Political Class Insanity Special Edition Part 2: Syrian Madness, McCain Plays Video Games, Obama Fails To Plan, and Other Insults

Today is the second in a special series of posts we are doing on the political class insanity about Syria. Most informed Americans know that President Obama is itching to send U.S. military resources into action to teach the Syrian government a lesson for allegedly using poison gas on some of its citizens. As we discussed yesterday in detail, the reason for his desire is that he issued an idle threat to the government of Syria about a year ago, his now infamous “red line” ultimatum, i.e. if Syria poison gassed its own people that would be bad and incur Obama’s wrath.

The problem with issuing this ultimatum, as we discussed yesterday, is that the President never took the time or effort to establish a plan to operationalize his threat. Now, he is standing in front of the world with egg on his face with no plan and no strategy, trying to convince the world that our military should be drawn into a vicious civil war in a Middle East country. 

Yesterday’s post with more details on how he got us into this pretty untenable position can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/09/political-class-insanity-special.html

Today and over the next few days we will continue to review why this is such a stupid idea, sending us into war in Syria, how idiotic some of our politicians have acted with regard to this crisis, how Obama’s desire to shoot missiles makes no sense, and what others in the world are saying about this problem and why military action is NOT the answer.

1) This issue is probably one of the biggest foreign relations problems that this nation has had to face in many years. Military personnel are being put at risk. Taxpayer dollars are being diverted to go to war. Congressional members are in heated debate with each other and members of the administration on the issues.

And Senator John McCain, one of the Senate’s biggest proponents of going to war in Syria, was recently caught on film by Washington Post reporter Melina Mara….playing online poker on his smartphone the middle of the Senate hearings on whether or not to attack Syria. One of the biggest issues of our time and he thinks it is fine to play a video game while lives are at stake.

And to add insult to injury, once the Post pictures were made public, McCain actually made light of the incident by Tweeting, "Scandal! Caught playing iPhone game at 3+ hour Senate hearing - worst of all I lost!" Talk about disgraceful, talk about condescending, this is pathetic. 

Lives hang in the balance he gets sarcastic after getting caught being distracted by such an important Senate debate and eventual decisions. These are the types of people that are leading the country today, the types of people that do not even have enough attention span to engage in a life and death matter.

2) The Heritage Foundation did a nice job with a recent posting where it laid out five questions that the administration needs to answer or clarify because the current status of information does not make sense:

- On August 31, 2013 and September 1, 2013, the President repeatedly stated that any U.S. military operation against Syria would be “narrow and limited” and would not involve troops on the ground. But when the administration put together a draft Congressional resolution that outlined how we would attack Syria, the resolution stated that the purpose of the U.S. military action is to “prevent or deter the use or proliferation” of weapons of mass destruction or to “protect the United States and its allies and partners against the threat posed by such weapons.” This is a very broad objective, it is not narrow and limited.

Narrow and limited military strikes are very unlikely to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons stocks or delivery capacity since the Syrian government has now had more than a week, or a year, to move and protect those chemical weapons and other military hardware. So what is it, narrow and limited or wipe out the Syrian chemical weapons capability. You cannot have both, and given the warning we have given the Syrian government of our attack intentions, Obama will likely get neither.

- But U.S. military strikes are not the only entanglement that Obama wants to create for us in Syria. The administration reportedly intends to do “more for the Syrian rebels,” including providing arms. 

But given that the Syrian rebels are fighting beside Islamist extremists, some of whom have ties to al-Qaeda, how does the administration plan to arm the “good” rebels but not the “bad” rebels. So far, that little snafu has not been ironed out. If it does not get done properly, we could be providing military hardware to the very people that blew up the World Trade Center and hit the Pentagon on 9-11.

- The Administration assesses “with high confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year, including in the Damascus suburbs.” However, these earlier attacks did not result in a military response from the U.S. Thus, why now and why because of just the latest alleged gas attack?  Arbitrary enforcement of a “red line” or any ultimatum is not a convincing argument.

- The President stated in late August that the Syrians’ behavior regarding the potential gassing of its own citizens was national security threat to the U.S. But he never said what that threat was except in the broadest and vaguest terms possible, as if we should just take his word for it. 

He also stated that we need to militarily attack to discourage other fiends around the world from getting into the chemical warfare game. But it is highly doubtful that a “narrow and limited” attack over a period of a couple of days is 1) going to make us more secure and 2) is going to discourage any madman from getting into chemical weapons if the only world answers to such a move is a few cruise missiles.

- The final Heritage point is one we covered yesterday. With the exception of France, Obama has not built any kind of allied, United Nations, or international coalition partnership to help us out in this self created crisis. He is trying to lead the charge up the hill while those he would like to have allies are staying back in their fox holes, not seeing this charade as worthwhile or likely to do any good.

Heritage tied these serious shortcomings of the administration’s thought processes very nicely and accurately: “The Obama Administration’s Syria policy has been disturbingly ad hoc and reactive. The Administration has not clearly explained why it must act at this time when earlier incidents did not require action, how its proposed actions will achieve its stated objectives, and what its plans are if the military strikes do not succeed in achieving those objectives. Answers to these and other questions are vital if Congress is to take its responsibilities seriously.”

Given that a high ranking Senator like John McCain would rather play video games than take this potential war situation seriously, I am not sure that Congress is ready, willing, and able to take the situation seriously. Also, based on these five issues, it is quite apparent the administration has not been ready, willing, and able to do their homework to properly address and resolve the issues of military intervention.

3) Ron Paul, former U.S. Congressman and Presidential candidate, recently had three insightful observations/warnings about this crisis that Obama’s careless red line threat has caused:

• “We are not really positive who set off the gas. The group that is most likely to benefit from that is Al-Qaida. They ignite some gas; some people die and blame it on Assad.”
• “Assad, I don’t think, is an idiot. I don’t think he would do this on purpose in order for the whole world to come down on him.”
• “What if there is an accident and 100 Russians get killed by our bombs? Who knows? Some type of unintended consequences. Wars always expand because of unintended consequences. They always provide short-term war. Just think of all the promises over in Iraq: short term; not much money; it’s over; we’ll get that oil. And don’t believe it.” 

Another view from a politician that has always been leery, and correct, about getting involved in other people’s business. What if we do kill some Russian citizens that are working for the Russian government in Syria? What if we end up with a stray missile that lands in the center of a residential area and which would likely kill far more Syrians than died in the alleged gas attack? What if Assad is actually a rationale tyrant who knew he was winning the civil war and would be crazy to get involved in such an attack? 

So many questions and so few answers on such an important issue.

4) Speaking of killing civilians, this issue has always bothered me. Best estimates say that over 100,000 Syrians have died as a result of the civil war. This war has been going on for years. These people died from gun shots, mortar rounds, artillery rounds, torture, etc. Why is it so important to inject ourselves into this civil war now? If the 400 or 1,400 people (various estimates) had not been killed by poison gas but by artillery shells, would we not be having this discussion and issue? 

Are Obama, Kerry, McCain and others  saying it is okay to kill someone with a mortar round but we need to get involved when it is allegedly poison gas? Unnecessary death is unnecessary death. If the administration and others had been this concerned about any civilian deaths than maybe they should have addressed the issue years ago before 100,000 people died.

Okay, heavy duty stuff and we are still not done reviewing all of the issues and opinions and ramifications of going to war, again, in the Middle East, a foreign policy strategy that has NEVER worked out well. More to follow tomorrow. In the meantime, if you agree that this insanity must stop, I urge you to call your Congressional representatives now before they decide military action, limited and useless as it is, has any merit at all.

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