Obama's Dissenters in the State Department Have a Novel Idea: More Bombs

[bemildred]

By Charles P. Pierce
Jun 17, 2016

Tout les Toobz are buzzing today about the apparent mutiny within the Department of State regarding what the United States should do about the ongoing carnage in Syria. The consensus of the 51 people who have signed on to the complaint seems to be bomb the hell out of the place, but from a safe distance. Per CNN:

The cable says that U.S. policy in the Middle East has been "overwhelmed" by the continuing violence in Syria. It calls for a "judicious use of stand-off and air weapons, which would undergird and drive a more focused and hard-nosed U.S.-led diplomatic process." CNN reviewed a draft of the memo, which has since been classified. The Wall Street Journal first reported on the memo's existence. The internal memo was sent throughout the "dissent channel," a mechanism for State Department officials to offer alternative views on foreign policy without freedom of retaliation or retaliation. It was established in the 1960s during the Vietnam War to ensure that senior leadership in the department would have access to alternative policy views on the war.

(And, not for nothing, but I'm glad there is such a thing as the "dissent channel" within the State Department. It comes from noble origins. Where in the hell it was during the run-up to the Iraq catastrophe is another question entirely.)

The case itself remains unconvincing. There may have been a point at which this country's involvement in a civil war in the Middle East would not have been completely counter-productive, but that moment passed some time in 2002.

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a45916/state-department-syria-policy/

[bemildred]

1. The Snake Oil Salesmen of Syria Are Back

Kevin Drum Jun. 17, 2016 10:50 AM

I'm not quite sure why this is such big news, but apparently it is:

Dozens of State Department employees signed and submitted a memo early this week urging the Obama administration to adopt a more aggressive stance against the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad, including the use of military force.

The 51 signatories to the document, which was sent through the department’s internal “dissent channel,” were largely mid-level diplomats based in Washington and overseas, including a Syria desk officer and the consul general in Istanbul....The memo calls on the administration to respond to the worsening humanitarian situation in Syria — where at least a quarter of a million people have been killed in five years of civil war and nearly half the population has been internally displaced or has fled the country — with air attacks and other “stand-off” weapons, fired from a distance without troops on the ground, to force Assad into U.S.-led negotiations to end the conflict.

I just don't get it. If you want to argue for a massive ground campaign to wipe Assad off the map, fine. I disagree, but at least we're talking about something real. Air strikes and "stand-off" weapons, by contrast, are a joke. Those just aren't going to make a significant difference—aside from possibly prompting Russia to get back into the air strike business too, that is.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/06/snake-oil-salesmen-syria-are-back

[bemildred]

2. Confused about the US response to Isis in Syria? Look to the CIA's relationship with Saudi Arabia

Patrick Cockburn

In 1996 the CIA set up a special unit called Alec Station with the aim of targeting Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda network. It was headed by Michael Scheuer who found the Saudis less than cooperative. “When we set up the unit in 1996 we asked the Saudis for some basic material on bin Laden, like his birth certificate, his financial records – obvious stuff,” recalled Mr Scheuer many years later. “We got nothing.”

The CIA unit pursuing bin Laden kept on requesting this mundane but necessary information about their target from the Saudis for the next three years but got no reply. “Finally in 1999, we get a message from the [CIA] station chief in Riyadh, a Mr John Brennan,” Mr Scheuer said in an interview published in Kill Chain: Drones and the Rise of High-Tech Assassins by my brother Andrew Cockburn. “He said we should stop sending these requests as it was ‘upsetting the Saudis’.”

The story is important because John Brennan has been director of the CIA since he replaced David Petraeus in 2013 and last week he was once again avoiding any upset to the Saudis by telling the Saudi-owned al-Arabiya television station that the 28 pages in the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry relating to Saudi Arabia that have never been released contain “no evidence to indicate that the Saudi government as an institution -- or as senior Saudi officials individually -- had supported the 9/11 attacks."

