The Bush Burden (tremendous article)

[JayhawkSD]

15. Bombing Syria is a bad idea in its own right.

It's not a bad idea because of what Bush did or did not do. It would still be a bad idea if Bush had never existed.

It is a bad policy and a bad idea on the merits, or lack thereof, of the action itself; on the illegality of making an act of war against a nation which has not attacked and is not an imminent threat to us; on the risk on incurring retaliation fom any number of sources; on the sheer stupidity of this country bombing yet another Islamic nation.

It's time to let go of the past and stop blaming Obama's problems on what previous presidents did. He is on his own, and he can make his own decisions. He has made some good ones, and he has made some god-awful bad ones like this.

The "isolationists" in the Republican Party are not isolationists, any more than are the Democrats who want no part of military intervention in a seventh Islamic nation, nor are they are "a direct result of the Bush foreign policy" any more than are their counterparts in the Democratic Party. Being against unprovoked and illegal military action does not make a person an "isolationist," it makes them reasonable.

We called a strike against two buildings in our country an "act of war" and retailited by invading, destroying, and occupying two countries and slaughtering tens of thousands of their citizens, and now we are prepared to say that attacking Syria with hundreds of cruise missiles is not an act of war and both should not and will not invite retaliation. That is utterly insane.