Posted on 09/23/2016 11:20:39 AM PDT by Lorianne
The neocon Washington Post wants an even bigger U.S. military intervention in Syria, ignoring the tenets of international law and assuming that more bombing will somehow make things better, observes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar. ___ Among the latest in the Washington Post editorial page’s unrelenting drumbeat of criticism on Syria — which often does not make clear exactly what the United States should be doing there, except that whatever it does should involve more military force than it is using now — is a signed column by deputy editorial page editor Jackson Diehl, who says President Obama ought to emulate Vladimir Putin.
Diehl says that events in Syria since Russia directly intervened militarily have demonstrated that Mr. Obama was wrong in refraining from a comparable intervention. “Putin has proved,” writes Diehl, ”that the concept Obama rejected — that a limited use of force could change the political outcome, without large costs — was right all along.”
Jackson Diehl, deputy editorial page editor of the Washington Post.
Jackson Diehl, deputy editorial page editor of the Washington Post.
Some of the biggest problems in Diehl’s argument are ones that he and his colleagues have displayed all along in beating their drum. Among these is an incredibly rigid and oversimplified view of what is at stake in Syria.
The apparent assumption is that the only thing that should matter to the United States is whether pro-regime or anti-regime players are forcefully gaining an advantage over the other. This complex and multidimensional civil war is treated as primitively as a schoolyard contest in toughness.
“The United States is far stronger than Putin’s Russia,” Diehl writes. “U.S. fecklessness is a choice.”
Diehl’s assumption of a zero-sum game is as absolute as the most Manichean views of U.S.-Soviet competition ever were during the Cold War. Putin intervened in Syria, says Diehl, “and it has made Barack Obama the loser.” The result is “a victory for Russia, Iran and the Assad regime, at the expense of the United States and its Arab, Israeli and Turkish friends.”
Such a statement masks not only the non-zero-sum nature of interests that cross the divide that Diehl postulates but also the significant differences in interests among the players on each side of that divide.
The incorrect zero-summing extends from the military to the diplomatic. Because the United States has not thrown its military weight around, argues Diehl, the recent cease-fire agreement “offered Putin everything he sought in Syria.” Diehl bemoans that we are “satisfying Putin’s longstanding demand that the West join him in fighting ‘terrorists’ rather than Assad.”
And so we should be against fighting terrorists, just because Putin is in favor of it? That seems to be the argument. Certainly serious questions should be raised about how effective U.S. military force can be against the Islamist extremist part of the Syrian situation (and some of the results of military operations the United States already is conducting against ISIS in Syria underscore those questions).
The Clinton/Neo-Con warmongers.
I gather from the article that the Compost wants us to drop bombs on people, but I’m not sure who it is they want us to bomb.
If they want us to bomb the forces of the Assad regime, then what I gather is that they want us to use our military air power to bomb the military assets of another sovereign state on that state’s soil, which is an act of war, but to do so without a declaration of war.
I hope they realize that I just described what the Japanese did on the morning of December 7, 1941.
“Bezos’ Blog”, and all of the “journolists” that work there are bloggers, not real reporters. :)
Zero’s cronies and the MSM are too stupid to get that.
Hmmm.... Paul Pillar.... where have we heard of him before?
Let me guess...
Why, yes, we have heard of him before — hangs out with the pro-palestinian joo-hating lobby...
http://blog.adl.org/tags/grant-f-smith
I’m not an isolationist nor a pacifist. There are deployments and wars I urge or support as appear necessary. But at the very least we need to be fighting for the right side, not our enemies. Or stay the hell out. To do that, we’ll have to wait until Obama’s out and Trump is in.
Another one of the Ray McGovern VIPS bunch, famous for giving us:
Valerie Plame, super dooper deep cover CIA spy, and her husband the tea swilling former Ambassador to Gabon [and more recently the guy involved in Africa investments with both billionaire Alamoudi and Hillary Clinton]...
All leakers who joined up with Vietnam War era Dan Ellsberg, who wrote and then stole the infamous Pentagon Papers...and who founded a group to encourage federal employees to leak classified information without regard to who might die as a result of having their identity exposed...
nice bunch.
Pillar’s the guy who at a speech at John Hopkins flatly stated there was no evidence of Iraqi involvement in the 1993 WTC bombing...
Problem was, the cell leader responsible for the 1993 WTC bombing turned up in Iraq where he was rewarded with a house and a pension by the regime.
Another Iraqi- who was a facilitator or 2 of the 9/11 hijackers- was caught by Jordan carrying in his pocket litter contact information- US phone numbers- for not only the perps in the 1993 WTC bombing but people involved in other attacks, including the USS Cole Bombing. He too eventually fled to Iraq.
Normally, I’d want to bomb folks, too, but we’ve been on the wrong side from day one.
We need to get out of the ME altogether, until we develop the spine and ruthlessness to fix things in a lasting fashion.
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