THE JOURNAL URGES US TO FIGHT ON BOTH SIDES IN SYRIA: BELLUM GRATIA BELLI?

9/17/14

In its lead editorial this (Wednesday, 9/17/14, page A14) morning, the Wall Street Journal urges the Obama Administration to lift the siege on Aleppo by bombing Syrian President Bashar Assad’s airfields.  This would put the United States, explicitly, on both sides of the Syrian conflict and clearly on one side of the larger Sunni/Shiite conflict in the Middle East.  Who but someone who urges us to fight a war for the sake of fighting a war would urge such an insane policy?

Even dedicated non-interventionists like yours truly can see some merit in a bombing campaign against ISIS, ISIL, the Islamic State, or whatever it is being called today, especially after this especially cold-blooded group of terrorists has beheaded two Americans and one Brit.   We don’t like our country putting its considerable proboscis where it doesn’t belong, but we also can’t see our country standing idly by while its citizens are tortured, killed, and otherwise abused.  

But I have also urged caution, reminding members of the War Party, and its most stentorian voice at the Wall Street Journal, that only a few months ago, they were urging the United States to bomb Syria in support of the Syrian rebels, the most salient group of which was, and is, ISIS.  (See, for example, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ON THE ISLAMIC STATE:  “I WAS FOR IT UNTIL I WAS AGAINST IT”?,  8/21/14, MORE ENLIGHTENED THINKING FROM WASHINGTON: LET’S FIGHT IN BOTH IRAQ AND SYRIA!, 6/25/14)  A military campaign against ISIS, however, would put us on the side of Mr. Assad, a guy that the Journal and its fellow neocons were urging us to oppose only a few months ago.   Fighting ISIS thus would have the implicit effect of our fighting on both sides of the Syrian Civil War.  Only the geniuses at the State Department and other bastions of deep thinking foreign policy formulation in Washington would put us on both sides of a war.

Now the Journal, by urging the Obama Administration to bomb Syrian airfields and take other steps to lift the siege of Aleppo, is advocating explicitly placing us on both sides of the Syrian Civil War, fighting both the Assad regime and its most powerful and visible opponent, ISIS.

The rationale the Journal provides for getting us on both sides of the Syrian conflict is that

Sunnis will not support the campaign against Islamic State if they think our air strikes are intended to help the regime in Damascus and its Shiite allies in Beirut and Tehran.

This might indeed be the case, though we could, by the intensity and targeting of our air campaign, show the world that our objective, and only objective, is to rid the world, to the extent we can, of a group of extremists who have committed what ought to be the worst of sins on the international stage, i.e., the cold-blooded killing of American citizens.  But I digress.

More to the point, though, is that while the Sunnis may misinterpret an effort solely directed against ISIS as our taking the sides of the Shiites in Syria and in the larger Middle East, what will be the reaction of the Shiites if they see us fighting explicitly on the side of the Sunnis in Syria?  Perhaps they will take solace in that we are supporting the Shiite dominated government in Iraq, but I wouldn’t bet on it.  

The larger point is that it’s easy to see how byzantine the politics of the Middle East are and the best policy is to stay as far away from such intrigue as we can, limiting our involvement to making it clear that killing and torturing American citizens will not go unanswered.

One suspects, though, that the neocons, their manifesto writers at the Wall Street Journal, and the rest of the War Party in Washington care little for either the complexities of the Middle East or the rationalizations they provide for military action there.  Their sole, or at least their paramount, goal in urging us to bomb both the Assad regime and the Islamic State that opposes it is to get us involved in a war, any war…doing so is good for the “defense” contractors who keep War Party members comfortably ensconced in their Washington, D.C. sinecures.  And what could be more important than that?

