he wasn't interested, apparently, being occupied w the Monica crap.

He had it 'relatively easy,' imo, due to relative efficiency of the way things were carried out, and fortunately the antagonists were able to pull themselves together or cease hostilities.

I suspect the same will not be the case in the middle-east.

Hope everything is calming down for you...!

Things ok, but can't say calming down, exactly! Moving stuff out of the apartment Sept. 11, so daughters considering what they want to do with what. due to expense of storage. My stuff will go to cottage then. Not huge individual problems, but issues continue to arise, as one would expect.

And dear first cousin who lives nearby appears to be failing. My brother, who lives in Iowa so is rarely in the DC area, is visiting, and I will probably do so tomorrow, too.

Friday Challenge was missed!

But I am doing research and will resume in the fall.

And I am doing research for my trip in March on the Piero della Francesca Trail in Tuscany! Gotta keep working on that bucket list!

Three related reasons:

1) Americans were generally more naive before 2001 and the 2003 Iraq war. We were lied into war, and most people grasped some of the implications of that, eventually.

2) The authorship for the atrocities in Bosnia wasn't nearly as ambiguous. It's more of "a pox on both your houses" attitude toward the Russian-backed regime and the Saudi-backed opposition, today.

3) America is broke in 2013. We were "the last rogue superpower" in 1996.

Because both sides are pile of garbage in Syria.

NATO troops have been occupying that region ever since to keep the peace.

I don't think Clinton would have had it easier if the US was mired down in a war and brutal occupation in the region for the past twelve years prior to doing what he did.

The main of which is that the US was just a supplementary force to the rest of NATO. We were the "extras" on a European stage.

Second, this was coming hot on the heels of Rwanda, where eight hundred thousand people were butchered and nobody lifted a finger. So when the specter of ethnic cleansing rose in Eastern Europe, there was simply no real question about doing something.

Third, it was at least somewhat understandable who was what in Bosnia and Kosovo, and what the goal was. Put up defensive lines around vulnerable populations and take out the offensive capabilities of Serbia.

In Syria we would be acting alone, with possible input from Turkey (or if we're super-unlucky, Israel or Egypt's junta.) We have no idea right now who launched this attack. There are between five and ten factions wrestling over Syria right now, and absolutely all of them are total bastards. If we want to stabilize the country that would mean lending aid to Syria's government, perhaps conditional on Assad's early retirement... But sincethe US has never met a Muslim nation it doesn't want to smash like a child in a snowglobe factory, more likely we'll just blow up Syria's capabilities and give arms and materiel to any asshole who shows up.

Prior to the conflict and during it, Clinton was accused of literally staging the entire conflict to distract from the Monica scandal, Wag the Dog, he was a terrible man who made war to cover his blowjobs.
How is that so easy?

so Albright dragged him into it, after atrocities called for intervention.

there are just a lot of factors involved like history, culture, what the conflict is, region etc.

This was due, in large measure, to Clinton and his DLC colleagues making it clear that they totally rejected even a less-interventionist U.S. approach to the world and partly due to severe demoralization and hopelessness among much of the left at the time.

oh, sorry. The answer the OP is looking for has something to do with race. Clinton had it good because he was white or because the theatre of action was demographically lighter-skinned than that of the victims of the latest atrocities .

I think its kinda lame to more or less state that because I was oblivious to the horrendous nature of War in my twenties, I should remain oblivious now. It is even lamer( actually, offensive! ) to suggest that I do not support more "death and misery" in the middle east because I am a racist.

If you support military action in Syria, you are promoting the killing of innocent men, women and children.

Period.

All you have to do to debunk the "humanitarian" intervention idea is to look at Baghdad. We really helped those poor fuckers. And so it would be for Syria.

You can dress it up in fierce rhetoric, horrific images and video, or thinly-veiled accusations of racism, but killing people that you do not have to is wrong.

And don't give me any of that "surgical strike" bullshit, either. There is no such thing. It is just a term we use to make ourselves feel less guilty about " collateral damage ".

Please don't try to take the moral high ground; We ( America ) support torture,civil and human rights violations, and assassinations with sloppy drone strikes in the territory of Sovereign nations. It is a little late to play the "Moral Compass " card.

Besides, we do not have the money.

Just ask the Congress, they will tell you all about it at the next phony "budget crisis" scare...

Torturing logic does not take away those who have been killed already without it. Syria is a nasty mess--one of those where noone wants to be involved until they are forced to be involved and don't wantbto be involved again. If you don't want military interference in a civil war, then you need to be willing to accept those deathsvthat will occur anyway. Not advocating either but pointing to the reality that exists when that which binds a people dissolves.

After Bush, it would be tough to sell any war, especially a bullshit one on the other side of the world like Syria.

because the syrian arab republic still has allies and is not internationally encircled

because US/NATO involvement is going to turn out to be a bigger commitment than the public is willing to accept

For some reason this was a wonderful thing, but an equivalent move by Serbia in Kosovo was bad. The bombing managed to destroy factories owned by Serbians missed the ones owned by foreigners.

Many things meet there that people care a lot about.
Oil and religion to name two. Either one of those alone would make the crisis important.

In addition, many countries been muddling around in the Middle East forever. Many are still muddling there in one way or another.

Bosnia and Kosovo- blank stares from many
Israel's proximity alone- attention

The first gulf war in 1991 was, all things considered, a success for our government. The objectives were met very fast with few casualties on our side. When we became involved in the Balkans and lead the NATO mission there after the failure of the UN mission, we had a recent and relatively easy success in the first gulf war to point to as an example.

Any mission in Syria will be overshadowed by what we have failed to accomplish in Iraq and Afghanistan during the last decade.

In Kosovo, to oversimplify massively while preserving a grain of truth, you had one group people oppressing another group of people who lived in a different part of the country, and who basically wanted to be left alone.

In Syria, you have one group of people oppressing other inhabitants of the same country, who want to run that country.

The former situations are generally easier to do good in by outside intervention than the latter.

in those wars. We went in as part of NATO as security forces to end ethnic cleansing on both sides and to protect the agencies extending humanitarian aid. That's how I saw it anyway.

If we put boots on the ground in Syria, it should be to protect civilians and workers extending humanitarian aid to all sides, not to dethrone Assad. That did not work out with Saddam so well, did it? When we take sides we are no better than king makers.

I would extend aid and protection to all who lay down their arms. Those who still choose to fight this civil war can decide what happens to Assad without our help. I'm against cruise missiles, drones or any air delivered weapons because this will kill innocents. Collateral damage is not acceptable.

A very clean war! CNN said so, and they were there.