As I write this, NBC is reporting the US has just launched a volley of Tomahawk missiles against Syria, aimed at a single airfield. Things are developing quickly. Here’s an open thread to discuss.
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We Hunted The MammothBucking the Backlash
That’s a very good example, yes. The Russian leadership don’t care about what Krim actually is; they care about what it represents to them.
@Troubelle
It was the most beautiful city in the world before Assad bombed it to shit.
If I can find it in me to sift through the hundreds (thousands ?) of pics I took during that trip, I’ll post the good ones. It’s not too easy for me to look at them though, so I’m taking it slow.
Here’s another for now.
http://i.imgur.com/5wdnSiJ.jpg
@Valentine
No, I live in France. I visited more than a dozen years ago.
IEJ
Though now you also mention that the importance of Krim is for all people. It is symbolic in manyways which is why so many want to claim it. Tartari, russians, ukranians, even British and french it is significant. I would say now it symbol is its most important factor.
@sinkable
Still very sad as it has important place in your heart from a young age.
Rojava.
Supporting it and supporting the rise of more of those experiments in the region.
It may not be a perfect answer but it’s a pretty decent one.
Now, the fact that none of the actors involved in the proxy war in Syria want anything like that to happen kind of puts a damper on things…
This news just pushes me a bit further in an unhappy direction. I think I’m finally beginning to understand Ulysses from Fallout: New Vegas.
What have flags brought us? What have symbols, or nationalism? Only death. Constant, and pointless death. And we get into situations where the only actors with the power to make change are the evil ones.
New Vegas included a wild card option to sidestep deciding which offer of thirty pieces of silver you should accept, but I don’t see any way to do that in Syria.
Hi guys. Just checking in because of the apparent terrorist attack in Stockholm. I am in Gothenburg, where I live, far away from where the attack happened. All my friends in Stockholm have checked in on Facebook to confirm that they’re safe.
I suppose I will keep up with the news reporting in case American “media” fucks it up as usual.
The missile strike appears to have had very little effect. A couple of small bunker hangers destroyed, some exposed infrastructure on fire but the runways are (predictably) undamaged and the MiGs left out in the open didn’t suffer a scratch. Depending on who one asks, most of the missiles didn’t seem to hit anything in particular, as if they weren’t intended to.
Yet it was a small airfield and nothing more. Syria can still produce and deploy chemical weapons, and now Russia’s pledging to improve the country’s anti-aircraft defenses. Way to play one’s crappy hand early in the game and go for broke.
Wait, does Trump know how to play Poker? Perhaps I should’ve used a different analogy? Way to go to Pewter City Gym with just one’s level 5 Charmander and only use growl? Yeah, I think anyone should understand that one.
Though since is the Deflector in Chief we’re discussing, I suppose it’s to be expected that there’d be a lot of bluster over a blatant distraction that might as well have been a few firecrackers set off in the neighbor’s driveway. I don’t think anyone, aside from the paid trolls that infest Yahoo News, could seriously think that a man who attacked intervention in Syria over the last several years and was quite willing to leave refugees there to die just started giving a damn about them in the middle of a campaign controversy.
@Scolar Visari
After the initial panic of impending nuclear destruction, everyone’s gonna go back to Trump’s Russia connections, especially when he pretty much warned Putin that it would happen, and the strike just so happened to hit a completely inconsequential area.
Gorsuch confirmed for supreme court justice.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/us/politics/neil-gorsuch-supreme-court.html?referer=https://www.google.com/
The nuclear option was involed by the GOP, expect this to bite them long term, if there is even a long term.
Scolar Visari: the US has the ability to bomb the shit out of everything. Even if this was just a quick warning shot that won’t stop Assad from much, the US can, if it wants, completely halt Assad’s air force.
The problem is that Russia is pretty deeply embedded there. If we bomb Assad’s forces, we bomb Russia’s forces.
The Guardian reports
Plus Russia is going to strengthen Syria’s air forces.
