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September 04, 2013 09:50 AM UTC
3 Comments
The US strike will apparently involve hundreds of Cruise/Tomahawk missiles.
What happens if Hezbollah retaliates against Israel?
What happens if Syria uses chemical weapons again?
The latest Congressional resolution does nothing to prevent escalation beyond placing a limit on the number of days a first strike can be made. Clearly, an extension would be granted if retaliation occurs. In fact, this is fodder for late night comics. David Letterman started a joke with, "We are about to attack Syria and our leaders are saying it will only last two days." The audience burst out in laughter and he didn't even deliver a punch line!
The Free Syrian Army is the only "friendly" rebel group in Syria (and I'd have to learn a lot more about them before I would agree that they are worthy of US support). Otherwise, we have Assad (and Iran) on one side, and Al Queda-related groups on the other side. So, other than possibly the FSA, both sides hate the US! That is ridiculous.
Yet again, we are about to enter a war where there is no clear definition of success. Don't do it. Please.
This is almost exactly how I feel.
John Kerry keeps saying that the president "isn't asking America to go to war." How not? If we attack Syria, Syria will retaliate. What then?
This is where the calculation of targets comes in, I think. What can we take out of Syria's military system that is sufficient to send the message, yet either not sufficient to provoke retaliatory strikes or debilitating enough that they'd think twice about it?
The two answers are probably: (1) something directly related to chemical weapons capabilities or the units that were involved in the attack, and (2) their air defense network. Unless Assad is completely mad, he is probably at least embarrassed by the chemical attack; striking directly at that might give him at least a private "out". On the other end, if his air defense network is taken out, it won't make a difference to the civil war, but it would make a huge difference if he tries to retaliate against anyone, US or other (e.g. Israel). No air defense means his forces are extremely vulnerable to future air attacks.
Let's hope that Obama spends as much time going over options for this as he did when he ordered the strike on Osama bin Laden.