The first mass at Mar Elias Church in Qusayr, Syria after a year and a half of being occupied by the so-called Free Syrian Army.  This is the ragtag group of terrorists that Obama, McCain, and other assorted anti-Christian leaders of our country want to support with arms.

Syrian blogger Maridosa asks, “So I guess our churches in Syria were oppressing the people so badly that they have to be burnt down.”  She makes many good points and expresses genuine and understandable frustration and hostility to the so-called West that is trying to help an extremist group of outsider terrorists take over Syria.  The West has not been this far off the mark of justice since the idiotic campaign against Serbia in Kosovo. 

I feel more and more alienated from my own country and government, like a stranger living in a land subject to enemy occupation.

Such “gender neutral standards” exist now. They’re the legacy standards that apply only to men in these all male units.  There is no need to make new standards; we can just apply the old standards to everyone.  They’re talking about rewriting standards, even as they say standards won’t be lowered. 

If you lower them across the board, you allow women and also lower qualified men to achieve a formerly prestigious position.  This will happen in order to prevent a 99.9% washout rate for women, such as we’ve seen with the entry of female Marines to the Infantry Officers Course.  The existing high standards that have worked for years are inherently nondiscriminatory and gender neutral, as they only applied until now in order to choose between one man and another.  Any real standards will discriminate between the weak and the strong.  And any real standards will have a hugely disproportionate impact on women, as their bodies, physiology, and physical strength and endurance are very different on average from men. 

Lowering standards and applying them to both sexes is how police and fire departments have ruined themselves to accommodate age and sex discrimination suits.  This is also how the military has allowed so many women into its ranks; in boot camp and beyond, they have much lower physical fitness requirements.  This entire policy is not about military effectiveness, but about feminist fantasies derived from movies, literature, and ignorance of basic science.  These people are working for an imaginary future utopia where there is physical equality of the sexes.

What is the goal here other than the destruction of military effectiveness and the male pride and competition on which it depends? It’s not like anyone can reasonably say our SF and male-only combat arms are somehow ineffective.  Indeed, they, more than support units, have maintained much of their elan and effectiveness in spite of the creeping political correctness of the Pentagon.  Truly, it is their higher standards that have much to do with this pride and effectiveness, and this is what is in the process of being destroyed by cowardly and treasonous leadership. 

Let’s not forget, the destructiveness of this initiative is two fold, going beyond its direct impact on combat effectiveness, to include also the destruction of the leadership ranks’ self-respect and integrity, which are ground down by the conspiracy of silence promoted by the politically correct culture of today’s military.

Was it OK, by contrast, when the rebels massacred a Shia village earlier this week or shot government soldiers in cold blood and posted it on youtube?  Under what principle is it worse for the Syrian government to use chemical weapons than it is for the rebels fighting that government to engage in numerous, intentional, very brutal violations of the law of war?

One or another side’s tactics does not logically tell us that we ought to choose a side and go to war.  It matters a great deal what each of the sides are fighting for.  And it is even more important to assess whether assisting one or the other side is in our interest.  There is always the option of neutrality.  It should be adopted in the vast majority of cases.

Assad is no great guy.  He, like most Middle Eastern dictators, has little regard for the rule of law, has enriched himself at the expense of the public, has used disproportionate violence against his opponents, supported our enemies in Iraq, and has associated with Hezbollah, which is undeniably a terrorist group.  That said, he has led a moderately prosperous, orderly, and tolerant regime that is multireligious, protective of Christians, and otherwise stable and predictable. We’ve seen in recent years similar dictators deposed in Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt with totally unpredictable results that are clearly worse than the status quo ante.  We can deal with dictators; we cannot manage anarachy.  Even if Assad deserves to be toppled–and I am doubtful of this–what business is it of ours to sign on with a rebel group that is even more hostile to our nation and its principles?

One may wonder why Russia has become so involved with this conflict, supplying sophisticated arms and a great deal of diplomatic support to Syria.  Two reasons seem clear.  Russia, like the US, has carried on some of its Cold War alliances out of habit, such as its friendly relations with Cuba and North Korea.   More important, Russia  is acting as the protector of Orthodox Christians throughout the world.  This is in line with Samuel Huntington’s thesis in Clash of Civilizations and explains at least a portion of Russia’s foreign policy. This was the chief reason for its support of Serbia during the Kosovo affair, for example.

