SYRIA

THIS IS THE TEXT OF MY LATEST BLOG POST FOR THE BUCKS COUNTY TIMES.

AMERICAN CREDULITY ON SYRIA

Thomas O. Meehan

9/4/13

We’ve all experienced people of limited self control who make the same mistakes over and over.  The fact that our government is one such, is frightening.  I have been watching the Senate and House committee hearing on a joint resolution for military action against Syria.  It seems that the Senate is leaning toward giving our President what he wants.  The House is in question.  What does the President want?  He wants accomplices to his own folly.

The arguments made with considerable bombast by Secretary Kerry do not deserve analysis.  His categorization of congressional upholders of prudence as “Armchair Isolationists.”  

This deadly mummery began when the President, who notoriously lacks both interest in foreign affairs and experience thereof, appointed Liberal Internationalist Feminists to be the Secretary of State, UN Ambassador, and senior State Department Officials.  A commonplace saying is, if women ran the world there would be no wars.  We can safely discount that now.  From Madeline Albright’s thirst for Serbian blood, to Hillary Clintons cackling over Ghaddafi’s lynching, we now have ample examples of power mad female warmongers.  And they Isn’t pretty. 

So our President, when he Isn’t golfing or lecturing us as though we are his pupils,  acceded to pressure from women who never heard a shot fired in anger, but who can’t resist the temptation to show how tough they are.  This, and his personal compunction toward self righteous posturing, led him to involve himself in issues far beyond his competence.  To wit, Syria.

The President has involved our country in the internal affairs of Syria, another sovereign state. It never occurs to him that we are not the guarantees of Syrian civil liberties anymore than the Syrians are the guarantor of ours.  As a creature of the American Academy he reflexively sympathizes with protestors in the street over established authority.  So he sides with the Syrian Opposition, even though it includes al Queda.  Ever the orator, he confuses his leanings with our actual interests and calls for the ouster of the Syrian President.  Why the legitimacy of Assad is his or our business is never explained.  Assad, not surprisingly, prefers to survive and continues his part of the civil war.  The President throws the war harpies a bone by sneaking supplies to the rebels.  Pressed further, he starts drawing red lines.  Assad still prefers to survive and some of these lines are, or seem to be, crossed.  Obama, drawn on by his own rhetoric, now finds himself calling for military action.  Bomber Obama is now the war leader without actual justification or enthusiasm.  He is no longer grading papers and pontificating.  He has talked himself into a real conflict, and he senses that some blood may splash onto his golf shoes.  This Isn’t in his comfort zone.  What to do?

Just as Bill Clinton’s first inclination is to lie, Obama’s is to obfuscate and sucker others into sharing the burden of his mistakes.  He has quailed at his use of arms and needs to hide his loss of nerve.  Where better to hide than among our congressmen?   So many of these characters have been bought by the Israel Lobby that the President just might get his way.  It is no secret that the Israel Lobby sees the Syrian Civil War as a vehicle for the advancement of Israeli interests.  They control Senators McCain and Graham; also Congressmen Cantor and Boehner along with a great many others.  They will primary challenge any member of Congress who fails to follow their line.  You can hear their talking points in the mouths of “Our” representatives with disgusting regularity.

The Administration is reduced to saying that “American Credibility” is on the line; I’d say more like American Credulity.  The President has gotten himself into this fiasco.  What credibility will we have if we actually go to war to save the face of a man who has already lost it?    

The American public that the Congress supposedly represents is against another Middle East war.  The American public can only ask, what’s in it for us?  The answer that no one in power is honest enough to give is,... nothing.   Let’s see who Congress really represents in this matter.