The legacy!

It was interesting to note the surprised and shocked look on British Prime Minister David Cameron’s face after his own party led to defections that doomed the British participation in the looming Syrian retaliations for the gassing of civilians a short while back. Like legislative bodies everywhere, the leadership doesn’t usually bring something up for a vote unless they are fairly sure that they have a majority to get it passed. Perhaps Cameron had no choice in this matter because if he had one he would probably have never brought the whole matter before parliament to start with. Unlike the United States, the British system does not possess the war powers act which allows an American president to take immediate action without consulting congress if American interests are threatened. The American system states that the president must approach the legislature if sixty days have passed and military action is still going forward.

George W. Bush, back in 2002 and early 2003 went through many machinations with both the American congress and the United Nations before he staged his invasion of Iraq in March of that year. It has been abundantly pointed out that Bush also told many lies through his representatives to both congress and to the United Nations to get what he wanted. It was the memory of those lies that laid the basis for what the British parliament did last week. And we can be sure that the ghost of what Tony Blair and George Bush did will linger with us for a very, very long time into the future and perhaps that is not all bad. It would appear that the Americans can pull off this limited punishment of the Syrian leader Assad without any outside help.

The intelligence community has come forward and privately off the record stated that they are not sure just who launched these attacks on the Syrian people but we can be sure that there were attacks launched. Circumstantial evidence would lead one to believe that it was government forces who did this deed because no one else would have had the capacity to do this sort of thing. However, there are those who now state that it might have been a rogue representative of the Assad government who carried out these attacks without the leaders consent. One thing is for certain, however, Assad did give permission for these weapons to be assembled and held in his forces custody and he is responsible for what his people do whether they have his permission or not to do it. It is notable that the Syrian government has been conspicuously silent about the whole business at hand. It is as if they do not even want to acknowledge that they have these types of weapons at all, much less in the numbers that they possess them in.

Perhaps it is a good thing that the world is much more skeptical of claims made by governments than it used to be before the time that George W. Bush deceived us all. It might be a partial result of what people like Edward Snowden have brought to light about what governments do. But that does not change what has been done and we do not need to enter a state of paralysis about moral issues because of what one immoral man--George W. Bush--did over ten years ago. People like Assad need to be punished for what they do if we are to maintain any sort of world morality in the face of the ones who would violate it for their own ends and to maintain their hold on power in the face of what so many of their own people desire.

The situation in Syria is very complicated. There are several groups of fighters there and many of them do not represent the interests that the United States would want to back. Iran has a heavy influence in Syria and fighters from that state cross regularly into Assad crumbled regime to fight him for control of the country. There are known backers of state terrorism such as Hezbollah inside of Syria fighting for control of the country just as well.

There are those who are criticizing president Obama for stating that Assad must go around two years ago when this whole thing began who are also criticizing him for not pushing for the rapid overthrow of the regime at this time. Among those people are Arizona senator John McCain who has been a heavy critic of the Obama administrations’ policies toward Syria. However, things have changed inside of ‘Syria and, as we previously mentioned, those who began this revolution two years ago are not the ones fighting alone to bring it about today. The Free Syrian Army are probably the only ones that the United states would back in this war and they are probably not a majority of those fighting any longer. What many fear may happen is that Syrian will become divided among the competing forces and become a place where everyone will have a piece of ground. The regime may still hold Damascus while others hold other portions of the country. This situation would not be good because that would give Iran and its deployed forces a foothold in that region that they have never had before. It is much like the situation in Iraq today where Iranian forces travel freely across the nation as they move to spread their revolution and state sponsored terrorism across the greater Middle East. Strong men are not the preferred type that the United States would like to deal with but they are preferable to a theocracy that spreads revolution and state terrorism every day of the week. There are those who like to blame president Obama for what is going on in the Middle East but we need look no further back than March of 2003 when George W. Bush destabilized the region with his toppling of Saddam Hussein. Barack Obama has been justifiably cautious in his Middle East dealings as he has tried to wind down two wars started by the second Bush administration while trying not to get the United States involved in another one. The model should probable be the United States involvement in Libya where we used air actions in concert with our allies to affect the outcome there but we should not forget what happened in Egypt either and the disastrous consequences that have so far come out of that. There have been many lessons learned over the past decade since George W. Bush did what he did and not backing retaliations against those who launch gas attacks against their citizens might be the least of them.

It is apparent that there are factions in the Middle East who want more for themselves and others than what they have out of their governments and societies now. However, it has also become apparent that many of these same people are not ready for a traditional democratic form of rule because of the competing religious motives that majorities of them also possess. The United States was founded in part on the separation of church and state but that does not seem to be possible across much of the Middle East where the readily available model of Iran and its religious backed government seems to prevail. The only counter to that seems to be the presence of a strong government, usually under the grip of a strongman who keeps order among and across all factions regardless of their beliefs and aspirations. The real answer for the United States might be to become energy independent again and leave this volatile region and its hates and prejudices behind and let others with interests there deal with them. As we approach the twelfth anniversary of September eleventh, however, we can never forget that we are on the minds of those in the Arab community and that some of them have no good motives involving the United States and its homeland.

After we finished this piece president Obama announced Saturday afternoon that he was going to allow congress to vote on this retaliation scheme. We feel that this will put them on record as either backing or not backing this idea before a war weary nation that they represent. However, we still feel that some action should be taken against Assad for what has been done or we risk setting a future precedent for other bad actors who may feel enabled to use the same tactics on their populations when their turn in the box comes about. And we do not feel that the power of the president to act should be subject to any future impediments because of this decision.

IOVHO,

Regards,

Joe