Fear and Stupidity

I don’t own a television.  I do listen to public radio – and, during baseball season, some sports radio – but, since neither normally carries political advertising, I’m largely spared the annual flood of nonsense through which American political campaigns are conducted.

I’m glad to miss out on the political ad wars.  The issues which politicians believe voters care about are sometimes trivial, sometimes important.  But the solutions which candidates offer – when they bother to offer any – would embarrass the folks who air late-night infomercials for “miracle” products.

And politicians don’t even offer a money-back guarantee.

Occasionally, between elections, you hear an elected leader offering actual, practical solutions.  During a campaign, all you hear is dumb – and dumber.

Still, not listening to the political ads, I sometimes miss things.  Recently, I was astounded to learn – via posts on social media – that some of my friends have become convinced that our government should ban international flights in order to prevent an Ebola epidemic here. 

The source of these panicky posts appears to be a coordinated campaign by Republican candidates for the House and Senate – though some terrified Democrats have apparently climbed aboard the bandwagon.

Now, I’m used to the inevitability of candidates offering up stupid policy ideas during political campaigns.  But an international flight ban isn’t just stupid – it could be suicidal.

Of course, this hasn’t stopped a majority of Americans telling pollsters they support a ban.  

No surprise there.  Americans will fall for anything – for a little while.  The good news is that most Americans – given time – will get back in touch with their native common sense.

That will have to happen soon, if we aren’t to end up electing a bunch if irresponsible fear-mongers to office.  But in an election campaign, two weeks is an eternity.  I’m betting the Republicans created their Ebola panic a couple of weeks too soon.

We’ll see.

It might be a little early for common sense to reassert itself, but – since I’m not running for anything – let’s give it a try.

In the first place, let’s understand that there are basically no direct flights from West Africa to the United States.  To get from Monrovia, Liberia, to JFK, Dulles or Hartsfield, you normally fly through Europe.

So right there, banning flights from West Africa to the US is nonsense.  There are no flights to ban.

But maybe the idea is to prevent anyone flying from West Africa from entering the US.  How would that work?

Well, clearly, US authorities could monitor passenger manifests and prevent the entry of passengers from West Africa who had taken connecting flights through Europe.

But suppose someone in West Africa really needs to get to the US – on business, for school, to visit family – and there’s a travel ban.  The obvious solution would be to take two non-connecting flights.  Fly to Rome or Paris; spend a day or two dining well; then fly into the US as a passenger from that European city.

Or you book connecting flights from West Africa to Toronto Pearson – and cross into the US by land transport.

Now, understand, anyone doing this would be violating the proposed travel ban.  But assume you’re in West Africa; you’re absolutely certain you don’t have Ebola; and you have important reasons for getting to America.

Is a travel ban going to stop you?

Consider our record of success at preventing illegal immigration – or the importation of marijuana and cocaine. 

Guess what?  In today’s world, you can’t keep people from crossing borders.

Not even North Korea can do that – and North Korea is a police state with two short, militarized borders.

Common sense says a flight ban would be unworkable.  But at the beginning of this piece, I suggested it might also be suicidal.

Here’s why.

At present, US authorities automatically screen everyone flying into the country from nations in which Ebola has erupted.  These passengers are asked several key questions.  Their temperatures are taken.  They are instructed on what to do if they begin to develop symptoms.

Thus far, passengers from West Africa have been cooperative with these sensible screening procedures.  They’re not intrusive, and – really – no one wants to bring Ebola into this country, or pass it on to his loved ones or business associates.

But suppose we imposed a flight ban – and passengers from West Africa started avoiding that ban by taking non-connecting flights or by flying into Canada.

People sneaking in via ­an indirect route could hardly be expected to present themselves to US authorities for screening once they arrived.  They’d be here – among us – but we wouldn’t know anything about them. 

And that’s where things get scary.

Because, sooner or later, someone will enter this country who has been infected – and doesn’t know it.  Under our present screening regime, there’s every chance a symptomatic person would promptly contact proper authorities for treatment.