Why this would be so in Syria is not readily apparent, as the Alawite minority ruling group is a subgroup of Shia Islam.  But there is a pretty obvious explanation.  The Alawaite Ba’athist regime in Syria, like Saddam’s Ba’athist regime in Iraq, grew out of a secular ideology and historically has found its greatest support in a hodgepodge of ethnic and religious minorities. These minorities are all scared of the numerical majority Sunnis and their increasing extremism.  In Syria, the Sunni extremists are part of the broader Salafist/Wahhabi branch of Sunni Islam that finds its most militant expression in al Qaeda.

Thus, we have a war with secular and religious minorities (Christians, Shias, Alawites, Druze etc.) on one side, who favor law and order and the devil they know, and, on the other side, fanatical Sunni extremists aligned with increasingly irrelevant secular enemies of the regime. The rebel platform is essentially one of genocide and religious totalitarianism.  This is what we are supporting, and this is undeniably worse than what Assad has delivered throughout his time as leader, in spite of himself, because of the coalition nature of his minority support and the type of governance that flows naturally from such a coalition.

America and Reagan were criticized for “arming bin Laden” during the fight against the Soviet client state in Afghanistan.  This criticism always struck me as pretty stupid and facile.  It’s like saying we were incredibly wrongheaded in World War II to support the Soviet Union, whom we later opposed, in order to defeat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.  Things change.  Coalitions come and go. There was no easy way to predict what exactly would come of the anti-Soviet rebels back when there was no Taliban or al Qaeda and, more important, it was worth it at the time to contribute to the devolution of the Soviet regime, even when some risks were apparent.

Whether that criticism of US policy has any merit, it surely is absolutely ridiculous to arm al Qaeda-aligned rebels simultaneously when we’re fighting a war with such people. There is no need for a crystal ball, unlike the 1980s support of the Afghan mujaheddin.  The better analogy would be if the US had adopted a schizophrenic policy during World War II of  aligning with Nazi Germany, while we were fighting Imperial Japan, even as the two remained allies themselves.

Let’s not forget what the real Benghazi scandal is.  Libya spun out of control after the US and European powers in 2011 undertook a totally lawless campaign there, a campaign without UN Security Counsel or Congressional authorization.   The rebels killed Qadaffi in cold blood, when they were not killing black Africans allied with the government.  Soon Libya, like Syria today, became a magnet for the “jihad tourists,” who undoubtedly could not resist the American target. Learning nothing of the very recent past, we’re now going to arm al Qaeda rebels because the regime they are fighting against used one among many nasty weapons in what is invariably the most nasty of wars:  a civil war.

The law of war is important, as is respect for the rights of civilians and other noncombatants.  But violations of the law of war alone are not a reason to go to war.  This is doubly so when the so-called good guys are just as guilty of violating the law of war as those whom we now aim to oppose.  Most important, the people we are proposing to support with arms, in addition to fighting atrociously, are fighting for a goal that is fundamentally atrocious:  Islamist totalitarianism and mass murder of  the Assad regime’s supporters. 

For a guy who appeared to have some sensible, nonideological instincts to oppose a great deal of military intervention during the 2008 campaign, Obama has shown himself to be as deeply wedded to the Washington DC interventionist consensus as anyone before him.  Indeed, he has apparently doubled down in his recent elevation of the interventionist Samantha Power to the post of UN ambassador.

We find the answer to this apparent contradiction in Obama’s lifelong leftism.  Obama is not essentially a pacifist, but rather an anti-American leftist.  He most favors wars that have nothing to do with America’s interest. In the liberal imagination, such wars are far preferable to wars where strategic goods like oil or commerce may be affected, as these interventions are marked by purity of intention.  Thus, he proposed to fold up the tents and scale back the war on al Qaeda earlier this week, even as he propels our forces into messy civil wars in Libya, Egypt, and Syria.  Worse, Obama is willing not only to ignore America’s interest in these cases, but to work directly contrary to it by arming al Qaeda-aligned rebels in the name of “humanitarian war.”