If the strike was ran by Russia, was coordinated by Russia, could they be using it as an excuse to…Declare war? In so confused.
I haven’t read all the comments yet – I will – but I had to come down here just to cry out
With all the bullshit that’s been happening
The Senate no longer a useful Senate, our government falling apart
The gassing of babies and children again again
Fighting constantly with xenophobic idiots who refuse to see reality and substitute their own
This shit-for-brains bizarre clown still in charge
Learning some hard fucking family shit from my only child two days ago, that he kept a secret for 8 years
I have been weeping for 3 days and I don’t know when I will stop. I will stop, I know. But right now, things look very hard and very dire. I am wiped out. Time will be a friend to me. It has been a hard 3 months.
Hugs to anyone here who wants or needs one. Carry on. Be brave.
This metropole/periphery divide as a sort of meta global urban/rural split is compelling.
numerobis makes a good point about Nunavut, but my wandering mind then considers how Canada itself was somewhat of a British periphery for the longest time.
I’ve long had a fascination for the convenient detritus of colonialism, mostly small far flung islands run from afar for their naval strategics.
The Virgin Islands, Miquelon, Curacao, etc.
Check out this territory map
Seems everyone wants to stick their fingers in everywhere.
I’ve been playing a web game called NationStates where everyone gets a nation to rule over, complete with annoying petitioners. 😉
I’m still skeptical about whether the intervention is a good idea. Hopefully Mattis will have a moderating effect on any decisions Trump makes.
@IgnoreSandra
“Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the twentieth century. Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s minds and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.”
― Arundhati Roy, War Talk
She’s underestimating, though; it’s been the cause of most of the genocide ever.
If I may ask, why is this an unhappy thought separate from the war itself? I mean, nationalism is shit; we should avoid it. What’s bad about that realisation?
I don’t have the spoons for this.
When it comes to Syria specifically, I recently found out about a piece of Syria that Israel is trying to steal and no doubt the same old oil and resources conflicts.
It reminds me of Ghaddafi (sic) who was the leader of an evil empire in 1984 (according to Reagan) then he was just another foreign leader until the Arab Spring, which ultimately led to his assassination. Why? As always, it was about how much he was willing to let the oil conglomerates take. For Shell, the choice is between paying something to a leader you don’t like in a relatively stable environment, or paying nothing and dealing with civil war. Six of one, half dozen of another.
At some point they decide that uppity leaders like Assad are more trouble than the war. Civilian deaths? Who cares, we have security!
Grrrrrrr
This is what I know right now:
– Spendrups truck mowed people down on Drottninggatan in central Stockholm, then crashed into the Åhléns store.
– At least 2 people dead. Police statement says “a few”.
– “Many” injured.
– Threat level raised in entire country.
– Presumed terrorist attack.
– The largest terrorist threat to Sweden is jihadist.
– Two persons have been brought in for interrogation (reasons unknown).
– A photo of an unknown person has been released, as police want to find the person (suspected perpetrator).
That’s horrible IP. I hope that the casulaties will stay at 2 and that it won’t be used to push racism 😡
For the geopolitic and/or army buff, do Russia stand a chance against America if they don’t go nuclear ? My understanding is that Russian army wouldn’t be as trivially swept as the irakian one, but that they would not stand a real chance, hence Putin not actually wanting to go to war if he can avoid it. That might be wishful thinking.
IP, the truck is said to have been hijacked. Any word on the driver that the truck was hijacked from?
@numerobis
Air campaigns, by themselves, are half measures at best. As I mentioned before, Syria’s situation would not improve even if you removed its government’s capacity to fight. Actual improvement after a sustained bombing campaign would take an enormous and very costly force of peacekeepers to guard against ISIS and other factions that are just as bad and poised to take over before the dust clears. Bombing campaigns are a little less effective against those kinds of belligerents.
