The curious case of Syria.

Much has been said about the soon-to-be inevitable strike against Syria, but I do want to add a few rambling thoughts.   Clearly the situation has been bothersome enough for me to emerge from a long slumber, hopefully some readership still exists!

While the fusion of two parties into one giant monolithic warfare-welfare state is now a foregone conclusion, several interesting arguments have come up that I would love to scribble about.  

Argument #1:  Obama does not need to seek Congressional authorization, but now that he has, he is a great president. 

First of all, just because there is precedent does not make the precedent noble.  Bush got authorization for Iraq and look what happened.  An open-ended conflict that dragged on longer than world war 2, the result of which is unclear at best.  Just last weekend, explosions rocked Baghdad as a result of sectarian violence.   Whether we bomb them, invade them or import our brand of democracy - the cultural differences of an area as diverse as that of the Middle East is too difficult for us to overcome. 

Second of all, Obama was more than ready to act solo, even as our steadfast ally across the pond bailed.  In fact, Obama changed his mind in the very last minute.  My hunch is that the change of heart came about due to popular opposition, with polls showing overwhelming and lopsided support to seek authorization.  

Third of all, Obama is a giant hypocrite:

The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation. -- Candidate Obama, 2007

Of course, he was smart enough to realize that the anti-war sheep that got him elected will support him no matter what - I kind of doubt that his base is rushing out to their cars to peel off their coexist stickers. 

Argument #2:  America must act to stop a humanitarian disaster, the use of chemical weapons is abhorrent and cannot be condoned.

Indeed the use of chemical weapons is awful, disgusting and heart wrenching.  Unfortunately the claim that we must act because 1,400 innocents perished is ridiculous on its face.  For starters, the death toll for the Syrian civil war allegedly stands at over 100,000 dead.  Hundreds of thousands displaced, ripped from their homes and forced to survive in refugee camps.  Entire cities have been demolished, turned into husks with no life other than roaming resistance fighters and military personnel.   One would think, that if America was going to act on the behalf of the civilian, then the time to do so would have been months if not years ago?

However, far more interesting of a question that I have seen seldom asked - why *this* particular chemical attack!?  Obama, Kerry and others like to cite to the public this notion that Syria violated the international agreement regarding the usage of chemical weapons.  Interesting.

However, when Saddam Hussein violated the very same international standard and gassed four times as many people as did Assad in the Kurdish town of Halabja (over 10,000 dead/injured/mutilated) - nothing happened.   In fact, the Halabja gassing is now considered to be a genocide, and nothing happened!   Yet Assad, who may or may not have deployed chemical weapons is going to be on the receiving end of cruise missiles?  

Or is it far more likely, that at the time when Saddam gassed the Kurds, he was too much of a strategic ally against Iran and therefore no response was required?  Whereas now, Assad being an important ally of the current Iranian regime seems like a perfect target.  

Indeed, comparing the two incidents alone, one can easily conclude that attacking a dictator has precious little to do with humanitarian reasons, and everything to do with protecting the infamous and impossible to define "American interests".

More simply put, over the course of  5 decades there have been numerous civil wars and atrocities across the world - such is human nature - for us to intervene when a magical humanitarian line is crossed would be ruinous and the end of our country.  Nothing is more expensive than war. 

Argument #3:  These anti-war and isolationist arguments are selfish, imagine if people like you were around in World War II, what would have happened to the Jews!?

Love this one!  

Let us be super clear.  America has every right to defend itself and indeed, like candidate Obama eloquently stated, Congress can even be bypassed in order to prevent an imminent attack.  Pray tell, how or why is America in danger due to Assad's use of chemical weapons?  This is without even mentioning the fact that this is not the first time the Syrians have been accused of using chemical warfare,  it just happens to be the biggest use of it so far.

As far as the Holocaust.  Well, this can easily balloon into a separate post, but America did NOT invade Europe to save the Jews.  Anyone who thinks that is sipping way too much kool-aid.  FDR could care less about the Jews, his refusal to bomb Auschwitz is evidence of that alone.  In fact, one could make a very simple argument that stopping a raging Nazi lunatic is indeed in the best interest of the country, although my personal opinion is that Normandy was invaded to stop Stalin, not Hitler.   More on that, perhaps at another time.

Argument #4:  This is a very limited engagement, with no boots on the ground and will be an effective mechanism to teach Assad a lesson.

That is called wishful thinking.  Once the authority has been granted, this will turn into an open-ended conflict regardless of what kind of language Congress uses.  Just today, our illustrious and brilliant former MA senator had the following to say: 

But, “In the event Syria imploded for instance or in the event there was a threat of a chemical weapons cache falling into the hands of al-Nusra or someone else and it was clearly in the interest of our allies — all of us, the British, the French, and others,” Kerry said, “I don’t want to take off the table an option that might or might not be available to the president of the United States to secure our country.”

There are exactly two reasons for Kerry saying that:

1) He realizes that if our engagement is limited to just air strikes, then Assad simply waits it out and continues on his merry way.  We have no leverage and look limp and ineffective.

2) He is just scaring the Syrians into thinking we would actually be dumb enough to put boots on the ground, but in reality there is no plan for any such action - and the administration hopes that 50 tomahawk missiles will inspire Assad to behave rationally.

Either way, there is no real reason why our involvement would change one damn thing!   If, Syria implodes, and we get sucked into another ground war then god help us.  Other than Krugman's Keynesian wet dream coming true, only further suffering awaits us.