Syria, Security and Scandal

Okay, we’re back. We went blank for over a week because I had the need to spend some time with a beautiful , much younger, blonde. That’s what happens to old guys like me.

 

“Papa Biw, pwease come visit me.” And the blog just goes out the window. Now after days of strange furry animals dancing through the pages of thick paged books or racing across TV screens and nights of fluffy hamsters and super cute dogs who keep getting lost under chairs and on the other sides of beds, causing huge, if temporary, crocodile  tears, I’m back in the dysfunctional world of politics.

 

So let’s get back into it and see what’s been going on.

 

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Everybody has an opinion about Syria. Obama took it on the chin last weekend over whether or not we should be doing something about Syria. Of course no one actually knows what that something should be. The American public is adamant about not getting into another war, even if most of them wouldn’t be losing kids in it. The President is listening, but he is getting a lot of flack from the Republicans, even the ones who don’t want another war, just because he’s a Democrat.

 

The big problem of immediate concern is that some 90,000 Syrian civilians have already been killed in this mess. Most American’s don’t care, they just don’t want us involved in any more wars. This does not, of course, include Senator McCain.

 

If the President uses the phony excuse of chemical weapons and gets involved it should be effectively. Just sending in some small weapons won’t do the trick. If we get involved it should be definitive for the side we back. Otherwise it’s a mistake.

 

The problem from the beginning, is that there are no good alternatives in this mess. If we back the rebels we must make sure that they are not the rebels who will turn the guns we give them on American interests. Right now Al Qaeda has the strongest rebel force but McCain claims to have found an American educated engineer who has taken over a large force that is secular and might become a functional ally. If that is true we have only one course of action. The American public will never put up with American boots on the ground so we must first cripple Assad’s air potential and then give this mystery leader enough powerful weapons that he can, not only win he war but can also win the war that is going to come after it.

 

Stopping Assad’s air force shouldn’t be a big deal. The oft suggested no-fly zone is the idea of idiots. We have the capability to crush the Syrian air force without ever putting a plane of ours in the air. We simply attack the Syrian airstrips with rockets and drones, those little weapons that everyone is against, thereby preventing any of their planes from taking off or landing. While we are destroying the landing strips we will, as collateral damage also destroy most of their planes. Then we give the chosen rebel forces most of our left over Iraq equipment. They will need it because as soon as they conquer Assad’s troops they will be in a war with the Al-Qaeda troops that are now fighting on their side.

 

Why am I and seemingly everyone else, so negative about any kind of a functional outcome from this mess?  Just take a look at the country. It’s 74% Sunni but they seem to have never run the place. It is run the 13% that make up the various Schia tribes divided into Alawites, Twelvers, Ismalis Zatdis and Druze, all of which pretty much hate each other as much as they hate the Sunnis. Then there are the Kurds, about 20% of the population, most of whom are Sunnis.. Historically these people have been trying to kill each other since the Ottoman Empire ended with WWI in 1920.

 

Right now the Schia, led by President Bashar a;-Assad are being aided by Hezballoh and by Iran which is Shia. The rebels are a mixture of tribal forces aided by Al-Qaedar who are Sunni. These rivalries have used Assad’s brutal rein to create a war about territory, religion and pure power. Yes it’s a mess but it’s the kind of mess that has been happening all over the Middle East for the last 10 thousand years. These are a greedy, avaricious people, who can’t seem to get along with each other let along anyone else and who have been in a constant state of warfare since 8,000 BC

 

If we want to give one side the means to temporarily stop this mess, and it will only be temporary, then that’s fine but for us to get further into the Middle Eastern quagmire of politics and religion is suicidal.

 

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We have been trying to put together a working immigration policy in this country for the better part of the last half-century. So far, no go. Now we have a group of eight senators called the Gang of 8, a bi-partisan group who has worked very hard to make this necessity a reality.

 

There are all kinds of aspects to this bill they are working on but the two that emerge as the most important have to do with border security between the U.S. and Mexico and a path to citizenship for those 11 million illegal immigrants who have been living here since some of those in congress, were actually working for a living..

 

One of these huge problems is real, and the other is simply a smoke screen to slow down or stop all progress on the bill. Guess which is which because the solutions to both have been argued over by the talking heads ad nauseum.

 

Actually, we are approaching both problems, the real and the fake from the wrong points of view. The real problem, a path to citizenship is now, according to the best estimates going to take at least twelve years and cost a lot of money. This is ridiculous.. Instead of dragging the whole thing out the way the far right wants, we should be forcing those in this category to either get their citizenship in five years or less or go back where they came from. Dragging the process out for over a decade has no practical value and will end up costing the country a lot more money than speed dialing the whole thing. Why does the far right want to drag out the process? They think that the longer it takes, the more of these people will die and others will get disgusted and go back where they came from, causing a natural attrition.

 

But natural attrition isn’t good for country. We need immigrants. Any sane economist will tell you that when population starts to drop, the economy follows it. Lack of consumers breaks the chain of growth just like it has during our recently visited depression. The faster we get these people into the mainstream instead of where they are now, in some shadow world, the better for all of us.

 

And by the way, the Bigot Theory that immigrants come to this country to go on welfare is pure bullshit. People come to this country to work and better themselves. That is a historical fact. Sure, there will always be a few deadbeats just like there are more than a few citizen deadbeats but that’s just not the case for the majority.

 

The other problem with the Gang of 8’s bill is the border baloney.  Right now we are at zero growth from Mexico. That means that as many people are going back as are coming here. Over the course of recent history, over 60% of illegal; immigrants arrived here by ship or plane with tourist, student or temp workers visa’s and just stayed. We don’t need more of that Berlin wall that the unemployed rednecks of the southwest and the military hardware manufacturers love so much. We don’t need a border patrolman every 250 feet and we don’t need any extension of the new Berlin wall. What we need to do is first help Mexico build their economy so their people don’t have to flee north and then adjust our own immigration process so that it isn’t so hard for people who can help our economy to become citizens.

 

Any foreign student who graduates from college should automatically get a green card with their diploma. That will encourage them to use the skills they have learned here to work here.

 

Right now the national birthrate is going down and our national education ate is going down faster. We need people to do our high  end jobs and we need people to do our menial jobs which means that we need more people now.

 

 

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Dick Cheney, a man who lets you know he s lying by moving his lips wants us to trust our government on the issue of security surveillance. This is a guy who lied us into two wars, miraculously remains out of prison after committing various felonies and war crimes while in office and still has the gall to tell us that we should trust the government. And strangely many of us do.

 

Cheney thinks that simply because we vote, and it’s his party that tries with all it has, to keep as few of us from voting a it can, that if we do manage to get to vote, that’s all we should require. After that we should all just line up for the cool-aide.

 

I know it never occurred to Cheney but our failures as voters are what is responsible for the louts that now infest the halls of Congress. It’s in those infamous chambers that our congress voted for the Patriot Act, a piece of legislature that most of them never read and fewer understood. It’s why we now have an intelligence community that can legally invade our privacy and endanger our freedom.

 

We do need the ability to fight the war on Terrorism with all the tools that science can provide, but because these tools are by their nature, so much more invasive, than anything we have yet to deal with, we must include restraints in the laws that allow us to use them.

 

We must help our government in the job of our protection but based on history, there is no reason, , that we should believe anything out of hand. Yes, we should trust and support the government but on the other hand they must provide translucence on everything they are doing. So far the trust has all been on our part. The government in the persons of NSA, CIA and the various intelligence and security arms has yet to show any inkling of proof of their worth.