This is not the impression of others who have read the report and dodges the question of indirect Saudi support for or tolerance of al-Qaeda in the past. But the important point is that in the 20 years between 1996 and 2016, the CIA and British security and foreign policy agencies have consistently given priority to maintaining their partnership with powerful Sunni states such as Saudi Arabia, the Gulf monarchies, Turkey and Pakistan over the elimination of terrorist organisations such as al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, Isis and the Taliban.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/confused-about-the-us-response-to-isis-in-syria-look-to-the-cias-relationship-with-saudi-arabia-a7087791.html

[KoKo]

33. Cockburn, as usual...

can cut through the weeds to get to the real issues. Unfortunately, so many news sources these days (whether by intent or ignorance) muck up reporting on foreign affairs so badly that the reader is left clueless and eventually gives up trying to make any sense of what seems senseless.

I thought this snip from the article explains the Saudi influence in Syria so much better than Reuter's or the other articles:

What makes the current wave of terrorism different is that it is backed by the resources of a de facto state which, even in its current battered condition, can mobilise money, expertise, equipment and communications. The possession of territory with its own well-organised administration makes a great difference to the punching power of Isis when it comes to either terrorism or war.

It is helped also by its enemies’ divisions, which are graphically on display at the moment in the battle for Aleppo where the CIA and the Pentagon pursue radically different policies. The Pentagon holds that its prime aim is to fight and defeat Isis, while the CIA maintains that Isis can be only be eliminated by first overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad and his regime. “The defeat of Assad is a necessary precondition to ultimately defeat [Isis],” a US intelligence official told Nancy Youssef of the Daily Beast. “As long as there is a failed leader in Damascus and a failed state in Syria, Isis will have a place to operate from.” This makes the dubious assumption that there would be less of a failed state in Damascus after Assad than there was before his fall.

Much the same argument is made by 51 US State Department diplomats in an internal memo calling for military strikes against Assad’s forces to compel him to abide by a ceasefire. It says that the Syrian government’s barrel bombing of civilians is the “root cause of the instability that continues to grip Syria and the broader region.” It calls for “a judicious use of stand-off and air weapons, which would undergird and drive a more focused and hard-nosed US diplomacy.” The mid-level diplomats, taking advantage of a State Department channel for officials to diverge from official policy without damaging their careers, say that at present Assad feels under no pressure to agree to a ceasefire, known as a “cessation of hostilities”, which excludes Isis and al-Nusra.

The diplomats’ demand for air strikes appears extraordinarily naïve and ill-considered since the last thing that Syria needs is yet more violence. Their protest avoids the problem that the Syrian armed opposition is dominated by Isis, al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham. It is understandable that the diplomats should denounce Assad for carrying out atrocities, but they should also accept that the only alternative to his rule is the Islamists. The US has found to its cost over the last few years that there is no moderate armed opposition fighting Assad which it can support aside from the Syrian Kurdish paramilitary army and some Arab units under Kurdish control.

[bemildred]

35. Yes, the government, doesn't even have it's shit together, is not on the same page.

Is at war with itself over policy, and that does much to explain ...

Most of DC is more wrapped up in it's little power struggles than ANYTHING else.

And that situation goes way back.

[yurbud]

37. it is truly dizzying how our government pumps up and uses nasty proxies with one hand then

sends someone chasing after them with the other.

What is the value of doing both?

Or is it just to spend a lot of money spinning their wheels since they have a finger on the scale, so the chasers are always Elmer Fudd and the boogey men are always Bugs Bunny?

[bemildred]

38. Value to whom? is always a good question.

The US government does not have its shit together, various parts of it are working at cross-purposes, often in very underhanded ways, as we speak. And this is "normal" too.

All in the service of keeping the money river that is "defense" rolling, because where would we be without that?

