Hacker News Reader

Comment by earthtolazlo | Hacker News Reader

This is bad. This is very bad.

    1. The U.S. and ISIS are on the same side in this war.

    2. Assad is a secularist, modernizer.

Shudder.

1. The US is also fighting ISIS. Despite the popular saying, "the enemy of my enemy" is not the same as "my friend".

2. Assad is also someone who uses chemical weapons on his own people. (All right, the other side of a civil war, but still citizens of his own nation.) He's a guy who turned protests into a civil war by his brutality in response. "Secularist and modernizer" isn't the same as "good guy".

Append to 1.: "moderate rebels," like Al-Nusra Front, who were actually caught in Turkey with chemical weapons [1].

Ron Paul is questioning the origin of the attack, but here we are.

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia is moving forward as of earlier this week, and the Turkish stream pipeline can't move forward until the Syria question is settled. Add to that in late March Russia announced it was coming up with an alternative to the SWIFT banking system. Collision course.

Vlad doesn't seem like the kind to back down. Not looking forward to this one bit.

[1] http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-syrian-rebels...

Secularist, modernizer, dictator, war criminal, human rights violator..

I can't wait for somebody to start judging american presidents by the same standards.

Well they aren't dictators, but they aren't always secularists or modernizers.

Is this how WW3 starts?

Duck and cover, kids. This ain't gonna be pretty.

Just a slight overreaction on your part. Just about every President has launched punitive strikes against targets for bad behavior. None led to WW3.

How many of them were under the protection of Russia?

[citation needed]

http://www.politico.eu/article/russia-says-support-for-syria...

(Dated today.)

They have a naval base in Syria.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War

It's not cold when your actually killing people.

The cold war was full of hot wars where the US and USSR fought by proxy.

They're both directly involved in this one, there is no proxy.

To the contrary: neither is directly involved. Neither the US nor Russia have troops on the ground in Syria.

They've both been bombing various factions, that's direct involvement. The both also have troops on the ground, the US has them in the north with the Kurds and the Russians had personnel at the very airbase that was bombed.

All we need now is an arch duke in an open top car.

You think Russia wasn't propping up the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War?

Just about every President has launched punitive strikes against targets for bad behavior.

But usually they think about the long-term strategic consequences of doing so, before acting. For like at least 5 minutes or so.

There are surely generals, including McMasters who are designed and approved this plan.

It seems his advisors don't so much approve, as rubberstamp.

Pretty much.

What a way to celebrate the 100th year anniversary of entering WWI.

Deep breathes. This may be Donald trying to make good on his campaign promise of sneak attacking without announcement.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com