TEN MANIFESTATIONS OF THE GLOOM AND DOOM THAT PERVADES OUR WORLD

7/30/14

Lest you have been enjoying your summer too much, here are some reasons to justify the gloom and doom approach to the world that characterizes many sage observers, including yours truly. Some of these have been very much in the headlines, some have been buried in the bowels of the news.  They are listed in no particular order:

1. The heat is being turned up on the Russians under the theory that we should have a bigger say concerning what happens on its borders than should Russia.  The Russians, and their leader, Vladimir Putin, are being backed into a corner with this newest round of economic and financial sanctions.  The major impact of these shrewd diplomatic moves has been to enhance Mr. Putin’s popularity at home (All governments, and especially authoritarian governments, like that of Mr. Putin, find foreign crises useful in rallying support among their populaces.) and to increasingly make the Russians see the entire Ukraine situation as evolving into a fight not for Ukraine but for Russia itself.   What could the consequences be?   One can think of many, but none of them is good.

2. The Israelis and the Palestinians in Gaza (for now) continue to go at it, with Hamas militants continuing to dig tunnels for sorties against Israeli civilians and military personnel and Israel bearing down militarily on Hamas military strongholds with predictable consequences for the civilian populations of Gaza.  Yesterday, the Israelis knocked out the only power plant on the Gaza Strip, eliminating electricity and water service for the entire area.   The situation is getting more desperate and the conflict threatens to spread at least to the West Bank and probably beyond.

3. An ebola outbreak is spreading through West Africa, having already claimed thousands of lives and probably destined to kill many more.

4. Western states in the Colorado River valley are tapping into groundwater at unprecedented rates.  Already, ground water levels are dangerously low and Lake Mead is at its lowest levels since it was built in the ‘30s.   Meanwhile, larges sections of California remain mired in drought.

5. Farm prices are down sharply, with December corn trading at $3.70 per bushel as I write this, far below the $4.00 widely regarded as the breakeven price for farmers who raise this most vital commodity.   That $4.00, of course, is a nebulous number and varies from farm to farm, but it’s still a pretty good indicator of the shape of farm finances…currently not good.   Not only does this hurt farm incomes, which would a bad enough outcome, but weakness in farm incomes quickly ripples throughout the entire agricultural economy…ag equipment manufacturers, seed and fertilizer companies, rural banks, etc.  And sometimes, but not always, weakness on the farm is a precursor of general economic malaise.

6. According to USA Today (not a good source, I know), one-third of Americans have debt in collection.  So much for Americans’ cleaning up their balance sheets; we just can’t stop spending money we don’t have for things we don’t need to impress people we don’t like.  This is not a formula for economic success, as much as the learned observers in the financial media cheer every indication of increased spending and lament every indication of financial prudence on the part of the American consumer.

7. There seem to be the makings of a shake-up in China’s leadership as Zhou Yongkang, former domestic security chief (a BIG job in China) comes under investigation for “serious disciplinary violations.”   China is a big, important place; what happens in China doesn’t stay in China any more.

8. The United States is seemingly under invasion by legions of illegal immigrants from Central America and doesn’t seem to know what to do with these new arrivals.   Our sense of humanity paralyzes us, perhaps understandably, making us a helpless giant in the face of this wave of new arrivals.

9. The Islamic State (“TIS”), a Sunni group I have described as Al Qaeda on steroids, continues to press for a caliphate spreading from Lebanon to the Iraq’s border with Iran.  Alawite (a branch of the Shia branch of Islam) President Bashar Assad continues fighting with Sunni rebels, including the TIS, in his country.  The United States is on both sides of this growing religious war that threatens to engulf the Middle East, supporting TIS in Syria and supporting the Iraqi government in its battle with TIS.

10. Terrorist attacks continue incessantly in China’s Xinjiang Province.  The Chinese government fights back with increasing, and understandable, ferocity.   Again, China is a big, important place; what happens in China doesn’t stay in China any more.

Yours truly does not make these observations in his occasional role as a financial/economic/stock market observer; our economy, if you believe the numbers, grew at a 4% pace in the second quarter and nothing seems to make this stock market go down.   I simply offer these trouble spots in my usual role as a curmudgeonly commentator who manages to find the cloud inside every silver lining.