[yurbud]

40. as long as contractors are working both sides of the equation, it's a win-win

[bemildred]

42. One big happy family. nt

[anoNY42]

3. We haven't tried regime change in a while,

maybe it will work this time!

[bemildred]

4. Obama Is Facing A Diplomatic Crisis Not Seen Since The Vietnam War

In a diplomatic revolt not seen since the Vietnam War, 51 United States Diplomats signed an internal State Department memo scathing President Obama’s Syria policy, and urging Obama to strike the Syrian Regime. The diplomats are enraged by continual Syrian violations of agreed upon ceasefires and the “overwhelming” of U.S. foreign policy by the Syrian civil war.

The diplomatic revolt is unprecedented in modern American foreign policy. Even at the height of the divisive Iraq war, the U.S. diplomatic corps did not revolt in such a public and embarrassing way. The diplomats sent the memo though the State Department’s dissent channel, which was was set up during the Vietnam war. The channel allows diplomats to protest current administration policy without fearing for their careers.

The high profile dissent is reminiscent of the famous ‘General’s Revolt’ at the height of the U.S. bombing effort in Vietnam. The then-Joint Chiefs of Staff were united in their opposition to the Johnson administration’s attrition strategy against the North Vietnamese. The chiefs confronted President Lyndon Johnson in the Oval Office, who refused to hear their concerns.

The diplomats who signed the memo were almost all career members of the foreign service, with hundreds of years of combined experience operating in the Middle East. “The status quo in Syria will continue to present increasingly dire, if not disastrous, humanitarian, diplomatic and terrorism-related challenges,” the memo said.

http://dailycaller.com/2016/06/17/obama-is-facing-a-diplomatic-crisis-not-seen-since-the-vietnam-war/

[bemildred]

5. . nt

[bemildred]

6. The Letter Urging a U.S. Rethink on Syria

---

“The moral rationale for taking steps to end the deaths and suffering in Syria, after five years of brutal war, is evident and unquestionable,” the letter from the 51 diplomats said. “The status quo in Syria will continue to present increasingly dire, if not disastrous, humanitarian, diplomatic and terrorism-related challenges.”

The Times adds the letter was filed to the State Department’s “dissent” channel, which was set up in the wake of the Vietnam War so, in the words of the newspaper, “employees who had disagreements with policies [could] … register their protest with the secretary of state and other top officials, without fear of reprisal.”

In a statement, Mary Ellen O’Connell, professor of international law at the University of Notre Dame, said the letter is, in essence, “calling for a grave breach of international law.” She said the U.S. military intervention in Libya had been an “unmitigated disaster,” and “attacking Syria will have no better results.”

“Diplomacy is the way to end the Syrian civil war,” she said. “State Department officials need to get on that job—not pass the buck again to the military.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2016/06/state-department-syria-letter/487511/

[enough]

7. Thanks Bemildred. (nt)

[bemildred]

8. My pleasure. nt

[geek tragedy]

9. the fallacy that doing something about a bad situation is always better than doing nothing

Obama's made his view pretty clear--he sees the Arab world as one giant sh!tshow that's way, way, way beyond our ability to fix.

The fact that the current situation is awful doesn't mean there are better options.

[bemildred]

10. A point that gets far too little attention, that, because doing nothing does not further ones career

Among other reasons, much new software for computers has a similar motivation, the desire to make a name by doing something new, as opposed to improving the old stuff. It encrusts the internet now.

But the fact is in real life doing nothing is often the best option. As i like to say: people who try to make you angry or afraid are not your friends, they're trying to get you to do something. Maybe you should think about it for a while instead,

[geek tragedy]

12. doing nothing falls into cognitive blind spots

it's a decision, for good or aught, and should always be treated as an option to be compared on the merits, taking a broad view, versus other possible plans.

it shouldn't be a default plan nor should it be something dismissed out of hand

[bemildred]

13. It beats the heck out lf going off half cocked, esp. as a default option. nt

[geek tragedy]

14. certainly, but by the same token it needs to be defended when policy is debated.

not enough to argue that action plans are bad, gotta show that doing nothing is a viable option.

for example, Obama has finally at long last realized that doing nothing with regard to Israel/Palestine is not only a viable option, it's really the only rational one for us.

