So Obama made his vague red line threat for no reason? Just for the hell of it? Because he likes doing things like that? The interests of the Syrians in no way played into it? The same people who feel we failed them?
It has everything to do with the article I posted.
The Syrian civilians are the very essence of the Red Line threat’s issuance.
I’ll be glad to answer that, Gkhan.
NO ONE.
Whatever eventually becomes of Syria; everyone would have ultimately lost (with the Syrian Civilians suffering the most).
I’ll say it again; when it comes to the Middle East, the choices are often not right and wrong; and the outcomes are rarely (if ever) “wins”.
The outcomes simply “are”…and more times than not are losses for everyone involved.
(Uh, no, I was mocking you for not being familiar with the precise wording of the remarks you were incessantly bleating about. Because that’s just what you do: choose a topic, learn nothing about it, and then mumble worthless, fact-free opinions into your own body cavity. In any case…)
Neither Putin nor Assad had any trouble understanding what kinds of things a change in calculus could entail (because they aren’t stupid children). But the threat to which they directly responded with the Framework – do we know anything more about that?
…
…
Wait! We do! From the very beginning of this miserable exchange:
[Quote]
Do you understand this? Do you understand how stupid and awful you are at this that I can beat your babbled, incoherent nonsense by going back in this thread and quoting your own Goddamn words? Do understand how badly you’ve done here? How utterly you’ve been beaten?
And now you’re asking “So Obama made his vague red line threat for no reason?” as if I hadn’t taught you multiple times about the American interest in WMD non-proliferation and denormalization? For example, from this thread alone:
Do you understand how arrantly stupid you have to be to keep asking questions the answers to which are sitting up the page? Do you understand that this isn’t argument, me beating the living shit out of you while you try to take my hand and lead me in aimless circles back around to the beginning by asking me idiotic questions I’ve already answered?
We’re done now.
Does anybody else think it’s funny that Obama tries to talk bout calculus and equations to sound all sciency instead of dodgy?
That clip makes me giggle. Like “Oh, there they go. Too close to the asymptote. Time to bomb Syria!”.
Seriously…
If you go back to the ORIGINAL argument which has been lost it goes like this:
Obama made the red line threat to bomb Syria if they use chemical weapons.
Syrians use chemical weapons.
Obama doesn’t bomb Syria.
Russians perceive the US as weak giving them the will to get further involved in Syria and Ukraine.
The fact that the Russians took Sarin and VX doesn’t even enter into this and only does to prove your point that the Russians acted out of fear of the US while the above argument shows they acted because of perceived US weakness. So you could complain MY arguments were straw man arguments when in reality your entire thesis post was in fact a straw man.
In any event, and I’m done also, because there’s no sense in continuing and repeating myself over and over ad nauseam, the Russians are in Syria because of fear or because of perceived weakness and their ally still remains in charge.
And if Obama’s stated goal in Syria was regime change, in that respect, he was a failure.
And furthermore, I must say I have defended a post and taken a lot of abuse over a friggin’ position I don’t and never fundamentally agreed with in the first place!!!
If someone else wants to pick this up feel free, if not, you all know where I stand on this:
If I was Obama, I would not have gotten involved because as Mufasa stated above, and smh himself for that matter, removing a dictator creates a power vacuum which anti-Western terrorists take advantage of. This much history has shown us and if I was Obama, I would not have gotten involved.
If I was Obama and did make a red line threat, I would have backed it up by punishing Assad’s forces like I did in Libya.
But if I was in the White House, I would have opted to support the status quo, and a dictator who could and would crush the anti-Western rebels in his country to go along with the War on Terror which I was fighting on many fronts.
