Possible Western military response to Syrian chemical weapons use

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Syria is a former colonial possession.

Libya was Italian.

It's North Africa so close enough.

[Hatman 🍁]

1,429 killed says Kerry.

lolz @ that specificity. What a joke.

Yes, people getting gassed is soooo funny

Your take on when Saddam Hussein gassed his own people?

Didn't the US bomb Iraq after that (in the 1990s)? And didn't Saddam get rid of his WMDs?

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

We still don't know for sure who was behind the chemical weapon use (unless you consider everything John Kerry says as infallable truth).

Just saying.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Syria is a former colonial possession.

Was there any previous example of France getting involved militarily in Syria after their mandate ended?

Usually, Paris tend to do a post-colonial stuff in the "Françafrique".

[Mr. Morden]

This just gets weirder and weirder (see Obama's press conference).

This is indeed pretty weird.  I can't remember any circumstance in which a president asked for congressional authorization for a military attack designed to last about three days, presumed to involve only missiles launched from sea, with no aircraft or ground forces involved.  Is there any precedent for this?

[Franknburger]

It is not weird at all. Russia has today proposed to put Syria on the Agenda of the G20 meeting that is upcoming this Wednesday and held in St. Petersburg. They would not make such a proposal if there wasn't a chance of some sort of compromise, and they understand that they, as the meeting host, must be the first to compromise.
So, Kerry has taken over the "bad cop" role, Obama buys time for negotiations, and the other western countries are just sorting out their roles:
Somebody has to tell Saudi Arabia to stop financing the Islamists in Syria (Turkey?), somebody has to sideline China so pressure on Russia can be maximised (Australia? UK?), there is a need for informal channels to Lebanon (France?), Israel (Canada?) and Iran (Indonesia?), and there needs to be a back-up moderator (moderation is typically the host's role, but Russia is too involved to be able to moderate the Syria part of the agenda). The rest is group dynamics, which may work out or not.

[Mr. Morden]

It is not weird at all.

It's weird that Obama is asking for Congress to vote on authorization before launching what is being advertised as a limited military strike that will last only a few days.  Like I said, I can't remember the last time a president asked Congress for approval on such a limited mission.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

It is not weird at all.

It's weird that Obama is asking for Congress to vote on authorization before launching what is being advertised as a limited military strike that will last only a few days.  Like I said, I can't remember the last time a president asked Congress for approval on such a limited mission.

Indeed. I don't think there ever was an example of the President asking for an authorization for anything else than deploying ground forces.

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but it wasn't even a case for all full-scale invasions, right? I don't think there was any vote before Grenada.

[Eraserhead]

Plus, he's already decided the attack will be launched at some point no matter how The Congress votes, so what's the point? To prove he's more popular with Congress than David Cameron is with Parliament? He may be in for a rude awakening.

[Silent Hunter]

Plus, he's already decided the attack will be launched at some point no matter how The Congress votes, so what's the point? To prove he's more popular with Congress than David Cameron is with Parliament? He may be in for a rude awakening.

Mark Mardell at the BBC thinks its that he'd prefer multiple hands on the knife here.

[Vosem]

It is not weird at all.

It's weird that Obama is asking for Congress to vote on authorization before launching what is being advertised as a limited military strike that will last only a few days.  Like I said, I can't remember the last time a president asked Congress for approval on such a limited mission.

It makes sense if you look at it from Obama's point-of-view: he doesn't want to attack Syria at all, he's been avoiding it for 2 years, but now uncautious past statements have boxed him into a position where he has to...unless Congress votes against it (as it likely will) and gives him an excuse not to.

Or, as Franknburger mentioned, perhaps he's just stalling for time -- that also seems reasonable.

Plus, he's already decided the attack will be launched at some point no matter how The Congress votes, so what's the point?

Nothing's final until it happens.

Syria is a former colonial possession.

Was there any previous example of France getting involved militarily in Syria after their mandate ended?

Usually, Paris tend to do a post-colonial stuff in the "Françafrique".

Not that I can think of, nor in Indochina after the pullout.

When did France became so hawkish? You guys led the charge over Libya as well - literally, your planes were the first over it.

France only experienced the Iraq War from afar, since it never directly sent troops, so it's maintained a bit of a pre-Iraq "the West has won the Cold War" mentality. As I understand it.