But if he had sneaked in to avoid a travel ban, there’s a fair chance he’d delay doing so.  And that delay is where the proposed travel ban becomes dangerous.

Fear-based political campaigns are nothing new.  But when politicians propose stupid, dangerous policies in order to win elections, they demonstrate their unworthiness to hold public office.

Let’s hope common sense kicks in soon enough to punish this fear-mongering nonsense.

Thinking Clearly about ISIS

This week, while America’s media obsess over Roger Goodell’s increasingly shaky tenure as NFL Commissioner, President Obama is preparing - with the superficial support of a gun-shy Congress - to involve this country in yet another misadventure in the Middle East.

Having finally woken to the fact that ISIS – or ISIL, or IS, or CIS – represents a clear and present danger to the U.S, Mr. Obama has reluctantly decided to act.  The pity is that it took him so long.   

Not only is ISIS dangerous, it’s almost certainly Mr. Obama’s fault that it has become so.  In the spring of 2011, when Syria’s civil war began, it quickly became apparent that the rebels America preferred to deal with – the “good guys” – lacked what it took to overthrow the ruthless Assad regime.  

Good guys seldom win revolutions.  Moderate, educated, democratically-inclined people – nice, middle-class types – too often lack the passion, the grit, and, let’s face it, the willingness to kill or die in a righteous cause.  Revolutions are often started by moderates, but when they succeed, it is usually because they fall into the hands of fiery-eyed, ruthless extremists.

Study the great revolutions – French, Bolshevik, Chinese, etc.   Or just read Les Miserables.  The lesson appears again and again.  Nice guys make poor revolutionaries.  Bloodthirsty fanatics do rather better - at least, in the near term.

The problem is that Mr. Obama, like most Americans, doesn’t know much about history.  In Syria, he tried an ineffectual strategy of arming and providing advice to moderates, while rejecting, absolutely, the one strategy which would have toppled Assad without allowing power to shift to a group such as ISIS.

He refused to put American “boots on the ground.”

Inevitably, the Syrian revolution passed into the hands of fanatical warriors, willing to die for their cause – ISIS.

Now that ISIS has overrun large parts of northern, Sunni-majority Mesopotamia – “Iraq,” for those who still believe in that fiction – Mr. Obama has decided to act.  But once again, he has instinctively decided against the one thing that might succeed – American “boots on the ground.”

Instead, the President wants to combine a few hundred military advisors with the liberal use of American air power.

Our advisors are supposed to reorganize and put some spine into the Iraqi army, whose initial reaction to a few thousand lightly-armed ISIS warriors was, as Monty Python would put it, “Run away!”

Other American advisors are supposed to do the same thing for the moderate Syrian rebels – the “nice” folks whose ineffectual efforts made ISIS possible in the first place.

The President’s plan is that – aided by American air power – a revived, moderate rebel force will defeat both ISIS and Assad in Syria, while a revived Iraqi Army, aided by Kurdish militia and anti-ISIS, Sunni tribal chiefs, will do the same in “Iraq”.  

Talk about the audacity of hope.

For thirteen years, now, American policy in the Middle East has suffered from a complete lack of rational thinking.  Mr. Bush’s faith-based approach has yielded to Mr. Obama’s hope-based alternative, but the shift has not represented an improvement.

Americans must insist that those who govern us start looking at the Middle East clearly, coolly, and rationally.  Such an approach might begin by recognizing one basic reality:  “Iraq” does not exist.

“Iraq” was an artificial, post-World War I creation of British politicians, who gathered Sunni and Shi’ite Arabs and tossed in a substantial population of Muslim, non-Arab Kurds, in order to create a kingdom worthy of a favored Arab ally.  

“Iraq” was initially held together by British force – later, by ruthless Ba’athist dictators, the last of whom was Saddam Hussein,

When President Bush decided to topple Saddam, “Iraq” shattered into its component pieces.  Most of the American lives – and nearly all of the American billions – expended since our relatively bloodless invasion were devoted to reconstructing the fiction of “Iraq.”