[bemildred]

17. If you got a plan, a good plan, a well-informed plan, that's different. More bombing is not a plan.

It's an abdication of responsibility.

[geek tragedy]

18. the absence of moral choice is not something people are wired to comprehend nt

[bemildred]

20. Effective moral choices demand a very unsentimental view of the situation.

It is not enough, morally, to mean well. Esp. when it is you that is contemplating violence to bring about the good.

[geek tragedy]

21. indeed, though very quickly differing moral theories will counsel

different courses of action.

[bemildred]

22. People do disagree. Open debate helps sort that out. DU does that, sometimes.

Wise leaders, teams of rivals, etc. You don't want to be impulsive, that's Trump, and you don't want to make decisons when you are upset either. People get engaged in their little disputes with each other and they forget all about the big picture.

[geek tragedy]

23. I wonder how much debate here is driven by deonotology vs utilitarianism nt

[bemildred]

24. A good question, and not just here.

People like order and stability, so they like rules, but they differ about the proper rules, and how many there should be, and who should make them. Still it's very hard to argue there should be no rules, we just aren't that well behaved.

And utilitarianism is just 19th Century capitalism with some rationalized dressing up.

I like heuristics, rules of thumb that are admitted sometimes to be wrong, that is the way the world is.

[geek tragedy]

25. utilitarianism covers a pretty wide spectrum of options

rules-based utilitarianism seems to best lend itself to policymaking, whereas pure form utilitarianism seems like a free for all.

Deontology tends to lead to paralysis pretty quickly

[bemildred]

26. The problem is the assumption that you can sum things up, arrive at a value that represents utility.

You can't, utility is messy, lots of things are messy. Things that really follow rules are the exception. That's why we like them, they are orderly, predictable, we can understand them.

There is no one complete set of rules. That is proved formally in mathematics, you always can use another rule. And thinking that way leaves you stuck when the rules don't work. You cling to the rules rather than deal with the exception.

[bemildred]

11. This is very much about "The Obama Doctrine" too, good point. nt

[bemildred]

15. Federal plan for northern Syria advances with U.S.-backed forces

As an alliance of U.S.-backed militias advance against Islamic State in northern Syria, their political allies are making progress of their own toward a new federal system of government which they hope will take root in newly captured areas.

The autonomous federation being planned by Syrian Kurdish parties and their allies is taking shape fast: a constitution should be finalised in three months, and possibly sooner, to be followed quickly by elections, a Kurdish official said.

While Kurdish groups insist this is no separatist bid, it is set to redraw the map as U.N. diplomacy fails to make any progress toward ending the war that has splintered Syria into a patchwork of separately-run areas.

In so doing, it is likely to deepen the concerns of NATO member Turkey about growing Kurdish influence in northern Syria, a region whose once unfamiliar Kurdish name - Rojava - has now entered the Middle East's political lexicon.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-federalism-idUSKCN0Z21FN

This is what's "not working".

[geek tragedy]

16. ironic because the Kurds are the one group who seem to have their shit together,

but they were screwed over by colonialist cartographers and nationalist pols like the Trumpito in Turkey.

[bemildred]

19. I'd say they earned it.

And it is true they have been there forever, and rarely the boss of their own affairs.

[bemildred]

29. You know Geek, this could get interesting.

These guys are trying to sandbag the President. And they are exposed, they have made their affiliation public, the War Party, belligerently pushing for war in a country sick of war, sick of paying for it.

So here you have Obama, a popular sitting President in the last part of his 2nd term, one of the most popular politicans in the country, essential to the candidates and the Party's chances in the coming election, long since sick of these guys, and a smart cookie, what does he do?

