It is highly instructive that when General Martin Dempsey of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was asked in Congress this week, just what it was that (the administration) was seeking, he couldn't answer the question. To do so, he would have had to turn to President Obama and pass the question to him. And Obama wouldn't have answered it either.
Look how has Obama has waffled and wandered all over the map. After proclaiming last year that any use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime would be a "game changer", Assad (presumably) went ahead and did it. Now Obama wants to act, but he sees that he has next to no support. So what is it he wants to do/? Well, we are not going to put boots on the ground even though a "top secret" analysis provided by his crack intelligence team of John Brennan, Jim Clapper, and Susan Rice has concluded that it would take 75,000 troops to secure the chemical weapons sites. Nor are we seeking regime change although Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry have been saying for over a year now that Assad "must go". It seems now that Obama is desperately trying to find international and congressional support for firing a shot over Syria's bow to warn them not to do it again. What kind of policy is this?
Add to that all the possible consequences of Iran and Russia getting involved, who we will be supporting, who might attack Israel, and how this could escalate into the next, Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya, and it is clear that Obama is way in over his head. he knows it. Congress knows it. We all know it. Obama has put his country's prestige on the line and now that everybody is laughing at us, some feel the need to pull his chestnuts out of the fire and support him.
It still comes down to this: We need to learn our lesson about this part of the world, which we still have yet to do. There is only one civilized and friendly country in the region; Israel. It is time to stop sacrificing our blood and treasure trying to bring the 20th century to the region-let alone the 21st century. However, there is one clash we will not be able to avoid-unless the Iranian people-succeed in toppling the mullahs from power. We need to focus on Iran and their nuclear weapons capability instead of wasting our time on hellholes like Syria. Right now, there are multiple groups of bad guys all trying to kill each other in Syria (including Iranians) and doing a pretty good job of it. We can't do anything about it nor I suspect, should we. Yet this president wants to insert us in the middle of what is largely a sectarian war between Sunnis and Alawites. I strongly suspect this is really part of his support for the Muslim Brotherhood.
That is reason enough for Congress to keep us out of this war.
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Peggy Noonan writes in the WSJ
"In the Syria argument, the moderating influence is the public, which doesn't seem to have even basic confidence in Washington's higher wisdom.
That would be a comment on more than Iraq. That would be a comment on the past five years, too."
It is a much longer argument with more observations and examples.
Again from the Peggy Noonan analysis:
"The administration has no discernible strategy. A small, limited strike will look merely symbolic, a face-saving measure. A strong, broad strike opens the possibility that the civil war will end in victory for those as bad as or worse than Assad. And time has already passed. Assad has had a chance to plan his response, and do us the kind of damage to which we would have to respond.
There is the issue of U.S. credibility. We speak of this constantly and in public, which has the effect of reducing its power. If we bomb Syria, will the world say, "Oh, how credible America is!" or will they say, "They just bombed people because they think they have to prove they're credible"?
We are, and everyone knows we are, the most militarily powerful and technologically able nation on earth. And at the end of the day America is America. We don't have to bow to the claim that if we don't attack Syria we are over as a great power."
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We may need to send those 75,000 troops. If Assad falls, and if those chemical weapons are about to fall into the hands of al Qaeda, THAT might put the security of the United States at issue.
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