Originally posted by DeepThought What business does the United States President have attempting to veto the presidency of Syria?
Slightly more legitimacy than Assad does for being president of Syria.
I would support the summary removal of dictators in any country - although I would prefer it be done via the United Nations and with some sort of legal system in place to determine who is or isn't a dictator. But short of that, let the americans do it, and take the blame when it goes sour.
I think this is why the GOP was allowed to retake Congress. The GOP has traditionally been the champion of big government abroad in the form of military intervention, while the DNC is big government at home. Neither one curbs the other in terms of expanding government globally.
Together, they make the out of control beast it is today.
The great part here is, there will be no protests since Obola sits in the White House. Only if he had an "R" by his name would all the left winged loons be protesting.
The added bonus is that its Obama's chance to stand up to big bad Putin.
Originally posted by twhitehead Slightly more legitimacy than Assad does for being president of Syria.
I would support the summary removal of dictators in any country - although I would prefer it be done via the United Nations and with some sort of legal system in place to determine who is or isn't a dictator. But short of that, let the americans do it, and take the blame when it goes sour.
Unfortunately a policy of removing dictators is impractical as there are lots of dictators in the world, and they tend to react dangerously to their fellow dictators being toppled. Assad is a prime example - he deliberately encouraged Syrian jidahists to go and fight in Iraq, since he knew that if the Iraq experiment proved successful, Syria would be the next target for regime change. Assad's strategy, judged on his terms, was a brilliant success; at the cost of horrible bloodshed and ongoing chaos in Iraq, he remained in more or less unchallenged power in Syria for another eight years, and succeeded in discouraging Western powers from intervening to depose him after 2011 out of fears that Syria would become "another Iraq".
Allowing the Salafists to go to Iraq was thought to be a good idea for two reasons: first, it got rid of thousands of the most aggressive Salafists with a taste for jihad, packing them off to a foreign war from which many would never return to pose a threat to Assad’s secular, minority-dominated government; second, it destabilised the occupation of Iraq and thwarted Bush’s quest to topple authoritarian regimes (everyone in Assad’s inner circle feared that Syria would be next). According to Assad’s biographer David Lesch, ‘Damascus wanted the Bush doctrine to fail, and it hoped that Iraq would be the first and last time it was applied. Anything it could do to ensure this outcome, short of incurring the direct military wrath of the United States, was considered fair game.’
Practically overnight, Syria became the principal point of entry for foreign jihadists hoping to join the Iraqi insurgency. Inside the country, Assad’s intelligence services activated their jihadist collaborators. The most prominent among them was Abu al-Qaqaa, a Salafi cleric from Aleppo who had studied in Saudi Arabia and whose sermons attracted hundreds – sometimes thousands – of people. Before the invasion of Iraq, Abu al-Qaqaa’s followers acted as religious vigilantes, meting out punishments for ‘indecent behaviour’ and stirring up hatred against the infidel governments of Israel and America. After the invasion, his group turned into a hub which provided Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s al-Qaida in Iraq with Syrian recruits. Qaqaa’s efforts were so successful that for most of 2003 Syrians constituted the largest foreign fighting contingent of the (emerging) insurgency. Four years later, when the political calculus had changed and the Syrian government wanted to slow down the traffic, Qaqaa was shot dead in mysterious circumstances. His funeral was attended by members of the Syrian parliament along with thousands of Islamists. According to a Lebanese media report, "his coffin was draped in a Syrian flag and the affair had all the trappings of a state occasion."
Originally posted by twhitehead Slightly more legitimacy than Assad does for being president of Syria.
I would support the summary removal of dictators in any country - although I would prefer it be done via the United Nations and with some sort of legal system in place to determine who is or isn't a dictator. But short of that, let the americans do it, and take the blame when it goes sour.
Originally posted by DeepThought What business does the United States President have attempting to veto the presidency of Syria?
He took an oath of office that had to do with protecting US interests. Whether he's doing it right is another question, but that's the 'business' he is supposed to be about.
Originally posted by JS357 He took an oath of office that had to do with protecting US interests. Whether he's doing it right is another question, but that's the 'business' he is supposed to be about.
He took no such oath. Here's the oath he did take:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.
Nothing in the Constitution is consistent with the President unilaterally deciding to oust another country's leader.
Originally posted by Teinosuke Unfortunately a policy of removing dictators is impractical as there are lots of dictators in the world, and they tend to react dangerously to their fellow dictators being toppled.
I agree. I don't necessarily think it is wise to topple dictators, but I do think it is morally acceptable. Unfortunately the US has a history of installing more dictators than they have toppled. In fact, some of the ones they toppled, were ones they had installed.
I do not know enough history to say. I do think that they would be morally correct to do so, but that doesn't mean it would be a wise thing to do politically.
13 Nov '14 19:59
Obama to remove Assad
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