Where’s the anti-war leftwing right now on the Syria situation?

It’s amazing to log in here and see very few, if any, threads on the current situation in Syria. From neocons this isn’t surprising, but where’s the “Bush lied people died” left wing on this? I’m not seeing any threads at all from them.

We are literally in a situation where a war with Russia (and possibly China) could break out depending on what happens in Syria, but the left has been so fixated on the idea of impeaching Trump, and so brainwashed by Russiaphobic propaganda, that they seem to be either indifferent or in favor of military action in the Middle East.

And then we have this...

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/2...-assassination-of-syrias-bashar-al-assad/amp/

Apparently Israel was very upset about the US plan to get out of Syria completely, and then just days later, we see images of wet faced brown children on the mainstream media and unverified reports of Assad gassing his own people - the same people he has fought to liberate from the ISIS scourge that has infested his country. It doesn’t make sense, especially when ISIS and other “rebel” groups have used chemical attacks in dozens of other instances. Somehow, we are so sure it wasn’t them, but Assad, and we are this close to an all out war.

It’s probably not a good thing that a man with dual Israeli citizenship, who was one of the primary warmongers behind the Iraq war and still thinks it was a good idea, is our current Security advisor

 

This is Trump's crap show.

I think the left wing has learned that anything they say will cause Trump to do the opposite just out of spite. Better to back off and hope Trump doesn't go ballistic.

 

Beating the drums of war baby.....

 

Exactly.

 

No, I don’t think that’s it. If the left really opposed this they’d be speaking out against it. It’s either that the left has been so whipped into a frenzy against Russia that they would love nothing more than to see some military action against them, or they are staying quiet in the hopes of aggression being launched at Russia by Trump so they can blame him for it after the fact. Either way, they want this.

Of course, the fact that Israel supports a war against Syria means that a large part of our media also wants this.

 

What do we stand to gain from this? Nobody seriously buys that we would risk a war against Syria (and Russia by extension) over “muh brown gas babies”. Even if Assad did do this (and he didn’t), who really cares that much about it? Why are Americans going to risk their lives over this?

 

Some Israeli Jewish rag just recently said that if you don't support the war in Syria you're a white supremacist or only white supremacist oppose it or something like that. But that's not me I can promise you that.

I love Jews more than anyone any of you people have ever met and I'm all for invading countries and bombing innocent civilians in their name.

 

I suppose at some point, it is pointless. I was pointing out, however, the number of lefties who are in fact silent here, or are actively beating the war drums. Why? Political advantage. To your point, why risk real war with Russia now? Or Iran? The destabilization of the EU would be devastating, not to mention what it would do locally in the Syrian countryside. I say, we be patient and watch this play out. I wouldn't get too excited about it yet.

 

This 20 second clip says it all

 

This is a helpful snapshot though, because if a situation does happen because of this, the left will pretend to have been against it all along. As of right now, they are indifferent or supportive. None of them are talking about it.

 

Agreed.

 

Does that "left" that festers in your noggin ever take the form of any actual people in lock step regarding whatever position you assign them? Are you confusing a diversity of independent individuals with the Borg?

How can anyone, of any political disposition, form a coherent response to Trump's contradictory incoherence?

​

 

You haven’t made a single thread about the Syria situation. Just for the record, in the off chance that something eventually does happen and you try and pretend you were against it all along. But I like how you pretend there is a huge difference in the beliefs of average left wingers such as yourself. For a group that has opposed the concept of individualism for decades, you like to throw that idea around when it’s convenient.

 

Failing to create a PF thread /= no activity by anti-war people. These folks, for instance:
https://www.northjersey.com/story/n...ar-groups-protest-us-strikes-syria/100173592/

Further, the "anti-war left" (or right) is not a monolithic group. People oppose wars to varying degrees and for different reasons. Some people oppose certain wars; others oppose war in general.