[geek tragedy]

30. Career diplomatic personnel, I think he just has to ignore their advice

As tempting as it is to suggest a crackdown, that sort of thing happened under Bush so probably a bad idea.

Watching Syria though, I get their angst. But angst isn't a strategy.

[bemildred]

31. Obama doesn't do crackdowns.

But he does do other things, and sometimes he is very effective.

Frederic C. Hof suggests they might have to resign out of principle if Obama continues to resist their omniscience in a piece by Atlantic Council. Gosh I don't know how I would go about it, but I'd sure try to encourage that.

[MisterP]

27. this isn't the "dissent channel," this IS the stovepipe

and you'll never guess who set it up 2009-13 ...

[bemildred]

28. Russia failed to heed U.S. call to stop targeting Syrian rebels - U.S.

Russia launched a second air strike on U.S.-backed Syrian fighters battling Islamic State, even after the U.S. military used emergency channels to ask Moscow to stop following a first strike, a U.S. official told Reuters on Friday.

The official, who spoke to on condition of anonymity, said a small number of Syrian fighters were killed in Thursday's air strikes in southern Syria.

U.S. officials have criticized the strike near al-Tanf, saying it raised concerns about Russian intentions in Syria and promising to bring up the matter with Russia. No Russia or Syrian ground forces were in the area at the time.

Asked about the incident, the Kremlin said on Friday it was hard to distinguish between moderate and Islamist extremist rebels on the ground when it came to targeting air strikes in Syria because they were frequently fighting close to one another.

http://www.reuters.com/article/uk-mideast-crisis-syria-strike-idUSKCN0Z306L

Yep. That "internal memo" was in the NYT in hours. Ash Carter is livid I hear.

[bemildred]

32. 51 US Diplomats Are Wrong--Assad Regime Change by Force Would Result in Uncontrollable Anti-American

51 mid-level U.S. diplomats have written a dissent cable to Secretary of State John Kerry urging the Obama administration to conduct military strikes against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to stop its "persistent violations of a cease-fire in the country’s five-year-old civil war."

The mid-level diplomats, who have been involved in the U.S. policy toward Syrian over the past five years, believe that “a judicious use of stand-off and air weapons, would undergird and drive a more focused and hard-nosed U.S.-led diplomatic process” and would put pressure on the Assad government to negotiate with the moderate opposition. The officers wrote that the Syrian government's barrel bombing of civilians is the “root cause of the instability that continues to grip Syria and the broader region....The moral rationale for taking steps to end the deaths and suffering in Syria, after five years of brutal war, is evident and unquestionable.The status quo in Syria will continue to present increasingly dire, if not disastrous, humanitarian, diplomatic and terrorism-related challenges.”

The dissent cable concludes, “It is time that the United States, guided by our strategic interests and moral convictions, lead a global effort to put an end to this conflict once and for all.”
I can understand their frustration, but from a different point of view.

I served sixteen years as a U.S. diplomat. But, thirteen years ago in late February 2003 I wrote a dissent cable to Secretary of State Colin Powell expressing my strong concerns about the Bush administration's hot rhetoric about the need for regime change in Iraq and predicted the chaos that a U.S.invasion and occupation would have.

http://warisacrime.org/content/51-us-diplomats-are-wrong-assad-regime-change-force-would-result-uncontrollable-anti-america

About the Author: Ann Wright served 29 years in the US Army/Army Reserves and retired as a Colonel. She also served 16 years as a U.S. diplomat in U.S. Embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. After sending a dissent cable on the pending Iraq war, she resigned from the U.S. Department of State in March, 2003. She is the co-author of "Dissent: Voices of Conscience."

[KoKo]

34. ...!

She makes good points.

[bemildred]

36. The Problem with the State Department Dissenters

By George Friedman

June 20, 2016 If the Assad regime was destroyed, what would take its place?