Until the next time, adios…
In other words, I just viciously faceplanted yet again, and, as has been true of each and every one of them been up to this point, my “argument” (such as it was) was utterly destroyed, this time by way of an excerpt from a post I-my-fucking-self wrote. But I’m not going to address that. I’m not going to pause and reflect on the utter idiot I literally must be if my own babbled half-claims are at this point being beaten by other babbled half-claims I made a few days ago. I’m just going to waddle away from the pile of shit I left on the floor, and we’re all gonna pretend that this is starting over…now! Do-over! Here! Here’s some new confusion, some fresh juvenile reductive horseshit strung together in utter ignorance of the basic relevant facts. Remember, pretend that this stuff hasn’t already been wholly and roundly and easily defeated! Pretend that there aren’t long, meticulously-detailed posts in this very thread that shredded me to Goddamn pieces on each of these points! Pretend that I haven’t already spectacularly lost this argument in seven different ways on two separate and utterly miserable occasions! Here! Take my hand! Take it! Now!
(Couldn’t resist.)
This makes no sense and is proof you will say anything to prove your point even though it is a contradiction and ridiculous .
I said:
You said found a post in which you got me to claim the Russians thought Obama was going to bomb them, which may or may not be true.
[quote=“smh_23, post:830, topic:210298”]
Wait! We do! From the very beginning of this miserable exchange:
On September 9, 2013, John Kerry told a reporter who’d asked whether there was any way for Assad to avert American military aggression that he could turn over his chemical weapons.
Five days later, on September 14, 2013, the Russians and Syrians formally offered – as in, signed on to – an agreement composed of a massive weapons confiscation and CWC accession.
Question: why did the Russians and Syrians do this? What were they trying to accomplish or avoid? Under what assumptions were they operating?[/quote]
I said:
That being said…In your latest post you attacked:
Yet an earlier exchange between us went like this:
To which you said:
I said:
[quote=“smh_23, post:620, topic:210298”]
At least I looked at it. Did you?[/quote]
You said:
So if you knew it word for word, quoted it again and again how exactly am I wrong saying:
Certainly when I pasted THE FUCKING ACTUAL OBAMA RED LINE THREAT SPEECH and he talked about calculus and never once mentioned the word “bomb” it would prove that he didn’t threaten to bomb Syria directly. I said he left it open for interpretation and you agreed. So now I’m wrong by saying:
Certainly a man who
Should at least know what he’s fucking talking about? No?
That’s It I’m done. Have a N.F.L.
Good fucking God, it’s like you were created in a lab for the purpose of losing arguments. You are the stupidest poster on PWI, and it isn’t even close. You are so terrible at this that at this point you are losing this argument to yourself. Do you understand? You are losing this argument to yourself. You said that Putin and Assad were afraid we were going to bomb them. Jesus Christ.
Neither Assad nor Putin had any trouble understanding what might happen in case of a change in calculus, but the threat to which they responded with the Framework was an overt threat of an air campaign. Do you understand those words? Do you know what “overt” means? Here, I’ll try to hammer it home:
[Quote]
On September 9, 2013, John Kerry told a reporter who’d asked whether there was any way for Assad to avert American military aggression that he could turn over his chemical weapons.[/quote]
Again: On September 9, 2013, John Kerry told a reporter who’d asked whether there was any way for Assad to avert American military aggression that he could turn over his chemical weapons.
Again: On September 9, 2013, John Kerry told a reporter who’d asked whether there was any way for Assad to avert American military aggression that he could turn over his chemical weapons.
Again: On September 9, 2013, John Kerry told a reporter who’d asked whether there was any way for Assad to avert American military aggression that he could turn over his chemical weapons.
Again: On September 9, 2013, John Kerry told a reporter who’d asked whether there was any way for Assad to avert American military aggression that he could turn over his chemical weapons.
Let’s see if that helps reality sink into the empty septic tank sitting atop your shoulders.
So Kerry told a reporter instead of the Russians.
Told you Kerry was a dick.
You might want to check your reading and comprehension skills because the what you replied had absolutely NOTHING to do with what I was talking about.