This is more than misguided do-gooderism.  This is treachery that knows no bounds, as it is no ordinary betrayal of the common good, but rather a treachery that imagines itself as a cosmopolitan, universalist morality that transcends parochial and discriminatory notions of mere national interest.

I have to laugh at the Obama administration on account of it, though. This is true blue schadenfreude.  First, he has denied we have an ongoing war on al Qaeda, when, in fact, that’s the only reason such a system could really be justified.  Second, he and his supporters were so incredibly self righteous about the war, about GITMO, and about civil liberties during the 2008 campaign, it’s rather plain to see now that this was all a pose, at least for Obama himself, as he has done almost nothing to scale back the national security state and related apparatus erected during the Bush administration and even undertook the Libya fiasco without congressional or UN authorization.  The man recognizes no limits.  Finally, when read in light of all the other scandals going on, it’s a reminder that government power is a serious thing, an easily abused thing, and while I’m not necessarily against such a system of metadata collection on principle, I am particularly suspicious about how such a small, venal, contemptuous man like Obama and his hateful, anti-American, leftist followers could possibly not abuse such power, as they have abused the intrinsically dangerous power of the DOJ, the IRS, and much else.

So, while I wouldn’t trust Obama as the head waiter at a restaurant, at the same time, I realize people doing any important job worth doing need a certain amount of power to get it done.  But there is no doubt we should be suspicious of any new and invasive federal involvement in our lives, even if it may ultimately be permissible to prevent mass murder.

One worrisome aspect of greater government involvement in health care is the politicization of health care, which would allow the government indirectly to punish critics, oddballs, and any others that are deemed undesirable.  Obamacare is nothing short of giving the government the power to destroy the lives of individuals without any due process whatsoever through the hazy and easily manipulated realm of “psychological institutionalization.”

This might appear, at first, kind of paranoid.  This is America, after all.  But it’s not unprecedented.  The Soviet Union declared political dissidents as mentally ill rather than having formal charges pressed through the criminal justice system.  Even in that sorry regime, it was easy for state evil to fly more easily under the radar in the medical field rather than in traditional law enforcement. The Soviet Union’s doctors locked decent men up for many years in mental wards. The state-paid psychologists did the bidding of the Communist Party in the end.

In the Soviet Union, where the government was the sole employer, the notion of professional independence had disappeared.  The state swallowed up every group or institution that might provide some locus of resistance–the wealthy, private property, private industry, free speech, education, labor unions, professional guilds, and the Orthodox Church.  In these circumstances, lone individuals had very little power to stop the state’s destruction of private life and were often themselves deemed “difficult” individuals suffering from mental illness.  All in the name of creating a socialist utopia.  The same trend of increasing government power over our lives is underway in the United States today.

It may be objected that there is a strong culture of professional independence and concern for patient welfare in the American regime.  How viable is this alleged protection?  For starters, whatever ethic prevails today depends on the about-to-be-destroyed system of fee-for-service, which will be eroded to nothingness under the influence of Obama’s “government option.”  Obamacare will require government approval for payments to doctors for the majority of patients and further encourage conformity to government-dictated “best practices.” It may go something like this:  “Well, you doctors can do whatever you like doctor, but we’ll only pay for X, Y, and Z. Govern yourself accordingly.”

Even today, it’s not so clear that the purported ethic of physician responsibility provides effective protection for patients.  Drug companies, for instance, have created a serious financial incentive for doctors to prescribe particular drugs to patients, regardless of their effectiveness, their own lack of expertise in psychological illnesses, or the desirability of therapies that do not involve mind-altering drugs.  Nowhere is this more evident than in the field of mental health. Hitherto unknown diseases like “shyness” now are declared sicknesses that require expensive drug treatments.  Primary care physicians with no time for time-consuming counseling instead hand out Prozac and Paxil like candy canes.  According to Forbes, “We now spend more on mood-altering drugs for our children, including antidepressants, than we spend on antibiotics.” This is a scandal.

