What is it with the American
government, its covert services, and military? Have we done such an admirable and
praiseworthy job in Afghanistan, and left a stable, peaceful, and democratic
situation behind in Iraq, that we now want to put that same expertise to work
in Syria? And drag other unwilling nations into the quagmire with us? Has the
summer heat finally gotten to our politicians and military leaders? I’m asking
a lot of questions in this post because our politicians and military haven’t.
Why do we need to stop Assad? We
don’t do jack about Kim Jong Un in North Korea. We don’t do diddley about the daily
killings in Somalia, Sudan or the Democratic Republic of Congo. Look how Ahmadinejad
is no longer considered a big threat. He’s still making the same noise as
before, but we now just consider him a loon, even though his regime has killed hundreds
of Iranians. But let Assad gas his own people, (like Saddam did to the Kurds in
1988 while we stood around with our thumbs jammed up our sphincter…Hell, we
even helped him.) and suddenly, Obama grows a pair and threatens to take our
military into another mess.
Haven’t U.S. politicians learned
anything? Do they understand what George Santayana meant when he said “Those
who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”? This is the
information age, and we’re swamped with information technology, so It’s not
like the facts and statistics from past U.S. misadventures isn’t available, in
an easy-to-read second grade level format (which is the right level for our
Congress and administration), So how are they missing the warning signs to stay
clear of Syria? Does the president think he has a great relationship with
Vladimir Putin and can talk the Russians into staying on the sidelines? Didn’t
John Kerry learn anything about the misapplication of the U.S. military when he
served in Vietnam? Are Syria’s friends in the Middle East (and there are
several) just going to lets us walk in and beat up Assad? Does our military
think that we’ll only lose a few thousand of our men and women in uniform when
we go up against a well-armed military with state-of-the-art Russian hardware,
unlike those backwoods tribal yahoos armed with second-rate black market
weapons in Afghanistan that have cost us a couple thousand casualties? Those
Afghani bumpkins have been easy to subdue in the past ten years; so no doubt, the
Syrians will be a pushover.
Oops, wrong target!
We’ll play it safe and initiate
combat by using our Predators and other drones to selectively take out the
people who are deemed the biggest threats…which has worked so well in Pakistan,
Yemen and Afghanistan with no collateral damage to come back and haunt us. And
when that doesn’t resolve anything, we’re going to put U.S. troops on Syrian
soil…to do what? How will we tell friend from foe? And getting involved in
Syria’s civil war will benefit us how? How many American lives is this
effort worth? When were we given the badge, and the task, to be the world’s
policemen? Team America: World Police was meant to be a crude, funny movie, not
the way the U.S. really operates. And naturally, with our superpower status and
vibrant economy, we’ve got plenty of money to pour down the Syrian rat hole.
Those who think we as a country
need to ‘man up’ and get involved in the Syrian mess should be in the first invasion
wave and put their money (and their lives) where their mouth is. Senator Bill
Nelson (D-Florida), if you REALLY believe we need to go into Syria to stop
Assad from killing his own people, I want to see YOU in uniform, leading the
troops in the front line with your bayoneted rifle poised to kill the first
Syrian who challenges you. And take John Kerry and Obama with you!