The reason you don't see a "Bush lied, people died" sort of thing with Syria is because -- duh -- we didn't lie our way into Syria. We resisted getting involved in Syria for years, and then got involved reluctantly when it was clear it was going to be a long-term humanitarian catastrophe AND a safe haven for ISIS and Al-Qaeda.

For instance, I opposed the war in Iraq, but don't have a problem with our decision to get involved in Syria. I think overall we managed to remove the safe haven and mitigate at least some of the suffering there.

That said, Syria is a mess, and now that ISIS is mostly defeated, we need to think about our long-term strategy. The basic problem is that there are no real good guys, and there are a host of geopolitical risks that tightly constrain our options. The most effective "good guy" fighting force is the Kurds -- but supporting them puts us at odds with Turkey and Iraq. I personally have more sympathy for the Kurds than the authoritarian Erdogan, but fighting Turkey in Syria really isn't a desirable outcome.

Same thing with Assad. We can't go all in to depose him because he's backed by Russia, and they would react violently. Deposing Assad is not worth war with Russia.

So the most we can do is stalemate the war and push for a negotiated peace. Which isn't the sort of thing that democracies typically have the strategic patience for.

If I thought we had that patience, I'd be fine with staying in Syria indefinitely and pushing hard for that negotiated peace. Our commitment there is tiny, both in terms of resources and lives. But on the assumption we don't, then we have two options: get aggressive to try to bring the war to a conclusion, or leave. I'm fine with either decision, as long as it is a considered one and not an early-morning impulse by our erratic President.

 

Animal Assad is a sick and evil tyrant! We must invade his country and liberate his people!!

 

Your wonky thinking seems to be that the Americans you like to label as "the left" must all, if they reserve judgement during Trump's erratic declarations concerning Syria and refrain from premature opining until after your anticipated Trump snafu, will all then resort to Trump's pretense that he had been opposed to Dubya's disastrous Iraq fiasco before it became apparent that it was a disastrous fiasco.

I see no likelihood of Trump repeating Dubya's monumental folly, and will be happy to share my assessment of Trump's policy toward Syria if he ever settles on one.

 

The average PF left winger is an MSNBC viewer or Huffpo reader who goes online and repeats talking points. That you don’t see this here is evidence that the mainstream left wing is not really interested in the Syria situation. I think PF is a good barometer on what the average left winger is thinking at any given time.

I sincerely doubt that the same left wing that took power in 2008 would have been supportive of any Middle East regime change/nation building effort. They had to walk this back once Obama turned into the same kind of meddling neocon that they opposed during the Bush administration, but nobody stood in line and eagerly pulled the lever for Obama hoping for more Middle East conflicts. It would be disingenuous to pretend otherwise.

ISIS was defeated within a year of Trump taking office, which Obama said wouldn’t happen for many years. We were prepared to pull out of Syria completely as of last week. So the only reason for changing course is because of muh brown gas babies being shown over the mainstream media networks. There’s no evidence at all to even prove Assad did this instead of the ISIS linked rebel groups.

It’s not our job to mitigate suffering in every country around the world.

So you support the US staying indefinitely in the Middle East while you stay stateside in your upper class white suburb. Must be pretty easy for you to send Americans overseas and fight war for the benefit of another country.

 

Oy! Is that a mustache? Is he the new Hitler? Is this another Shoah? He should be deposed just in case!

 

Trump made a threatening tweet against Russia yesterday. You read it, you didn’t comment on it. Instead, you post about Stormy Daniels, “progress” (aka the US becoming more 3rd world and brown), and your usual hobby horse issues. It’s clear that you didn’t care too much about the threats to Russia and the US getting involved in another war.

 

Correct. Trump spews copious hysterical tweets, very few of which merit my notice.

I regard Trump's sordid antics with Ms Daniels and others and his desperate attempts to conceal them as of little importance as well.

Any crimes committed in the course of attempts to hide his depravity are of legal significance, of course, and that is a matter of undeniable gravitas.

Again, if Trump ever settles on a consistent, coherent policy toward Syria, cogent comment will be possible.

 

Once again, your ideological filter does not comport with reality.

