No big surprises

Well, no surprise that all the politicians in Washington thought bombing the Middle East back to the Dark Ages was a swell idea.  Also no surprise that they did it as an amendment to a "must pass" spending bill, with no record of votes for or against the war.  Once again, we see the most cowardly Congress in history, with no courage in their convictions, and plenty of willingness to kill brown people.

Not even a peace treaty between ISIL and other, various Syrian opposition groups (you know, the people we were going to be training to go after ISIL) was enough to get the politicians to rethink their strategy.

"Third time's the charm" for war in/around Iraq, I guess.

I don't understand it.  A pure bombing campaign (which, with the treaty with the Syrian opposition, is all with which we're left) is useless.  It'll kill some people, but also ensure plenty of new recruits.  It might hinder their operations a bit, but won't ever get them to stop what they're doing.

And apparently the killing started today.  I hope they can do a much better job of avoiding killing innocent bystanders than has been the case over the last... many years.

And it all goes to hell

I alluded to the attacks of Israel on Gaza, a few days ago.  Well, the one part I didn't know at the time was that Hamas was firing missiles at Israel.  I don't think it changes the entire equation, but it's certainly a stupid (if understandable, given their frustration at not being able to control their own homes) provocation for a situation that didn't need any more.

But on the flip side, Israel has now also attacked such insurgent hotbeds as hospitals (to much lower casualties than I would have expected, though I imagine it's "the gift that keeps on giving" as the Palestinians have less ability to treat people wounded in the assault now).

As you'd probably expect, casualties are running about 20:1 Palestinian vs Israeli (honestly, that's a lower ratio than I'd've expected, given that Israel is using tanks and airplanes, while Palestinians are using unguided rockets and handguns).

The one thing I can't figure out is what is the endgame that Israel envisions.  This is supposedly deterrent for three teenagers killed by a radical fringe group.  When does it stop?

And do they really think that this will stop radical fringe groups like that?  I'd bet it gave groups like that virtually unlimited volunteers for further mayhem.

But to get back to Israel's calculus, when do they stop?  They've already passed 100:1 killing of Palestinians vs the three Israeli teens who were the justification for the attack (in fact, my numbers are from this morning's Post, and I wouldn't be surprised if they've cleared 200:1 by now).  Do they stop at 1000:1?  10000:1?  When they've pushed everyone in Gaza into an area of a few acres?  I don't know, but this kind of mass killing is just horrific.

Syria-l notes

I've been forgetting, for quite a while now, to note one thing about the chemical weapons debates ongoing in Syria.  And that is that inspectors are supposed to remove existing chemical weapons (which I have no doubt of their ability to do), but also to remove the ability to make more.

This latter I am extremely skeptical of: if this is even possible, then it absolutely destroys any chance of Russia's claims of rebel-based launching of the August attacks.  If the rebels have the equipment to make sarin gas (as has been claimed), then the government will certainly be able to do it, no matter what the chemical weapons inspectors do.

I guess we'll see.

And in other news of Syria's devolution into a third-world country, polio is making a comeback there.  NPR was reporting, earlier today, that there have been fourteen (I think) cases very recently, as a result of the breakdown of their extremely good pre-war vaccination program.  I feel even more sorry for the children over there.  With apologies to Dr Seuss, let's hope that vaccinations are still widespread enough to keep the outbreak from biggerer and biggerering.

Whithering war?

I'm sort of wondering what's going on in Syria, now.  Assad's regime is saying they'll hand over their chemical weapons, and the UN will destroy them, and somehow make sure he can't make any more.

It's that latter part that seems terribly ridiculous, to me.  I don't know a whole lot about chemical weapons, but I can't see how that's possible.  If it's even remotely feasible for the rebels to have chemical weapons, as Assad and the Russians have been asserting, then there's no way they could ever remove Assad's ability to make more.  So I think there's some smoke-blowing going on there.

I am glad to see that Iran is at the bargaining table, and some interesting things came out of that, I think.

For one thing, it shows that the sanctions are achieving their intended effect.  For another, we (or at least I) learned a bit more about Iran's backing of Assad.  Iran, apparently, didn't want chemical weapons used for two reasons.  One, they have a lot of memories of Saddam using chemical weapons on them in the Iran/Iraq war, and two, they didn't want the Americans to get involved in Syria.

