(Washington Post) Imminent U.S. strike on Syria could draw nation into civil war

An imminent U.S. strike on Syrian government targets in response to the alleged gassing of civilians last week has the potential to draw the United States into the country’s civil war, former U.S. officials said Tuesday, warning that history doesn’t bode well for such limited retaliatory interventions.

The best historical parallels ”” the 1998 cruise missile strikes on targets in Iraq, Afghanistan and Sudan ”” are rife with unintended consequences and feature little success.

“The one thing we should learn is you can’t get a little bit pregnant,” said retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, who was at the helm of U.S. Central Command when the Pentagon launched cruise missiles at suspected terrorist sites in Afghanistan and weapons facilities in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. “If you do a one-and-done and say you’re going to repeat it if unacceptable things happen, you might find these people keep doing unacceptable things. It will suck you in.”

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10 comments on “(Washington Post) Imminent U.S. strike on Syria could draw nation into civil war

  1. Milton Finch says:

    http://news.yahoo.com/syrian-kurdish-leader-doubts-assad-stupid-carry-gas-145739712.html

    Anything to keep our eyes and minds off the IRS and the NSA. Above is a story about why it could not have been Assad.

  2. sophy0075 says:

    Anything to keep our eyes and minds off Benghazi!

  3. Milton Finch says:

    True. Shipping surface to air missiles to Syrian rebels, I guess, was uncool to somebody.

  4. bettcee says:

    U.S. Government seems to have learned from General Colin Powell’s experience and is now using the word “evidence” instead of showing pictures as proof of manufacture of chemical weapons but this sidesteps the real question and that is should the U.S. initiate a war on the basis of unproven “evidence”?

  5. Milton Finch says:

    The ones in power will all too soon jump in to get the masses minds’ off Benghazi, the IRS and the NSA. We, I feel, need to stay out of it and let the tribes in that area do what the tribes do best. Otherwise we are just delaying the inevitable…that tribes will do what tribes do until they get one overpowering tribe into a position with the ability to rule the other tribes around. And we will have a Khadafi type once again. That is their culture.

  6. bettcee says:

    The ones in power are in danger of, again, forming an alliance with supporters of both The Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda who have one goal in common and that is their mandate for the imposition of universal Sharia Law.
    It has been demonstrated in Egypt that people do NOT want to live under Sharia Law. Is our country going to make the same mistake again?

  7. Milton Finch says:

    As long as the populace doesn’t think about what is happening in their own country, with the eroding of their rights and the goverment intimidating half the people through the IRS, and they are not found to have been shipping surface to air missiles from Libya to Syria, the administration could care less with whoever they end up in bed with.

  8. Ad Orientem says:

    I think the Russian Foreign Minister pretty well nailed it when he said of the Syrian situation that the West was behaving like a monkey with a hand grenade.

  9. Milton Finch says:

    To me, it is because a person from the IRS, who collects her salary from the people, is seen claiming the 5th. It’s also because of no keystroke going unrecorded. We have seen generals fall because of keystrokes. Wasn’t there a core group of generals that disliked the president? Was the email information that brought the generals down gathered via the NSA? It’s also because of shipments to rebels (al Queda not excluded) originating from a “mission” in Benghazi. And this transpired right before a presidential election? The monkey has pulled the pin and has thrown the grenade. Or is the monkey still holding the grenade?

  10. Jim the Puritan says:

    Civil war in Syria or civil war in the United States?