Syria-The Pit

 

 

I watched incredulously yesterday as the President came on TV and announced to the world that the United States, acting unilaterally on information that only a three year old child would readily accept, was going to attack Syrian government forces – someday. Then he turned around and announced that he was going to turn the whole thing over to congress and let them decide what to do.

 

So he has turned this entire mess into a political rather than a humanitarian situation. Everyone has been very careful to make sure anyone with any interest knew that this attack, if and when it happened would be severely limited. What the hell is a limited attack? Are we going to drop bombs or leaflets? These people are killing each other left and right. Does anyone really think a symbolic attack on them is going to make any difference at all?

 

It was a pretty bizarre performance, especially after The President had driven himself into a corner by drawing red lines from which he would have found it almost impossible to retreat. One would think that a Chicago politician would have learned something from Al Capone, like never threaten to kill a guy unless you’re up to the job.

 

There are many who believe that what Obama really wants is for congress to turn down the request, which they think would get him off the spot and let him back down from any attacks. If you think that’s a cynical approach, you have probably gone nuts over Secretary of State John Kerry’s interview on This Week with Whoever Shows Up.  I have never heard such unmitigated bullshit in all my life.

 

Kerry doubles down on how clear it is that Assad had attacked his own people with gas but the only evidence so far is that gas was used. We really have no idea who used it. Then Kerry goes on to mention Geneva and the rules of war. If there is any country that shouldn’t be brining up Geneva at his point in history, we are that country. We have violated so many of the Geneva Accords that we have practically written the book on ignoring them.  If we want to pretend to be the good guys we had better start acting like the good guys, even when it doesn’t suit the purposes of the military/industrial complex.

 

Watching the corporate media was pretty embarrassing this morning. Much the same as they did before we attacked Iraq, when the government had sold them on yellowcake being acquired by that dictatorship, the media is now all in on the fact that Assad is the one responsible for the gas attacks.  Meanwhile, no one has been able to prove that Assad did this.  Maybe he did, in fact probably he did, but knowing the moral stature of the people who are fighting against Assad, is it so hard to believe that one of them was the one that used the gas, understanding that we would automatically look to Assad as the perpetrator. The only one of many who had their say this morning, who seems to have given this concept any credence was Peggy Noonan, a reporter to whom I usually ascribe bad intentions but who, in this case, I think may be on the right track.

 

Of course no one has asked the question, why did Assad do this? He was gaining ground in the fight and the outside forces seemed to have decided not to get any more involved, which was to his advantage.  Why would he shake the hornet’s nest? It doesn’t make sense. All he had to do was keep punching with his legitimate forces and it looked very much like he would have won.

 

Does anyone think that the powers in Iran wouldn’t find it advantageous to have created this attack themselves just to force America’s hand.

 

It goes without saying that we have no business getting involved with Syria or any other Middle-Eastern country. For God’s sake, haven’t we learned anything in the last ten years? Obviously Barak hasn’t. He’s been breaking his ass to get us out of Iraq and now Afghanistan and still he talks about turning around and getting us into the mess that is Syria?

 

Of course it’s quite obvious that he’s really just blowing smoke. If he really wanted to back up his red line blunder we would already have been bombing Damascus. So it’s really clear that he has brought congress into the picture, knowing full well that nothing will get done. I mean they’ve been at it for five years of his presidency and they have produced a huge zero. The chances of them getting together and putting out something usable on this are zero and minus one..

 

But why is this even a consideration?  The use of gas was first reported by Doctors Without Borders, the most reputable of sources, but they couldn’t tell who had been the user. Had it actually been Assad’s forces or had it been one of the many, blood thirsty rebel bands looking to force us into the conflict? So far, no one really knows and the UN investigation is still trying to find out if gas has actually been used. They will never advance to who used it.

 

Then, of course there’s the question of why gas is such a pariah? There are any number of other weapons that kill you just as dead and cause a death that is just as horrible. Napalm, which we used extensively in Vietnam and all the way back to WWII is at least as horrible as gas. One of our current favorites, is depleted uranium, which we have used to create weapons that not only kill our enemies but also any civilians who come through the area after its use and to a great extent our own soldiers. It is depleted uranium weapons that were the basis for Gulf War Syndrome. Despite knowing this we continue to use this heinous substance, so where do we get off putting down the Syrians for using gas?

 

The bottom line, of course, is that this is another war between a degenerate dictator and his own people, now expanded to include elements from every crazy tribe and jihadist Muslim faction that has an ax to grind and a gun to shoot. It’s only our greed for oil that keeps us involved in this ridiculous part of the world, an area that still exists in the fourth century BC. Regardless which side we decide to support in any action, we are, in fact, supporting men who hate women, education, intelligent thought, anyone who isn’t a Muslim and us. Is it really worth it?

 

If only we had the intelligence to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, to develop energy sources that didn’t depend on oil, so that we could just abandon these sub-human creeps to their never ending sand dunes and love affairs with goats.

 

Despite the current warnings, no one in the world except us is dumb enough to get into a war with or over any of these false nations. We keep wanting them to become democracies, which is the ultimate brain dead concept. These are people who only flourish under strong dictators. Given their warlike ways their government structures tend to degenerate into chaos. Just look at Egypt, the most civilized of these barbarian states. They finally got an elected president and no sooner did he get in office then he turned into a dictator himself. This has led to a military takeover and now murder in the streets. We may have been appalled by Saddam Hussein and his nut cake sons but Iraq was a hell of a lot better with him than it has become without him and we will probably find the same thing true of Syria if they ever get Assad out of power.

 

Of course the biggest argument for intervention or just military action is humanitarian. There’s nothing like pictures of dying kids to get us involved but if we do react to this bait we have to ask why we haven’t reacted to the atrocities that have been going on in Africa for the past two decades, why we haven’t gotten involved in the problems of the Uighurs and China’s attempts to annihilate them or any number of other groups that the Chinese find annoying.

 

The fact is that there are people in jeopardy all over the world and  despite the fact that we are the richest and most powerful nation in that world we can’t solve all their problems if we want to stay that way.  At least we can’t do it by starting wars with every piece of garbage that acts like a crazed rattlesnake. There are other ways to get what we want and until we are smart enough to figure out what they are and until we stop being led by people to whom the economic bottom line is the only answer, we will never be able to solve these problems because we will never be acting from a place of moral certitude.