Welcome to DU! The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards. Join the community: Create a free account Support DU (and get rid of ads!): Become a Star Member All Forums Issue Forums Culture Forums Alliance Forums Region Forums Support Forums Help & Search

babylonsister

(170,964 posts)
Thu Sep 12, 2013, 11:09 AM Sep 2013

Nicholas Kristof: That Threat Worked

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/kristof-that-threat-worked.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

That Threat Worked
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: September 11, 2013


For all you innumerable skeptics of President Obama’s calls for military strikes on Syria, consider this:

For decades, Syria has refused to confirm that it has chemical weapons. Now, facing a limited strike, its position abruptly changed to: Oh! We do have them after all! And we want to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention! We want to show them to United Nations inspectors.

In short, the mere flexing of military power worked
— initially and tentatively. And while it seems that neither Congress nor the public has any appetite for cruise missile strikes on Syria, it will be critical to keep the military option alive in the coming weeks or Russia and Syria will play us like a yo-yo.

Frankly, I’m skeptical that a deal can be worked out in which Syria hands over its chemical weaponry, and President Obama may have exchanged a losing struggle with Congress with a Sisyphean struggle with Russia. But it’s not impossible. And even if Syria cheated and stalled and eventually handed over only half of its chemical arsenal and none of its biological arsenal, that would still be a huge win for global security.

snip//

In Syria, for two-and-a-half years, we’ve given the regime a green light, and the killing has escalated from 5,000 a year to 5,000 a month — and, last month, to a poison gas attack that was perhaps the biggest massacre in the war. Now Obama’s threat of military strikes has turned the light yellow, Syria is scrambling to adjust, and there is some hope of a diplomatic solution.

Let’s not allow the light to go green again.
4 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight: NoneDon't highlight anything 5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
Nicholas Kristof: That Threat Worked (Original Post) babylonsister Sep 2013 OP
K & R. n/t FSogol Sep 2013 #1
nicholas_kristof bigtree Sep 2013 #2
Two wrongs don't make a right alfie Sep 2013 #3
K & R Scurrilous Sep 2013 #4

bigtree

(85,920 posts)
2. nicholas_kristof
Thu Sep 12, 2013, 11:27 AM
Sep 2013

from Jeffrey Tayler at Salon:


. . . I will never forget that in 2002 he also offered qualified support to Bush administration plans to invade Iraq, while, puzzlingly, in the same lines, detailing the quagmire of mayhem and sectarian violence likely to ensue. We know how things turned out there.

Then in 2011 Kristof wrote in favor of establishing a no-fly zone in Libya, cautioning us against the “risks of inaction” and asking us not to “psych ourselves out” worrying about the results. It would have been better if we had psyched ourselves out. A U.S. ambassador, Christopher Stevens, is dead, as is our latter-day ally, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi; armed militias roam the streets; al-Qaida has set up shop; and Islamists fleeing south helped take over northern Mali, with disastrous consequences only a French military intervention could reverse — and possibly only temporarily.

Now, once again, with the Obama administration pounding the war drums for Syria, Kristof has returned to his computer console and tapped out a column declaring that country to be “the world capital of human suffering,” and urging us to get with the president’s program – that is, firing Tomahawk missiles at people who haven’t attacked us, and whose dictatorial regime may well be the only thing standing between the chaotic status quo of civil war and a future as an al-Qaida-ruled state bristling with chemical weapons and bordering vital U.S. allies. Kristof’s designation of Syria as the planet’s most grievously afflicted country is disingenuous; he knows better. So what is he really up to?


read: http://www.salon.com/2013/09/12/nicholas_kristof_knows_better_a_shameful_addition_to_the_syria_hawk_club/

alfie

(522 posts)
3. Two wrongs don't make a right
Thu Sep 12, 2013, 11:34 AM
Sep 2013

but two wrongs doesn't mean you never get it right. He seems to be advocating rattling sabers, not thrusting them.

Latest Discussions»General Discussion»Nicholas Kristof: That T...