[Ed: Sorry this is long, but you really should read the whole thing. Seriously.]
I’ve had a wide range of people ask me my opinion on the Syrian crisis; from co-workers to church youth. I don’t know why. But you know me. I give my people what they want!
First, as usual, history is everything. So let’s review.
The “Assad Regime” has been around a long time. Bashar Al-Assad is a leader of the Ba’ath political movement in Syria. (His dad Hafez was the party leader before him.) You probably know another former Ba’ath party leader, Saddam Hussein. Yes, Bashar and Saddam are old buddies. Both were “democratically elected” (That’s in quotes for a reason.) and both have a history of, shall we say, brass knuckle diplomacy.
However, unlike Saddam, Bashar likes to look like the good guy. He wears dapper suits instead of fake military medals. He studied in London, speaks English and married a Brit girl. He’s the Joe Cool of the Middle East. And as part of this charade, he likes to wine and dine Western diplomats.
Now, if you will recall, not long after U.S. tanks rolled into Baghdad, the peacenik Lame stream media started chanting, “Where are the WMDs?!” And, of course, there is a very logical and sound answer: Syria. When Saddam saw the writing on the wall, he stashed his goods at his buddy’s house. But, because they’re peaceniks and Lame and hate Bush more than they love the truth, this idea never saw ink.
Fast-forward about five years. Peacenik and Lame stream “Chosen One”, Bronco Bomber takes the reins. His foreign policy boils down to, “We suck and anyone we’ve ever supported sucks too.” This includes several Middle East dictators.
If you spend five minutes reading about U.S. Middle East policy, you’re realize it’s incredibly complicated and sometimes involves us propping up a bad dictator because he’s the lesser of several evils. This includes Egypt’s Mubarak, Libya’s Gadhafi, and Syria’s Asaad. But the Chosen One’s new policy encourages the overthrow of these (admittedly not angelic yet) fairly stable dictators. Great! Hooray for democracy! Except (as the rest of us know*) it’s not that simple.
Wacko extremist terrorist types, like Al Qaeda, thrive in instability. So as soon as Bronco’s “Arab Spring” breaks loose, democracy takes a back seat real fast. Suddenly Egypt’s “democratically elected” government turns into radical Islam’s Muslim Brotherhood slaughtering “infidels” in the street. Likewise, days after the good people of Syria took up arms to topple their evil dictator, the rebellion is taken over by Al Qaeda and it becomes an on-going terror attack.
The worse news is that Al Qaeda actually captured several Syrian cities and Syrian assets (quite possibly including some of Saddam’s old WMDs).
Now, Bronco Bomber (as usual) starts spouting uneducated policy threats, “fuzzy red lines,” that are (as usual) hopelessly undefinable and unenforceable. The “Un” (see also Un-Speak) announces that it’s going send people in to “observe” the civil war in Syria. A few days *AFTER* this announcement hundreds of civilians are killed by a WMD.
Bashar is smart; dangerously smart. It would not be smart to use you’re old buddy’s 20 year old chemical weapons on your own people DAYS AFTER the Un announced they were coming to inspect your war. (There is evidence that Assad explicitly rejected the use of chemical weapons.)
However, Al Qaeda is also smart and has a long running policy of killing civilians (no matter what side they’re on) to further its cause. Let’s just say that Al Qaeda did stumble across a couple canisters of weaponized sarin gas and just happened to be watching CNN when the Un made their announcement. Wouldn’t it be smart to gas some innocents with Assad’s own WMDs to push Bronco Bomber and the Un across the “fuzzy red line?” Wouldn’t that force the U.S. and the Un to take out Al Qaeda’s enemy? Pretty smart if you ask me; horrifyingly smart.
So now, Bronco Bomber is really screwed. He’s painted himself into a corner. His peacenik buddies won’t support a new war. The rest of us* are too smart to support an alliance with Al Qaeda. Mad Vlad Putin is maniacally laughing and wringing his hands as he watches the White House implode. There’s no way out for the poor Bronco Bomber. He’s going to look like the idiot he is no matter what he does. How in the good name of the Chosen One will the media bail out their Messiah?
The news comes out that Tuesday night, our great and glorious Bronco Bomber is going to address the nation. Is this going to be a “Shock on Awe” speech? Is it going to be a “Congress made me back down” speech? No one is sure. The only surety is that it will be the best tap-dance the Bronco has ever performed.
And then along comes John!
Yesterday (Monday) morning, Foot-In-Mouth Sec. of State John Kerry, spouts off a flippant attempt at condescension when a reporter asked if Assad had any way of escape from the wrath of the Bronco Bomber. Kerry said, “Sure!” Assad just has to turn over his WMDs!
Now the dominoes start falling faster than the Lame stream can type.
Kerry said this as a “Yeah right. Like that’ll happen” remark. The Lame stream instantly started backtracking Kerry’s idiocy as a “gaffe.” “He didn’t mean it like that!” But before the ink was dry, Assad and Putin pounced. The deal is struck. Putin sets himself up to sweep in and save the day. Russia will accept Syria’s WMDs to save Assad from the Big Bad Bronco.
Considering that Bronco was so hopelessly cornered, he takes this as an unexpected out! The Lame stream quickly changes tack. Now they say Kerry’s “offer” for Syrian disarmament was on the table all along. It was just “considered unlikely.”
In the mean time, the Bomber’s speech writers are burning up their keyboards to rewrite tonight’s speech. We will never know what sort of tap dance they had planned. That speech will never see the light of day. Instead, we get to watch a whole new tap dance in which the Bronco Bomber claims victory once again for his glorious diplomacy that diverted war. All hail our great and glorious Bronco.
But, my dear readers, the rest of us* know better.
* Throughout this post, when I say, “the rest of us,” I am referring to level-headed, conservative, intelligent American patriots, such as you, my readers. You are so smart! Smart enough to read this blog!!
