Its been a few days as I have been busy and wanted time to organize my thoughts on everything. Some of you may consider comments I make biased in favor of Conservative leadership, but when it comes to Historical/Military/Political affairs, I strive my hardest to adhere to truth even if it may not appear that way on the outside. So let me offer some explanation as to my support of Trump's recent strike in Syria, and why I opposed Obama's "Red Line" (which subsequently turned out to be solely pure rhetoric).
Lets go back in time to 2011. The "Arab Spring" has begun, inflaming parts of North Africa and the Middle East. Libya became one of the countries engulfed in civil war. Obama declared to the world "Muammar Gaddafi must go". NATO agrees to start military operations and the UN institutes a No Fly Zone within Libya. Now, a No Fly Zone traditionally means any unauthorized aircraft (in this case Libyan aircraft) will be shot down. Also included were measures for further actions to prevent attacks on civilian targets. So now all Libyan aircraft more or less remain grounded and unused. But gradually the attack orders changed. It went from strictly targeting flying aircraft to now including Anti Air defenses. The reason being these defenses could kill or severely damage NATO air assets. This was a relatively reasonable choice as this tactic is still mostly 'defensive' based. The conflict drags on and the Rebels have barely gained any ground. So the US and NATO begin targeting armored vehicles, with tanks being the main target. The explanation being tanks have the possibility of destroying NATO helicopters (while this statement is technically true, the age of Libyan tanks, primitive fire control systems, and inadequate training make the possibility of this ever occurring remotely impossible). The Rebels begin gaining more ground due to increased NATO assistance but still are falling short of acquiring victory. Experiencing mounting frustration over Rebel setbacks and length of conflict, so began the task of decapitating the head of state to institute regime change. Gaddafi's convoy eventually got caught in an airstrike and he was quickly captured by rebel forces and executed. Expecting immediate peace, Obama was surprised when 2 main factions vied for control of Libya and in 2012 a US Ambassador is murdered. Libya still to this day has a power vacuum and has only partially recovered from its civil war. This whole thing began as a No Fly Zone and while suffering from mission creep, grew exponentially into a major military commitment. Obama was never given Congressional approval for the 7 month military intervention in Libya.
We now jump to 2013. The Syrian Civil War is ongoing. Obama goes on TV and proclaims the infamous "Red Line". He implied that if Syria were to use chemical weapons, the US would retaliate. Assad ignores this threat and uses them anyway in multiple gas attacks. Now this is where things get a little odd. Obama chose to not act immediately. He could have retaliated quickly (using a method similar to Trump's recent cruise missile strike), but instead he waits 10 days and then proceeds to talk to Congress and our allies. But Obama also mentioned that when he asked Congress for approval, he stated he legally didn't even have to ask Congress to approve. He could have launched his own small strike and be done with it. The UK subsequently back out of helping, and Congress declines to give any form of support. Obama goes back on TV and says maybe he will launch a cruise missile strike from several US ships stationed off the coast of Syria, but admits it would be barely be anything, it would be a very minor attack. The statement was incredibly vague and Obama backs down quickly from this idea. Shortly after this, Russia offers to remove Syrian chemical weapons if the US does not retaliate militarily. Obama saw this as a lifeline and way out of the hole he dug, so he accepted the deal.
I am very glad Obama did not launch a strike on Syria. His proposed missile strike would have done next to nothing, given the rhetoric he used as it being something along the lines of 'barely anything and minor', so in all seriousness why bother at all if no real objectives will be achieved. It reminded me a lot of Bill Clinton's Operation Infinite Reach, which launched cruise missiles into Sudan and Afghanistan in 1998. Nothing noteworthy was achieved during this Operation and it is worth bringing up it happened 3 days after Bill Clinton's testimony on the Monica Lewinsky scandal. It was an easy way out for him even though the targets were failures and accomplished little. If Obama had agreed to launch strikes into Syria he just just revealed his hand in regards to a possible strike. Unlike Libya, Syria has a more modernized Anti Aircraft defense. With these defenses on high alert and given the length of time Obama took to consider launching a strike, its very feasible numerous US cruise missiles would have been shot down, and any aircraft entering the area would need Electronic Warfare equipped planes capable of jamming Radar, and stealth aircraft such as the F-22, B1, and B2 would had to have been used. Syria knew we would have been coming and with ample time to prepare, it would have reduced US effectiveness of strikes on military targets. And who knows how this would have even ended. The thought of establishing a No Fly Zone is Syria was tossed around a couple times but got shelved rather quickly. But with how badly Libya had been recently handled, no one wanted to see mission creep escalate itself to the point of another "Libyan style intervention".
In contrast, Trump's swift action demonstrated to Syria not to use banned weaponry, and it did so in a confined appropriate manner. The attack destroyed multiple planes (even after those at the base were warned right before the strike, they still didn't scramble planes off the base) and severely damaged the airbase (check out the before and after satellite photos of the airbase). Overall this military action was a success, something I doubted Obama was capable of achieving. Obama has never struck me an effective military leader. He promised to quickly pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan upon winning his first term and never did. He started a small operation in Libya and escalated it into a massive operation, and I felt his involvement within Syria would have suffered the same fate.
To help reiterate my point of non bias, I do feel that any further military action in Syria should be given Congressional approval or at least establish some clear guidelines. The Syrian Civil war has a chance of igniting a powder keg with Russia so it seems logical to write up a concrete plan of action. Even though it isn't legally required, it would still be the 'proper' procedure for a President who wishes to not risk starting a grave, international incident.
The idea of war is not to die for your country, it's to make the enemy die for his.
Former Member of the VOC
IRON STATS Wars Fought: 13 POWs Taken: 2 Nations ZIed: 2 Aid Given: $341 Million
Recruits: 7 Alliances Fought: LSF, Sparta, VE, Umbrella, DBDC, STA
Alliance Seniority: 2,595 Days Soldier Casualties: 867,426 Att + 2,123,326 Def = 2,990,752
Sign In
Create Account
Back to top
)
