11 ms·
US and allies launch strikes on Syria chemical weapons sites
- hueving 9y agohopes this isn't the beginning of another 15 year quagmire
- bilbo0s 9y agoLooked at from a certain point of view, it's likely part of the SAME 15 year quagmire.
- jumelles 9y agoI fear that's a low estimate - this entire situation is messy and complex and everyone ran out of not-bad options long ago.
- almostApatriot1 9y agoWell it's already been going on for 7 years with 500k+ dead. US has already been there quite some time. The Kurds we support have many enemies as well. They will not exist without our support.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- shiado 9y agoWar is great for business, why stop now when there are contracts to renew and weapons to be built and sold? Just dress it up in enough appeals to emotion and political drama and people will do their patriotic duty to believe in the effort.
- almostApatriot1 9y agoTake out Assad and get this over with!
- Analemma_ 9y agoTake out Saddam and get this over with! It'll be over in 9 months! We'll be greeted as liberators! Good grief, how much of a goldfish can you be?
- dang 9y agoPlease don't break the HN guideline against name-calling in arguments, regardless of how wrong another comment is. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- youpassbutter 9y agoLunacy. Under what rule, law or authority are we just allowed to bomb/attack other nations? Imagine if china, russia or any other nation acted like this. The media would be screaming bloody murder and calling other nations evil, depraved, etc. When we do it, it's "strikes on chemical weapons sites", it's for democracy, it's for freedom. One day, I hope leaders of all nations are held to account for their crimes and not just the leaders of poor and weak countries. And most importantly, I hope one day the media are held accountable for their part in war mongering as well. Rule of law should be applied to all, not just the poor and weak.
- WrtCdEvrydy 9y agoI mean, he did gas his own people...
- youpassbutter 9y agoOf course he did. Just like saddam had his soldiers kill babies in incubators. You have to be extremely naive to believe government and media lies.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- bilbo0s 9y agoLook, we can only go by what we're told. We, the people, have no ability at all to ascertain the veracity of assertions of this nature made by our government. It's not that we're naive, it's that we are in no position to go to Syria and watch every second of the hostilities so that attribution can be made independently of government agencies and the media. If Assad did do it, then we are simply responding to what he did. If Assad didn't do it, well, it's not the first time our government has lied to us. Either way, this military action will not have much effect on the outcome of the conflict so it's not as if we're messing anything up too bad.
- 9y ago
- mattsfrey 9y agoGreat, it's 2003 again. Even have good ole' Bolton back in there just in time.
- colordrops 9y agoThere was never evidence shown that the attack was executed by Assad. There has not been any evidence shown that Assad still has WMD. This all started winding up right after the Bolton appointment. As is well known, Bolton was a Neoconservative architect of the Iraq war, and has been pushing hard for an attack on Syria. Also well known is that Assad was almost in full control of Eastern Ghouta, and Trump announced that he was planning to pull out, so why on Earth would Assad do something so dumb as to pull the west back in? Think about who is most invested in keeping the west involved. That would be the rebels/al queda/Isis who have been armed and supported by the Saudis and the US to fight Russia and Assad. It was even tweeted that insurgents were going to stage a chemical attack false flag before it happened: https://twitter.com/mod_russia/status/973535840646434816?s=19 https://twitter.com/mod_russia/status/973535840646434816?s=1...
- jumelles 9y agoSorry. No.
- colordrops 9y agoGood point. Edit: removed personal attack.
- dang 9y agoPersonal attacks are a bannable offense here, so please don't do that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- colordrops 9y agoSorry. I will update.
- command 9y agoWhat Israel wants, Israel gets. I find it hard to believe that anyone truly believes the narrative being pushed by the West.
- matte_black 9y agoGood. I gotta say, I was skeptical of a Trump presidency at first, but when I look at in retrospect so far, things aren’t really all that bad, if you ignore all the media circus around Trump’s character flaws and the stupid election conspiracies, which in the grand scheme don’t matter. Trump is a random chaotic president, and when his presidency is done the effects of his presidency will linger and new precedents will have been set, some good and some bad, but I think the good will outweigh the bad in more important ways. He is the mutation in the status quo’s DNA.
- jrobn 9y agoI’m not dooming and glooming but I don’t think good precedents will come out of this presidency. If anything it has become a litmus test of our democratic institutions in the era of “Fake News” and “alternative facts”, and mob boss leadership. I hope we come out better on the other side.
- tomrod 9y agoMay this be quick and not boil over. My heart goes out to my Syrian friends, may their loved ones remain safe during these continually troubled times.
- jumelles 9y agoYes, for all of us sitting at our computers talking about war and international law, Syrians are dying and have been dying. It's a humanitarian disaster. No one deserves to go through something like this.
- amasad 9y agoOne only needs to apply basic game theory and skepticism to come to the conclusion that Assad has no incentives to gas citizens. He's winning the war! On the other hand who would benefit from a gas attack? Obviously, the "rebels" (read islamists). They have been losing ground for the past two years and if the US pulled out (which was planned) and a peace settlement is reached then they would lose. Now consider that the exact same sequence of events happened almost exactly the same time last year -- the US announced that "regime change is no longer a priority" and a few days later we saw reports of a gas attack. See http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/04/timelines-of-gas-attacks-in-syria-follow-a-similar-scheme.html http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/04/timelines-of-gas-attack... For the game theory see: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2018/04/from_game_theor.html http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2018/04/from_game_theor....
- written 9y agoYou have no clue. How did rebels benefit? JAI in Douma capitulated the next morning, lost everything except some small arms and were displaced north. Assad obviously benefits, he has his territorial control now. He uses chemical weapons periodically, mostly chlorine, to get what he wants, which is teritorrial control and sending message to other groups elsewhere to obey or face the same terror. And I don't care who's good for the sake of this argument. Just get a clue about the actual conditions and effects on the ground if you want to play Game theory. Assad just got unlucky, because this time the stupid chlorine container fell next room to where plenty of people were, and they had no chance, and the Trump noticed this time, and felt whatever Trump feels, and decided to act. You can't use skepticism and speculation (meaningfully) without being significantly informed about context, and history of those urban sieges Assad's regime uses. Otherwise your speculation is baseless, nevermind the theory it's based uppon.
- oliveshell 9y agoGame theory assumes rational decision-makers; Bashar al-Assad is a premium-grade psychopath. A rational actor might not have enough incentive to gas civilians. But a despot who listens to LMFAO and Right Said Fred [1] while his own citizens are shot at his behest? What does he care? [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/14/assad-itunes-emails-chris-brown https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/14/assad-itunes-e... https://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2012/03/20/assads-wife-likes-her-louboutins/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2012/03/20/assa...
- hueving 9y agoWho would flag this? This is a pretty major development.
- mattsfrey 9y agoI don't think people realize how serious this is. For those of us who vividly remember the events leading up to the Iraq invasion, this is extremely unsettling. I can see younger members viewing this as just more tripe from international news or whatever though.
- SAI_Peregrinus 9y agoThere's a previous article on the same topic, slightly older.
- quaffapint 9y agoIf this is from the bbc, why did they start with US and allies and not the British and their allies? Weird.
- rntksi 9y agoMaybe because this is a world news article, and us Brits didn't actually start this bombing initiative?