But the case that Kerry put forth for the Assad regime's complicity in what can justifiably be called an atrocity gave us a million dollars worth of motive to justify a ten-cent response. What in hell are we doing here?
I do not want to believe that American policy is to weaken Assad but somehow not weaken him enough so that the rebels -- whom we do not trust and, frankly, do not know -- can actually overthrow him. I do not want to believe that the policy is to let Syria bleed itself white. I do not want to believe this because I remember when Henry Kissinger, that sociopath, actually adopted that policy during the Iran-Iraq War. We armed both sides to keep them at each other so that neither one would win. Thousands of people who were not us got slaughtered meaninglessly. I do not want to believe that American policy in Syria is within miles of that kind of lycanthropic realpolitik. I'd prefer to believe we just don't know what in the hell to do.
There is no question, however, that's it's on now, probably some time over the weekend. If I were a cynical clod like John Boehner, I'd hide until the missiles were launched and then scream that I wasn't consulted, and maybe throw a little wink to the impeachment crazies over the president's actions. If I were the Democrats, I'd be standing up right now demanding to be consulted, and demanding that Boehner get his orange ass back to Washington and put the House into session. And, to tell you the honest to god truth, if I were Maher Arar, I'd be marvelling at the American government's sudden shock and horror at what a monster Bashar al-Assad is, when it was the very fact that he was a monster on which American policy depended when Arar was picked up at JFK and shuffled off to be held in a rat's cage for over a year. I'd be marvelling at the horror expressed by an American government -- the same government that fought my lawsuit and hid behind secrecy and denied me justice for what the Assad did to me with the encouragement of the American government -- at the inhumanity of the Syrian regime. If I were Maher Arar, I might even laugh, although I rather doubt it.
Read more: John Kerry Syria Speech - It's On - Esquire
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