Though as a warning, this is entirely useless. It openly demonstrated that Trump is in fact unwilling to use force where there may be Russian forces involved, and that’s going to be difficult to avoid if you actually want a useful air campaign against anything other than a small airfield in Syria.
But it isn’t a warning. It’s a spur-of-the-moment distraction the same as his early morning tweeting, and one that is likely to bite Trump back hard. The Kremlin, after all, has already demonstrated it’s not above politically motivated cyber attacks. Trump’s an absolute moron when it comes to security (such as using his unsecured smartphone for communications and conducting crisis meetings in full view of civilians), and it’s likely his staff are just as bad in this regards. People like Flynn had clear relationships with Russia and other bad hombres before the election, and they should have never even been considered for positions in the first place before we even get to the possibility of what they might be hiding. The swamp, far from having been drained, just got filled up more and is about to see a spectacular swamp fire. This is late night talk show gold.
@Ooglyboggles
I don’t think the GOP has really thought that far ahead, though they’re not quite alone in that respect. They did not expect Trump to win in the first place (or, rather, had the capability to reliably predict the odds at all), and it’s quite possible they simply can’t imagine losing their Congressional majority after such an upset. Long term is something that happens to other people, and Heaven forbid some of them actually believe God has a hand in their campaign victories (He is interested in American midterm elections, but not so much in dying children). One could imagine what further damage impeachment would do to their numbers.
That Trump voters feel betrayed by recent events is very amusing. What, he changed his mind for the nth time? You don’t say?
@PeeVee
Yes, the truck was hijacked by a masked person while the driver was unloading it. The driver moved in front of the truck and was run into, but not injured.
I see zero reason to believe Trump gives a tinker’s damn about dying Syrian babies, any more than Yemen babies killed in fighting, or for that matter hungry and health care deficient American babies and children or women.
I think Trump cares very much about the focus on his ties to Putin and apparent collaboration w Russia. I am confident Trump cares very much about his low approval ratings. Trump desperately needs a big boost for his legislative efforts and to push back against resistance to his Muslim ban.
Trump’s big bomb drop did astonishingly little damage; both runways are still operational. Warning your target as Trump did was not usual, not normal procedure. They reportedly removed what was important from the target site, as well as evacuating personnel, both Syrian and Russian.
I would argue this benefits Putin and Assad as much as it benefits Trump. So let’s bet Assad continues bombing civilians conventionally, to stay in power. Putin gets to look powerful, Trump came to him not the other way around.
Trump benefits while America pays the freight.
I will bet now Assad stays in power exactly as long as Putin wants him too. And meanwhile, Iran and Russia benefit from the spike in oil prices too.
Follow the power, follow the money; ALWAYS follow the money. Don’t be distracted by the rest. Don’t believe the fake so-called reality, TV or DC.
IP, thanks for the info.
@Ohlmann
Missed that one. It’d be really hard not to go nuclear and have a full scale conventional war outside some improbable Crimson Tide or Call of Duty 4 scenario, but the American navy (which would be executing the brunt of such an attack in a crisis zone like Syria) would probably succeed in doing whatever the Hell it wanted to. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union fully expected to send and lose upwards of a hundred aircraft to sink single aircraft carriers on one way trips. I can’t imagine things have improved, particularly since they still just have a single accident prone carrier of their own. Pay no mind to rumors of supposed, “carrier killer” missiles.
However, a Russian invasion of Europe would generally be problematic. While Russia’s not quite the Soviet Union in terms of numbers of working IFVs, the rest of Europe has had similar declines.
Nuclear or not, it’s not really something anyone can win or, rather, worth winning. Huzzah, you took out Putin/Merkel/the Vatican! Now you have millions dead and even more living at the risk of starvation and hypothermia. If you thought rebuilding Iraq was expensive . . .
That’s to say nothing of participation by countries like China, which was itself horrifyingly closer to nuclear war with Russia in the 60’s than the U.S. is now. Their call for deescalation is a very sensible one.