When is a red line more of a grey area?

[eppie]

This really upsets me. It makes the president look like a bumbling fool - sorry to say - that lacks the fervor of his supposed convictions. Of course the reality is that after what happened in Egypt/Libya, America does not want to waste it's time in another war in which we have a country we helped just turn around and burn our flag immediately after. If I had my druthers, I'd say let them fight their own wars as we did in our country, but because of the statement Obama made about crossing the "red line," I feel we are obligated to help now with the burden of proof exposed! If we do not react after that big hoopla of a press conference, then what are we saying to the rest of the world? If Obama does not act, then I would question his leadership abilities because his inaction in this matter after what he swore to us, Syria, and the world is unforgivable, and other countries will exploit this "weak" president, which to me is completely intolerable! I sincerely hope this administration is only biding its time until a solution presents itself and then jumps at the first sign of action and takes it because if they do not, I fear this will spell poor relations with... well with the rest of the world! And if this administration waits too long, the situation will be just as bad! Don't get me wrong, America is in an extremely unfavorable position here; if we help the rebels and they turn out to be Al Qaeda (which is a very real possibility), then we just made the situation WORSE... but IMO doing nothing after what was said is unforgivable and would just show how pathetic this administration really is at foreign affairs, which to me is the far worse option.

EDIT: And that reminds me, with the situation that occurred in Korea, we all know Kim was posturing, however if that had happened on the Bushs' watch, Regan, possibly Carter's or Clintons - i.e. Korea loading nukes to it's missile facilities on the beaches and pointing them toward us - these other presidents would have sent war ships out to the Korea to say, "are you seriously going to fuck with us?" What did the Obama administration do? Offered aid. I'm all for peace, but this president is becoming the world's pushover. What's next? China demands we give up Hawaii and we we decide to give them partial ownership rights? <-sarcasm> N.Korea is a fly on the wall compared to other great nations and if N.Korea was allowed to point missiles at our great nation without any kind of display of military might from us, then again, what does this say to other nations? You don't hear about this in the American media, but I'm sure there's talk in other countries about the pushover American president. And the handling of the US Consulate attack in Libya? Sorry, I'm ranting. I voted for Obama because I wanted to see change; I just wish he had more of an iron fist!

You are oversimplifying this.
The North Korea diplomatics are going just fine. Maybe the US is being even to tough. They just should let them complain a bit and not give them too much incentive to let them escalate the situation.

About Syria....the issue is that you don't want to get problems with Russia, and that sadly it is very difficult to see who are the good guys and who the bad......likely both enemies are the bad guys here. Sadly, as always with wars, innocent civilians are the main victims.
The problems in Syria, and the whole region should have been solved 50 years ago, not now. Maybe now that the US is become more self-sufficient in energy things might actually lighten up a bit there.....but the whole region remains difficult. Once the US is gone, you hope that more and more people will see the US as friend instead of as enemy.

---

I find patriotism in general to be idiotic and reactionary, but your blind patriotism is actually very worrisome. You are so eager to go head on into a war with nations that you have NO clue to the degree with which they hate us, guns blazing without thinking about the consequences. To say N. Korea is all talk is presumptuous.

Get your head out of the sand. No one wins in a war - all participants lose, just some more than others. Well, there are winners actually - those who make all the decisions - everyone else loses.

You have mistaken blind patriotism for blind rage! I won't lie, I'm naturally a vindictive person at heart although after having kids, this had changed quite a bit however I still find the actions of this administration intolerable. I've always been the type of person where if someone were to point a gun at me, they better be ready to die. I was never a big guy, but I also wasn't afraid and this got me into quite a few fights where the "bigger" guy had a mental image in his head of winning over me and couldn't conceptually conceive of loosing to me, so when I had successfully defended myself, my attacker could not comprehend it and kept the assault up expecting me to falter. Of course the natural escalation would have been for me to take up arms and vice versa until one of us were dead, but thankfully the yard duty came . My point is that I learned early on to "go for the throat," or better put, to not drag out a fight because doing so would either cause third party intervention, or cause me to loose once the bigger guy got his friends so I went for the kill (figuratively) immediately if somebody fucked with me. I found grabbing their larynx/adams apple with both hands and squeezing as hard as I could while concurrently kneeing them in the abdomen or scrotum netted a 100% win ratio, but if I just stopped there, they would seek revenge later in the day, so I had to put the fear of god into them by choking them until they were almost unconscious - which in itself was pretty annoying because they would be hitting me in the head the whole time - then while they lay on the floor, kick the shit out of them. I honestly never had any issues with people after that because they knew what type of person they were fucking with - that if they attacked me, I'd attack them WORSE, so it was better to just leave me alone! You see, I have this mentality and always have, and most likely always will, and if I were a leader and someone pointed a gun at me, I'd fucken shoot them, no questions asked! You threaten me with real or perceived violence against me or my family and you better be ready to die because I'm going to assume you're serious and that the situation is only going to escalate and that my only option is to kill you before you kill me. This is why I think the president is a pansy, because Kim was allowed to point his nukes at us and he (Obama) did nothing about it! Because if I made a "red line" THREAT, I'd follow through with it that I promise you. To me, it is our (as a country) moral obligation to follow through with what we said we would! Talk is cheap, but actions make the character, so we can now really see what type of person Obama really is! And you call this patriotism on my part? I feel like you're just reaching to make another one of your communist points and derail yet another conversation once again. You don't know me or where I'm coming from so making these grandiose assessments of me and my personal opinions is more worrisome to me than your perceived notions of me. And like I said in my prior post, Obama could have just kept his mouth shut or just promised aid, but instead choose to issue a threat! He's the one who chose his words and was "eager" to escalate this situation with Syria to a war. Like I said (again), I was fine with letting them fight their own war, but now that Obama made that statement, it's time to man up!

Djeez,this reminds me of those antisocials or hooligans you sometimes see in TV programs saying 'yeah I am a very nice guy I won't hurt anyway, but if they touch me or my family I will kill them'. How reasonable this sound, usually these people are the ones that start fighting first.
The people that become aggressive when you accidentally bump against them in the street.
You probably don't mean it this way, but it for sure sounds like it.