As soon as Mr. Obama withdrew our last significant forces, “Iraq” began falling apart again.  ISIS merely accelerated the process.

As of now, the Kurds have largely withstood ISIS.  A relatively progressive, warlike people, the Kurds regard the U.S. with favor.  With U.S. support, they could create a tidy, independent, pro-American nation – perhaps even one which would welcome permanent American military bases, thus transforming the balance of power in that part of the world.  

But the Kurds cannot liberate ISIS-held portions of “Iraq.”  The Sunnis who live there fear and loathe ISIS, but they have a long-term rivalry with the Kurds over key cities and oil fields located along their common population boundary.  A Kurdish “liberation” would inevitably appear, to Sunni Arabs, as an act of aggression.

Nor can the Iraqi Army liberate ISIS-held territory.  The post-Saddam central government – and its army – have been dominated by “Iraq’s” Shi’ite majority.  Local Sunni tribal and religious leaders might fear ISIS, but its fanatics are, at least, Sunni – and therefore, preferable to the tyranny of their sectarian enemies.

Thus, the inevitable reality that no in-country forces are in a position to rally the local support essential to defeating ISIS at an acceptable cost.  The only power capable of pulling that off would be American “boots on the ground” – and even a substantial American army would be insufficient without a coordinated diplomatic strategy.

To defeat ISIS, Mr. Obama must offer the local Sunni leadership the only thing ISIS cannot – their own, independent state - without the terrors of religious extremism.  

But this would require Mr. Obama to acknowledge that “Iraq” no longer exists.  

By adopting this view, Mr. Obama might actually achieve something like victory.  But it would require him to admit to over five years of chasing a phantom - something our President, intent on creating an historical "legacy", is unlikely to do.

The alternative - continuing to pretend that "Iraq" is real - can only lead to futility, frustration, and horror.  Almost certainly, over time, we will witness the beheading of downed American pilots and captured American military advisors.

It's not impossible that we will even suffer the sort of 9-11 style retribution which only a terrorist group, securely in control of its own territory, can plan and launch.

For certain, we will not see victory.

“Iraq” is a myth.  A sane policy in Mesopotamia can only be built on reality.  

What a shame no one will tell the President.

Not This Year

This week, my local NPR station - WMRA - has been conducting its spring membership drive.  And this time around, I'm ignoring it.

Even the most casual reader of this column might suspect that NPR's news coverage would suit my "informed" - not to say "liberal" - predilections.  Long-time readers of this column will know that I've long been an advocate of public radio.

Which is why I find myself surprised that I feel absolutely no inclination to make a contribution this year.

Now, to be sure, I've had to tighten my belt in recent years.   Gone, for now, are the days when I could support my public radio station at the dollar-a-day level. 

But this year, I can't even bring myself to cough up a nominal sum.  I'm that fed up with what once passed for "must-listen" radio.

Here's my problem.

Like most public media, NPR started out as the indirect beneficiary of generous public funding.  Taxpayer dollars subsidized local stations, which, in turn, subscribed to news and other programming from NPR and other content providers.

Over the years, public funding for has been reduced - forcing public radio stations to seek additional support from individual listeners, non-profits, and - here's the kicker - corporate sponsors.

This last fact has been unfortunate.  Whenever any entity - educational, artistic, or otherwise - becomes dependent on substantial corporate funding, it quickly learns that this funding comes with strings.

For public radio, the result has manifested itself in many ways.  From my personal perspective, the two most egregious have been an almost total disregard of two issues:  AGW (anthropomorphic global warming) and the increasingly disturbing ways in which our food supply is produced.

To be sure, the former issue is of far greater concern.  If even the more moderate expert forecasts are true, our children and grandchildren will be living in a world drastically different - in ever more unpleasant ways - from the world we have known in our times, or indeed, since our ancestors climbed down out of the trees. 

