The Obama administration full court press effort chugs along without pause, trying to convince America and the world, that absent US intervention in the bloody Syrian civil war, the sky is falling or at least it is according to this Chicken Little president (picture here).  Here’s the type of sweeping, disingenuous, flat-out ridiculous claim he makes to explain our “national interest” in the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government:

“It’s important for us to recognize that when over 1,000 people are killed, including hundreds of innocent children, through the use of a weapon that 98 or 99 percent of humanity says should not be used even in war, and there is no action, then we’re sending a signal that that international norm doesn’t mean much,” Obama said. “And that is a danger to our national security.” (CNN story here).

Our national interest is threatened enough by Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons against his own people, but our national interest isn’t threatened enough to act regarding Iran’s determined acquisition of nuclear weapons capability, which Iran clearly would use to threaten the United States and our interests in the world?  President Obama never quite connects the dots of foreign policy issues in a coherent, realistic manner and he often fudges on the facts.  So, here’s the kindergarten level primer on the real “big picture” view of the troublesome Muslim world situation as it pertains to US national interests.

We still need oil, let’s start with that.  Okay, leftists, start wailing, “no war for oil”, but thanks to our failure to secure American domestic self-reliance regarding our energy needs (Obama nixing Keystone/banning new off-shore drilling/attacking fracking ring any bells), we still need to import a good deal of our oil.  Now, many want to demonize Vladimir Putin’s bold strokes, but if you look at a map and watch his moves to secure pipelines to export their oil, he expanded their oil markets eastward to tap into Asian markets, added to their European market.  We have President Obama and his cronies wasting billions on “alternative” energy pipedreams, while stymieing domestic oil, natural gas and coal production.  Having enough fuel to keep our economy functioning is a vital national interest – worth defending!  The Mid-East, absent vast oil supplies, would be a whole big mess we could pretty much avoid, but there you have it – we need oil.

Radical Islam, jihadi nutcases, Al Qaeda & friends, Islamists or as the Obama folks like to take the Islam out of  the name, “radical extremists” – whatever you call them – they are Islamic-inspired loons intent on ridding the world of infidels, of whom they consider Americans to be the #1 Infidels in the world.  That makes America and American interests their prime target.  Now, in Syria, we’ve got a rather ruthless dictator, Assad, who is engaged in a civil war against an assortment of rebel forces – some of them Al Qaeda (those “radical extremists” who want to annihilate America).  Now Secretary of State, John Kerry claims that 15-25% of the rebel forces are Al Qaeda in Syria (here).  Syrian president, Bashar Assad, claims that 80-90% of the rebels fighting him are Al Qaeda (here).  Who to believe, hummmm, well, first I would like to know from what sources John Kerry’s “facts” were attained, before accepting his lowball statistic.  This Syrian resistance lobbying group, Syria Emergency Task Force, who took John McCain to Syria earlier this year to promote US intervention and whose map seems to be accepted as the “official” disposition of rebel forces in Syria seems to be the source of much of the “accepted facts” on Syria.  Their mouthpiece, Elizabeth O’Bagy, keeps  prancing across US news venues as a “senior analyst for the Institute for the Study of War” (which states it is a think tank dedicated to promoting US strategic interests).

President Obama wants us to strike some of Assad’s military assets to help the rebel forces, of which a percentage (some/many, do we even know or care?) are Al Qaeda fighters.  Now, President Obama is very clear that this strike will be very limited, it’s not intended to topple Assad, but only intended to send Assad a message that we won’t tolerate him using chemical weapons against his own people…..  Yep, Assad who is engaged in a brutal existential struggle will be so moved by the US lobbing some cruise missiles in a very limited strike that he will be awed into rethinking his actions.  Okay, we won’t target Assad’s chemical weapons, because we can’t blow them up from the air, because these wily Arab tinpot dictators have the habit of placing their WMD and most vital military assets in places like hospitals, populated civilian areas and schools.  Actually rounding up his WMD stockpiles would require “boots on the ground” and our Chicken Little president doesn’t have the guts to risk that.

Now, Iran, the bigger regional power broker in this Syria issue, will keep sending weapons to Assad.  Russia also is propping up Assad.  The Saudis are happy to export Al Qaeda and company to help the rebel forces in Syria, because that gets these dangerous radicals out of Saudi Arabia.  Now, Iran probably is sending Hezbollah terrorists to aid Assad too, so we’ve got all the worst of worst “radical extremists” involved here and our President thinks a few missiles will faze them???  To understand the way the Mid-East stacks up requires a more in-depth look at the history of the region and how European, Russian and American actions in the region got us to the present day huge mess, but the short explanation is Cold War era alliances and economic concerns play a huge role.  The establishment of Israel post-World War II influences just about every event in the region.  Even further back, anti-colonial movements and pan-Arabism and pan-Islamism movements began to ignite leading to the present-day conflagration in the Arab/Muslim world (here’s an Al Jazeera piece to explain the history).  Does President Obama understand this history?  I  doubt it.

