A couple of ruminations came up in my head over the weekend when I contemplated the latest from Syria:
1) Do you think that the corporatists are screaming bloody murder that their chosen party, Republicans, are not falling in line like the sheeple they are?
2) Is part of the reason Teabaggers aren’t falling in line to get a pound of flesh out of Assad because they’d finally have to acknowledge that global warming is a real threat to the world and by extension, us? Assad has been diverting water from the rural communities (and farms) to the cities to help ease the thirst of not only the permanent urban citizenry, but also the massive influx of refugees from those self-same rural communities ravaged by drought. As he’s moved closer to the city to divert water – notably, the suburbs – the civil unrest has gotten worse.
3) Would this conflict even be discussed if some bonehead President hadn’t gotten us engulfed (pun intended) in a war of choice that last more than a decade? After all, President Clinton managed to gather a coalition of NATO and other allies, including Russia, to get on board to seek first diplomatic means and then military solutions to the ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia. One presumes that had we not become a truly evil nation in the past twenty years, we’d have the moral authority now to ask again.
4) I’m not sure Assad understands the Iraq war, however. Is he trying to rally his allies by playing the martyr card? Is it possible he’s telling the truth, as Hussein did?
5) Loren Thompson has a point: If Obama fails to garner the votes to authorize retaliation, he actually wins in the long run, domestically. And I think the US gains a measure of credibility back, too. For 213 of our 236+ years of existence, the United States has been at war with somebody. It’s really long past time to call us “warmongers”. The last time we were not at war? Dec. 6, 1941 (if you include the Cold War. If not, you need only look to Jimmy Carter’s administration.)
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