Our food supply would be of greater personal concern if I hadn't made the decision, some years back, to do a lot more actual cooking - increasingly using ingredients which are natural, and (when the price permits) organic.

Still, I wish more of my friends and fellow citizens were aware of the degree to which the things they consume introduce hormones, antibiotics, and actual toxins into their diets.

Sadly, nobody's going to learn much about climate change or the food supply from NPR news.  In recent years, it seems, these issues have simply disappeared - and one can only conclude that this has come about as the result of public media's dependence on corporate dollars.

Which is not to say that NPR and other content providers have moved entirely into the conservative camp.  For most public radio stations, listener dollars are more important than corporate support. 

But liberally-minded listeners - like their conservative opposite numbers - can generally be contented with non-stop coverage of social issues.  Thus, NPR's almost obsessive coverage of demographic issues - the politics and sociology of race, gender, gender preference, and immigration status.

Because the public radio audience contains a large number of aging Baby Boomers - members of a generation which refuses to grow old - recent years have also featured an increasing emphasis on pop culture and the latest technological gadgets.

On any given day, in morning or afternoon drive-time, you can be sure of hearing a story about some manifestation of inequality in our society; about some new gadget, app, or website; and about some up-and coming band, singer, or other entertainer.

But you'll drive a lot of commuter miles between stories about AGW, much less - say - what your latest meal might be doing to your body.

Now look, no rational observer would question that Big Business - far more than Big Government - runs this country.  

Moreover, most of the media - newspapers, radio and television stations, and online service providers - are owned by huge corporations.

As are nearly all of their advertisers. 

Our elected officials are, especially since the abominable - and intellectually indefensible - Supreme Court decision in Citizens United vs. FEC , almost entirely dependent on essentially unlimited campaign contributions from wealthy individuals and corporate sources.

With public radio, the strategy has been a bit more subtle.  Deprive the stations of public funds - on the argument that they shouldn't be supported by taxpayer money - and then substitute corporate funding, on condition that these stations and their content providers "dummy up" on the issues most important to Big Oil, Big Ag, Big Pharma, and our other corporate masters.

That strategy has worked.  Perhaps I'm only playing into our corporate masters' hands by withdrawing my personal support.  If others followed my example, public radio might gradually be transformed into another FOX News.

But I'm sorry.  My heart just isn't in it this year.

Those Who Walk in Darkness...

This is a reprint of my weekly column in the (Chester) Village News.  I post it here to encourage my readers to consider taking Coursera's excellent online course on Global Climate Change.

Isaiah surely had something else in mind when he said, "The people who walk in darkness have seen a great light."  And that's fine.

An Old Testament prophet would be concerned with those who had turned their backs on a creed they once believed, commandments they once obeyed, rites they once observed. 

For me - a secular humanist struggling to make the world slightly more civilized - this passage sheds light on a different group:  People who choose not to see the light - to remain deliberately ignorant, because ignorance suits them better than changing long-held beliefs.

To be sure, we're all guilty of deliberate ignorance at time.  In my case, for example, there's a tendency to put off medical tests.

Or use one of those handy online calculators to find out how much I should have saved up in order to live out my golden years in comfort.

Or step onto my bathroom scale.

But - at least when it comes to the great issues confronting my nation and my planet - I try to avoid ignorance.  And I find that, as I get older, I have less and less patience with those who choose to walk in darkness with respect to such things.

One of these great issues is global climate change.  To my mind, it will be the biggest challenge confronting America - and humanity - in this century. 

I didn't always believe that.  I didn't want to.  My personal and intellectual bent is to think in terms of human progress - the spread of freedom, constitutionalism, education, opportunity, and tolerance to more and more of humanity.

And space travel, of course. 

It goes against the grain to think that the great challenge of my lifetime will not involve spreading enlightenment and landing on Mars - but hunkering down to avoid human extinction.