You called me out on something you yourself admitted to. So if I’m and idiot for calling Obama’s speech vague, you’re an even bigger idiot for saying it is open for interpretation and then denying you even said it, something you allegedly quoted over and over again and again, yet must not have the comprehension skills to know what you said.
But the hell with this. No body wants to read us bickering, so I’m finished this time.
You might be addicted to arguing with me, but I’ve had it. I’m done.
There’s a pun in there somewhere but it isn’t even worth exploring.
Later
Whatever this means in your fucking child’s mind, it isn’t clear to me. It should be obvious to you that the reporter was asking the question because we had already signaled in multiple overt ways our intention to take punitive action. You would know this if you knew any Goddamn thing at all about this simple matter over which you’ve been getting beaten to death for days now.
In any case. You lose. Everything you have tried has failed spectacularly. With fucking fireworks. And then, as is the case with the post I’m quoting right now, you’ve tried to waddle away to your next immense failure. You didn’t know the basic facts in the beginning, and here at the end all you’ve accomplished is to demonstrate to bystanders that you are too wormish to take a loss like a man. Better luck next time.
I never denied I said anything, you unbelievable idiot. Punitive military action was clearly one of the primary interpretations to which the original “red line” words were open. But as I’ve now proved and explained to you multiple times in simple English, the Framework followed a series of further overt threats…so your last-ditch you can’t say Assad/Putin were responding to what they saw as a credible American threat effort is done. Beaten. Destroyed. Exposed as desperate, unthinking, fact-free horseshit. Reduced to nothing.
That’s it. You lose this last round, just like all the ones that came before it. It’s been a real displeasure.
Great do so. sayonara already.
Your’e worse than herpes.
Name one document that explicitly states that non-compliance by Iran, will result in air strikes or any other military action by the U.S. or any of it’s partners?
It’s a simple question.
I am not interested in the conjecture of some Washington Post opinion piece.
It was your claim that, non-compliance or pulling out of IAEA would lead to military action. It may result in sanctions, but there is no definitive proof anything other than that would be done.
The burden of proof is on you, not me. Your “Mr. Official Documents”. No official document states we will hit Iran militarily for non-compliance. It just doesn’t.
You can insult me all you want. It doesn’t bother me. I don’t have to insult you because the facts are what they are and they do not support what you say.
For any poor bastards who happen to be bearing witness to the whirling storm of fallacy and shit-for-brains that has been this thread:
This…
…has nothing to do with Pat’s demand for a…
Nobody claimed that any such document exists. In fact, Bismark’s actual words clearly acknowledged that an air campaign (or more) would be a real possibility: I defer to Google’s definition of the word “specter”: “something widely feared as a possible unpleasant or dangerous occurrence.”
Contrary to what many children undoubtedly believe about the adult world, not everything that can happen – not even everything that is likely to happen – is written in magic marker on a wall above some grand, authoritative blackboard. That’s how elementary-school classrooms work. It isn’t usually how international relations work. Nevertheless, people who think seriously about these things (aside: such people tend to be easy to spot, and therefore so do people who do not think seriously about these things) can exchange all kinds of useful and legitimate information about things that can and/or are likely to happen. That’s pretty much what political discussion is.
In short, Pat is insisting Bismark produce the photo of the rule written in magic marker above the blackboard… which Bismark didn’t claim exists. This is an archetypal strawman argument.
Again, I encourage you to understand the difference between the the NPT and IAEA (to stress the difference between the two is neither semantical nor minutia)
I don’t have the patience today to reiterate what smh23 wrote more eloquently than I could hope to do above.
P.S., I hope you feel better soon Pat. The flu is a bitch and a half.
As you well know I will not read the quote. In my world I have eliminated the existence of any smh_23. I will not give it the dignity of attention.
Thank you for the well wishes. I finally went to the dr. Apparently I have an aggressive upper respiratory infection. He put me on the most aggressive antibiotic regimen I have ever been on.
Hope you get well soon, Pat.
We need you back here raising Hell and taking no prisoners!