Don’t draw red lines ahead of time based on non-strategic considerations. Insofar as Power’s commitments diverge from our strategic interests, America will be harmed by following through on them. If, on the other hand, we protect our interests, undercutting Power’s message in the process, the cycle of failed deterrence will start again.
This is the dangerous mess Obama’s utopianism has landed us in.
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Red lines impulsively drawn are no substitute for principle-based policy
Great Stanley Kurtz post at NRO's The Corner today. He says that the MEC, guided by a Samantha Powers-ian to mideast policy, shooting off his mouth about chemical weapons, isolated from any larger context other than the mixed signals sent by previous cozyings-up to Assad, put us in the position where "if we go light, we'll seem like paper tigers," but if we strive in earnest to depose Assad we kick over a geostrategic hornet's nest.
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Smells like a dangerous mess from a decade or so ago. Did you catch Dennis Kucinich on Hannity yesterday? They are in bed with the Labour Party over in Britain and myself and apparently yourself regarding not favoring a strike on Syria at this time. Glenn Beck says it's World War III if we do it. He also admits to being wrong about the Iraq invasion too. I doubt whether the bloggie will go that far though. Let's all (chastely) engage in a group hug. We seldom bed down together,lol.
ReplyDeleteBut in a stinging irony, Obama now finds his plans for a military strike on Syria hamstrung by memories of George W. Bush’s war. And many of the same objections that Obama once voiced are being hurled back at him by opponents of an intervention in Syria.
ReplyDelete“All of this [talk of striking Syria] makes one recall the events that happened 10 years ago, when, using false information about Iraqis having weapons of mass destruction, the U.S. bypassed the United Nations and started a scheme whose consequences are well known to everyone,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement this week.
Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2013/08/30/103541/#ixzz2dSVZm5ug
British politicians made clear they felt the U.S. had dragged them into the war in Iraq a decade ago under false pretenses, and they are in no rush for a reprise. “We are determined to learn the lessons from Iraq,” Labour Party leader Ed Miliband said. “Evidence should precede decision, not decision precede evidence.”
ReplyDeleteRead more: http://swampland.time.com/2013/08/30/can-the-u-s-attack-syria-without-its-british-ally/#ixzz2dSWbMz00