But over time, I've learned too much to deny the threat of climate change.  I'm worried.  I think we should all be worried.

And I'm getting seriously annoyed with those strident know-nothings who insist that global climate change is a hoax, or part of a natural cycle, or something to do with sunspots. 

Now, here's the moment where I could say some pretty harsh things about climate change deniers.  The temptation is great.

But I started this column with Isaiah, not Jeremiah - so let's take a different tack.

Because the fact is that climate change deniers are not really the problem.  They're a vocal, but ever-so-slowly dwindling, minority in this country. 

In a study or public opinion released by Yale and George Mason universities - "Global Warming's Six Americas" - the two groups labeled "Dismissive" and "Doubtful" make up only 10% and 15% of the American population, respectively. 

And that's not nearly enough to stop America from taking serious action - if the rest of us are determined to do so.

On climate change, the key group - as always - are the undecideds.  The Yale/GMU study labeled this group "Cautious".  These folks - a whopping 29% - are the ones who really matter in the climate change debate.

Convince them, and the doubters and deniers are marginalized.  Fail to convince them, and nothing much gets done. 

So rather than lash the deniers, let me instead appeal to those on my side of the issue - the "Alarmed" and "Concerned" who make up 13 and 26% of the population, respectively. 

We're the ones who're pretty sure that global climate change is real; that it's serious; that it's the product of human activity; that there's something we can - and must - do about it. 

The problem is that most of us don't really have a firm grasp of the science, or the public policy options available for dealing with the threat.

We need to educate ourselves - and then educate our friends and loved ones who are still "Cautious".  If we do that, the doubters and deniers can go whistle.

This summer, I took a ten-week, college-level on global climate change, taught by two professors from the University of British Columbia.  It was called "Climate Literacy:  Navigating Climate Change Conversations", and it included short lectures, reading materials, interactive workshops, and other good things.

All completely free.

Starting September 30, it will be offered again.  I hope you'll sign up for it.

To be sure, it's a serious undertaking.  It's not hard, but it will require a commitment of three or four hours a week for ten weeks. 

If stick to it, you'll learn a lot.  I urge you sign up - if possible, with a few friends.

From my experience, the one weakness of MOOCs is that they lack direct, human interaction.  If you convince a few friends to take the course - and meet once a week to discuss it over coffee - that problem would be alleviated.

You'd probably learn more, too. 

Climate change is important.

It's time to stop walking in darkness, don't you think?

Is Tehran the Key?

I don't know nearly enough about Iran, but I'm working on it. 

I have picked up a little bit over the years, though, and that little bit tells me that the handful of  experts calling for a rapprochement with Iran are onto something. 

After sixty years of nonsense - on both sides - it's time to build a working partnership with Tehran.

Why?

First, Iran is a power in the Middle East - with or without nuclear weapons - and it's not going to go away.  The reason is that Iran is a real nation. 

What does that mean?

Since the creation of the UN, it has been necessary to pretend that every part of the globe - except for Antarctica - is part of one nation or another.  And it's a fundamental precept of international law that all nations are sovereign equals. 

But that's a legal fiction.  Many so-called "nations" aren't much more than lines on a map.  In much of Africa and the Middle East, national borders are awkward remnants of 19th century European colonialism or post-World War I decisions by the victorious Allied powers.  

These borders don't define real nations.  In many cases, they never will.

Iraq, for example, was created by the British in the early 1920s.  The Brits needed a suitable kingdom for an Arab prince who had been a wartime ally, so they cobbled together three vilayets - provinces - of the defunct Ottoman Empire and called the result Iraq.

Iraq never worked very well.  It only held together into modern times because Saddam Hussein ruled it with an iron fist.  In 2003, when we blundered in and ousted Saddam, the fictitious nation of Iraq began coming apart at the seams. 

We tried holding it together - at the cost of thousands of American and Iraqi lives.  But that was foolish.  Iraq isn't a nation - just lines on a map.

