August 29, 2013

OK, I'm still not quite right after seeing this gun toting, war loving madman say that striking Syria was a stupid idea. I know you've heard all the sayings like 'Even a broken clock is right twice a day,' but men like Ralph Peters are so twisted, they can't even fit into that paradigm. So I was stunned when he said he was against bombing Syria. I expected him to say we needed to go on a month-long bombing campaign there. He then made a lot of ridiculous assumptions--like we should have intervened two years ago because then we could have whopped Assad's ass easily, and Syria would be just like Santa Monica, California today instead of infested with Al-Qaeda.

Peters: I don't know a single person in our military, not a one who thinks attacking Syria is remotely a good idea or will have any positive benefit for our national security

OK, stop the video right there. (1:29 mark) if you want to save yourself some grief. He also thinks the military never is wrong when it comes to attacking people, but the history of the military's sound decision-making on war is dubious at best. Now, he's like many conservatives who will bash President Obama if it rains out and their local meteorologist said it was going to be a sunny day. He throws in every bogus attack on Obama that he could think of, but even if he opposes the strike just because, you know, the Marxist Kenyan is behind it, I still agree with that one point.

Now let's take a look at the full range of establishment opinion on Syria. Here's a hint, both lefties and righties are for the strike.

FAIR reports that CNN did a sort of dry run of its retooled "Crossfire" today and featured a spirited debate on the impending bombardment of Syria:

On the show The Lead, guest host John Berman moderated a "debate" between conservative S.E. Cupp and left-leaning Van Jones.

"Look, I want to commend the president for finally following through on our red line threats," Cupp declared–-before explaining that Obama's plan was too timid:

We should absolutely intervene to stop the genocide of more than 100,000 people. We should absolutely intervene to stop Al-Qaeda and Islamic extremism from jihadizing yet another conflict. It is absolutely our obligation, and instead, we do the bare minimum to save face and pat ourselves on the back for our civility and our diplomacy. I think it's pathetic.

OK, and from the left? Jones said:

This president has now said there is a red line. It was not clear before whether the line was crossed. It's crossed, he's moving forward. I think we need to stand behind this president and send a clear message to Assad that this type behavior is not acceptable.

Jones did go on to point out that if Assad isn't killed, it won't be the end of the world because his death would leave a power vacuum and that's bad. And he pointed out that people should be a little bit more reasonable with the president on this because it just isn't as easy to depose people like it was when we installed the Shah back in the 50's. (And who can argue with how well that worked out over the long run?)

(Thanks Heather for making the video for me)

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