We have also witnessed psychiatrists in particular gladly assist the military, the police, and industrial organizations with an eye towards institutional goals like effective interrogation, screening of employees, and the creation of systems that promote worker productivity. Institutionalization of people was once the norm, as too is a habit of experimentation, including in the abuses of lobotomies in the middle 20th Century right here here in the United States.  Patient welfare is secondary in all of these well established practices, and the proximity of the abuses should give pause to those that call critics “paranoid.”

What historical or ethical limit would prevent careerist doctors from also engaging in punitive diagnoses of “authoritative personalities” and labeling conservative “sickos” under Obamacare?  What would prevent the creation of new diagnoses such as “homophobia” or pathological conservatism?  After all, such politicized definitions of mental health and long-term involuntary incarceration of political dissidents happened under the long-standing socialist medical regime in history, that of the former Soviet Union.

The world is more politically correct than ever.  To a great extent, we’ve become desensitized to the brainwashing and indoctrination of liberal group-think in corporate and academic settings.  Why wouldn’t medicine also be abused?  From diversity seminars to the scandalous sub rosa euthanasia that takes place in hospices to the anti-life practice of abortion, the potential oppressiveness of liberals knows no boundaries, because it’s not limited by the conscience:  it imagines itself to be good and promoting the good of all; therefore, dissent can be dismissed and classified as an expression of hate, racism, and, most sinisterly, “sickness.”

We must consider all the possibilities of evil under the Obamacare regime.  The potential abuses of Obamacare will not be spelled out in the plan.  Instead, the plan must be reviewed critically in light of the times, the dilapidated state of medical ethics, and the sorry history “repressive psychology” in the world’s longest-running experiment of government-run healthcare.

I do not harbor illusions about Bush.  He and his presidency were a mixed bag.  On the good side he was in that moment decisive, clear thinking, and aggressive in dealing with al Qaeda.  He also is very human and connected to the American people and their anxieties in the weeks after the attack.  His iconic image and words on the top of the rubble of the World Trade Center were moving then and remain so.  On the bad side, he later allowed himself to allow his thinking to be transformed from an instinctual sense of vengeance and national self defense to the utopian idea that we could transform the Middle East by expanding democracy and addressing all of the other intractable problems in the region, such as Iraq and its alleged WMDs.  In doing so, al Qaeda and the worldwide jihad movement continued to fester, and we unwittingly empowered Iran. Bush also remained somewhat abstract in his concept of “the country” and the respect due to Islam.  This prevented him from closing the borders, which would have been the most effective means of stopping Islamic jihad power projection, and his failure to look deeper into the reality of Islam allowed him to be hoodwinked by the backslapping of the Saudis, who continually play both sides of the fence.

Bush appears in these early pages as a clear thinking and sympathetic figure, thrust into a dilemma that he had not been prepared for by his earlier life experience. One notable difference from Obama, made manifest in the latter’s recent “we are not really at war” speech, is that Bush understood this attack was an act of war to be addressed with military means.  This seems obvious now, but it was far from obvious at the time, when the prevailing ethos on dealing with al Qaeda was one of a law enforcement problem.  Bush later allowed his war footing to be chipped away by the interventions of the Supreme Court and the legion of “human rights lawyers” who gummed up what was supposed to be the streamlined detention regime of Guantanamo Bay.  Worse, he allowed the mission to lose focus and expand exponentially to one of   in both Iraq and Afghanistan.  That said, his initial approach, one of vengeance and one of speed was memorable and correct. 

What is noteworthy about Obama’s recent speech is its certitude.  He declares, “So that’s the current threat — lethal yet less capable al Qaeda affiliates; threats to diplomatic facilities and businesses abroad; homegrown extremists.  This is the future of terrorism. We have to take these threats seriously, and do all that we can to confront them.  But as we shape our response, we have to recognize that the scale of this threat closely resembles the types of attacks we faced before 9/11. ”  Is this true?  We hope it is.  But the pre-9/11 threats did not necessarily give notice of what we faced on 9/11.  Further, the homegrown radicals may be capable of great and spectacular violence if they simply are able to get some leadership, such as Mohammad Atta provided . Finally, even if the threat has diminished, that is no reason to let up on terrorists and their networks and the states that sponsor them.  The Pakistans and Saudi Arabias of the world need to remain in fear of more than an unenforceable US indictment.  Why tie our own hands?