Iran with nuclear weapons does pose a serious threat to us and Israel, our closest ally in the region.  However, President Obama keeps wanting to “talk” to them and he refused to lift a finger to aid the resistance that tried to rise against the oppressive Iranian regime.  He also pulled US troops out of Iraq, leaving the door wide open for Iran to destabilize the fledgling Iraqi government and undermine all the US effort to prop up a functioning post-Saddam government in Iraq (a vital national interest at limiting Iranian influence in the region).  He insisted on aiding the “radical extremists” in Libya, which was instrumental in the ouster of Qaddafi and leaves Libya in a state of lawlessness and ruin, but who cares, as Hillary Clinton joked, “We came, we saw, he died.” (CBS report here).  More recently, Obama turned on reliable ally Mubarek in Egypt, without even consulting the Israelis, whose security relied on upholding the Camp David accords, which served as a pillar in Israeli defense planning (so we stabbed two loyal allies, Mubarek and the Israelis, in the back in one fell swoop).  Obama backed the Muslim Brotherhood power grab in Egypt, by telling us that they were moderate and mostly secular, which was a flat-out lie and since then the Egyptian people ousted the Muslim Brotherhood from power and the Egyptian military took charge, for the moment. (good John Bolton explanation of Camp David and our interests here).  As a little map detour, in Afghanistan Obama is pulling out there after his ballyhooed surge, which he never did fully man and which he announced an end date when he announced the surge, thus telegraphing to the Taliban and the world his total cluelessness on strategy.  Thousands of US soldiers have died fighting for nothing in Afghanistan under this CINC and at the end of the day, he ceded Afghanistan’s future to the Taliban (which he will try to tell us is a new, more moderate Taliban….).

So, President Obama has consistently backed the wrong horse rather than the horse which would  bolster US vital national interests in the Mid-East, but he wants us to trust him now.  Time to wake up America!  This man doesn’t have a clue on the history of the region and all he knows is far-left American college campus radical nonsense.  You can hate George W. Bush and disagree with his policies too, because I disagreed with some of his actions too (not nearly as many as I disagree with this Gumby President though).  It’s way past time for Americans to pull out the history books and don’t believe me, start doing your own research and start where I started when I was a kid reading my trusty World Book Encyclopedia – ask “WHY?”  Don’t keep regurgitating spin.  Don’t accept the glib answers.  Don’t assume one side is 100% right and the other 100% wrong – start looking at the various sides in every issue and then start looking at maps, so that you can actually see where all the players live and what the world looks like from where they stand.  And when you think you have a grasp of that, then start asking yourself what things in this area of the world matter to the United States.  Only then can you see the big strategic picture clearly- it isn’t really all that hard and it doesn’t require a fancy degree – all it takes is a little bit of independent study (read a variety of sources – learning about how each side sees things helps you get a wider view of the situation) and then be willing to think for yourself.

With so many idiotic opinion pieces,  penned by “experts” no less, hitting the presses, it’s difficult to choose where to begin commenting.  Frederick Kagan, son of famous historian Donald Kagan, brother of Robert Kagan, brother-in-law of snarky Clinton State Department spokesperson, Victoria Nuland and husband of Kimberly Kagan, who heads the Institute for the Study of War (source of much of Syrian resistance “facts” swirling about) seems like a good choice.  Frederick Kagan offers his expertise in a laughably titled Washington Post piece, “On Syria, a weak strike is better than none”.  The title pretty much serves as a leitmotif for the leading-from-behind President.  Yes, I admit it, I laughed at the idiocy of some “military expert” proposing that a “weak” response is better than none.  What a clown!!!  He fits perfectly with this President and bunch of fools.  He rambles on about the morale of the Syrian resistance:

“Especially after this lengthy buildup and public debate, Syrian rebels and their supporters would view a U.S. failure to act as abandonment of their cause. In particular, the moderate Syrian opposition, which relies on support from the United States and its allies, would be devastated.”

