Robert Gates Says Syria Is A Tornado, And The US Should Keeps Its Hands Out

Business Insider ^ | July 3 2013 | GEOFFREY INGERSOLL

[WilliamIII]

Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham think attacking Syria to establish a no-fly zone will somehow stem Iranian nuclear ambitions, while Dr. Robert Gates says the whole mess is like "sticking your hand in a tornado." Gates, both a former Secretary of Defense and a former CIA director, says involvement in Syria is a slippery slope that will only lead to deeper, riskier commitments.

"The question about the involvement in Syria is, can you put just a few fingers into the tornado? And at what point, when that fails, do the pressures to do more gradually draw you in further and further?" Gates said during a talk at the Hearst Tower Sunday.

[FredZarguna]

Stalin and Hitler are duking it out. There are millions of dead Nazis and Communists. We need to get a piece of that.

Sure. Made sense in 1941.

Oh, wait...

[fieldmarshaldj]

Sound advice.

[Reaganez]

So we shouldn’t have supplied the USSR with war material through the Lend Lease Act and joined the Allies on the Western Front?

Let the Nazi’s take control of Europe?

I think a stalemate is in the best interest of the US.

Letting Assad’s Government win would be a huge win for Iran in the Middle East and that would be hurt US interest.

[A Navy Vet]

"Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham think attacking Syria to establish a no-fly zone will somehow stem Iranian nuclear ambitions,..."

Wow. Guess I missed that one by the Mclindsey girls. Sheesh, go off line for a moment...

[Bratch]

He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind

- Proverbs 11:29a

[Netz]

Gates and others before him are all very wise AFTER leaving office, the office and state of the Union they left in a complete mess to the next “expert” who, in turn, will leave their post in a mess similar to the one they inherited.

If Syria/Iran/CCCP win in Syria, the CCCP will have tremendous leverage in that region and with a nuclear Iran - lights out! Israel...alone...again!

[Irenic]

If Syria/Iran/CCCP win in Syria, the CCCP will have tremendous leverage in that region and with a nuclear Iran - lights out! Israel...alone...again!

************************
What changed in 2011 that made the Assad creeps more dangerous? They’ve been there since 1971. Assad loses, so do Christians.

If Assad is gone, it sure won’t be people friendly to Israel running things and it is guaranteed that any Christians that survived will be killed.

Anyhow, we don’t fight wars anymore. We get our soldiers killed and burn through tax dollars playing little nation building games.

[FredZarguna]

In what sense was giving the Russians control of Eastern Europe better than letting the Nazis have it? If we were aghast at the Holocaust, why did we allow the repatriation of millions of anti-Communist Russians, Poles and Eastern Europeans to a dictator who had already murdered more of his own people than Hitler had? Why did we send Atomic Bomb secrets, Uranium and other materials to the Russians through Lend-Lease? Why did Russian armies have a higher priority for war materials than our own troops? Why did the British have to pay us back for Lend Lease, but not the Russians?

Did you know that Khrushchev told us in the late 1950's that our Lend Lease trucks and other war gear were used to allow the Russians to take over Eastern Europe and reach Berlin first? Why did we open a second front in France via two amphibious landings when we were already positioned to open a second front via the Aegean? Why did Stalin constantly whine about our lack of second front, when the invasion of Sicily was exactly that? And why did Stalin open no second front against Japan, even though China was supposedly every bit as much his ally as ours?

Hitler had no capacity to invade Britain, and his admirals repeatedly told him that Germany would have no such capacity for a decade. Yes. we should not have helped the Russians. We should have let two totalitarian dictators beat each others brains out and picked up the pieces when they were done. The Soviets thoroughly infiltrated our government in the 1930's and 1940's and were at least as dangerous to our interests as the Nazis. The Monster the Soviets and their agents of influence created in China is still with us, and will be for a long, long time to come.

[buffyt]

“Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham think...”

No, they Don’t Think!

LOL

[Reaganez]

Not entering the war would mean giving the Nazis control of all Europe not just Eastern Europe. That would have been far worse.

Giving aid to allies does not nor should it mean giving them our entire arsenal.