France and England fought the 100 Years War.  Central Europe was embroiled in the 30 Years War.  The Indian Wars stretched across nearly the entire 19th Century of American History. A slippery enemy requires patience and persistence.  But Obama, out of a combination of naivite and wishful thinking, simply thinks declaring victory is a substitute for actual victory.  I hope he does not have to eat his words, but the 30 year track record of Islamic extremism against the West does not bode well for his sanguine and meandering words.

Oh yes, Diversity!

This is pretty good.

Of course, deep down I don’t think Obama wants a society like Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany.  What he really wants is a society like Chicago, where the politicians have their hand in everything, spend much of their time giving out largesse to ethnic constituencies, and tons of people work for the government. In Chicago, as in much of urban Yankee land, there is absolutely no sense of a private realm free from government, no independence in the sense enjoyed by rural Americans, and no real connection to the limited government traditions of the Constitution.  Chicago is a corporatist and technocratic regime, where the government–as exemplified by a Mayor Daley–is in charge.  Obama wants that level of power and control over the whole country.  No May Day parades.  But no opening a business without “doing your part for the community” and “taking care of stakeholders” either.

We sometimes wonder how did such horrible men as Pol Pot or Hitler or Stalin get it done.  Didn’t everyone just hate their guts?  Well, all these men had lots of enemies with whom they dealt very harshly.   But the average supporter or man on the street, who was neither an angel nor a monster, consoled himself with thoughts like, “these are just overzelous underlings . . . if only Dear Leader knew this would never happen.”

This kind of combination of partisanship and wishful thinking has really gone into overdrive in recent weeks among a great many perfectly ordinary Obama supporters.  Obama and his buddy Holder are banking on the assumption that such delusional blame shifting will continue and maintain their respective moral purity amidst all these scandals.

Only a fool would believe Obama is anything other than a political operative willing to do nearly anything to win and crush his opponents.  That’s the whole meaning of the Saul Alinsky inspired community organizing he did, his association with Weather Underground terrorists like Bill Ayers, and his dirty tricks used to win elections in Chicago.  He believes he’s right, he wants power, and he has no serious compunction about playing hardball with the right wing, because he thinks they’re a bunch of evil rich racists that deserve what they get in the end.

He speaks soberly and thoughtfully, but his views are pretty extreme, and this was apparent to anyone living in Hyde Park in the 90s.  Indeed, anyone who could get elected there at that time had to be politically left and extremist.  It was a university town interspersed with black power activists like Farrakhan.  It’s about as far from ordinary America and the life most people lead as you can imagine.

Finally, whether explicitly told or tacitly permitted, there’s a reason certain types of scandals happen in certain administrations.  There’s a reason Abu Ghraib happened under Bush, for example, or that petty financial scandals like Teapot Dome hit the Harding administration, whereas pretty low brow sexual scandals hit Clinton’s.  The scandals each exemplify the fatal flaw of the president involved, whether it was excessive certainty, cupidity, or outright lust.

Think about this.  Bush clearly treated al Qaeda and its supporters as ultra vires and subject to extrajudicial treatment.  He was convinced of his rectitude and purity of intention.  He spoke in grandiloquent terms of vanquishing terrorists form the earth once and for all and ushering in an era of peace and democracy in the Middle East.  The stakes were high and the “evil doers” were spoken of in the harshest possible terms.   The old rules from Panama or the First Gulf War did not apply. This filtered throughout the command environment.  Three letter agencies, unspoken acts of necessity, all occurred alongside the uniformed military, creating a kind of lawless environment in the field.  It was all for a good cause, but people got carried away and thought that nearly anything was permitted.

Was it the worst thing ever?  No.  But it was emblematic of the man, his times, and the kinds of “faults of overzealousness” one might expect under his command and in the circumstances our country faced at the time.

