No boots on the ground? Then it's not a war.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

No sirree. Not a war at all.

[cali]

1. I don't agree with the premise that Sept. 11th was an act of war

I believe it was a criminal act.

[whatchamacallit]

3. But the US government and a lot of Americans did

The OP's point about hypocrisy is valid.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

8. That's where I was headed (nt)

[HardTimes99]

4. Most acts of war are criminal acts, imho. Not trying to get all Jesuitical on you :) - nt

[Courtesy Flush]

5. Then what about...

[cali]

11. yes, that was an act of war. The nation of Japan attacked the U.S.

with their armed forces.

Sept 11th was not an attack by a nation. It was a handful of men unaffiliated with any nation.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

13. You should add Pearl Harbor was a military target.

It would have been as if the Imperial Japanese's opening salvo in WW ll was an attack on downtown Honolulu.

[mindwalker_i]

15. If that's so

Specifically that a nation attacking with its millitary forces, then won't the US attacking Syria with its armed forces be an act of war?

[NightWatcher]

2. 15 Saudi Arabians with boxcutters...so we hit Iraq and Afghanistan

That's like spanking the kid next door when your kid refuses to eat his veggies.

[ProSense]

6. It was terrorism, and

in response, only one person voted against the original AUMF that launched the war in Afghanistan.

Barbara Lee

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2001/roll342.xml

Ron Paul voted yes. Dennis Kucinich voted yes.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

7. If President Obama deliberately orders attacks on civilian office buildings I hope you will join me

If President Obama deliberately orders attacks on civilian office buildings I hope you will join me in calls for his impeachment and a trial for war crimes at the Hague.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

9. And if it's an accident?

We're all good with that, right?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

10. Ummmm, no

But i would hope the law would treat me differently if I accidently crossed a lane and caused an accident that led to a innocent person's death than If I drank a fifth of Jack Daniels, got on the 405, and ran another car off the road resulting in another driver's death.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

19. Department of Bad Metaphors

I'm pretty sure the President will be stone cold sober when he launches the missiles. And he will do so knowing full well (based on our experience in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere) that there is literally 0% chance of each warhead landing on its intended target or if the target was even hostile.

I believe the legal term is "depraved indifference."

[DemocratSinceBirth]

20. You suggested that a carefully targeted attack on military facilities

You suggested that a carefully targeted attack on military facilities is no different than twenty miscreants hijacking three civilian planes and flying them into civilian targets and largely populated civilian targets at that.

I will leave it to history to judge whose metaphors are more apt.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

21. Swing and a miss....

The same chowder heads who decried 9/11 as an "Act of War" and unleashed the military at a cost of more dead soldiers than dead civilians are now peddling the notion that bombing the bejesus out of Syria -- and if you think there won't be civilian casualties, you're either a bald-faced liar or a drooling idiot -- isn't an "Act of War" at all because we won't have troops on the ground.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

22. If you can't distinguish between a attack on military targets

If you can't distinguish between a attack on military targets, designed to punish those who use chemical weapons on men,women and children and to deter them and others from doing it again with the risks any military operation entails with twenty miscreants hijacking three civilian airliners and flying them into civilian office buildings there is nothing I can do to disabuse you of that notion.


Also, if you do a little research you will discover that many of those who supported the invasion of iraq oppose intervention in Syria now. I'm the opposite, figure it out.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

23. You like the word "miscreants" don't you?

I'm worried about those miscreants in Washington who are going to unleash Hellfire (missiles) and blow innocent civilians to tiny bits in an effort to protect innocent civilians from being gassed.



This is an image of a residential neighborhood in Pakistan that got clobbered by a Predator Drone. Know what the difference is between hitting a residential neighborhood in Pakistan and hitting an office building in Lower Manhattan? The village in Pakistan is full of brown people about whom we don't give two shits.

So sure. Let's bomb Syria, too.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

25. You suggested Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden are morally equivalent

Now you are trying to shame me for calmly pointing out they aren't . Sorry, that dog won't hunt.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

28. No, I didn't....

You inferred that (incorrectly).

My point is that an "act of war" depends on the beholder. And I daresay that cruise missile strikes will be viewed as an act of war by the Assad regime as well as by Russia and Iran. Assad has threatened to launch attacks against Israel if we intervene, and Israel will almost certainly respond. That's very likely to draw Iran into the conflict and will almost assuredly cause even more violent upheaval from Baghdad to Cairo.

So if you're looking to create a massive clusterfuck that will cost the lives of thousands of innocent civilians, then please proceed. I'm just wondering when Americans are going to learn that not every problem can be solved by the application of high explosives.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

31. I don't like war. I opposed the last one as well as some/many of the others

I just think there are instances where force is necessary, whether that force is employed by an individual or a group. I think this is one of those instances.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

35. Why?

We're not going to get all of Assad's chemical weapons -- unless he obligingly leaves them all in a neat pile in the middle of an airstrip outside Aleppo. And he's not going to just surrender; the idea that air power can effectively end a war has proven true only in the case of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, otherwise it's just an old wives' tale.