The reason I now visit PF very rarely is precisely because I DON'T think it's a good barometer of mainstream thinking of any sort. The site has been taken over by extremists and trolls, for the most part.

Okay. You are entitled to your opinion. But there is a qualitative difference between our decision to get involved in Syria and our decision to get involved in Iraq.

*Shrug.* Sure, people can be hypocritical. But if you look at the history of our involvement in Syria, it's clear it wasn't a "meddling neocon" kind of decision, with the blatant rush to war that marked Bush's invasion of Iraq. Obama got involved VERY reluctantly, after years of trying to stay out of it, and then committed extremely minimal resources.

ISIS was in the process of being defeated already. Trump did NOTHING to change the strategy against ISIS -- he simply allowed the Obama strategy to continue. So crediting him with its defeat is the worst sort of partisan blather.

Er.... no we weren't. Not immediately, anyway.

Nobody really wants to be in Syria; as I said, it's a mess. But not really wanting to be there isn't the same thing as being prepared to withdraw.

It's true that civilians being killed with chemical weapons tends to provoke a reaction. But the reaction is likely to be in the form of a strike against Assad. It didn't materially change the discussion over whether to withdraw or not.

None that you know of. Doesn't mean none exists. But that's why we (and the UN, and our European allies) are still assessing the evidence, and haven't yet attacked Assad. As it should be.

For what it's worth, France says they have clear evidence Assad is responsible:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...suspected-chemical-attack-occurred/509862002/

No, it's not. But when you have the means to mitigate suffering and do nothing, it's a choice. And when the area in question becomes a safe haven for terrorism, that's another consideration.

You do realize Obama got involved, in part, due to loud pressure from Republicans?
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/aug/25/mccain-graham-call-military-action-syria-chemical-/

And then there's the total hypocrisy of other Republicans, who opposed an Obama strike in 2013 but supported a Trump strike in 2017:
https://www.cnn.com/2017/04/07/politics/kfile-top-republicans-syria-trump/index.html

Rubio is a special example of the genre. He had been pushing for intervention for months, but then opposed Obama when the president sought support for intervention.

Not as a general proposition, no. But on a case-by-case basis, I think long-term, low-intensity involvement is a very smart way to go.

For example, in the run-up to the war in Iraq, I pointed out that our efforts to contain Saddam Hussein -- with sanctions, inspections and no-fly zones -- had worked awesomely for 10 years, at very little cost. For the price of the Iraq invasion, we could have contained him for 100 years.

More broadly, though, I would prefer we end our dependence on Middle East oil so we could stop caring about the Middle East. Which is why I support green-energy development for both climate and national security reasons.

I'm ex-Army, genius.

 

Here's animal Assad eating babies.

 

Russia is a white, nationalist, capitalist, christian power. The progs arent anti-war anymore, they're anti white, nationalism, capitalism and christian. Russia is the sworn enemy.

At the top rungs, the progs are anti-human as well. Nothing depopulates the human virus infecting mother earth like global nuclear holocaust. Icing on the cake.

They're also anti Americana. Russia, historically, is where empires go to commit suicide.

War with Russia has three potential outcomes: America wins and a white, nationalist, capitalist, christian power is destroyed.

Russia wins and America is destroyed.

It goes nuclear and the earth is cleansed of humanity.

War with Russia is the progressive wet dream.

And Trump getting goaded into it by a likely false flag is, for the first time, giving me strong reservations about him. I truly hope this is yet another troll 'bait n switch' where he moves with the progressive globalists just far enough for them to 'out' their true agenda, then he 180s back to sanity and kills it. But I really don't see how this time...

 

You sound excited over the prospect of war.

With Drumpf saying he wants out of Syria I wonder if Putin ordered the chemical attack to draw us back in. That maniac is always two steps ahead of Don.

 

Bingo. No way to know what the head crackpot will do next. We are all just hoping he doesn't start WWIII before being impeached and removed from office.

I am more worried about removing trump, than I am Syria. Syria isn't destroying the US. Trump is.