This was beginning to sound too familiar. A president is calling for a new war based on his inherent authority while members of Congress warn that it is war or death for America. However, former NSA director (and my neighbor) Michael Hayden added a new element: explaining that air power is like “casual sex” and that we need greater commitment than the military equivalent to a one night stand. Of course, this one night stand is expected to last months and cost billions. President Obama has already asked for $500 million to just arm Syrian rebels despite the fact that we are now facing our own weaponry in the hands of ISIS (captured from our past supply of rebels and the Iraqi military). Sort of like Warren Zevon’s song to send “Lawyers, Guns, and Money” except we are leaving the lawyers behind on this one.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told the American people that the choice is simple in going to war:
“[T]hey’re intending to come here. So, I will not let this president suggest to the American people we can outsource our security and this is not about our safety. There is no way in hell you can form an army on the ground to go into Syria, to destroy ISIL without a substantial American component. And to destroy ISIL, you have to kill or capture their leaders, take the territory they hold back, cut off their financing and destroy their capability to regenerate. . . . This is a war we’re fighting, it is not a counterterrorism operation! This is not Somalia; this is not Yemen; this is a turning point in the war on terror. Our strategy will fail yet again. This president needs to rise to the occasion before we all get killed back here at home.”
Graham was heavily ridiculed for his drumbeat to war in Iraq over the non-exist WMDs and previously called for war against Iran.
Graham however at least portrayed the war in relatively platonic terms. Former NSA Director Michael Hayden who was tied to both the unlawful torture and surveillance programs under the Bush Administration compared the U.S. air strikes as nothing more than enjoyable but meaningless “casual sex”:
“The reliance on air power has all of the attraction of casual sex: It seems to offer gratification but with little commitment. We need to be wary of a strategy that puts emphasis on air power and air power alone.”
No first base for Hayden on this date. Of course, given our continuing and perpetual military engagements, we are under Hayden’s terms something of a promiscuous power. Hayden clearly wants more of a commitment and long-term relationship. Something like . . . well . . . Iraq.
In the meantime, dating on Hayden’s term is not cheap. We are about to commit an initial half a billion dollars to just arming Syrian rebels — the same area where ISIS emerged with U.S. weapons to become the current menace. This is a collateral cost and does not include our direct military costs.
However, Obama insists that he does not need anyone’s approval to launch such a war as previously discussed. In a bizarre twist however the Administration is arguing that the President can always rely on Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), which authorized attacks against Al Qaeda and those who “planned, authorized, committed or aided” the September 11th attacks, or who harbored said persons or groups. The problem is that that authorization occurred 13 years ago and the Islamic State happens to be the moral enemy of Al Qaeda at this point. Thus, Obama is claiming that he is fighting Al Qaeda by waging war on its enemy (while of course claiming that he needs for such authorization).
Perhaps Hayden is right. War, like dating, is just too confusing, too expensive, and just a bit dangerous.
Squeeky, you said they’re already here. We’re doomed. Runferyerlives. Look under your bed!
Now tell us about all the WMD they have…
Those with no credibility or track record–please keep talking.
Scott Supak (@ssupak)
underhisbed?
@ScottS
Well, it is kind of difficult to swim the Rio Grande when you are lying dead in Iraq or Syria.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Who Pays the Pro-War Pundits? Conflicts of Interest Exposed for TV Guests Backing Military Action
http://youtu.be/IOhUfp9ASw8
Precisely Scott, we were never safer because we were over “there”. It always PO’d me to no end to hear that garbage. Our troops aren’t the sacrificial lambs we present to the God Of Terrorists, so they don’t smite us.
J. Brian Harris, Ph.D., P.E.
A war based economy = EMPIRE
Max-1… right on. Threat inflation never seems to go out of style…
Squeeky: “Graham is right. Those SOB’s are coming here, and probably already are here just waiting to get into some meanness. ”
So, fighting them there will stop the ones already here?
Freaking warmongers…
ISIS is worse than Al-Q.
Al-Q was worse than Bin Laden.
Bin Laden is worse than Saddam.
Saddam was a tyrant, don’tcha know…
… ‘Cept when the Soviets were worse than Saddam.
We actually had a cold war with the Soviets.
Almost sunk a boat at the Gulf of Tonkin.
WMD’s… gonna get’cha in your bed.
Hey, where’s Schulte telling us to runferyerlives!?
RE: Anonymouly Yours, Has everyone lost their marbles? September 16, 2014 at 12:48 pm
I really doubt it,
My best guess is that there are many who never acquired any marbles, and so have never been able to lose any of them.
System Dynamics is an interesting tool for solving apparently complicated problems.
Study a complicated problem, get a system dynamics computer program, perhaps Vensim, perhaps Stella, perhaps another one, and try some causal loops, and some stocks and flows, and model a war-based international economy.
A war-based international economy has, as its main product, war. War, as an economic product, is interesting as an aspect of a system dynamics economic model. The more a war-based international economy flourishes, the more wars are needed to invigorate said economy, and the more said economy destroys itself to save itself, and the more wars are needed to sustain the war-based international economy.
In the end, a war-based international economy seems, every time I have tried to system-dynamics model such an economy, to destroy itself by destroying everything else first.
In a profound sense, is addiction actually anything other than a process which, if not stopped first, destroys everything else until, finally, all that is left to destroy is itself, which, without alternative recourse, it always does?
If so, what has caused, time and time again, nations, the better to save themselves from destruction, to destroy themselves?
Was My Lai a microcosm of nation-building via nation destroying?
Apparently, whatever lessons the My Lai massacre had to offer went unlearned, at least in the so-called United States of America?
Ok, Squeekers. I can sign on to that. But if you happen to be black, make sure you don’t open carry in the mall, because you know what happened to that black guy in Walmart, don’t ya?
@Annie,
No, but if I am in a mall, and they pull something like they did in Kenya, I will take a few of them with me. Then, if I can get their AK47, I will send a few more of them to hell. Whatever, I can go down fighting.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky, that gun won’t protect you from a dirty bomb. 🙁
And in dating the Syrian rebels we are cavorting with bad boys who tend to beat up their dates at some point. We’re engaging in this act without the requisite protection, which would be the knowledge of who we are really ‘kissing’.
Graham is right. Those SOB’s are coming here, and probably already are here just waiting to get into some meanness. They will probably send the smart ones first, and then later the suicidal kamikaze ones. I am locked and loaded, and am probably going to buy a 45, because my father says one shot from that will stop a person, where my 38 might not.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Has everyone lost their marbles?
Hayden’s trying to prove to his future employers how his comments can fill the orders for weapons. Isn’t that what all these connected military/gov types do now. They keep chanting the same thing… “stay under your bed, but keep checking out the window… they’re coming… they’re coming for you….”
A lot of people seem to be wising up to this whole thing. I think people are beginning to realize the role of Saudi Arabia in the world and are wanting to push back.
There are some jobs that should not be delegated. Arming the Syrian rebels, IMHO, is a bad idea.
I don’t like the idea of U.S. boots on the ground anymore than others, but I do recognize that dipping our toes into those waters is not going to prevent the flood. War must always be an “all in” move, if the intent is to win.