There are several possible reactions to the above list of troubling developments.  One is to point out that things have looked bad at many points in history; 1929, 1933, 1940, and 1968 come immediately to mind as recent examples of low points on the world’s timeline.  And the world somehow survived and eventually prospered.  Another reaction is to say something like “This time it’s different” and conclude that the world runs inexorably and speedily toward hell in a hand basket.   While, given my general downbeat approach to life, I favor the latter, history teaches us that the former approach will not only probably prove more beneficial, both personally and generally, but will probably prove correct.  We somehow will get out of this…I suppose.

Meanwhile, yours truly continues to pray for another Great Awakening, this time on a worldwide scale.  This seems to be the only development that would save our nation, and the world, from the generalized suicide it seems bent on committing.

RICK PERRY BASHES RAND PAUL: IGNORANCE OR MERETRICIOUSNESS?

7/14/14

On Face the Nation this weekend, Texas Governor Rick Perry took his limited air time to bash fellow Republican, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul.  Governor Perry accused Mr. Paul of being an “isolationist,” and wanting to draw a “red line around the United States” because Mr. Paul urges us to stay out of the religious battles and internecine conflicts that now characterize much of the Middle East.  Governor Perry accused Mr. Paul of having his head in the sand because the Islamic State is a dangerous terrorist group that will not be satisfied in establishing a caliphate in large swaths of Iraq and Syria but also doubtless wants to inflict great harm on the United States itself.  How, Mr. Perry asked, can Mr. Paul ignore this threat?

Mr. Perry apparently made all these accusations with a straight face.   That he was able to do so is remarkable given that it was Mr. Perry and those of his ilk who were, just a few short months ago, urging us to join the conflict in Syria on the side of what is now called the Islamic State, the very terror group he (in all likelihood correctly) accuses of wanting to inflict great harm on the U.S. homeland.   It was Mr. Perry (and John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and all the other usual suspects) who was urging us to bomb Bashar Assad’s forces, which are fighting the forces of the Islamic State.   Messrs. Perry, McCain, and Graham deny that they wanted to help out the Islamic State…no sir, they wanted to help the “moderates” in Syria.   That defense for their militaristic impulse is laughable.  Even assuming that these “moderates” are genuine and are not, as are so many of our “friends” in the Middle East, merely striking a pose in order to get access to American money and start numbered offshore bank accounts, the real force behind the opposition to Bashar Assad is provided by the most radical elements of his opposition, most saliently the Islamic State.  Any action against Mr. Assad is de facto support for the Islamic State that Mr. Perry and his pals purport to oppose.

We can draw one of two conclusions about the inherent contradictions behind the Perry/McCain/Graham approach to the Islamic State, professing to be so opposed to the State while urging action to fight its battles for it.

First, Messrs. McCain, Perry and Graham are completely ignorant of the Middle East and/or are completely delusional about the array of forces in the area.  They are either complete dullards and/or they simply cannot fathom a Syria or Iraq in which the U.S. has no visible support among anyone who is not on its payroll.   These pols seem to think that there are legions of people in the Middle East who are absolutely delighted that we have inflicted massive casualties on them and their families in Iraq and Afghanistan and thus have been rendered “moderate” and “pro-Western,” ready to vanquish dictators and establish Arab versions of Jeffersonian democracy at our mere request.

Second, Messrs. McCain, Perry, and Graham are no fools and are completely aware that we have few friends in the Middle East.  Further, they know that they are being completely self-contradictory in urging action against both the Islamic State and its most salient enemy, the regime of Bashar Assad.   But Messrs. McCain, Perry, and Graham simply don’t care.  They want American involvement in every conflict in which such involvement is possible.   They have to make good IOUs to the “defense contractors” who finance their positions of power and prestige, who enable them to remain in jobs in which their most urgent and constant task is to have their hindquarters smooched.   So if going to war anywhere with anyone will make the “defense” contractors happy, the money flowing, and thus the likes of Messrs. McCain, Perry, and Graham comfortably ensconced in the lifelong sinecures they call careers, going to war anywhere with anyone must be a very good thing.

Which one is it, Messrs. Perry, McCain, and Graham?   Are you ignorant or merely servicing the people who keep you in your cushy jobs that would make a Middle Eastern suzerain envious?