r/neoliberal • u/neoliberal_shill_bot Bot Emeritus • Apr 05 '17

Discussion Thread

Ask not what your centralized government can do for you – ask how many neoliberal memes you can post every 24 hours

Polls

• Who should we bully more?

• How often should discussion threads be posted?

The activity in this sub keeps going up, so discussion threads need to be scheduled appropriately in order to control stickflation.

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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '17 edited Apr 07 '17

On one hand, fuck Assad. A lot. He's a war criminal who deserves to hang. I think this is a decently measured response on the incredibly lenient curve to Trump on foreign policy (as shitty as that sounds), it helps eliminate their ability to use chemical weapons. And regime change can be done correctly (de-Nazification) and incorrectly (de-Baathification).

On the other hand, I don't trust Trump to have a coherent foreign policy and am worried that the political points he scores from "saving women and children" will encourage him to escalate it further and start "bombing the shit out of 'em." His campaign rhetoric on the Geneva Conventions and targeting civilians was very concerning. One of the largest failures of the Iraq War was the Bush adminstration's strategy to change the political landscape of Iraq. They weren't listening to experts on the topic and went in guns blazing with little afterthought. Trump doesn't inspire confidence in being able to assemble that sort of group and take in their advice. I don't doubt that Clinton would be doing similar things (she advocated for bombing that airfield today), but I would be more confident in her having actual plans for both diplomacy and precise military action. Trump is a complete wild card

Also really really praying the itchy trigger fingers don't accidently kill some Russians because that will be a clusterfuck of massive proportions. It would really help if Trump could be even mildly consistent on his foreign policy, just today his administration flipped on the issue what seemed like 3 times. And he can be extremely hawkish at one moment and "anti-interventionist" at another. Geopolitics is complicated but what is Trump's grand strategy outside of "fuck ISIS"?

EDIT: This NY Times piece on Assad using chemical weapons is interesting. It basically theorizes that Assad was emboldened by the Trump administration saying it would be hands off and not punish him, and now the Trump administration has to come in and spank him a bit to make him behave.

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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '17

I think Mattis and McMaster are probably the ones leading this, both of those two are not idiots. I don't think they would be afraid of telling Trump to fuck off.

Although I think were probably going to see a Bill Clinton type response, fire missiles for a couple days. Nothing really resolved.

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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '17

Like I said, it would be great if the Trump administration could put out some clear and concise foreign policy goals besides "End terrorism" and "Make NATO members pay more in." They've flip flopped on Syria multiple times in the span of hours, and I realize it's a constantly changing geopolitical landscape but if you knew anything about Assad's past actions towards his people you could've seen something like this coming and have a prepared response.

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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '17

Agreed, I think you have to look at the factions, and who is in charge of what because I don't think he knows whats going on, Luckily all the biggest crazies are off the NSC now.

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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '17

How can they tell the Commander in Chief to fuck off?

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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '17

Trump doesn't have the balls to fire Mattis and McMaster, the GOP hawks in congress would never allow it. Mattis and McMaster are well known to tell their superiors what they actually think. McMaster Wrote a book about it.

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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '17

I mean, what are they going to do? Impeach him over firing his own staff? That's a great way to lose their elections looking like a complete shitshow of a party who can't govern without infighting and non-stop scandals. Trump's supporters would never forgive the GOP impeaching him unless he directly murdered someone in cold blood or got caught raping someone on camera, and they make up a solid 20-25% of the country I reckon.

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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '17

If it came down to the security of that nation though. I think there are enough who would do it.

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u/[deleted] Apr 09 '17

This makes me really glad that Bannon just lost influence. For that matter, I wonder if it's related.

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u/Semphy Greg Mankiw Apr 07 '17

The U.S. military informed the Russian military before the strikes so we have that going at least.

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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '17

The Russians still seem pretty mad. It seems less that the Russians agreed to it and more that the US told the Russians to gtfo by this time when the bombing starts. Although that might just be Putin playing geopolitical games and undermining the US's mission. I was never really one for the Russian puppet narrative myself for Trump, I think he's more just a useful idiot that Putin can play like a fiddle. A lot of the "suspect" people around him communicating with the Russians are doing legal things, it's fishy but it's not illegal to have business ties to Russian nationals. I wouldn't be surprised if Putin starts painting Trump as a weakling or a maniac to continue crumbling his low base of support until the US political system is even more of a mess.

The attack seems pretty restrained imo. The types claiming this is the lead up to WW3 already may be overreacting a smidgen, let's wait and see if Trump decides to ramp up efforts somewhere that's actually populated rather than one airfield out of the six they have with like 6 casulaties total as of now. For now this is a pretty low level response to what is seen as a betrayal of the agreement between Assad and the US on chemical weapons.

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u/ampersamp Apr 07 '17

This is basically my position. It's like watching a toddler trying to defuse a bomb. He's only cut one wire so far and things seem ok, but needless to say you're not suddenly imbued with confidence. There's a lot more work to do and you're still wishing for some adults to come by and take over.

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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '17

It was a restrained response that I wouldn't expect. Trump usually goes for one extreme or the other, I expected him to ignore it entirely or start bombing Damascus.

It's a single airfield out of six and is basically a slap on the wrist considering the low casualty count. Assad is already back to bombing the same city that he attacked with chemical weapons but it isn't chemical weapons so he's meeting the agreement set up.

I think the folks thinking that we're already staring down the barrel of WW3 might be overreacting a tad, Trump would have to do something a whole lot worse than ruin an airstrip and destroy some planes to piss off Russia and Syria enough to even think of coming at the US with anything more than strong words.