So we just used 60 million worth of missiles to take out approximately 1.4 million worth of outdated MiG jets.

Raytheon stock is up tho.

It's uncanny. With all the lose lose lose he's doing for the country and its citizens, he does seem to find a way to win win win for himself and his family in every situation.

I'm sure idiots are hoping Assad holds that opinion. The guy's a monster, and he seems to know what's up/has his priorities (power at all costs, probably up to and including his own death) in order.

It tilts me that people/racists think that Obama could get to where he got in life without being tough as nails.

It seems that the strikes on Syria were just as haphazard, unplanned and poorly thought out as the rest of the Trump presidency.

But remember, he's the most strategic guy in the room and knows more than the generals.

Much as I dislike Trump I can't help feeling he is getting too much blame here.

The US is a disgustingly violent country. It has for as long as any one can remember killed very large numbers of innocent people around the world mostly to secure its economic and geopolitical interests, often in violation of international law.

There is no good part of the US that opposes this. Under Obama all but fringe left groups and the odd fringe neo-fascist isolationist groups went along with it.

What Trump is doing is nothing particulary special. It is what the US does. It is business as usual. If it was Hilary it would be the same. Even Sanders would probably be little different. It seems too easy to blame Trump for this.

What?

GBV obviously not proficient with American history. In terms of civilian casualties, we are far less violent than in the past.

"The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan have taken a tremendous human toll on those countries. As of March 2015, approximately 210,000 civilians have died violent deaths as a result of the wars. Civilian deaths have also resulted from the US military operations in Yemen that began in 2002."

http://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/c...uman/civilians

"Within the first two to four months of the bombings, the acute effects of the atomic bombings killed 90,000–146,000 people in Hiroshima and 39,000–80,000 in Nagasaki; roughly half of the deaths in each city occurred on the first day."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic...a_and_Nagasaki

Those numbers are right. We killed more civilians in 2 World War II bombings than 15 years of war in the Middle East combined. Acting as though post WW II America is ultra-violent is ignorant of any historical precedent not just with America but with empires in general.

The vast majority of people who complain about America being ultra-violent are hypocrites to an extreme degree.

I recall you being British. You don't get to wiggle your finger at anyone for being ultra-violent. Your Empire and other European countries ****ed the world up way before the US. And it isn't even ancient history (though if we are talking old news... Europeans are the ones responsible for slave trade in my country, killing off native American populaces on both continents, etc). You ****ers were going HAM in the Falklands and Ireland in recent history, not to mention there were Brits in US and Afghanistan.

tl;dr Your **** stinks too

I'll jump on the Britain bashing mostly because a couple Brits here in the politics forum are so absurdly nationalistic and can't take it while being virulently anti-American.

They were the last empire in the ME. Sykes-Picot was more them than anyone else. Kuwait, the reason for the Gulf War, was the kingdom of British Petroleum. Sure the CIA was involved in overthrowing the democratic government of Iran, but we did it for the British. Iran had offered Britain half of the oil revenue and Eisenhower asked them to accept, but it wasn't enough. And with all the talk of corporations taking over the world Britain literally put a company in charge of governing hundreds of millions of people in India and then after the East India Company ended its rule, Britain continued to dominate hundreds of millions of people thousands of miles away, entirely for their own economic benefit until 1947.

Yeah, America has done and is still doing a lot of bad things. Power is corrupting and Britain not having much anymore has been a lot less responsible for what happens in the world than the US since after WW2.

It's true, most nations that developed some time ago have histories that stink. Almost all of Western Europe does, with Britain and Spain among the worst offenders. But at least they're histories, whereas every US President since WW2 has been guilty of war crimes (as Chomsky reminds us).

Britain really doesn't get off from this either as they have been involved in many of the actions that the US has been involved in.

For example: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...raq-war-crimes

There's also a British private company called Eninys International that is like our Blackwater group and I expect they're also *******s.

The US is a much larger and more powerful country at this point and the numbers are bigger and at this point we think we're the world's police and thus the world's ******* a lot of the time.

The government of Iceland has been super cool internationally and I wish we were as peaceful as they are. I give them credit for that. They are awesome. But, they don't really have the option of being huge *******s.

Europeans are guilty of aiding the US in almost all armed struggles if not all of them.

I get that the US is the largest force these days, and it is natural for the largest force to take most of the blame. But, geez, it's time for everybody in allied countries to get off their high horses since we are pretty much doing all of this with agreements between countries.

Sykes-Picot is one of the reasons ISIS gives for their war and taking part of Syria and Iraq.

Oh, have a cookie!

Any one who sanctions mass murder of civillians is a c***. Whether they call themselves American, British or whatever.

Whenever the British state does something stupid or evil we can discuss that, it is a tangential irrelevance in this particular thread.

I have a hard time believing the condemnations of Trump on this issue because he is scarcely different than Obama in terms of foreign policy, and there was virtual silence about Obama's warmongering apart from some small fringe groups with no popular support.

This is not a Trump problem, it is a problem with US politics in general. If Trump is impeached or whatever it will just carry on.

Russia now saying it will respond to any more attacks on Syria by US with force: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/329322...rike-in-syria/

If anyone still thinks the worst case scenario for a Trump Presidency is nuclear holocaust, this is the most plausible way that it happens.

Certainly not all of them. The US wanted Britain to to join its disastrous war in Vietnam, but in those days we had a PM with actual balls who found a way to diplomatically refuse.

I wish Wilson's successors had half his gumption, especially the invertebrate Blair. If there are any pluses from Brexit, hopefully one will be a diminishing role in these types of activities.

When comparing nations' atrocities over different time periods, one also has to factor in how much attitudes have changed regarding international warfare. Using only current morality to compare human behaviour of a hundred years ago unfavourably with that of today doesn't make a lot of sense.

People in other countries look to the dominant global power of the age for more than cultural and economic influence: they also hope for some moral leadership backed up by military force when necessary. It would be admirable if the US was able to be the first in a long time to actually do that, but since GWB it looks like a case of one step forward, two steps back.

I don't remember Obama getting pushed around like this by Russia. So weak and unamerican. Sad!

It's all about $$$.

Obama cut back on intervention a LOT from GWB, but no one cuts defense spending and arms sales are an international thing. Per capita Germany, France, and the UK aren't that much different on that front. Mutually assured destruction seems to have thus far prevented nuclear war, but as far as general world conflict goes, Einstein had a point about not being able to simultaneously prepare for and prevent war.

Russia is pushing no one around. Pushing around would be doing another chemical attack, knowing that doing so could (would?) lead to war. Without that, what they're doing is saving face while doing what they're told.

Wahoo,

Russia didn't do the chemical attack.

Shephard Smith now saying that Russia was fully aware of the chemical attack before it happened. Let's hope this is all related to distracting from the Trump Russia connection and that your theory that a guy with 200 billion wants someplace to spend it, is right.

Shep is just now saying that? Been pretty well known for a while. I thought you were a critical thinker?