In the cult of personality surrounding President Barack Obama, the ultimate test of loyalty is to shoot a cherish value. No one has proven herself more blindly loyal than House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi who previously led the fight to kill privacy in America as a demonstration of absolute fealty. Now, Pelosi appears to be advocating military action. In a meeting with the White House. Pelosi voiced the need for action. Presumably, this means military action — again — because Obama said that the use of chemical weapons would be a redline and of course Obama is not to be mocked. It is a test that England appears to have failed and now there is a concern that the White House views England with suspicion and distrust for balking at war.
Pelosi paid only passing acknowledgement of liberals who oppose war, but suggested that we should attack even if we do so against the wishes of our allies and go in alone. She insisted “it is clear that the American people are weary of war. However, Assad gassing his own people is an issue of our national security, regional stability and global security.” Of course, our sprawling military industrial complex is not weary. We are about to fire off a billion or so dollars worth of missiles that will have to be replaced and could trigger a broader war.
Pelosi is quoted as countering statements from House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) suggesting a more cautious approach with consultation. Pelosi reportedly countered that the United States needed “to do something.”
So now that Pelosi has led the attack on privacy, called for another war, supported warrantless surveillance, and the killing of citizens on the sole authority of the president, it is difficult to see what is left for the democratic party beyond of course Barack Obama.
There has been a democrat president at the onset of WW1, WW2, the Korean war , and the Viet Nam war, not Iraq 1 and 2
” how many people can Assad gas to death before there is an outcry to stop it?”
If you have not noticed there is plenty of outcry.
The question what do we do about it.
And if no one has raised the question, let me be the first.
The President has specified that the action he proposed would be carefully calibrated to avoid tipping the balance in the civil war and would not involve us further in Syria’s civil war. The President has assured us there will not be US boots on the ground.
Doesn’t that formulation, that our action will not change the dynamics of the civil war and we will not become involved in the civil war, give lie to the claim that the use of gas is a grave threat to US national and Global security?
If this event is really so important wouldn’t the President be telling us that we must bear any burden, pay any price?
The use of poison gas is shocking an criminal. We must work with other nations to put a stop to it.
But the President himself has, perhaps unintentionally, given us the answer. There is nothing in this that justifies war. In any case, not right now.
Hmm. Let’s see. Assad gassed his own people, and so WE have the right to tell Syria what it will do? Really? Oh, but they have chemical weapons. Really? Just what in the hell do they think WE keep at Ft. Detrick? How many people have WE killed with our chemical weapons like Agent Orange? Oh, I see. It’s ok when WE do it because we’re only killing other people not our own citizens……yet.
“BS to the ultimate. Only a liar or a fool would assert that there is a U.S. national security interest in this civil war.”
I think I have to agree. What ever the threat to US national security it certainly is not immanent. It clearly does not require immediate action. There is time for further discussion if we would only use it.
And the threat to global security? Isn’t that even more remote. Chemical weapons may be emotionally devastating but they are not particularly useful as weapons.
The logistics of chemical weapons are formidable. Even nerve poisons, the most potent of all the chemical weapons, require large quantities for effective coverage of any significant area.
The effects of chemical weapons are variable and dependent on factors like wind direction and velocity, and other weather factors.
Chemical weapons are not very useful against well equipped and trained military units. Chemical weapons can be as much a threat to the forces that deploy them as their targets.
Most any adversary would much rather have air dominance and smart munitions than chemical weapons.
It is hard to imagine a situation in which chemical weapons would change the strategic balance in global security.
What we have is a bunch of high blown rhetoric to defend propositions that devoid of reason when you actually get down to the real claim.
Some spokespeople tell us that the President made a commitment, his red line, and now we have to act – no matter what.
Others tell us that this is a terrible situation that demands action, so lets do something, anything, just do something.
Take away the inflated rhetoric and the actual reasons to take action right now seem pretty inadequate.
Maybe we should talk this over.
This interview/comments below sounds real, is it??
