John F. Kerry’s growing nose
John F. Kerry, our Secretary of State, gave an impassioned speech about the evil Syrian regime, written by a very good speechwriter.
He was full of accusations and allegations, almost down to the soldiers’ shirt and shoe sizes in each of the evil chemical weapons batteries. The only part he left out was the evidence, and mentioning that there weren’t any enemy rebels among the casualties.
Although hoping to get the U.S. public behind him and President Obama, it may not work this time, as the public is tired of being lied to. We were lied into Vietnam, and lied into Iraq. In fact, I think that Mr. Kerry used the same speechwriter that Vice President, Dick Cheney used when he was busy cherry picking “evidence” against Saddam Hussein and his non-existent WMD.
We even had James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence lie to the Congress (without consequences) about the public not being under surveillance. The opposite is true, and he did back-flips after being caught to reinterpret the word he used – “No” to mean something else. Why wasn’t he sanctioned? Because Congress is weak, bicker a lot and leaderless.
When we attack other countries, it’s only after the “Ooops” error is discovered that our government tactfully and carefully admits the error. They do it either on the weekend, or during another crisis. As the American public has such a short collective memory, very few people pay any attention or care. Why? Because we will have had so many crises since the beginning of that particular “Ooops,” that it will be ancient history.
The actual process is developed backwards. First you decide on the outcome; in this instance that al-Assad must go. Then when he actually objected to being knocked down like the rest of the Arab Spring (fiasco) dominoes, President Obama’s team developed rationale for us to push him out.
Sad for Mr. Obama, but the pin-prick bombing campaign that President Obama is building up courage to initiate is like he’s trying to spank al-Assad. It will not help.
It will help Raytheon’s stock price as they make the Tomahawk missiles. They may gross a half billion dollars in new missile orders out of this crisis.
Mr. Obama has cornered himself by using the red line metaphor. The Russians don’t believe a word of the stories our government has concocted. The real issue is how to stop the Russians from supplying SA-300 ground to air missiles to Iran. The rockets will destroy Israeli airplanes when they fly over Iran on their next nuclear facilities bombing mission.
Since Russia likes having Tartus, its Syrian port for Mediterranean access, Mr. Kerry (and President Obama) were using the chemical weapons pitch to get Russia to give the okay to get rid of Assad. They won’t. They are using the specious undocumented and unproven chemical weapons claims that the Syrian government, and not the rebels (al-Qaeda) used them. Remember, there hasn’t been any reports of any rebel casualties.
Russia isn’t buying the story, because they strongly doubt its truth. Even if they did, they still like having that port for their Mediterranean fleet. It’s in their best interest to protect Al-Assad and supply the same sophisticated SA-300VM rockets to him to keep our air-force at bay.
I suspect that these rockets have already been delivered to Iran and Syria, but the long encryption codes needed to activate the weapon’s computers have not been supplied.
That’s Vladimir Putin’s gambit to block Mr. Obama’s action. So far it’s worked as Mr. Obama hasn’t made “the decision” for weeks now. This could be the reason… fire the Tomahawks and Mr. Putin will release the codes instantly to the Syrians, and then to Iran.
As protecting Israel has a much higher priority than the Syrian public, a pawn in this chess game, it’s probably what’s stopping Mr. Obama from acting.
If our president had any sense, he would call for an emergency session of Congress and put it to the vote, as in the U.K., quietly hoping that they’d vote against launching the strike. He could escape the red line metaphor by blaming the no-voting members of Congress, and move forward until al-Qaeda’s next incident. That will be blamed on al-Assad again. Perhaps they’d vote yes the next time.
Fortunately, Mr. Kerry is not as vituperous as Mrs. Clinton, our former Secretary of State and instigator of the Arab Spring disaster, so his nose may shrink in time. Let’s hope so.
