{"id":37444,"date":"2013-09-06T08:32:40","date_gmt":"2013-09-06T12:32:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=37444"},"modified":"2013-09-06T08:32:40","modified_gmt":"2013-09-06T12:32:40","slug":"the-tar-baby-at-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=37444","title":{"rendered":"The tar baby at home"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, it seems that Syria is becoming a tar baby here at home in the US for some politicians. John McCain heard from his constituents in Arizona last night who are pretty upset that he’s so hawkish on military action in Syria. Wrote CNN<\/a>;<\/p>\n

McCain has long advocated a more muscular American approach toward Syria, calling for a plan to oust President Bashar al-Assad from power. But on Thursday many people who showed up to a town hall in Phoenix said that getting more involved in the civil war would lead to unintended consequences.<\/p>\n

“We didn’t send you to make war for us. We sent you to stop the war,” one man said to applause.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The real enemy that six presidents have refused to deal with, Iran, has become a wild card in the discussion since they will more than likely target US embassies and our presence in countless countries around the world. The Wall Street Journal <\/a>reports that some threats have already been uncovered;<\/p>\n

The U.S. has intercepted an order from Iran to militants in Iraq to attack the U.S. Embassy and other American interests in Baghdad in the event of a strike on Syria, officials said, amid an expanding array of reprisal threats across the region.<\/p>\n

Military officials have been trying to predict the range of possible responses from Syria, Iran and their allies. U.S. officials said they are on alert for Iran’s fleet of small, fast boats in the Persian Gulf, where American warships are positioned. U.S. officials also fear Hezbollah could attack the U.S. Embassy in Beirut.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Russia has moved war ships in to the Mediterranean according to AFP<\/a>; <\/p>\n

The SSV-201 intelligence ship Priazovye, accompanied by the two landing ships Minsk and Novocherkassk passed through the Bosphorus known as the Istanbul strait that separates Asia from Europe, an AFP photographer reported.<\/p>\n

The Priazovye on Sunday started its voyage from its home port of Sevastopol in Ukraine “to the appointed region of military service in the eastern Mediterranean”, a military official told the Interfax news agency.<\/p>\n

Russia, a key ally of Damascus, has kept a constant presence of around four warships in the eastern Mediterranean in the Syrian crisis, rotating them every few months.<\/p>\n

It also has a naval base in the Syrian port of Tartus whose origins date back to Moscow’s close relationship with Damascus under the Soviet Union.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Unconfirmed sources<\/a> report that China is moving ships into the Mediterranean as well.<\/p>\n

According to the Russian news outlet Telegrafist.org, the People\u2019s Liberation Army dispatched the Jinggangshan amphibious dock landing ship and the vessel was seen passing through the Red Sea towards the Suez Canal, the waterway in Egypt that leads to the Mediterranean Sea and waters off the coast of Israel, Lebanon and Syria.<\/p>\n

According to the report, the ship has not been sent to engage in any aggressive actions but is merely there to \u201cobserve\u201d the actions of Russian and US warships. However, the Jinggangshan is equipped for combat and was utilized as part of a \u201cshow of force\u201d in maneuvers aimed at defending the South China Sea earlier this year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Putin and Obama met yesterday – their meeting lasted 15 seconds. Hardly seems enough time to resolve the myriad issues that face the two figureheads of their countries. From the Associated Press<\/a>;<\/p>\n

With tensions mounting over issues including Syria, National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, and human rights, Obama and Putin did not plan to hold a formal bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 gathering. A formal greeting outside St. Petersburg’s Constantine Palace was their only planned one-on-one public appearance.<\/p>\n

Parsing the body language between Obama and Putin has become something of a geopolitical parlor game every time the two leaders meet. But there wasn’t much to work with this time: Their exchange lasted 15 seconds.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On the cost of the war, Joe Bite Me hinted yesterday that US military action would be funded by the Gulf States, which is a nice thought, except that it sort of makes our troops the mercenaries of the rich Arabs who get to outsource their war fighting. The Christian Science Monitor<\/a> reports that the wording of the Senate resolution for Syria, although it forbids the use of US “boots on the ground”, it really doesn’t;<\/p>\n

\u201cIt might appear to a casual reader to be some significant prohibitions \u2013 preventing combat forces,\u201d says retired Lt. Gen. David Barno, the former commander of US forces in Afghanistan. \u201cWe define \u2018combat\u2019 in lots of different ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

Without being \u201ccombat\u201d forces, US troops could still be brought in for peacekeeping, search and rescue, and to secure chemical weapons plants should the need arise, adds Mr. Barno, who is now a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a think tank in Washington.<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite the fact that the ban on combat troops looks pretty severe and restrictive,\u201d he adds, \u201cit\u2019s not.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Still, no one has articulated why we need to involve ourselves in a civil war beyond the appearance of chemical weapons in the conflict. No one has told me why it’s a national security issue that requires American lives to be at risk and no one has provided any real proof that it was Assad’s forces who used chemical weapons against the Syrian rebels and not the al Qaeda manipulators who used the weapons on their own people to make it appear as if Assad had used the weapons. The Obama Administration has dismissed the importance of the findings of the UN inspection team before they’ve even concluded sifting through the research they collected on the ground in Syria.<\/p>\n

So why the rush to war?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, it seems that Syria is becoming a tar baby here at home in the US … The tar baby at home<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-terror-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37444\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}