Iran, on the other hand, is real.  Human civilization has existed in Persia for five thousand years.  Despite waves of migration and conquest - specifically including the Islamic conquest in the 7th century - Iran has enjoyed considerable linguistic and cultural continuity over millennia.

It's also a relatively modern society.   In 2012, an Iranian film, A Separation, won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.  I wish more Americans had seen it.  A Separation had almost nothing to do with politics.  It was a domestic drama about the marital difficulties of a middle-class, urban couple trying to do the best thing for their clever daughter while caring for the husband's father, who was sliding into dementia. 

The remarkable thing about A Separation was how much the people in the film - the couple, the daughter's teachers, the lawyers and judge in their divorce case - resembled urban, middle-class Americans. 

I'm not sure we should be so quick to talk about bombing these people

The great obstacle to understanding between the US and Iran is our long history of mutual bad blood.  Most Iranians would date that bad blood from 1953, when the CIA brought about the overthrow of Iran's popular, constitutionally-elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh.

Mosaddegh's ouster came at the instigation of the Brits, who resented Mosaddegh's nationalization of the British-run Anglo-Persian Oil Company - now BP - which exercised monopoly control of Iran's oil.

America's heavy-handed intervention led to our replacing Britain as the Western power most resented by the Iranian people.  Most Americans paid little attention to this resentment - or even knew it existed - until it boiled over in the Iranian Revolution of 1979, when activists seized the US Embassy and held its staff hostage for 444 days.

Those of us alive at the time were outraged by the behavior of the Iranian "students" - and by the failure of its revolutionary government, headed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to secure the hostage's prompt release.

At this point, the bad blood became mutual - and it has remained so to this day.

But the question remains:  Should why mistakes the US made during the Eisenhower administration - and mistakes Iran made during the Carter administration - doom our two countries to perpetual animosity?

Iran is a serious country - a real nation with 75 million people, enormous oil reserves, and an advanced nuclear-weapons program.

It is also, as Syria's strongest ally, the potential key to resolving that not-so-real nation's civil war.

Iran is also a potential force for stability in Afghanistan, its neighbor to the east.

Recently, Iran elected a new President - a reasonable fellow named Hassan Rouhani - who replaced the truly dangerous Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  President Rouhani has expressed a willingness to negotiate seriously about everything - including nuclear weapons.

Forty years ago, in one of the unlikeliest moves in American diplomatic history, President Richard Nixon - the old Cold Warrior - went to China.  The results of that mission transformed our world forever.

Perhaps it's time for President Obama - winner of a Nobel Peace Prize he has yet to earn - to follow Mr. Nixon's example. 

"No" on ObamaWar

Four years ago, President Obama - newly elected, with majorities in both houses of Congress - and holding a ton of the imaginary currency pundits term "political capital" - passed up a chance to move toward genuine health care reform.  Instead, we got a complex, Rube Goldberg contraption called "Obamacare".

Now, to be sure, Obamacare isn't all bad.  I'd be very much opposed to repealing it.  After all, Obamacare has lowered some folks' insurance bills, at least for a while.  It has allowed many folks with pre-existing conditions to buy insurance.  It has made insurance companies more accountable for how they spend their money.

But there's a lot Obamacare didn't do.  It did nothing serious about reducing medical care or prescription drug costs.  It did nothing at all to increase the supply of doctors - the most obvious step toward both increasing the availability and decreasing the cost of quality care.  It did nothing serious about promoting healthy lifestyles - the single most dramatic step we could take toward cutting the cost of medical care.

Most important, it did nothing to move us toward a single-payer system to replace the embarrassing hodgepodge of conflicting systems which makes America unique - and embarrassingly so - among developed nations.

Obamacare, for all its merits, was basically a can of worms.  With better leadership, and better use of the President's bully pulpit, we could have had a far more progressive, more efficient, less complex law.  Instead, we got a typical, cobbled-together, congressional mess.

Because the new president didn't lead.