[Bunwahaha [still dunno why, but well, so be it]]

Well, yeah, we kept a 'good guy status' here, both from our point of view and from the external point of view.

And this is not only a matter of Iraq or of Cold War.

If you don't try to get the fact that France always saw itself as a kind of unique power, independant from anybody (and overall from anything that can look like Anglophone!).

And, overall since the post WW2 ironically, which is based on Gaullisme, which is in short:

'There are the US, there are the Soviets, and...there is France!'

Actually.

And for anybody who fairly look at the Arab and Middle-East policies of France since the post WW2 it's pretty obvious.

The Anglo world never aired that anger from Chirac against some guys of Israeli authorities in Jerusalem? A few days later you had the Chirac t-shirts popping all over eastern Jerusalem close to Arafat ones.

And if the spontaneous trend here use to be more pro-Arab than pro-Israeli, it's more subtle than that.

For example, who did built the Israeli nukes in Neguev...??  

France!

Want more?

Who have been the 1st ones to initiate Iran to nuclear technologies (from a civilian point of view, and under the Shah, but still)...??

France again!

And who later gave shelter to Khomeiny?

...!!

lol

And actually, I find that the position of this country regarding Arab-Mid-East world uses to be the most balanced in West for a while now, even under Sarkozy whiche here used to be bad painted as 'BIG BAD EVIL ZIONNIST!!', or something like that.

Regarding Syria and the formal colonial status, yeah, I had spoken about it earlier. France has a historical responsibility in the building of this regime. It's apparently France who organized the 'Alawisme' of the regime and which participated to build their military culture, and this to avoid the persecussion of a minority...

(kudos for the achievement if so, maybe one day people will learn that reading a society mainly through the ethnicity glasses leads to...poor consequences to say the least)

That being said, in the region, the spot to which France remained quite tied at a lot of levels, is by far Lebanon.

Tied economically, the large Lebanese disapora works all over the Francophone world (a world in which you can find the 'Franco paradigme' that I tried to describe earlier all over, as opposed to the 'Anglo paradigme', there could be books to develop on those 2...), some buisnessmen which can also be used as a connexion between France and the rest of the Arab world.

Tied politically, especially under Chirac who oppenly was a big friend of the Hariri family, and the assassination of the father in 2005 was a big thing here.

Tied culturally, lots of exchange of populations, especially in the sense Lebanon-France, and the French culture is present all over the free Beyrouth (aka not the south), and 'Le Petit Journal' a trendy French late show which is sometimes fancy to watch seems to be part of Beyrouth's students program. The youngs seem to speak a kind of mix of Arab French and English over there.

That's the big connexion between France and the Arab world.

The second one being Maghreb-Sahara.

There goes Lybia, since it's been evoked there too.

Well, yeah, Italy didn't have the same care for its former colonies than France had, and since France had put its flag all over the area of which Lybia was greatly dependent, then no surprise the French influence was big in Lybia too, and most of Gaddafi military and diplomatic moves have been made towards some former French colonies in which France kept a big strategic role, the biggest case being Tchad.

It wasn't mainly a matter of oil for Lybia, it's mainly Italy that depended on Lybian oil (so it wasn't totally careless of its former colonies...), the big contracts in Lybia used to be for weapons...

And yet we're slowly walking toward Afrique, and the Françafrique which has also been evoked here...

It might be the most 'amusing' (very relatively) part of the story of the post WW2 era.

France uses to be seen and to see itself as the biggest anti-American neo-imperialism, with all the bright blahblahblha that can go with it.

The anti-American stuff (geopolitically and culturally to a lesser extent) is true, but while the Americans spent decades to screw Mid-east for the sake of their own interests, we did the exact same thing in our little empire!

All the nasty neo-imperiaslim things that the US did (playing with guerillas, bombing such or such, installing such or such guy in power, sometimes sending our troops when it didn't turn the way we wanted and so forth...), we did it too!

It's just that the US did that in a place on which everybody was focused, while nobody cared of our own little African Mid-East (who cares about Africans and their very bloody unimportant wars anyways?). Our Middle-East was Southern Guinean Gulf mainly, Equatorian Guinea, Popular Republic of Congo, Gabon was the fantastic trio for our oil mainly, but each time we could take something in Africa, we indeed did anywhere.