Obama, on the other hand, has an agenda at once much more expansive, but also much more ordinary.  He doesn’t just want to defeat al Qaeda and Iraq, as Bush did, but he wants to defeat a certain cohort of America.  He wants to transform (or bury) that old, fuddy duddy, “bitter clinging” group of rednecks, businessmen, gun owners, and the entire class of people who believe in genuinely American notions of self-reliance and not Marxist notions of common collective welfare.  In other words, his unifying principal–like Nixon to whom he has been compared as of late–is power and hatred of opponents coupled with a messianic zeal to teach them the right way. But he wants to do so by giving away cell phones, minor tax credits, and forcing us to get expensive health insurance.  In other words, the “pot of gold” really ain’t much to get too impressed with.

So, for such a familiar, but unusually ambitious type of politician, there is no characteristic scandal.  One minute he’s spying on political opponents.  The next he’s harassing political opponents.  Then he’s sending guns to Mexico as part of some elaborate attempt to demonize gun owners.  And then he’s spying on the media.  Then he’s comparing gun owners to spree shooters.  It’s all narrow and provincial, though.  It’s like the crappy politics of Chicago, where people are always getting hush money and giving bribes of some kind to Alderman, and things get done but don’t really change much for the better, but Obama dresses it up like he’s Don Henley waxing nostalgic for Woodstock.

People often say history repeats itself, and they really don’t mean anything in particular when they say it.  That said, history does provide parallels, lessons, and demonstratives of the human personality writ large.

I’m reading a good book right now on the imposition of the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe.  One of the most striking things is how the communists were just so angry and simultaneously confused by their opposition.  They had a pretty good concept of reaching young people, starting off moderate, infiltrating every sector of society, dividing the majority from the so-called rich, controlling media and culture and the like.  But, the real striking thing was their fanaticism and simultaneous confusion.  Like Muslims, they were willing to proselytize for a moment or two, but if you didn’t agree after that, you were simply being defiant, reactionary, a wrecker, saboteur, a spy an ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.

Obama and his hair-brained rhetoric has this quality too.  He starts of appearing even-handed and looking at both sides.  But when one side remains convinced and becomes defensive in the face of attacks, he just completely loses it and loses whatever perspective he once had.  We see this especially when he thinks he’s among friends, knocking gun owners and Christians and defending crooks like Trayvon Martin.

So Obama’s scandals have all the pseudoidealism, certitude, discredited leftism, power hunger, busy-bodyness, duplicity, and all around pettiness that characterize Obama himself.

I hope this does him in, but the guy has nine lives, and certain Republicans are cooperating with his efforts to “elect a new people.”

The NY Times today complains of Republican conspiracy thinking, but they fail to mention (not even once!) Susan Rice, Obama, Hillary Clinton, and many of their proxies, all went around for weeks telling lies about this attack and blaming it on youtube videos.  Further, they knew better, and they themselves were responsible for altering initial intelligence reports that pinned this attack on al Qaeda.  This is not exactly a very complicated conspiracy; it’s a basic administration p.r. campaign that clearly was authored and vetted at the highest levels.  It’s like when all of a sudden gun control became “gun safety.”  This wasn’t an accident and you don’t have to believe in the Illuminati to see that sometimes p.r. strategies have authors, planning, and cooperation.

And why did they do that?  At first it was a bit unclear, but it’s become more clear why in recent weeks.  First, the Obama administration doesn’t want us focusing on our piss poor and thoughtless security arrangements in these newly destabilized countries. Second, because their official narrative is that their North Africa policy is a success and that al Qaeda is a waning force  worldwide, it pays to downplay events that show it as a persistent, slippery, and sometimes leaderless expression of the worldwide jihad movement.

Above all, any lies the administration has told are designed to make Obama appear to be more successful than he has been.

Obama, the polar opposite of W. and Reagan in his ability to deliver a credible threat, had this to say at his press conference when asked about the changing situation:

So when I’ve said the use of chemical weapons would be a game changer, that wasn’t unique to — that wasn’t a position unique to the United States, and it shouldn’t have been a surprise.

