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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (136691)	9/1/2013 5:38:38 PM
From: RetiredNow	Respond to of 149317

I am firmly against it. Assad is a bad man and the rebels are infused with Al Qaeda allies. Let them kill each other. We have nothing to gain and a hell of a lot to lose if we get embroiled in a war with Syria. 80% of the American people are against Obama striking Syria. In addition, it is unConstitutional for Obama to unilaterally engage in an act of war against Syria without Congressional approval. So it's good he's going to ask permission. Yes, it's sad that the UN and International community does not see fit to come together in a consensus to make Syria pay for the use of chemical weapons, but we are not the world's police and we need to stop acting unilaterally on things like this. If for no other reason, we simply can't afford war anymore. And to clarify your nuke comment...I do remember saying something like that. What I said was in the context of a discussion of MAD. Mutually Assured Destruction. What I said was that we should withdraw our forces from around the world, where our allies have the means to defend themselves, but as we do that, we should make it clear to everyone that if we are attacked by terrorists, as happened in 9/11, we would keep all options on the table, including nuking Mecca and Medina. I've softened on that a bit since then. Here's my reasoning. Those words were used within a year of 9/11, when I was more angry than knowledgeable. Since then, I've read volumes of material on the history of US actions in the ME, including how we overthrew a Democratically elected leader in Iran and how we routinely prop up Dictators in the ME. So these ME Muslims have good reasons to hate us. So I'm disappointed at how hypocritical this country is. We are reaping what we have sowed for 50 years. Having said all that, we have a right to use our power to defend ourselves and part of that defense is making it clear that we will not make a distinction between terrorists and the countries who harbor them. If we are attacked and we trace it back to a country who supported them, then I would have no problem in taking the leadership of that country out, just like we did with the Taliban. In fact, I'm shocked we have not done more in Benghazi, where and American Ambassador was assassinated. That was the place where a reprisal should have been felt, not in Syria. These people are killing each other, but the US has not interests there. We should stay out of it. Those ME tribes have been killing themselves and fighting each other for millennia. They will be doing so for many more millennia. We aren't going to change anything over there, no matter how much we'd wish to. Our best bet is to just stay out of it all, including with the Israelis. We need to butt out and use our military for defense only. All these wars of aggression need to stop. Chinu and I are in lockstep on the need to cut our military spending dramatically and stop all the wars. It's not about war fatigue as Kerry put it. It's about being sensible. We have plenty of high priority issues to deal with right here at home. Let's get focused on that instead.