And who had built this 'paradigme' again?

De Gaulle indeed!

All of this was theorized, again for France independence from the 'Cold War' stuff.

There I come to the last thing that has been evoked here, 'France is not hawkish'.

I tried to demonstrate here that you can give a lol at this.

Outside of all what I've already cited here, you can add the fact that France has apparently built the 3rd military industry in the world (that's at least how it was the last time I heard about it), and that while everybody was, lol, as always, mainly focused on US neo-imperialism, France was also signing big weapon contracts all over the world, any Arab power, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, Africa, and so forth. And that made the great politico-financiary scandals of our republic...

That being said, and it was something I was chanting a few months ago on this forum, we are not the US.

We belong to Europe.

And here there is more and more an actual self-criticism about geopolitical imperialism, even in France, even if you can continue to find our companies all over Africa, even if a geopolitcal act is never uninterested (which is why we need an actual police force for this world...), the more it goes, the less there is ground for the dirty hidden practices. Beyond an intellectual evolution that I would find actual here, and that wouldn't be that present in the US (Iraq was only 10 years ago, and Obama seems to enjoy drone strikes wherever it pleases...), you can at the very least count on the far bigger transparency that exists in our societies.

And thus what one can qualifies 'hawkish' (which I would inherently take as pejorative), I would tend to qualify it of rather, well, 'responsible', at worst you can find it pretentious, but...you think you can bother a French about calling him pretentious?? Who f**king cares! We're pretentious enough to think we should have this kind of pretention.

I love what a former guy from French secret services answered in a very good documentary on our foreign services since WW2.

He was asked about the fact that the French were the 1st ones to go to Afghanistan to arm Afghanis against Soviets (^^)...

Journalist:

...but, everybody thought it was only the Americans who did it...?!...you have been very discrete!

The guy had a laaarge smile, and he answered:

...we are always more discrete than Americans...

...

[Bunwahaha [still dunno why, but well, so be it]]

...read everything?

...want more?

Here is:


And that are actually all of those topics that are debated right now in the country since we have the feeling to have been totally trapped by Obama...

'France is a unique power, its voice shouldn't depend on what the US do!'

'France has its world to say on how the world goes!'

'Hollande is irresponsible, he tied us to the US! What a shame for us!'

You only have the far-right and the far-left to contest any foreign intervention here, any military intervention uses to be rather consensual in the classical political class, everybody behind the Président, just a few side criticisms here and there. But Obama managed to mess all of this with his totally irresponsible moves, and now that's upside down here.

He manged to make Libération (the big leftie paper) and Le Figaro (the big rightie paper) agree!

Both saying 'Obama traps Hollande'.

What will happen in the coming days could be...'interesting/amusing'.

If ever the US don't go (and so far seems totally possible the Congress votes 'no'), then we will have to 'face our face'.

We are on a quite positive record here so far.

The refusal of Iraq.

The operation in Lybia.

The operation in Côte d'Ivoire.

The operation in Mali.

All of those is seen as France successes. Lybia being more and more relativized due to Jihadists messing in the Sahara, but Mali came as a kind of total apotheosis, at all levels, militarily, politically, culturally.

So, all of this bubbled still more our natural inclination for being, so French.

But since Obama totally irresponsible, both strategically and politcially, danse, everything looks so fragile here.

We look totally prisonners of American Republicans, and be sure that for a French feeling prisonner of Americans is...painful. So imagine how it is to be prisonner of Republicans...

That Syria stuff is really forcing everybody to face hiself.

If ever the US don't go, either we look totally pitiful.

Or we look great and try to find a way to still do something.

We have everything to lead a striking campaign alone. We have the boats, the planes, the bases, the right weapons, the intelligence to know what to strike, everything in total independence, due to this long tradition about which I developped here, but apparently according to yesterday's meeting between the PM and the representants of the Parliament:

'France is determined to do something, but only within a coalition'

According to journalists who are close to the administration, they don't want to look like a power that does a unilateral, alone and without the UN, war against an other country.

And what was the breakfast this morning?

Assad directly threatening France!

It's a double-edged sword, either it 'strengthen the national unity' for strikes, or it feels like 'ok, enough now, we really have nothing to gain there'.