Flash forward four years, and we're about to see the same approach taken to war.  With respect to Syria, President Obama - after two years of dithering - has decided, once again, to toss the whole mess to Congress.

And Congress, true to its habits, is beginning to cobble together a complex, Rube Goldberg mechanism to define the conduct of military operations.

And that is something that - as far as I know - has never, ever worked.  Not in all of human history. 

If Congress takes the President up on his invitation to authorize military action against Syria, we're going to get a declaration of something less than war - with a whole lot of restrictions and no clear objective.  And it will solve absolutely nothing.

And I say to hell with it.

But let me be clear as to why. 

I have no problem - none at all - with military operations to depose Bashar al-Assad.  I have no problem with putting him on trial before an international court, or before a court representing a new Syrian government.  Frankly, I have no problem dealing with him as we dealt with Osama bin  Laden - two in the head, two in the heart, and a quick burial at sea.

But that is not what Mr. Obama propose to do.  He proposes some sort of limited, "proportional" response - which essentially means bombing some Syrian military assets.  Some your Syrian soldiers will die.  And some officers.  And probably some unlucky civilians.

Not Assad.  He's supposed to get the "message".

But what's the message?  To obey international law on the subject of chemical warfare? 

Assuming there is such a law, wouldn't that be better done by an international organization - maybe a court, with due process - not the United States and a few allies acting on their own, like some sort of international lynch mob?

Honestly, it's time we outgrew the notion that bombs are some sort of messaging system.  It isn't a way to enforce laws.  And it certainly isn't a way to build a nation.

The purpose of war isn't to communicate, it's to defeat someone - to conquer them and impose your will on them. 

War is a blunt instrument.  And it tends to run out of control - no matter how many pre-conditions you try to write into your plans.

That being so, our Founding Fathers made it clear that they wanted Congress - and only Congress - to have the awesome responsibility of declaring war.  But they did not say that Congress should conduct the war.  That was left to the Commander in Chief.

The Founders, as men of experience and good sense, knew that declaring war is a very big deal - the release of uncontrollable forces which could lead to triumph or disaster.  Only a cautious, bicameral legislative body should decide to commit the country to war.

Only a single individual could then decide how to wage it.

Obviously, we're not doing that.  We're going to pretend that a legislative body can design a compromise war - in the process, handcuffing the President who will then have to conduct it.

So we're going at this all wrong.  The Founders told us how to do it, and we're ignoring everything they said.

Here's what we should do:

The President should go to Congress - not with a few, limited things he plans to do and a lot of promises about what he won't allow to happen - but with a clear, military goal. 

And in this case, the only possible clear goal is the elimination of the Assad regime and - perhaps - the seizure of its chemical weapons stocks. 

That's a military goal.  That's a war goal.

It would, of course, take more than a stand-off attack with cruise missiles.  It would require "boots on the ground".  Men and women would die.  But that's what armies and navies and air forces are for - to engage and destroy an enemy.  The necessary concomitant of that is that some of your own men and women will die. 

But in a war, they're at least dying for something concrete - not so send a message.

But that's not what the President has called for - not what Congress is going to determine.  

They're going to design some legislative compromise, and pretend it means something.

Four years ago, they gave us Obamacare.

Now, we get ObamaWar.

What Now? (Part Two)

In my previous post, I suggested that there were four ways in which Congress could respond to President Obama's request for their endorsement of action against Syria. 

They could say Yes.

They could say No.

They could ask for a more detailed plan, with serious undertakings as to the President's further plans in the event that bombing Syria doesn't result in its abandonment of chemical weapons.

They could declare war against Syria, insisting upon a full-scale military effort to oust the Assad regime, corral Syria's stockpiles of WMD, and pull out.

Obviously, the first two options are what they are.  If Congress says "Yes", they must hope that this President - not the most decisive or experienced of presidents - will be able to avoid the slippery slope which seems, too often, to lead from limited intervention into invasion, protracted conflict, and a failed attempt at nation-building.

If Congress says "No", apparently, that's it.  We stay out, and let what happens, happen.