NEW YORK – USA – In a remarkable admission by former Nixon era Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, reveals what is happening at the moment in the world and particularly the Middle East. [ACCURATE SATIRE]
Speaking from his luxurious Manhattan apartment, the elder statesman, who will be 89 in May, is all too forward with his analysis of the current situation in the world forum of Geo-politics and economics.
“The United States is bating China and Russia, and the final nail in the coffin will be Iran, which is, of course, the main target of Israel. We have allowed China to increase their military strength and Russia to recover from Sovietization, to give them a false sense of bravado, this will create an all together faster demise for them. We’re like the sharp shooter daring the noob to pick up the gun, and when they try, it’s bang bang. The coming war will will be so severe that only one superpower can win, and that’s us folks. This is why the EU is in such a hurry to form a complete superstate because they know what is coming, and to survive, Europe will have to be one whole cohesive state. Their urgency tells me that they know full well that the big showdown is upon us. O how I have dreamed of this delightful moment.”
“Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.”
Mr Kissinger then added: “If you are an ordinary person, then you can prepare yourself for war by moving to the countryside and building a farm, but you must take guns with you, as the hordes of starving will be roaming. Also, even though the elite will have their safe havens and specialist shelters, they must be just as careful during the war as the ordinary civilians, because their shelters can still be compromised.”
After pausing for a few minutes to collect his thoughts, Mr Kissinger, carried on:
“We told the military that we would have to take over seven Middle Eastern countries for their resources and they have nearly completed their job. We all know what I think of the military, but I have to say they have obeyed orders superfluously this time. It is just that last stepping stone, i.e. Iran which will really tip the balance. How long can China and Russia stand by and watch America clean up? The great Russian bear and Chinese sickle will be roused from their slumber and this is when Israel will have to fight with all its might and weapons to kill as many Arabs as it can. Hopefully if all goes well, half the Middle East will be Israeli. Our young have been trained well for the last decade or so on combat console games, it was interesting to see the new Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 game, which mirrors exactly what is to come in the near future with its predictive programming. Our young, in the US and West, are prepared because they have been programmed to be good soldiers, cannon fodder, and when they will be ordered to go out into the streets and fight those crazy Chins and Russkies, they will obey their orders. Out of the ashes we shall build a new society, there will only be one superpower left, and that one will be the global government that wins. Don’t forget, the United States, has the best weapons, we have stuff that no other nation has, and we will introduce those weapons to the world when the time is right.”
End of interview. Our reporter is ushered out of the room by Kissinger’s minder.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/accurate-satire-henry-kissinger-if-you-can-t-hear-the-drums-of-war-you-must-be-deaf/28610
Els DL,
I salute you for having the intestinal fortitude to sit through more meaningless harangues by President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry. I can’t even stand to look at these moral cretins without seeing Colin Powell and George “Slam Dunk” Tenet at the U.N. lying through their teeth to an utterly disbelieving world. I can’t listen to a word out of their mouths without hearing former Secretary of State You-Know-Her cackling: “We came; we saw; he died,” about the brutal murder of captured Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. As James Carroll wrote in Crusade: Chronicles of an Unjust War:
“Beware a nation announcing its innocence en route to war.”
I don’t believe in innocent, “humanitarian” war. And I refuse to credit a single word, look, or a gesture by those American officials who babble hysterically about killing for salvation. That really does sound positively Medieval.
Put another way by Noam Chomsky in Failed States:
“[Samuel] Huntington’s observations about the need to create misimpressions to control the domestic population illustrate what should be the merest truism: professions of benign intent by leaders should be dismissed by any rational observer. They are near universal and predictable, and hence carry virtually no information. … If we are serious, we will ask about their actions, paying little attention to their words.”
Given the evidence of its actions over the past several decades, the U.S. government doesn’t give a damn for the lives of women and children in the Muslim world, or else it wouldn’t keep killing and starving so many of them for purposes which the U.S. government will never share with the American people. The U.S. government deals only in misimpressions deliberately designed to anesthetize and control the domestic U.S. population, large segments of which like to vicariously enjoy someone killing someone else while congratulating themselves on their own moral superiority for condoning and encouraging the killing. Holy bread and circuses!