About 65% oppose a military intervention here in polls.

Frankly, Obama behavior doesn't help, and puts everybody in danger, at all levels.

And if ever nothing is done:

What a slap for American credibility...
What a slap for French idea of themselves...
And overall what a slap we would put in the face of Syrians, a false hope is worse than no promise at all...
And welcome to the back flags, which is the only help that Syrians receive for a while now...

I can't wait to see the faces of our guys here if we do nothing due to Americans...

Might be Hollande harshest moments right now, everything is said in pictures realeased by both administrations:

Official pic from Elysée 'Hollande phoning to Obama'

Official pic from White House 'Obama phoning the Congress'

Oh dear it's painful...

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

So is it possible France could go it alone if our Congress declines to support a strike?

[Supersonic]

So is it possible France could go it alone if our Congress declines to support a strike?

Hollande ruled this out earlier. Amusingly enough.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Lighten up.

[Lief 🗽]

France is a great country, and has always been committed to the protection of human rights and international law. I commend their leadership on Libya and now Syria. I only wish other countries would be as brave and selfless.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Obama didn't set a red line he says?  Hmmmmmmm.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Obama didn't set a red line he says?  Hmmmmmmm.

The snake oil salesman-in-chief might see the writing on the wall. I honestly doubt intervention will happen.

[Silent Hunter]

France is a great country, and has always been committed to the protection of human rights and international law.

The Algerians would beg to differ.

[Bunwahaha [still dunno why, but well, so be it]]

France is a great country, and has always been committed to the protection of human rights and international law.

The Algerians would beg to differ.

Yeah.

And you could add other stuffs of the end of colonialism, or the 'Ouvéa cave' in Nouvelle-Calédonie.

It's never unpleasant to hear it, but I tried to demonstrate it's not necessarily always so obvious...

That being said, I tend to genuinely believe there's been an evolution here, and that we, along with other European countries would be more and more responsible when it comes to international interventions.

So is it possible France could go it alone if our Congress declines to support a strike?

That's actually the huge question of the moment here.

To be fair, if the US don't go, I'd tend to believe that Hollande would also call for a vote in the Parliament. And then, the most obvious scenario would be that Socialistes don't vote for it. It would be the best way to 'save our face' and to dilute the responsibility of such an eventual withdrawal, Hollande could always say 'ah well, I respect the decision of the Parliament' (but everybody would knew it'd be a total slap).

Because yeah, on the other hand, Hollande kept some very tough words against Assad when he received the German president on Tuesday evening, just like if the strikes were just a question of time, plus you can add that this German president was here to commemorate the biggest civilian massacre made by Nazis in France, in Oradour-sur-Glane (642 civilians, men, women, children, the whole village, coldly massacred by a SS company on the 10th of June 1944), and that, after De Gaulle will have been kept like a kind of Pompei...



...and you can guess that in our context it takes a 'particular resonnance'.

All of this makes that I more and more I hardly imagine how Hollande could withdraw. It would really look totally pitiful...

It's Syria, always have the potentiality to be so freaking disappointing...

That being said, in his last determined statements, Hollande announced that he tries to make European and Arab coalition, so you never know...

In any case, right now, Putin is just playing basket-ball with Obama's head with his last statements this morning, and enjoying his role of perfect troll of a new fake cold war, the US better don't play fool if they are still interested in keeping the very bit of credibility they still eventually have...

[Silent Hunter]

FWIW, six countries provided troops for the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 (this making it sextilateral). It's two confirmed for this at the moment.

[Mr. Morden]

FWIW, six countries provided troops for the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 (this making it sextilateral). It's two confirmed for this at the moment.

Of course the proposed military action here is launching cruise missiles from ships in the Med to hit targets within Syria.  How many NATO or allied countries even have that capability?

[Mr. Morden]

Actually, it looks like it might involve more than just missiles launched from ships in the Med:

http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Report-US-strike-on-Syria-to-be-significantly-larger-than-expected-325389

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[Silent Hunter]

Of course the proposed military action here is launching cruise missiles from ships in the Med to hit targets within Syria.  How many NATO or allied countries even have that capability?

The UK and the US, but France can launch missiles from aircraft outside its airspace.