From Cowboy to Mau-Mau Diplomacy

What are we doing?

What exactly or even approximately are we doing on Syria?

The news gets weirder and weirder. The latest is that the UK is out, out of . .  . what exactly were we doing? Oh, yes, something "limited and brief" with no intention of provoking regime change. We, according to no less a military expert than our Commander-in-Chief, seek to

"take limited tailored approaches, not getting drawn into a long conflict — not a repetition of Iraq, which I know a lot of people are worried about — but if we are saying, in a clear and decisive, but very limited way we send a shot across the bow, saying, ‘stop doing this,’ that can have a positive impact on our national security over the long term and may have a positive impact in the sense that chemical weapons are not used again on innocent civilians.”

Uh, what? He's certainly not repeating Iraq where President Bush had a Congressional OK, an impressive international coalition, and a military punch that Saddam would not be able to withstand. Obama is warning Assad that we are going to send a shot across the bow, but in a limited way, sorry, in a very limited way, to say "stop doing this." I see. That's going to impress Assad, that pencil-necked swine friend of Nancy Pelosi's? Wow! He must be sweating bullets . . . or, more likely, busting a gut laughing his behind off at the guy who leads from behind, or follows from the front, or whatever it is he does, besides play golf and give historically illiterate speeches.

I have written before how the Democrats have a tradition of mishandling US interests, emphasis added,

Democrats prefer and advocate for U.S. intervention, including messy, bloody, military intervention, in places where there is little or, preferably, no US national interest at stake, e.g., Vietnam, Libya, ex-Yugoslavia. Find a place where there are US interests at risk--e.g., Panama, Central America, Iran, Cuba--they go into pacifist-anti-imperialist-defender-of-the-peoples-of-the-Third-World mode. Also curiously, as we saw most spectacularly in Vietnam, once the US does go in, they quickly begin to doubt the wisdom of the move, and even turn against the US intervention. They know that once we do intervene, even if it was in a place of no or limited importance before, the act of intervening creates US national interests, e.g., the need to show that the US cannot be defeated, that we mean what we say, etc. Once such interests are created, the liberals, "summer soldiers" if there ever were, become very critical of the intervention, and actively work to sabotage the US effort.

Obama and his merry band of morons--kindest word I could generate--decided to be tough on Syria. Better said, to be what they see as passing as tough, you know, two years of desultory debate to draw red lines for US intervention, allowing the jihadi loons to take over the anti-Assad resistance, then announcing, sort of, that the red line, i.e., use of chemical weapons, had been crossed, and that, therefore, we would do something undefined that would be brief and limited, and serve as a "shot across the bow." Now, PM Cameron, Obama's competitor for Dopey Leader of the Year, couldn't get his Parliament to go along with, well, uh, with whatever it is that is to be done somehow.

Now, guess what? If we don't act, but in something more than just a brief and limited shot across the bow, we have lost. That's the way the world works. If you announce or imply that you are going to do something, you damn well better do it, especially when the Iranians are threatening you. If you don't do it, the Iranians win. Remember Bin Ladin's comment about people going with "the strong horse"? You don't want the Iranians to be that horse, not if you're a real President of the United States--but now I really have crossed into Fantasy Land from Bizarro World.

Let's not forget, that all this nonsense has real world implications. Not just in a policy sense, but in a more human sense. People, our people, could die; I don't care about Assad's people or the AQ creeps on the other side. What reason do we give grieving parents, brothers, sisters, children to explain why their loved ones died in Syria? A shot across the bow to stop "mistreating" Al Qaeda fanatics, the same people we "drone" nearly every day in many places around the world?

I am beyond appalled and  disgusted. This misadministration is criminally inept.

WLA