More Notes on Syria

The Sunday morning talking heads are all over the idea that Syria is the monumental totem of the Obama Presidency. This only proves that these false newsmen will do anything to promote a little noise for themselves to talk about. There is no question that Obama has handled this whole situation badly from the red line statement to the present imitation of the Bush administration’s push to get congress to vote us into a war like the one that almost ruined our country and left the one we professed to be saving, in a smoldering heap.

 

Obama was trying to pass the buck to congress, figuring that there were enough John McCain led hawks in it to back him up, but now it looks like that’s not going t happen so The President sent his own talking head, Dennis McDonough, to go on TV to mouth platitudes and repeat over and over the mantra “killing 400 children” ad nauseum.

 

The reality is that no one else in the world except France wants anyone outside the Syrian revolution to act. Oh yeah, there’s Turkey too, but they, after all, are absorbing 600,000 refugees they have no place to put.

 

McDonough lists what this strategy would not be. It would not be boots on the ground, it would no be an extended air campaign, it would not be Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya. Well if it not any of those things why the hell are we bothering? And while we are punishing  Assad, how many civilian killings will we be responsible for?

 

The big problem with what McDonough is selling is that he keeps saying that complete proof of Assad’s guilt has been presented to Congress. But it hasn’t. Yes, proof of a gas attack has been presented but no proof that Assad did it. He has in fact denied doing it in an interview with Charlie Rose and if you really look at it, there seems to be little valid reason for him to do it. He is, after all, winning right now.

 

Add to that, reports from Germany that indicate that Syrian troops may have gone ahead with the gassing without the permission of Assad, permission that had already been denied them. The German Foreign Intelligence Agency, (BND) reports that, radio traffic, indicating the above, was intercepted by a naval reconnaissance vessel, the Okur, sailing close to the Syrian coast.

 

McDonough also has a lot of problems with answering direct questions. It’s the same thing that the Left accused members of the Bush administration of doing for eight years and now the same guys who whined about it when it was done by the evil American empire are doing it themselves.

 

McDonough just isn’t creative enough for his job. I did a lot of complaining about his predecessor, David Axelrod, but this guy is a long step behind Axelrod.

 

Ted Cruz, who I almost never agree with, actually speaks to the real problems of such an attack. He points out that the administration is going ahead with no real objective and also that they have no established plan for success, mostly because no one has been able to define what, in this case, success is. Sound like Iraq does it?

 

What happens if Assad is able to start an attack on American embassies, all over the  region in retaliation. What do we do then? Do we launch an all out attack, boots on the ground and find ourselves in another Iraq?

 

Obama states that the attack wouldn’t be to protect any American interests but would be a slap on the wrist to punish Assad for bad behavior, which isn’t the job of the U.S. military. Then he turns around a few days later and says that there is no such thing as a slap on the wrist.

 

This kind of problem should be handled by the UN. If we are going to continue to support this organization we should at least use it for something.

 

With all the talk about what happened and what we should do about it the only person who even bothered to mention the fact that we have used weapons that are far worse than the current chemical weapons was Katrina van den Heuvel and she barely touched on it. Nobody mentioned that both the U.S and Russia still have large deposits of chemical weapons. Ours are in Colorado and Kentucky and still exist despite our signing onto the 1993 accord to eliminate them.

 

Now that Russia has stepped in and tried to negotiate a peaceful solution, Obama may be off the hook. This is a good thing, but to hear the Republican neo com’s tell it, we are a disgraced country because we didn’t get a chance to kill a few thousand more human beings. What the hell is the matter with these people? We have a legit shot at getting these chemical weapons out of play and we can do it without any more collateral damage. That is win-win and you should be able to recognize that, no matter how dumb you are.

 

So Putin is a putz, so what. In this one, sort of important, matter he is doing the right thing. Maybe he is doing it for a selfish reason but that doesn’t matter. It will help us, and everyone who is involved in Syria. That’s the bottom line.

 

Just as important as removing the reason for us to attack Assad’s army it relieves us of the pressure to back any of the non-governmental forces that are attacking Assad until we can ascertain just which ones are worthy of our help and just which ones aren’t going to turn around and attack us as soon as they are in power. Why we haven’t been able to get an answer to that question in almost two years is just one more consummate failure by our intelligence networks. Maybe if they worried a little less about what Americans are saying to each other on their private phones and a little more about what the commanders of the invading forces in Syria are saying to their followers, we’d know a lot more about what the hell is going on over there and who we should be backing.

 

We’ve never been friendly to Assad but that has mostly been because we don’t agree with his policies or his desire to push the military envelope.   We have, in fact, over the years, had a number of instances where his regime has cooperated with our needs. He would love to be friends with us. That’s not true of the people he’s fighting.

 

 

One of the biggest questions about the bombing of Syria is where does it help American interests. The correct answer is… it doesn’t. Our interests are not served by helping the rebels who for the most part are al-Qaeda controlled factions. Why should we help people who want to kill us? Why not back Assad, who is backed by the Alawites and the Christians both of whom are definitely on our side?? The answer to that is the very altruistic; because he is a bad guy who was hurting his people even before this civil war started. But didn’t we learn anything in Iraq?  Sure Saddam Hussein was a monster but what we left behind is a thousand percent worse for the people of Iraq than what they had under Hussein. Plus, the war was destructive of our economy, our world position and ruined thousands of American families. Do we want that to happen again?