Does this man realize that our military’s credibility and morale would be severely damaged by a half-assed, lame strike?  We are still reaping the results of the “no boots on the ground” wimping out mentality from the Clinton years, which emboldened Al Qaeda and our adversaries since the 1990s.  Lobbing some missiles to no real strategic purpose serves no purpose and unless you’re prepared to respond to the repercussions of a strike, you had better not start something you don’t have the guts to finish.  Other people get to play their hand too when we start lobbing missiles outside our borders. Truly, does anyone believe this waffler in the White House will be able to act swiftly and forcefully if presented with an unforeseen challenge if his Syrian “not quite war” gambit blows a bit hotter than he intended?  The success or failure of any strategy always relies on the strengths and weaknesses of the commanders in whose hands the plan takes life.

History is full of examples where the side with all the advantages lost, because of poor, indecisive leadership and we have the ultimate in indecisive leadership as our Commander-In-Chief.  Yes, I consider him an embarrassment, who makes me wish the founding fathers had separated the roles of President and Commander-In-Chief into two separate offices (an idea considered at that time).  In fact, for a long time I have thought we would be better served in a nuclear age with a Commander-In-Chief office, which would be held by a person with the military knowledge, background and expertise commensurate with the responsibility.  We had President Clinton lose the nuclear codes for several months (ABC story here)  This President’s total cluelessness on military affairs serves to highlight that perhaps a serious consideration of this Constitutional change would be a prudent step toward checking runaway executive power and curtail  presidential military adventurism.  And it sure would make me feel safer knowing we have someone with some military experience calling the shots and sparing us from some political hacks in the White House formulating half-baked military options.

This man’s wife, Kimberly Kagan,  heads the Institute for the Study of War, which has been sending their senior analyst, Elizabeth O’Bagy (aka political director for the Syrian Emergency Task Force) all over the TV cable news circuit to convince people that most of the Syrian rebel force is “moderates”.  She is aided by GEN Jack Keane, who has, perhaps unwittingly, lent his good name to this Syrian resistance propaganda campaign

This think thank power couple gets paid top dollar for their expertise and several American generals have included them in their strategic planning (no wonder we end up with crap like “winning the hearts and minds of Afghans” as a serious strategic end game).  Of course, his buddy, William Kristol, at the Weekly Standard penned a pro-strike piece, called, “The Right Vote“, where he implores Republicans to do the statesmanlike thing and vote “yes” for a strike.  Mr. Kristol lambasted Glenn Beck for doubting the Arab Spring meant a new democratic rebirth in the Mid-East and he also embraced the “moderate-new-and-improved” Muslim Brotherhood pipe dream too.   One might think that shame or at least reticence about proclaiming your expertise would kick in if every prediction you make about the Arab world turns out wrong, but that doesn’t seem to faze Mr. Kristol or these other punditry wunderkinds.  Another one is Clifford May at National Review, whose assessments always turn out 180 degrees from ground truth- he offers, “Assad Must Pay“.

Laugh or cry…….. hard to decide at this point, but I can assure you that America’s credibility with this President bottomed out already, so whatever he decides will just bury him (and us) further.  He isn’t even contemplating any sort of military action that could effectively achieve a true strategic objective that would improve America’s or his own image.  He’s tossing around mushy milktoast, strategically short-sighted objectives, which will only further embolden our adversaries in the world.  And, I, for one, don’t really want any parts of having the French covering my back and Gulf State Arab shieks bankrolling my country’s military actions. If this is the “coalition of the willing”, I choose to pass on this adventure.

Back in June I wrote a blog post about John McCain’s Arab democracy projects (The GOP policy maverick rides again unfortunately) where I mentioned:

“It’s way past time for the GOP to take away the megaphones from John McCain and Lindsey Graham.  They spend more time being simultaneously for and against issues than John Kerry and that sure takes policy acrobatics to a whole new level.  These two relish all the media attention and they hog the media spotlight to such an extent that President Obama gets a pass on these policy debacles, because Graham and McCain so generously stamp the GOP seal of approval all over these foreign policy disasters.” 

I could lay claim to being psychic, but many others wrote about this same topic and in my June post I cited an Andrew McCarthy piece titled, “Syria: John McCain’s Next Libya“,   it’s definitely worth your time to read this months’ old article, because it’s highlights, in McCarthy’s richly derisive prose, just how clueless John McCain really is on understanding the Arab world.  Here’s the first few lines to give you a taste for what you’re in store for in his piece:

“Did you catch Senator John McCain’s much-heralded (by Senator McCain) trip to the Syrian civil war — by way of our NATO ally Turkey, the lifeline of the Hamas terrorist organization? Yeah, Senator McCain blew into town to prove that all of us dissenters from his latest adventure in “Democracy, Sharia Style” are wacko birds. Surely, the Forward March of Freedom can work just as well in Damascus as it has in Benghazi, Cairo, Baghdad, and Kabul.”

