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Buried below pictures of Miley Cyrus grinding against a singer in a referee shirt, the national news organizations are letting the U.S. government beat the drums for a new military attack in the Middle East. There is absolutely nothing good about that. Miley twerking on stage is a better sight than listening to Obama administration officials dance around the semantics of war and trying to justify it on “moral” grounds.
Just the idea of the United States government being a moral compass for the world is somewhat ludicrous. Who are we to anoint ourselves as the official spanker of the globe’s trouble child? On top of that pompous position, the idea of the president using military force without Congressional approval on a country that has not attacked the United States is not only dangerous but goes against the Constitution and War Powers Resolution.
Top government officials including vice president Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry are saying this week that the moral thing to do right now is take military action against Syria. They are yelling that the Syrian government used chemical weapons to kill some of its citizens. Kerry says there is “undeniable” proof that the Syrian government is responsible. He hasn’t publicly presented that proof but says if you question his statements, you apparently have no conscience.
“Anyone who can claim that an attack of this staggering scale can be contrived or fabricated needs to check their conscience and their own moral compass,” Kerry said.
Statements like that make me want to flip him the bird and honestly make me less inclined to believe anything he has to say. That type of overheated rhetoric smells and an odor like eight-week-old garbage in July is starting to emanate from words like Kerry’s. He’s a government flack, not anyone’s priest or rabbi.
Look, something certainly happened over there. It’s been happening for more than two years in a civil war that has claimed more than 100,000 lives. The independent group Doctors Without Borders put the death toll at 355 in this latest incident. But think about it…who really benefits by framing this disaster the way Kerry is putting it out there?
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime has vehemently denied it was responsible and has instead accused the rebels of using chemical weapons. To a simpleton like me, it appears the biggest beneficiaries of portraying this chemical weapon attack the way Kerry is depicting it are the rebels fighting the Syrian government. Such a chemical attack brings into play President Obama’s past statement that using such weapons is a “red line” that if crossed would result in American retaliation. The rebels might just be sneaky enough to try to frame their enemy so that it might result in a superpower deciding to bomb their foe. How convenient. And remember, we don’t really know who those rebels are ultimately loyal to…many think it is Al-Qaeda or similar anti-American organizations. So let’s jump right in the middle of this one!
But to me, just as important, is the question of how in the heck can the United States government claim to be the moral arbiter of the world?
Not to be too unpatriotic by asking reality questions, but was it not our government that dropped two nuclear bombs on citizens of Japanese cities that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths some 60 years ago? Was it not a more recent government that literally contrived reasons to invade Iraq 10 years ago claiming “indisputable proof” that Saddam Hussein had ties to 9-11 and weapons of mass destruction that he was ready to use? That was all a lie. And that’s worked out really well, hasn’t it? Is it not the current government that today uses unmanned drones all over the world to kill people it “believes” are terrorists? But a study by the Stanford Law School and New York University’s School of Law calls for a re-evaluation of the drone program, claiming the number of “high-level” targets killed, as a percentage of total casualties, is extremely low—about 2 percent. Obama’s government, our government, has killed and injured hundreds if not thousands of innocent civilians in places like Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen. And yet we have the “moral compass” to decide whether or not to launch deadly missiles into Syria?
For the United States government to claim the moral authority to punish a government in an ongoing civil war is at the least imperially arrogant and is most definitely ethically questionable.
On top of all of that it should be pretty simple for the guy who taught some Constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School and who now sits in the Oval Office…The United States Constitution and the War Powers Resolution state that aside from an attack on the United States, Congress must approve any military action before it takes place. If Obama sets this precedent and decides on his own to take military action in Syria, what is to stop him or the next president from invading say, Iran or Canada, if he or she feels a “moral duty” to do so? It all just smells.
No wonder Miley Cyrus twerking is the top story on the Internet. We need something to numb the brain.