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has proven herself as worthless to the American and Syrian people as House Majority Leader John Boehner. I have nothing but contempt for them both.
real liberals don’t want pelosi
Pelosi is a two-faced loser. She and her ilk are the main reason I gave up on the major parties in 2000. Both parties are gutless thieves.
I’m always amazed how quickly the war machine can get ready for Middle East conflicts. The oil lobby, the defense complex and the spy networks need a new war to protect their interests. Why is ok that US can indiscriminately kill thousands of women and children with bombs and drones without remorse? Chemical weapons are only supportable when the CIA finds them to be useful to their needs like they did for Iraq. Punishment may be just, but scattershot diplomacy does not send a proper message…
Arthur Randolph…Perhaps you missed the point in 1941 where the Japanese actually dropped bombs on a U.S. territory. Did Assad gas 35, or is it 350,000, or what? The number keeps changing. Or did he do it at all? Did the rebels (whoever they are) do it?
National security, surely you jest? There is a civil war brewing in the Muslim world, we should stay the F out!
National security, my A$$
The Syria Mess, Explained by a Man You’ve Never Heard Of
By Charles P. Pierce
8/30/13
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Syria_Speech
Excerpt:
Listening to Secretary Of State John Kerry make a statement justifying whatever’s about to happen in Syria, and looking back over the events of the day, I began to think about one person. I began to think about Maher Arar.
In September, 2002, while on a layover at JFK in New York, Arar, a telecommunications engineer from Canada, was detained by US authorities because they thought he was a member of al Qaeda. He was held incommunicado in this country for two weeks and then sent on rendition, not back to Canada, but to another one of our staunch allies in the War On Terror. Once there, Arar was beaten, and held in a rat-infested 3-by-6-foot cell from which he could listen to the screams of other people being tortured. He was held there in those conditions for 374 days. Eventually, the Canadian government settled a lawsuit brought by Mr. Arar. Facing a similar suit, the United States government invoked a “state secrets privilege” to kill Arar’s efforts to get justice. Ultimately, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
The plucky ally that was so willing to cooperate with the United States in the torture of Maher Arar was Syria…
I do not want to believe that American policy is to weaken Assad but somehow not weaken him enough so that the rebels — whom we do not trust and, frankly, do not know — can actually overthrow him. I do not want to believe that the policy is to let Syria bleed itself white. I do not want to believe this because I remember when Henry Kissinger, that sociopath, actually adopted that policy during the Iran-Iraq War. We armed both sides to keep them at each other so that neither one would win. Thousands of people who were not us got slaughtered meaninglessly. I do not want to believe that American policy in Syria is within miles of that kind of lycanthropic realpolitik. I’d prefer to believe we just don’t know what in the hell to do.
There is no question, however, that’s it’s on now, probably some time over the weekend. If I were a cynical clod like John Boehner, I’d hide until the missiles were launched and then scream that I wasn’t consulted, and maybe throw a little wink to the impeachment crazies over the president’s actions. If I were the Democrats, I’d be standing up right now demanding to be consulted, and demanding that Boehner get his orange ass back to Washington and put the House into session. And, to tell you the honest to god truth, if I were Maher Arar, I’d be marvelling at the American government’s sudden shock and horror at what a monster Bashar al-Assad is, when it was the very fact that he was a monster on which American policy depended when Arar was picked up at JFK and shuffled off to be held in a rat’s cage for over a year. I’d be marvelling at the horror expressed by an American government — the same government that fought my lawsuit and hid behind secrecy and denied me justice for what the Assad did to me with the encouragement of the American government — at the inhumanity of the Syrian regime. If I were Maher Arar, I might even laugh, although I rather doubt it.
http://youtu.be/j51jSEF4hHs
Maggie Ringland
1, August 30, 2013 at 5:18 pm
Correct. This is a good exams of how the Nation is being mislead by a one party of Fascists that wear two faces. One face is Blue and the other, red! BOTH work to keep poor, poor; war, warring; bailouts, flowing.
nick spinelli
1, August 30, 2013 at 6:20 pm
IMO Pelosi was and IS the first and worst female Speaker of the House… Sorry ladies, but face it, she’s weak and corrupt. Women deserve better representation than a Corporate shill.