It's that latter point, especially with Iran pushing them, that makes me think that maybe Assad's agreement on the chemical weapons isn't just a delaying tactic.  I'm not sure it isn't, but I think it's at least possible that he's geniune.  He certainly doesn't want America to enter the conflict openly.

Most likely, America getting involved would cause all hell to break loose, in all kinds of unpredictable ways, but the one thing that would be pretty predictable is that Assad would be gone.  So he certainly doesn't want that.

So, having said all that, I can't say as I have a good feel for what's coming, but I'm damned glad to see that we aren't going to war again in the near term.  And there are even reasons to be optimistic.  Maybe not wildly optimistic, but at least a little bit.

Reasons for war?

I still haven't listened to Obama's speech (though I'll certainly read summaries, if not a transcript), and it's sure that the US media isn't talking about this, but it's kind of important.

So far, we haven't heard any evidence that doesn't amount to "trust us", and that's a bit of a problem.

Especially when we find out that our allies aren't quite as convinced as we are.  The lede is pretty straightforward:

Syrian government forces may have carried out a chemical weapons attack close to Damascus without the personal permission of President Bashar al-Assad, Germany's Bild am Sonntag paper reported on Sunday, citing German intelligence.

Kind of destroys any rationale for attacking, doesn't it?

Beating the Drums

*Thump* *Thump* *THUMP*

Hear that?  Those are the drums of war, beating again.  Once again, Obama's Nobel Prize is looking like an ever-more-foolish selection by the Nobel committee.

Once again, we're hearing the same familiar refrains about how, this time, things will be different.  Somehow, many more people will not be killed (except, you know, THOSE bad guys).  Somehow, this will not be expensive (even though cruise missiles cost over $1M apiece, and the smallest of the plans being contemplated (that I've heard) involves launching several hundred of those).  And somehow, this will increase our standing in the world.

Never mind the man behind the curtain, who would reveal that killing more people in the Middle East would only feed terrorist organizations (no, I'm not echoing what Assad is saying, I'm saying that it would provide more propoganda material for them).  And that we would be violating the UN Charter.  And that it's likely that we're giving up more money (in some form or another) to placate would-be allies to give us cover to violate that charter.  And that we've been allowing a great many people over there to die for a long time (and far more to be violently displaced from their homes).

And that violence never begets peace (unless you completely destroy the violent; at which point you need to rebuild their countries.  Yeah, past experience shows that that's a cheap operation.  And again, that it gives you a lot more terrorists to fight).

Once again, a not-terribly-close look reveals that there is no endgame planned.

Our military has gone off half-cocked entirely too many times in the last forty to fifty years.  Let's not repeat the experiment.

As a weird thought, why don't we instead plow that $0.5B (again, I haven't heard an idea that would possibly cost less than that) into helping refugees and providing medical help to Syrians.  That would be the long play towards winning hearts and minds in the region.  Just think about al Qaeda's reaction to that.  Or Saudi Arabia's.  Or Iran's.

D-Day plus ten years

Ten years to the day after the invasion of Iraq, I wish that it looked like the political establishment had actually learned any lessons from the debacle.

Earlier today, I read quite an impassioned accusation of the previous administration by a veteran who will soon have given his life for his country.  It's very much worth a read (and some reflection on how we got here).

Wow, this is depressing

I read most of Glenn Greenwald's columns (and have been, since before he was at Salon). Unfortunately, I find most of them pretty depressing. But this latest one... ugh.

I remember reading a couple of Clancy's older books, back when I was in high school (when Clancy was still a local; at the time, we went to Church in the same town where Clancy sold insurance), and he had south americans talking about how the norteamericanos were such imperialists. At the time, it didn't make much sense to me. But now? It's hard to see how you avoid such a conclusion.

Everything seems to be an excuse for war, or at least bombing.

The Nobel committee admitted that they awarded Obama the award more aspirationally than for deeds done; he apparently never got the message. And that's sad, because his rhetoric when running was really dead-on. But his execution as president has been terrible. He hasn't just forgotten his campaign promises, but has actively worked to undermine some of them, especially as relates to foreign policy, transparency, and civil liberties. It's very disappointing.

It's hard to avoid the thought that the Yemeni push will be used as an excuse to increase attempts to murder al Awlaki (sp?) as well. As I said, damned depressing.