William Rivers Pitt, Truthout:
"A huge majority of the American people is against attacking Syria. Battalions of military experts and advisers are terrified of the prospect ... and more than a few veterans are seething at the idea of launching yet another war while a killer backlog of VA applications languishes unresolved to the terminal detriment of those who bore the brunt of our previous martial adventures."
President Barack Obama, center, with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), left, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in the Cabinet Room at the White House in Washington, Sept. 3, 2013. (Photo: Christopher Gregory / The New York Times)
The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now - with somebody - and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.
- Hunter S. Thompson
John Boehner and Eric Cantor think attacking Syria is a great idea, and have encouraged all congressional Republicans to support President Obama in the upcoming vote to authorize such an action, though they don't intend to actually whip votes or anything. John McCain was for attacking Syria, but against it, yet for it, but refused to vote for it unless his amendment making the resolution more fulsomely war-ish was added to the final text. Sheldon Adelson, the right-wing billionaire who spent $70 million trying to defeat Obama in the 2012 election, is firmly in the president's corner when it comes to saving Syrian civilians by dropping bombs on them.
Boehner, Cantor, Adelson and Obama: if someone showed you a picture of them playing golf together, you'd think it was Photoshopped, because it's just too deranged to be real. But there they are, all four of them, walking shoulder to shoulder towards the precipice of another Middle East conflict, with McCain as usual scurrying to keep up.
Secretary of State John Kerry made it abundantly clear during a congressional hearingon Tuesday that he is ready to ask someone to be the first to die for a mistake, and did so with a barrage of gibberish so vast that it bent the light in the hearing room.
He insisted with table-pounding vehemence that the president is not asking America to go to war by asking America to flip missiles and bombs into Syria, because it totally won't seem like war to us. No one bothered to ask what it will seem like to the people on the receiving end of our non-war armaments. It won't be like war, though, so stop saying that.
He declared that there will be "no boots on the ground" after saying it might be necessary, all the while not bothering to mention that "boots" are almost certainly already on the ground over there, in the form of Special Operations soldiers who are preparing the ground for whatever attack may come.
He, as well as any number of Obama's to-the-knife defenders, filled the air with stentorian declarations that America will not be involving itself in the Syrian civil war by raining bombs down on one side of the Syrian civil war while contemplatingallowing the Pentagon to step up assistance to the other side of the Syrian civil war, because that's totally not getting involved in the Syrian civil war, so stop saying that.
Now, I'm no von Clausewitz, but it seems to me that the military theory here is pretty straightforwardly binary: 0 = no bombs = not involved, 1 = bombs = involved; 0 = no arming the rebels = not involved, 1 = arming the rebels = involved. Trying to argue otherwise amounts to the largest gob of doublespeaking half-assery anyone has heard since White House spokesman Ari Fleischer angrily announced ten years ago that those who wanted to see evidence of WMD in Iraq should go find it themselves...and yes, that actually happened...
Boehner, Cantor, Adelson and Obama: if someone showed you a picture of them playing golf together, you'd think it was Photoshopped, because it's just too deranged to be real. But there they are, all four of them, walking shoulder to shoulder towards the precipice of another Middle East conflict, with McCain as usual scurrying to keep up.
Secretary of State John Kerry made it abundantly clear during a congressional hearingon Tuesday that he is ready to ask someone to be the first to die for a mistake, and did so with a barrage of gibberish so vast that it bent the light in the hearing room.
He insisted with table-pounding vehemence that the president is not asking America to go to war by asking America to flip missiles and bombs into Syria, because it totally won't seem like war to us. No one bothered to ask what it will seem like to the people on the receiving end of our non-war armaments. It won't be like war, though, so stop saying that.
He declared that there will be "no boots on the ground" after saying it might be necessary, all the while not bothering to mention that "boots" are almost certainly already on the ground over there, in the form of Special Operations soldiers who are preparing the ground for whatever attack may come.
He, as well as any number of Obama's to-the-knife defenders, filled the air with stentorian declarations that America will not be involving itself in the Syrian civil war by raining bombs down on one side of the Syrian civil war while contemplatingallowing the Pentagon to step up assistance to the other side of the Syrian civil war, because that's totally not getting involved in the Syrian civil war, so stop saying that.
Now, I'm no von Clausewitz, but it seems to me that the military theory here is pretty straightforwardly binary: 0 = no bombs = not involved, 1 = bombs = involved; 0 = no arming the rebels = not involved, 1 = arming the rebels = involved. Trying to argue otherwise amounts to the largest gob of doublespeaking half-assery anyone has heard since White House spokesman Ari Fleischer angrily announced ten years ago that those who wanted to see evidence of WMD in Iraq should go find it themselves...and yes, that actually happened...
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