 

And what we now have is evidence that chemical weapons have been used inside of Syria, but we don’t know how they were used, when they were used, who used them; we don’t have chain of custody that establishes what exactly happened. And when I am making decisions about America’s national security and the potential for taking additional action in response to chemical weapon use, I’ve got to make sure I’ve got the facts.

That’s what the American people would expect. And if we end up rushing to judgment without hard, effective evidence, then we can find ourselves in the position where we can’t mobilize the international community to support what we do. There may be objections even among some people in the region who are sympathetic with the opposition if we take action. So, you know, it’s important for us to do this in a prudent way.

John Wayne, he is not.

This is one problem with these types of situations.  They’re unmanageable.  And they demand action or they impose a loss in credibility. Surely Obama should have known better than to make a threat that had absolutely no weight, and that there was a reasonable chance would be violated by the belligerents. 

Our policy should be one of peace through strength.  We should use deterrence and words before arms.  But we are better to remain silent and aloof than to make threats we have absolutely no ability, will, or interest in doing anything about.  We look weaker, and even four plus years into his presidency, Obama still doesn’t get it.

So I’m opposed to this prospect of war in Syria, opposed to the aid provided to the terroristic rebels so far, and also opposed generally to Obama’s handling of it from the perspective of US interests. 

The only thing worse than events to date, however, would be to go further down this road because of the supposed necessity of restoring our credibility. There is no reason to jump in the shark infested waters just because we mistakenly walked a few steps onto the plank. War has its own serious impact on national strength and morale that are more imposing.

These wars, like the proposed action in Syria, are part of the “idealist” concept of foreign policy and war. These are wars done because it’s the “right thing to do” and we’re “helping the good guys.”

We of course have no idea who the good guys are in this part of the world.  And our track record in these wars is typically doing little more than elevating one group of thugs over the legacy thugs.  It’s basically what happened in Iraq.  And let’s not forget the Christians are on Assad’s side.  So not only would the moral calculus be dubious, but the older requirements that the enemy actually have attacked us and we’ve exhausted other options and the war implicates something other than a nation’s internal affairs are all missing.

So this war is a colossal mistake waiting to happen, and I cannot believe so many people are unchastened by recent events in Libya, Egypt, and elsewhere to propose US boots on the ground.  Doug Bandow has a good piece on the details.

I hope it’s no longer controversial to say wars should be avoided, only undertaken as a last resort, only when vital issues of national interest are at stake, and only when there is a reasonable chance of success. 

It’s not like education of the “acculturating oneself” variety cannot happen outside of college  I’ve learned more reading on my own than I did in college, simply by the sheer force of volume.

Most important, though, college today and its great expense is a consequence of the deadly combination of government and the private sector that so often yields insanely high levels of expense for mediocre quality.  A college degree is approximately 1,000% more expensive than it was 30 years ago.  It’s certainly not 1000% more valuable or 1000% more ROI.  It’s a joke, and it takes advantage of the great cultural weight of a college degree, the great value a degree had back when fewer were offered in the Baby Boomer era, and the gap between benefit and pain that student loans entail.

Like the JFK conspiracy theorists, there is the slight problem that these guys got into a shootout with ordinary cops, just like Oswald did with JD Tibbett.

I would say conspiracy thinking is a waste of time, talent, and brains, but the one striking thing among all these people is how pseudointelligent they are.  The notion of logic, testable hypotheses, and nonselective reading of all the evidence is completely missing.  In other words, while very critical of officials, they lack all critical thinking.  They simply are results-oriented, stupid, and deranged, as well as possessing a flawed moral sense.  I think they are a sign of the tenuous grip on reality that is implanted in a great many people by our flawed educational system.

It also doesn’t help that you have US Presidents giving some of these idiots street cred.  I’ll never forget Jimmy Carter and Michael Moore side by side in a skybox at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.  What a low point for the country . . . only to be outdone by some future atrocity, no doubt.

Equally important, the non-terrorist side of the ledger adds very little to our common and collective life.  We could do without any more such immigrants, and we should work to encourage self-deportation among those already here who are not firmly rooted.

Don’t expect to hear this from the Marco Rubio wing of the Republican Party any time soon.