Time fluttered by and here we are months later and John McCain and Lindsey Graham stand ready to yank the blanket of responsibility out of President Obama’s hands.  They will use it to smother any flames of resistance in the GOP ranks, like those pesky firebrands in the Tea Party ranks.  Once again the GOP charges forth to allow this inept, Gumby President of ours to mold himself out of his own story and let the GOP take the fall when this Syria intervention ends up like all of his other foreign policy interventions.  The British paper, The Independent, offered a special report on Libya yesterday: “Special report: We all thought Libya had moved on – it has, but into lawlessness and ruin” (full story here).  Quite the McCain/Obama success story there, maybe someone should ask them about that during these Syria deliberations.

Then we come to the humanitarian crowd, who lament that we have to step in when unconventional weaponry is used, because we must do something when people are gassed.  No where in the Constitution does it state we must intervene in another country’s civil war.  And for the historically-challenged, right at our country’s founding we had just such a foreign challenge and the likes of Thomas Jefferson wanted us to jump right in and help the French free themselves from the shackles of an oppressive monarch.  Cooler heads, like George Washington, cautioned against getting embroiled in another country’s internal affairs.  And as history showed, the French Revolution turned into a bloody, out-of-control mess where mindless murderous rampages took hold and we sure were better off not getting entangled in that debacle.  And the bloody French Revolution did not lead to a better government for the French people.  It led to Napoleon Bonaparte grasping the reins of power and embroiling the entire European continent and North Africa in a decades long war.

Saying we need to do something sometimes sets us on a worse course than if we hadn’t done anything at all.  Throwing more weaponry into the mix escalates a conflict and it almost always provokes more responses.  You had better be prepared that by attempting to “send a message” you don’t get an RSVP you didn’t plan for.  Bill O’Reilly opined on the humanitarian thread last night and yes, Bill, it’s nice to believe we need to set the example, but a Gumby like this President will bend every which way to avoid taking responsibility and he certainly doesn’t have even a drop of courage to react if some other folks don’t like the “message” he’s sending.  He is a vain, clueless wimp and all the other leaders who might be concerned with this Syria civil war figured that out long ago.  And yet, people keep talking about him like he’s some noble leader because he holds the title of President of the United States.  Well, let me point out that sometimes the American people are clueless idiots too and they elected this man to represent them, so when he waffles, dithers, or backs down once again don’t act surprised.  I judge every person on personal character – regardless of what title he/she holds and for the Bill O’Reilly’s of the world:  his being President isn’t going to improve his character, it only gives him way more power than he is fit to shoulder.

And back to the history lesson, we’re dealing with Arab men here – these are men who live and breath things like family honor and deals are still often done verbally by giving your word.  They’re men who judge other men on character weakness or strength.  President Obama’s adversaries in the Arab world already decided on his character and even Assad’s kid is calling President Obama a wimp.

An air strike, where the goals are severely limited and no boots on the ground is our “ground rule”, can only fail.  Heck, even in Clark’s air war over Bosnia – they used decoy tanks to deceive our pilots and we ended up being laughed at.  Once again we are defining the means we will use, before we have clearly defined a strategic mission.  First you decide what your strategic objectives are, then you consider the means at your disposal and you decide which of them you will use to achieve your objectives.   We get this part screwed up all the time and then we wonder why we end up twisted in endless strategic knots, where we accomplish nothing.  Strategy first – state what your short-range, mid-range, long-range goals are.  Now how hard is that?  After you’ve ironed that out – then you can start defining the scope of your military assets you will employ to achieve these goals.  We start cutting off our arms and legs and then we end up flat on our back strategically all the darned time.  We have idiots formulating these missions!!!

Some strategists weighing in on military action in Syria cite Iran and the importance of Syria as a buffer between Iranian domination.  They list the importance of a US-friendly regime in Syria as a vital US national interest.  Yesterday on Fox News, General Jack Keane explained this view in-depth.  Certainly a containment of Iranian domination in the region is a vital national security interest, so don’t take this question the wrong way.  My question is what factors indicate that a US-friendly regime in Syria is remotely likely, even if we do assist in toppling Assad?  Our Iraqi experience? Our Afghan experience?  Our more recent forays in Egypt and Libya?  On what basis do General Keane and others, who toss out this pipe-dream as a likely outcome,  base their strategic reasoning?  I would love to hear the historical backing for this position!  Sure, lots of things would be advantageous to the US, but we need to take off the rose-colored glasses and look at the Arab/Muslim world as it is and it is anything but friendly toward US national interests.  We need to deal in reality here – not wishful thinking again!!!