If Congress asks for a more detailed strategy - and the President complies - Congress will then be left to decide whether to say yes or no to that plan.  Which doesn't really change anything, since plans are just plans - and the slippery slope still looms.

Which brings us to option four:  What if Congress upped the ante by insisting that we go all-in?  What if we just declared war - essentially giving the bird to Vladimir Putin, Iran's ayatollahs and China's new mandarins of  - and started landing the Marines?

I'm not recommending it, understand, but there's something to be said for waging war in pursuit of a decisive result.

Indeed, there was a great deal to be said for it two years ago, when we dithered around hoping an ill-sorted, disorganized bunch of rebels would be able to topple a well-organized, ruthless regime fighting for the existence of itself and the religious minority it leads.

At that point, there was at least some prospect that a quick, decisive victory would leave in place the sort of civil society necessary as the prerequisite for nation-building. 

Now, all the people we could have relied upon then - the educated, relatively secular businessmen, lawyers, doctors, teachers and bureaucrats who are the best hope in every society seeking to move toward enlightened self-government - are either dead or fled.  Of the millions of Syrians now in exile, it's a safe bet that their number includes nearly everyone who could afford to get out.

And that number will include nearly everyone in Syria who doesn't believe, deep down, that it is the will of Allah that his particular group crush, humiliate, and rule over all the other groups.  

Which is to say that - while there might possibly have been a good ending to the Syrian rising had we acted promptly and decisively to eliminate Assad - there is no good ending possible now.  No matter who wins, Syria will be devastated for decades - and the eventual ruler will be the survivor of a particularly ruthless war of all against all.

Speaking personally, had I been President two years ago - and had the military been able to put together a plan which involved limited costs - I would have taken advantage of the opportunity to eliminate the Assad regime.  Period. 

There are a lot of bad rulers in the world - many of them hostile to the United States.  Most of the time, we have to live with that.

But when there's a chance to support a group of people who are making a serious effort to topple one of them - and there's a reasonable chance of succeeding - my instinct is to take it. 

But again, that was two years ago. 

And my guess is that the President's present desire to do something arises largely out of the desire to compensate for the mistake he made in not doing something then.

There's a good deal of that in recent American foreign policy.  We miss an opportunity, and later, we try to go back for a redo.

Like the urgency of a bunch of retreads from Bush 41 talking his son into invading Iraq after 9-11 - on a fabricated pretext - in order to make up for their failure to finish off Saddam ten years earlier.

They missed that chance.  The attempt to get it back was a waste of lives and treasure - and a profound distraction from the  mission of catching Osama bin Laden.

At any rate, that's my sense of what's going on here.  A lot of people in Washington - including the President - are having regrets about missing the boat in 2011.  But they did miss the boat, and it's now too late to go back and fix things.  Syria's educated middle-class is gone.  There's no one left to build a nation with.

Which leaves the American people - now that we've been belated invited into this debate - to make the best of our remaining options.

And they are two:

Either stay out - completely out - and let Syria gone on destroying itself.  Perhaps by focusing on something a lot more important - and about which we  could actually do something - like global climate change.

Or go in - hard and fast, boots on the ground - to take out Assad and his military, capture his chemical weapons stocks, and leave. 

And then let the Syrians go on killing each other until someone forms a new government.  Or several new governments.

For my money, since there are al Qaeda and Hezbollah fighters on the ground in Syria, I'd vote for the limited incursion to decapitate the Assad regime and grab the weapons.  If our military thinks that's possible.

If not, I'd vote to stay out completely and just stop talking about it. 

Because the bottom line is this: 

Two years ago, we had a magnificence, once-in-a-presidency chance to topple a truly evil regime and allow a relatively educated, sophisticated people to try for something better.

And we missed the  boat.

Since we can't turn back the clock, we shouldn't waste any more time with it.  If we can grab Assad's weapons at a reasonable cost, let's go.

If not, let's go home.