What's more, we're arming the rebels against Assad when there's credible evidence that they've been committing atrocities, as well. Are we going to call in drone strikes against the rebels if they continue to butcher Syrian soldiers trying to surrender? Understand something. There are no "good guys" in this fight. A lot of innocent bystanders, but no combatants that we have any business supporting.

I get it. We don't want Assad gassing innocent people. But airstrikes -- even targeted air strikes -- are going to bring civilian casualties. The Bureau for Investigative Journalism has estimated that 50 civilians are killed or injured for every al-Queda target that gets taken out -- The U.S. has fessed up to about 150 known civilian fatalities -- and that's JUST from drone strikes and that's JUST in Pakistan. Even Operation Deliberate Force -- our intervention in Bosnia -- had somewhere around 500 civilian casualties, not to mention the fact that we inadvertently bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade.

Rather than ratchet up the violence, how about getting Russia and Iran to lean on Assad. Impossible? No. The Russians have a significant financial interest in the continuing good health of the Assad regime. What's more, one of the principle state-run arms dealers in Russia (which supplies arms to Assad) also has contracts with -- wait for it -- the United States Department of Defense. We have a half billion dollar contract with Rosoboronexport, which we could threaten to cancel if Mr. Putin doesn't help us talk Assad off the ledge.

The man who raises his fist is the man who's run out of ideas.

[99Forever]

33. Obama isn't calling for Assad to face "a trial for war crimes at the Hague".

He is calling for acts of war upon people who haven't stood trial for ANYTHING yet or even put forth ANY sort of absolute proof of WHO perpetrated the CW attack.

So spare us the holier-than-thou, "humanitarian limited strikes" bullshit.

BTW, 911 and Pearl Harbor were BOTH "limited strikes intended to send a message."

Who the fuck do you think you are fooling?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

34. I'm not trying to fool anybody, pal.

And there have been several attempts to get the United Nations to resolve the situation to no avail.

Pearl Harbor was an attack on a military installation. The Japanese didn't deliberately target downtown Honolulu.

And 9-11 was a deliberate attack on civilian office buildings by malefactors who had hijacked civilian airplanes.If you don't think there is a difference between Osama bin Laden and Barack Obama there is nothing I can do to disabuse you of that notion.

[99Forever]

37. But of course...

... if things aren't EXACTLY the same, in every fucking detail, how can there possibly be ANY comparison at all?

The bullshit is getting deep in here.

[In_The_Wind]

12. Bullshit

[KittyWampus]

14. Obama isn't going to intentionally strike civilians or civilian targets. FAIL

[atreides1]

16. That's right, because he's not pushing the buttons or flying the aircraft

What about unintentionally? Perhaps you believe that a cruise missile can't go off course or that a bomb won't hit the wrong target?

But it really doesn't matter, intentionally...unintentionally...it's still possible that civilians and civilian targets will be hit!


And those civilians will still be killed!

[DemocratSinceBirth]

17. It doesn't make a difference to the victim but the law distinguishes between war and war crimes./nt

[KittyWampus]

18. Intention certainly does matter. That's why there are Hate Crime laws. Unless you object to them.

[HereSince1628]

24. It's not war unless both sides are shooting

If only one nation shoots at another its:

target practice, or
aggression, or
imperialism, or
terrorism, or
a murder/massacre, or
.
.
.
pressure to induce cognitive motivation for change.

[SidDithers]

26. Obama is not Osama...nt

Sid

[tridim]

27. Sad that this has to be said.

I can't even believe this thread is allowed on DU, but alas this isn't DU any more.

Neo-DU has gone completely crazy.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

29. My point here...

Is that Americans considered 9/11 an act of war (and responded accordingly) even though al-Queda did not make use of ground troops. Cruise missile strikes against Syria will be perceived as an act of war by the Syrians (also by the Russian and the Iranians) and risks turning a civil war into a massive regional conflict.

I don't think Obama and Kerry are war-mongers or that they're going this for oil or at the behest of defense contractors, as has been suggested elsewhere. I just think they're pursuing the wrong solution.

[4bucksagallon]

30. LOL, what a foolish post this. When are we declaring war? Do you know what war is?

Didn't think so.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

36. War is like Pornography

I can't define it, but I know it when I see it.

Don't know if you've noticed, but the United States hasn't passed a declaration of war since 1941, but we've had more than 87,000 combat fatalities since the end of World War II. I don't know what war is, so why don't you ask one of those 87,000 dead soldiers if it felt like war to them.

[GoneFishin]

32. We are sending in "advisors" already. We stayed out of the Vietnam war by only sending in

"advisors". And in Iraq we were there for only 6 days ... no 6 weeks ... well, no longer than 6 months.

This has the hallmarks of deliberate mission creep already. This desperate push to go in is about getting our foot in the door, knowing full well that we can fabricate excuses to ramp up to the next level later.