Last week, approximately 51 State Department officials filed a protest against the American policy in Syria. They called for airstrikes against the Bashar al-Assad regime, which they claimed has been in constant violation of all ceasefire agreements. On the surface, this is a completely reasonable demand. Bashar al-Assad and his father Hafez al-Assad have maintained power in Syria since 1970 through oppression and periodic reigns of terror. Resting on the support of the Alawite minority in Syria, they created a military and security force that has violated all standards of human decency.

---

The problem is threefold. First, would such bombing work? Second, how many innocent civilians would be killed in the bombing, and how would the uprising’s supporters and others demanding action to stop Assad’s brutality respond to these inevitable civilian deaths? Finally, and most important, if a massive air campaign forced Assad out, what would the situation be like after the attack?

Beginning with the last question, the example of Libya sits before us. Moammar Gadhafi was certainly in the running with the Assads and Saddam Hussein for the title of most brutal thug in the region. His regime was destroyed and he was killed. What followed was not the establishment of a liberal democracy, in which a leader like former Czech President Václav Havel or former Polish President Lech Wałęsa proclaimed the liberation of a people. Rather, what followed was the continuation of a civil war with people certainly no less vicious than Gadhafi contending for power, and the country suffering through years of war and poverty.

Syria, of course, is a different case. It cannot be said that Assad has imposed order through terror on Syria. He has terrified without maintaining order. Still, it is useful to consider what might follow airstrikes. There are three possibilities. One is that Assad, shocked at the attacks, will stop his war. Second, he might take the airstrikes in stride and continue the war. Third, the airstrikes may be so effective that they will cause the regime to crumble.

https://geopoliticalfutures.com/the-problem-with-the-state-department-dissenters/

[yurbud]

39. Why didn't Obama clear out the neocons when he came into office?

[bemildred]

43. If I had to summarize it in one guess: The Congress.

The Congress has made a habit of using defense procurement as a slush fund since before we beat the British, and so have large portions of the Business class.

Con men have been a staple of US literature all the way back, we've always had plenty of hucksters, grifters, hustlers, and crooks, and we romanticize them too, lionize them, like Trump.

All that has been much enhanced by the power and impunity we have enjoyed since WWII, and the Washinton bubble just seals it all in, where it stews.

[yurbud]

47. How did the slush fund force Obama to re-appoint these grifters to positions of power?

[bemildred]

49. I could only speculate, but the sum of that speculating would be compromises were made.

And that things like avoiding impeachment and getting elected in the first place were relevant. You have to remember that it's both parties that like the slush fund. Even now, after 15 years of this folly, it's a tough sell to actually give up those good jobs in ones own district, and I expect in the event it will be very disruptive, and we haven't had a Congress that could wipe its own butt without help since, ..., the 70s I'd say.

[yurbud]

52. if they could just make up boogey men that did get actual people killed

maybe Nazis living on the dark side of the moon.

[bemildred]

51. You notice in his last year he has become more assertive?

It's too late, they can't shut him up now, and his popularity is much better than theirs.

I have always thought his first job was to go two terms and leave office in good repute, and he did, he's been the Eisenhower Republican he says he is.

[yurbud]

41. one way Hillary could impress the crap out of me is give an honest speech about foreign policy

Tells us what our government has really been trying to do, whose interests it serves, what it costs us, and what average Americans get out of it.

I already know the answer to the last one, but I'd like to hear a top insider lay out the first two.

Some who have done this well before were Smedley Butler in "War Is a Racket" and Col. Lawrence Wilkerson in modern day.

