Monday, September 23, 2013

Week of 09/23/2013

No, Syria Was NOT Ours To Solve
– by David Matthews 2

Well it appears that we just dodged a bullet concerning the mess with Syria.

Instead of dropping bombs and firing missiles, we’re sending diplomats and firing off terms to negotiate how Russia will handle Syria’s weapons of mass destruction.  The guys that helped make the mess and encouraged the mess are supposedly going to oversee cleaning up the mess.

That’s good.  That’s called responsibility.  You’d think that the cons and neo-cons would be all for that, right?

So we should be breathing a sigh of relief right now.  We’re not having to get involved in yet another Middle East conflict.  We’re not having to put planes in the air and firing off missiles and hearing the daily body count from the air-fluffed ego-driven media.

Have you noticed that the price of gasoline has dropped since we backed away from the brink?  Big Oil doesn’t have the excuse to pilfer the average American like they’ve been doing with every Middle East crisis.  Some sheik stubs his toe and the price at the pump goes up a few pennies per gallon.  Some warlord threatens to unleash hell and gas prices soar.  But now that we’re not bombing, the prices are going down.

That’s good, right?

Hey, we defied the script!  That is not easy to do!  This is the same script that drove us into Iraq.  That told us that we had to get involved with Libya.  That tells us that we need to confront North Korea whenever their egomaniacal leadership feels a little neglected.  That always looks for new battles for us to fight around the world and tells us that “only we” can fight these battles.  “Only we” can save the world.  “Only we” can “police” it.

We actually said “No” to that script!  We told the FoxNews “experts” and the bloodlust chickenhawks to go pound sand.  Good for us!  That’s long overdue!

Well now we have to hear the whining from those behind the script.  The people that were denied their self-promised “blood and treasure”.

They tell us that Syria should have been “ours” to solve.  That we “should have” been the ones to step in and held their strongman to account for his criminal acts.  After all, it was President Barack Obama that drew that supposed “red line” and promised action if Syria’s thug Bashar Assad used chemical weapons on his own people.  “The world” supposedly turned to the United States for action, not Russia.  And what did we do?  We handed it off to Russia, the very country that supplied Assad with his weapons and then blocked any action from the United Nations.

It was “ours to win” say the defenders of the script.  How dare Obama deprive them of their “win”!

No, they’re wrong.  Dead wrong. 

Let’s get brutally honest here… Syria was never “ours to win”.  And it was never “ours to win” for many reasons.

First of all, what the hell were we supposed to “win” anyway?  At least with Iraq, the script argued that there was oil.  Granted, any promise of oil was thrown down the toilet later on, but at least there was supposedly something for America to gain with Iraq.

What are we supposed to gain in Syria?  Huh?  Is there some sort of hidden cache of money?  Maybe the body of Jimmy Hoffa?  Amelia Earhart’s plane?  Joseph Smith’s Golden Plates?

Remember all of those “weapons of mass destruction” that the people behind the script swore on a stack of bibles were in Iraq ten years ago?  How many did we actually find?  Try one.  And it was one that we didn’t even know Saddam Hussein had!

So what is it that we would have “won”?

Ego.  That is all that we would have “won”.

This was all so a gang of preening former soldiers can bring in a paycheck as “military advisors” to Fox News; second-guessing the actual generals and armchair-quarterbacking foreign policy from the comforts of their cushy special interest offices.  It’s so chickenhawk politicians can beat their chests and preach like dimestore ministers about “American Exceptionalism” and “Manifest Destiny”, all the while complaining that Obama wasn’t “doing enough”.

The argument could have been made that Syria was “our” conflict to join in… back when it was a simple act of revolt against Assad’s rule.  Back when the chief organizers and encouragers of that revolt were pushing for a more democratic system of government… you know, the kind of system that we here in America pretend to share with that whole “American Exceptionalism” delusion.

Unfortunately for us, at that time, the people behind the same script were telling us that the revolt was a “bad thing”.  It seems these supposed “experts” can’t tell the difference between the Arab Spring – the people behind the push for more-secular democratic governing in the Middle East – and the Muslim Brotherhood, who want Islamic-dominated theocracies.  So when the Arab Spring people were pushing the Middle East towards more-secular democracies, the people behind the script were saying “No!  These are Muslim Brotherhood people!  We hate these people!  We can’t let them win!”

So we sat on our hands when the revolt was one we could have made a difference in.  And now that it’s become a mess, the script changes and now we are “supposed” to get involved.

Isn’t it funny how the people behind the script were telling us not to get involved when it could have really mattered, then turned around and told us we “needed” to get involved when it became a huge fuster-cluck.  It’s almost as if they really want America to fail, doesn’t it?  After all, it would be on Obama’s head if it did, right?  You know, the Nobel Peace Prize recipient being dragged into yet another military conflict.

But, thankfully, we don’t have to worry about that now, because we’ve passed the burden off to the Russians. 

Let’s have the Chippendale-wannabe Vlad Putin put his and his country’s reputations on the line in the global arena for once.  If he fails, then at least the people behind the script will be ready, willing, and eager to say “We told you so”.  And then the next time trouble raises its ugly head, Putin won’t be so eager to complain about America’s self-appointed role as the world’s policeman.

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