Having Russians die on the Eastern Front is better than American troops getting killed on the Eastern front. Every German soldier fighting on the Eastern Front was not fighting on the Western front.

I would have Patton take Moscow or better yet nuked it after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I don’t agree with all American policies in WWII including Yalta but getting involved was not one of them.

There are a lot of what if from hind site. If Hitler had not let the British retreat from France the British may have been done. If “we let two totalitarians beat each others brains out” the Nazis may have had the time to develop a nuclear bomb. And we don’t get those German scientist to aid on our nuclear development.

Completely stupid to have done nothing till Pearl Harbor when Germany declared war on the US.

[Netz]

Assad is what is commonly called in the Middle East, a “MANIAK” or maniac but the word has a heavier weight to it and is very insulting. He is “stable” when you compare him to the Islamic nut cases, so, ok, he's really a secular nut case and more predictable.
The struggle in Syria is a critical one. Who wins? One side has CCCP, Iran and Hizbollah, the other, every radical Islamic fringe. Who do we want to win? Neither side.
Hopefully, the “rebels” will kill off all the Hizbollah and the Hizbollah will kill off all the Islamic Jihadists.
Either way it's a mess for Israel.

[spetznaz]

What you are saying FZ misses a couple of points. Most important is that if the Nazis weren't facing too fronts they may very well won. That is something most historians agree on, together with the point that Hitler started aggression too early. Had he not attacked Stalin, as had been agreed, all of Europe would have fallen. Additionally, major war would have started a couple of years later, when many of the superlative weapons the Nazis had invented would have come online with sufficient numbers to make a difference. Sufficient tanks better than anything anyone else had, sufficient cruise missiles and IRBMs, jet fighters (that no one else had) in sufficient numbers, they were even working on their own nuclear program.

The Soviets were monsters, however so were the Nazis. The difference is that the Soviets had a self defeating ideology ...communism has embedded self-destruct failsafes. Nazism, like any form of fascism/nationalism (eg the Chinese 'communism' which is anything but) has a far longer shelf life.

Anyways, had the Soviets fallen when Hitler expected them to, Europe would have fallen. Germany would have only had one front to deal with rather than three (the Western Allies, the Soviets, and the Russian winter), and Germany would have won. A Germany with superior weapons in superior numbers, with an ally in Japan, and with nuclear weapons.

[FredZarguna]

Completely wrong. We should have rolled up the Japs and told Stalin if he thought he could make a separate peace with Hitler go ahead and do it. Stalin knew perfectly well what you appear not to know: Russia was bluffing with an empty hand. Hitler was never going to make peace with the Soviet Union. Never. Every Allied soldier killed on the Western front was killed for the benefit of the Soviet Union, and NOT the other way around.

Why did we have to withdraw from the Aegean and invade from France? For one simple reason: so Stalin could march unimpeded to Berlin. He played us for suckers and people like you aided and abetted it.

And we don’t get those German scientist to aid on our nuclear development

Your understanding of physics is as bad as your grasp of history. Germans did not help us with our nuclear program. Heisenberg was years behind us.

[spetznaz]

Too fronts = two fronts.

Apologies for this and other spelling errors. Word fill on phone.

[FredZarguna]

The Germans had no chance of building a nuclear bomb before we did. None whatsoever.

[FredZarguna]

Letting Assad’s Government win would be a huge win for Iran in the Middle East and that would be hurt US interest.

You do realize that the people fighting Assad are also enemies of the United States, I hope. Having an al Qaeda state on the border of Israel isn't in the interests of the United States either. There is no outcome that serves our interest, we can only take solace in the fact that someone evil is going to lose.

[Reaganez]

Yes I do realize both sides are enemies of the USA.

That is why I said a stalemate is in the interest of the USA.

Having the world’s Sunni crazies being killed by Shia crazies instead of creating Islamic Emirates all over the Muslim world is in the interest of the USA.

The Alawite government is being supported by Russia and Iran.

It is in our interest to support the Sunni crazies just enough to not lose.

If they kill each other in Syria for the next 100 years the better for the West.

[Ann Archy]

But, But, Obama’s FRIENDS are duking it out....he MUST send in OUR MONEY and OUR GUYS to get KILLED!!!