Overheard in Damaskus:
Kerry: “Don’t p!ss us of or the USA will bring you our Democracy!”
There’s a killing to be had at making war!
Corporate war hawks tied into the MIC want war…
Michael Murry, as one who watched both Secretary of State, John Kerry and President Obama make their case for retaliation and in the background seeing unseen (by me) footage of so many dead children, I almost changed my mind on what I said just yesterday (don’t go bomb Syria) until I read your comment.
I’m ashamed to admit that even though I fight for human rights, I am finding it incredibly difficult to decide where I’m at on this issue. I find the use of chemical weapons on people incredibly inhumane but then again, so I find bombing people and torturing them. In both cases innocent people, including children are going to die an untimely death and a very violent one. One thing I can tell you is that I’m sure as hell glad I don’t have to make a final decision. One of the reasons the GOP/TeaParty politicians are now scrambling back from wanting to take Assad to task is the fact that they fear that the Christian minority who under Assad have been living relatively safe and well-off will bear the brunt if the opposition is given a chance. The same goes for the Alawites. Actually, the plight of the Christians has also been taken up the head of the Russian Orthodox Church ( who knew Russia now loves their religious followers?). Can this all get even more complicated? I stand with you and my earlier statement: Obama, don’t go in and if you must, make sure to have Congress vote on it with a clear yes/no. Send in the sons and daughters of those who vote yes FIRST.
“WASHINGTON (AP) President Barack Obama says he recognizes the world and the U.S. are war-weary in the face of potential military action against Syria.
But he says the United States has an obligation “as a leader in the world” to hold countries accountable if they violate international norms.”
WOW, the US is not a country! Who knew? It’s the only way the US can’t be held to account for violating international norms. This is just sickening.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/feedarticle/10953800
Notice how everyone is just so weary of war all of a sudden. But we still have to do it, even though none of the elites is tired of it at all. It’s a wonderful money maker for each of them and nobody they care about will ever be in harm’s way. What’s not to like, Nancy, Barrack, and John?
Nancy’s husband and or Nancy probably will financially benefit in some way from US going into Syria. England refused to do anything; why should we go it alone?
If we go it alone, Syria will send terrorists to blow us up. What prevents Russia to hint to Syria to send more terrorists to US.
We don’t gain anything.
How come all the options that make sense always wind up on the floor instead of on the table where they belong?
The Answer Off the Table
(From The Triumph of Strife: an homage to Dante Alighieri and Percy Shelley)
The bankrupt brainless blowhard beast defies
The reason to contest stupidity.
Grown fat and lazy on its loathsome lies,
The perpetrating predator feels free
To gorge upon the surface spoils of war:
Domestic profit far as eyes can see
Where foreign puppets groomed to play the whore
Return a portion of their greedy gains
To congressmen who leave us poor and sore,
While death upon a target people rains
And soldiers into pudding pounded are
By roadside bombs. How little now remains
Of them and us who suffer while we spar
Against the bogus baby made of tar.
Our new commander in his briefs has bought
The dreary drug of endless, pointless fights
And thus cannot discern the Truth he ought
That Quagmire in its sophistry delights
In making men of straw, red-herrings, too:
Those lifeless foes whose fragile feeble slights
Prove easy for the brain-dead to outdo;
A dialectic dodge that paints “extreme”
On any choices obvious and true,
Which leaves decision “centered” in a dream.
The feckless failures flail about and flop.
With each New Year they COIN a great new scheme.
We hear of “options” on the table top,
Just not the one to clearly think and stop.
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2009