", so what is his real point? Hitler didn't gas innocent people? It's better to use it at home than on the frontlines? Or just that the use was technically different, in which case I wonder why exactly Assad is worse then? Why does it even matter?