Some 50
State Department officials have signed a memo calling on President Obama to
launch air and missile strikes on the Damascus regime of Bashar Assad.
A “judicious use of stand-off and air weapons,” they claim,
“would undergird and drive a more focused and hard-nosed U.S.-led diplomatic
process.”
In brief, to strengthen the hand of our diplomats and show we
mean business, we should start bombing and killing Syrian soldiers.
Yet Syria has not attacked
us. And Congress has not declared war on Syria, or authorized an attack. Where
do these State hawks think President Obama gets the authority to launch a war
on Syria?
Does State consider the Constitution to be purely advisory when
it grants Congress the sole power to declare war? Was not waging aggressive war
the principal charge against the Nazis at Nuremberg?
If U.S. bombs and missiles rain down on Damascus, to the cheers
of the C-Street Pattons, what do we do if Bashar Assad’s allies Iran and
Hezbollah retaliate with Benghazi-type attacks on U.S. diplomats across the
Middle East?
What do we do if Syrian missiles and Russian planes starting
shooting down U.S. planes?
Go to war with Hezbollah, Iran, and Russia?
Assume U.S. strikes break
Syria’s regime and Assad falls and flees. Who fills the power vacuum in
Damascus, if not the most ruthless of the terrorist forces in that country,
al-Nusra, and ISIS?
Should ISIS reach Damascus first, and a slaughter of Alawites
and Christians ensue, would we send an American army to save them?
According to CIA Director John Brennan, ISIS is spreading and
coming to Europe and America. Does it make sense then that we would launch air
and missile strikes against a Syrian regime and army that is today the last
line of defense between ISIS and Damascus?
Does anyone think these things through?
Wherever, across the Middle East, we have plunged into wage war —
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Syria — people continue to suffer and die, and
we are ensnared.
Have we not fought enough wars in this Godforsaken region?
Last week, Russian planes launched air strikes on the rebels in
Syria whom we have been arming and training to overthrow Assad.
Said John Kerry, “Russia
needs to understand that our patience is not infinite.” But why are we arming
rebels to overthrow Assad?
Who rises if he falls?
Moscow’s alliance with Damascus goes back decades. Syria provides Russia with a
naval base in the Mediterranean. Vladimir Putin’s support for the embattled
Syrian regime in the civil war being waged against it is legal under
international law.
It is our policy that appears
questionable.
Where did Obama get the right to arm and train rebels to dump
over the Damascus regime? Did Congress authorize this insurrection? Or is this just
another CIA-National Endowment for Democracy project?
Why are we trying to bring down Assad, anyhow?
U.S. foreign policy today seems unthinking, reactive, impulsive.
Last week, 31,000 NATO troops conducted exercises in Poland and
the Baltic republics, right alongside the border with Russia.
For the first time since 1945, German tanks appeared in Poland.
Now we are planning to base four NATO battalions — one U.S.-led,
one British, one German, and perhaps one Canadian, as the French and Italians
are balking at being part of a tripwire for war.
How would we react if 31,000 Russian, Chinese, Cuban, Iranian
and North Korean troops conducted military exercises across from El Paso and
Brownsville, Texas?
How would we react if each of those countries left behind a
battalion of troops to prevent a repeat of General “Black Jack” Pershing’s
intervention in Mexico in 1916?
Americans would be apoplectic.
Nor are some Europeans enthusiastic about confronting Moscow.
German Foreign Minister
Frank-Walter Steinmeier called the NATO exercises “warmongering” and
“saber-rattling.” He adds, “Anyone who believes that symbolic tank parades on
the alliance’s eastern border will increase security is wrong. We would
be well-advised not to deliver any excuses for a new, old confrontation.”
Not only is Steinmeier’s Social Democratic Party leery of any
new Cold War with Russia, so, too, is the German Left Party, and the anti-EU
populist party Alternative for Germany, which wants closer ties to Russia and
looser ties to the United States.
This month, we sent the USS Porter into the Black Sea. Why? Says
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, “to deter potential aggression.”
While there is the talk of a NATO Black Sea fleet, Bulgaria, one
of the three NATO Black Sea nations, appears to want no part of it.
The European Union also just voted to extend sanctions on Russia
for annexing Crimea and supporting separatists in Ukraine.
Donald Trump calls the NATO
alliance a rip-off, a tripwire for World War III and “obsolete.” Hillary
Clinton compares Putin’s actions in Ukraine to Hitler’s actions in Germany in
the early 1930s.
Looking for a four-year faceoff
with a nuclear-armed Russia?
Hillary’s the one!