[bemildred]

45. The Rich and the Super-Rich: A Study in the Power of Money Today

Hardcover – June, 1968
by Ferdinand Lundberg (Author)
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Thirty years ago, a bombshell of a book appeared which told the story of the lords of wealth and their glittering clans. It was called America's Sixty Families. It rocked the nation and became a classic. Lundberg showed how America was ruled by a plutocracy of inherited wealth, even under the New Deal. At the time he could only provide a sampling of the economic and political patterns of those families, which, for one reason or another, had come under public scrutiny. In addition to the Sixty Families he dealt with in depth he was able to outline the probable holdings of a few hundred other families. Where are they today - those Sixty Families? What ravages of time, death and taxes worked on the mighty fortunes of yesteryear? Is the "Welfare State" robbing them of the opulence they knew in the good old days?... Lundberg shows that there are 200,000 very wealthy individuals in the United states. Most of them are of some 500 super-millionaire families. Examples are 250 Du Ponts, 73 Rockefellers. Some 61% of the 200,000 inherited their wealth. These families are far wealthier than ever before.... These families have all the old levers of power and pelf plus a whole host of new ones created for them during the intervening decades by the politicians, lawyers and judges who serve them. --- excerpts from book's dustjacket

https://www.amazon.com/Rich-Super-Rich-Study-Power-Money/dp/0818400692

Note the date. That book was my introduction to the wealthy in the USA. Whatever change there has been since then was all in the direction of the superrich defending their winnings and making them bigger.

[yurbud]

46. yikes! Well, they could keep most of it if they screwed the rest of us less including those in

other countries.

And of course not conduct their business using our state and defense departments as instruments of their "negotiations."

[bemildred]

48. That has annoyed me for a long time, all they have to do is govern reasonably well,

and they can sit up there and enjoy their winnings forever, nobody would care, but that's not good enough, they have to have somebody to dump on, grind the faces of the poor, grab as much as possible, engage in their little dick-waving disputes at the expense of nations and the planet.

Fools.

[yurbud]

50. what probably drives them crazy is most of us could have fairly comfortable lives, good education,

decent healthcare and even some leisure time for a fraction of what they hoard, but if we had all that, we'd have a chance to catch our breath, realize that inherited money does not qualify them to rule the world anymore than it does to declare themselves kings or queens, and they would gradually become the toothless zoo exhibits that actual royalty have become.

That is coming eventually anyway.

They probably realized before the rest of us that the internet broke their chokehold on information, so as soon as you read news from a couple of other countries or even a handful of decently written blogs, you realize our mainstream pundits are lazy propagandists at best and not to be trusted.

As oil dries up and alternative energy becomes cheaper, the chokehold on energy will break too.

Food and medicine will be harder, but someone will figure out how to do it, and somewhere along the way, we'll figure out how to make democracy actually work for most people.

[milestogo]

44. Bunch of sociopaths at the State Department

[bemildred]

53. Speaking Nonsense to Power: Misadventures in Dissent Over Syria

Anyone with a conscience is frustrated and saddened by the ongoing tragedy in Syria. Five years of civil war have caused more than 400,000 deaths, created millions of refugees, and given rise to extremism and regional instability. The 51 mid-level officers at the State Department who wrote a “dissent cable” advocating the use of force feel this frustration more acutely than most. One can understand and respect their despair. I was deeply impressed, when I worked at the State Department, by how much State Department officials cared about the Syrian people and how tirelessly they worked to improve the situation in Syria.

But, alas, caring is not a plan and despair is not a strategy.

---

But in a media-saturated age, the tendency for these disagreements to leak out into the public sphere, and subsequently embarrass the president, has made this situation politically intolerable. Every leak and every demonstration that the civil servants who populate the State Department either don’t understand or don’t care about the president’s political interests just reinforces his distrust. Recent presidents, going back at least to Nixon, have responded to this dynamic by beefing up the White House foreign policy staff and seeking to exclude the State Department from policymaking as much as possible.

This is clearly frustrating for State Department officials who feel that America has a disastrous Syria policy. But they should understand that this particular response only earns them more enmity from their political masters and will only encourage this and future presidents to exclude them more from the levers of power.

http://warontherocks.com/2016/06/speaking-nonsense-to-power-misadventures-in-dissent-over-syria/