Decade After Iraq, Right-Wing and Liberal Hawks Reunite Over Syria

[Emit]

This is a piece by Jim Lobe from May 8th, 2013 but it's relevant reading still, imho...

Decade After Iraq, Right-Wing and Liberal Hawks Reunite Over Syria
Jim Lobe | Posted: May 08, 2013
Inter Press Service

Ten years after right-wing and liberal hawks came together to push the U.S. into invading Iraq, key members of the two groups appear to be reuniting behind stronger U.S. military intervention in Syria.

While the liberals appear motivated by a desire to stop the violence and prevent its spread across borders, their right-wing colleagues, particularly neo-conservatives, see U.S. intervention as key to dealing Iran a strategic defeat in the region.

“(T)he most important strategic goal continues to be to defeat Iran, our main adversary in the region,” according to Tuesday’s lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal.

~snip~

Liberal hawks have been less precise about what needs to be done, but their sense of urgency in favour of escalating U.S. military intervention – beginning with supplying the rebels with weapons – appears no less intense.

Slaughter, who served for two years as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s policy planning chief and, as an influential Princeton University international-relations professor, urged U.S. intervention in both Iraq and Libya, published an op-ed in the Washington Post that warned that Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria brought forth the spectre of the Rwandan genocide.

~snip~

Keller, who described himself as a “reluctant hawk” in an influential 1,500-word op-ed on the eve of the 2003 Iraq invasion, provided somewhat more detailed advice in 1,300-word, very prominently placed op-ed entitled “Syria is Not Iraq” Wednesday in which he quoted Slaughter, among other liberal hawks.

~snip~

http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/articles/display/decade_after_iraq_right_wing_and_liberal_hawks_reunite_over_syria

(My apologies for not being able to get that last link for "Syria is Not Iraq" to work - might be a NYT issue ~ Regards, Emit)

[Bluenorthwest]

1. Syria is not Iraq is not Vietnam

http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1548897,00.html