Charles Pierce: The Syria Mess, Explained by a Man You've Never Heard Of

[blm]

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Syria_Speech

The Syria Mess, Explained by a Man You've Never Heard Of
By Charles P. Pierce at 2:15pm


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.

So I wondered what Maher Arar thought today when George W. Bush, under whose policies Arar was tortured by the regime of Bashar al-Assad crawled out from under the landfill of moral disgrace under which he and his presidency have been buried to say that, he "was not a fan" of Assad. You were quite the fan of Mr. Assad when he was doing your torturing for you. Just shut up, you sad little child. Just shut up and go away. Maher Arar should arrange to spit on you.

I wondered what Maher Arar thought today when Kerry made what appeared to be the most compelling case yet for regime change in Syria, and then said he wasn't talking about regime change at all. I mean, Jesus, if we've got all the proof Kerry says we have, and Assad's own brother directed the chemical attack that killed 1429 people, many more than the original estimates, then what in the hell are we fking around with a "limited response"? (To be fair, shortly after Kerry had finished, Andrea Mitchell defined a "limited response" as "100 or so cruise missiles," which is only "limited" if you don't happen live in Syria.) There was a lot of boilerplate there about credibility and what will history, Russia, China, Iran -- or North Korea (?) -- think of us if we don't act. But the case that Kerry put forth for the Assad regime's complicity in what can justifiably be called an atrocity gave us a million dollars worth of motive to justify a ten-cent response. What in hell are we doing here?
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Read more: John Kerry Syria Speech - It's On - Esquire

[GeorgeGist]

1. Apparently targeting heads of state ...

Is more morally obscene than using chemical weapons; if you're a head of state.

[bigtree]

2. there's the nub of it, isn't it? Stated and apparent motive to retaliate for chemical attack

. . . is actually trivialized and even contradicted in the administration's opposition position to Assad and their wariness of the 'rebels' who would assume power in Assad's absence.

It reminds me so much of George Orwell (such an easy reference, but such a prophetic one).

Our nation is not merely threatening war. Our government is busy warring, in Afghanistan and elsewhere in that region, using its subjects as fodder for the machine which gives it the most relevance. Its war machine. Before 9-11 our nation spent a full 60% of our annual budget on 'Defense', the military. Now, although most of the off-budget in the form of emergency appropriations has ended, the percentage of the budget that we toil for is still so overwhelmingly weighted toward the perpetual militarism that countless future generations will suffer from the debt alone. We are as removed from our own centers of authority over this militarism as the chemical attackers are from whoever they regard as their leader. Our nation's defenders and those who find themselves at the point of their weapons abroad are being cast against each other to effect a perpetual industry of aggression for the leaders to lord over.

We are blessed with the cynicism of Orwell to, at least, reassure us of our plight:

"The war, therefore, if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose horns are set at such an angle that they are incapable of hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact. The very word "war," therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. The peculiar pressure that it exerted on human beings between the Neolithic Age and the early twentieth century has disappeared and has been replaced by something quite different. The effect would be much the same if the three superstates, instead of fighting one another, should agree to live in perpetual peace, each inviolate within its own boundaries. For in that case each would still be a self-contained universe, freed forever from the sobering influence of external danger. A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war. This -- although the vast majority of Party members understand it only in a shallower sense -- is the inner meaning of the Party slogan: WAR IS PEACE.


Justifying War; 'Just' Wars
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023568932

[cali]

3. more:

But the case that Kerry put forth for the Assad regime's complicity in what can justifiably be called an atrocity gave us a million dollars worth of motive to justify a ten-cent response. What in hell are we doing here?

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.

Read more: John Kerry Syria Speech - It's On - Esquire
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[Flatulo]

4. And once again we resort to military action with none of the three prerequisites;

A detailed mission with objectives and an exit plan, support of the congress, and support of the people.

I'm not in favor of this.

On edit - I just now leaned that the President will seek approval from congress. Still, the people are against intervention by 80%.

[pansypoo53219]

5. more an indictment of the stupid ass blivet that george w fucking bush was.

we are STILL PAYING for his misadministration. and will be for decades.

[blm]

7. exactly....

the idea that Obama is using limited military force for the same reason as Bush invaded Iraq is preposterous and irresponsible.

[Maedhros]

6. 100 cruise missiles = $140 million straight to General Dynamics.

[Flatulo]

8. Hang the expense - do we have the right to bomb

a sovereign state that hasn't attacked either us or an ally? I don't think so.

And on second thought, that $140m is a lot of money. We could pay 7 or 8 CEOs with that kind of change.

[Maedhros]

10. Of course we do not have any kind of legal authority to drop bombs on a country

that isn't threatening to attack us.

Bombing Syria is the perceived easy answer - it requires no real consequence for the United States, it doesn't require much in the way of sacrifice or risk and can be accomplished within a news cycle.

"Easy answers" are usually the purview of neocons, who sneer at "nuance" or perceived "coddling." The problem is, in a situation such as we are experiencing in Syria, there is no "easy answer." Trying to manufacture one with military intervention is unwise.

[indepat]

11. But as Condi Rice said mushroom (poisonous gas) clouds might be wafting in any moment and we have

the right to launch pre-emptive wars of aggression as TPTB deem desirable. My God, this is playing out as if it were right out of the right-wing PNAC playbook.

[Solly Mack]

9. K&R

Though I'm confused by the title. I well remember Maher Arar and that the U.S government got away with torturing him. You send someone to a known torture country for uh, "interrogation" (cough cough), you ARE responsible for their torture. You are guilty of crimes against humanity. I don't give a rat's ass how much "assurance" you got.