General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNicholas Kristof: That Threat Worked
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/kristof-that-threat-worked.html?ref=opinion&_r=0That Threat Worked
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: September 11, 2013
For all you innumerable skeptics of President Obamas 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, Im 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 its 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, weve 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 Obamas threat of military strikes has turned the light yellow, Syria is scrambling to adjust, and there is some hope of a diplomatic solution.
Lets not allow the light to go green again.
FSogol
(45,363 posts)bigtree
(85,920 posts)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 presidents program that is, firing Tomahawk missiles at people who havent 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. Kristofs designation of Syria as the planets 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)but two wrongs doesn't mean you never get it right. He seems to be advocating rattling sabers, not thrusting them.