Time to get back to regular old blogging and give my “Messages of mhere” tale a break.  This clueless president of ours seems to have found his backbone (or at least the pushy women behind him found theirs) and he wants to use the US military for another doomed foray into a Mid-East swirling sand devil – this time Syria, where it defies strategic sense to intervene.  Where is the US vital national interest in this Syrian civil war?  Oh, we don’t have one?  No problem, Samantha Power (aka Summer Vacation Sam) just returned to her post and she’s ready to do battle for all the victims of genocide in the world and lucky girl that she is, she now has the US military (whom she despises as genocidal maniacs) to put power to her radical ideas on how to stop genocide.  Lest you doubt her strategic prowess, she’s a bonafide  “expert” on genocide, even wrote a book,  “A Problem from Hell:  America and the Age of Genocide”.

After more than a decade of short-sighted, poorly planned forays into deposing troublesome tyrants in the Muslim world, we still haven’t learned the simple takeaway lessons.  Before we fire the first shot, we need to do the serious strategic-thinking.  Woefully, we lack very many solid strategic thinkers in the world of elected political leadership.  Fewer and fewer of our elected officials ever served in uniform, which used to be the premiere venue to learn serious strategic-thinking skills and out of the few prior-service elected officials we do have, most of them fell into the “social-engineering” side of the military, which has been sidelining serious military planning for the past 30 years.  For instance we have a war hero lady in Congress, who definitely served honorably, but she is mired in the feminism-before-all-else track in the military, so she views all issues from the “social-engineering” viewpoint and one can bet she isn’t real concerned with studying military history or wanting to hear any truths that get in the way of her liberal politics.  On the right of course, we have John McCain, who can switch positions so quickly, that makes one wonder, who is putting the screws to him, or least libertybelle has wondered if he was compromised decades ago.  Alas, that train of thought, where people are compromised by foreign entities, no longer holds sway in Washington obviously.  We even have a Secretary of State who denounced the military he served and we’re supposed to “trust” his judgment.  Now, of course he followed the Secretary of State, who made lying to cover her husband’s indiscretions a cottage industry, but alas she is wonderful too, even in light of angrily declaring, “what difference does it make”  as to why her ambassador and three other Americans died while under attack at some unprotected State Department facility in the bad part of town in Libya (probably gunrunning to Syria).

This track highlights our strategic-thinking brain trust (Lord, help us all).  And at the top is President Obama, the champion of creating fictional “narratives” and “composites”,  that substitute for facts, the truth and a serious education.  Alas, he rides a Harvard degree as his “proof” he’s educated (Lord, help us all again).  This man understands far left political ideology, holds the US military in contempt and is weak, vain and totally clueless on military matters, yet he is our Commander-In-Chief.  So, we have a bunch of vain feminist harpies, Genghis Khan John Kerry and Composite Barack formulating this attack on Syria.  They sure don’t want to hear anyone from the military telling them this is a bad idea.

Now leftist academics attack the Westphalian system, but it is the the international system of states and view of national sovereignty that the world operates under.  To determine national interest the most basic requirement is to pull out a map (yes, we need maps) and then you start looking at the neighborhood you’re thinking of getting involved in.  You look at things like waterways, access to other countries of interest to you, natural resources that matter to you.  You read up on the history and study the people.  You ask yourself, why is the fate of this country of importance to my own country?  That is step one – determine a vital national interest.  If there really is a vital national interest it usually hits you in the face quickly – you don’t have to parse it or look under rocks for it.  If you think you have a vital national interest worthy of committing US military force to defending, then you look at the terrain (yes, before you launch any attack you consider the terrain, climate and any natural obstacles or unusual terrain features.  You had better be thinking about supply lines, no matter what type of attack you plan, because if you don’t think of that, then you are unfit to be the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces (I am still angry at the Bush administration for allowing such convoluted, polluted supply routes to Afghanistan – subject to attack and political blackmail).  You decide on clear-cut military objectives and then you begin planning how best to defend your national interest with the arsenal you have at hand.  And here comes the crucial often overlooked step – you’ve got to think ahead to what potential outcomes could ensue from your attack.  I spent most of my life as a homemaker, what would I know right?  Oh well, it looks like Gumby Barack has found his spine and is ready to act and his minions hauled out the Libya trope, “It will last hours, not days” to quell any American anxiety.

If you want some real strategic commentary, Ralph Peters wrote a very good column on our Syria policy a couple days ago at the New York Post titled, “Obama’s third war”.   Ralph begins this column with the line , “You might as well try to teach a snake to juggle as hope the Obama administration will think strategically.”, which is about the nicest thing he has to say about this proposed attack on Syria.