…it puts the incontrovertibility of Bashar Assad’s savagery on a par with the absolute ineptitude of The Obamao’s entire foreign policy team.
In a related item, the WSJ‘s Bret Stephens suggests the same solution in Syria we recommended repeatedly as an alternative to invading Iraq:
Target Assad
A strike directed straight at the Syrian dictator and his family is the only military option that could hasten the end of the civil war.
Should President Obama decide to order a military strike against Syria, his main order of business must be to kill Bashar Assad. Also, Bashar’s brother and principal henchman, Maher. Also, everyone else in the Assad family with a claim on political power. Also, all of the political symbols of the Assad family’s power, including all of their official or unofficial residences. The use of chemical weapons against one’s own citizens plumbs depths of barbarity matched in recent history only by Saddam Hussein. A civilized world cannot tolerate it. It must demonstrate that the penalty for it will be acutely personal and inescapably fatal.
Maybe this strikes some readers as bloody-minded. But I don’t see how a president who ran for his second term boasting about how he “got” Osama bin Laden—one bullet to the head and another to the heart—has any grounds to quarrel with the concept.
As it is, a strike directed straight at the Syrian dictator and his family is the only military option that will not run afoul of the only red line Mr. Obama is adamant about: not getting drawn into a protracted Syrian conflict. And it is the one option that has a chance to pay strategic dividends from what will inevitably be a symbolic action.
Let’s examine some of the alternatives.
One option is to target the Syrian army’s stores of chemical weapons, estimated at over 1,000 tons. Last week the Times of Israel reported that “the embattled [Assad] regime has concentrated its vast stocks of chemical weapons in just two or three locations . . . under the control of Syrian Air Force Intelligence.” If that’s right, there’s a chance some large portion of Assad’s stockpile could be wiped out of existence using “agent-defeat” bombs that first shred chemical storage containers in a rain of metal darts, and then incinerate the chemicals with white phosphorus, preventing them from going airborne.
Still, it’s unlikely that airstrikes could destroy all of the regime’s chemical stores, which are probably now being moved in anticipation of a strike, and which could always be replenished by Bashar’s friends in North Korea and Iran.More to the point, a strike on chemical weapons stocks, while salutary in its own right, does little to hurt the men who ordered their use. Nor does it seriously damage the regime’s ability to continue waging war against its own people, if only by conventional means.
Another option would be a strike on the headquarters, air bases and arms depots of the regime’s elite Republican Guard, and particularly Maher Assad’s Fourth Armored Division, which reportedly carried out last week’s attack. But here the problem of asset dispersion becomes that much greater, as fewer tanks, helicopters or jets can be destroyed by a single cruise missile (unit cost: $1.5 million).
Nor is it clear, morally speaking, why the grunts doing the Assad family’s bidding should be first in the line of American fire. In the spring of 2005 I was briefly detained by a Republican Guard unit when I stumbled into their encampment on the Lebanese border. The soldiers looked poor, dirty and thin. I felt sorry for them then. I still do.
Then there is the “Desert Fox” option—Bill Clinton’s scattershot, three-day bombing campaign of Iraq in December 1998, on the eve of his impeachment. The operation hit 97 targets in an effort to “degrade” Iraq’s WMD stockpiles and make a political statement. But it did nothing to damage Saddam’s regime and even increased international sympathy for him. Reprising that feckless exercise in “doing something” is the worst thing the U.S. could do in Syria.Sadly, it’s probably what we’ll wind up doing.
And so to the Kill Assad option. On Monday John Kerry spoke with remarkable passion about the “moral obscenity” of using chemical weapons, and about the need to enforce “accountability for those who would use the world’s most heinous weapons against the world’s most vulnerable people.” Amen, Mr. Secretary, especially considering that you used to be Bashar’s best friend in Washington. (Outside of Hillary!)
But now those words must be made to mean something, lest they become a piece of that other moral obscenity: the West’s hitherto bland indifference to Syria’s suffering. Condemnation can no longer suffice. It recalls the international reaction to Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia, captured by the magazine Punch:
“We don’t want you to fight/but by jingo if you do/We will probably issue a joint memorandum/Suggesting a mild disapproval of you.”
Mussolini went on to conquer the country—using chemical weapons.
The world can ill-afford a reprise of the 1930s, when the barbarians were given free rein by a West that had lost its will to enforce global order. Yes, a Tomahawk aimed at Assad could miss, just as the missiles aimed at Saddam did. But there’s also a chance it could hit and hasten the end of the civil war. And there’s both a moral and deterrent value in putting Bashar and Maher on the same list that once contained the names of bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki.
There will be other occasions to consider the narrow question of Syria’s future.What’s at stake now is the future of civilization, and whether the word still has any meaning.
For those whose delicate constitutions don’t allow them to consider the extermination the House of Assad as serving the common good…
Which brings us, appropriately enough, to today’s Money Quote, courtesy of a recent observation by Hugh Hewitt:
“…now that that the bodies of hundreds of gassed Syrian children are piling up in Damascus and scores of Christian churches are burned-out shells in Egypt, it is getting harder and harder to find anything to write about the president that doesn’t underscore his incompetence.“
Besides, as Conn Carroll notes in the Morning Examiner…
Whatever Obama does in Syria, don’t expect him to run it by Congress
President Obama will have to decide how to respond to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s apparent use of chemical weapons soon, but whatever Obama does do, do not expect him to run it by Congress.
Calling Obama’s bluff
As The Weekly Standard‘s Lee Smith notes, Assad’s apparent use of chemical weapons on a Damascus suburb last week, comes almost exactly two years (August 18, 2011) after Obama called for Assad’s removal, and one year (August 20, 2012) after Obama warned that using chemical weapons would “change my calculus” on the issue. With a United Nations inspection team already ensconced in a luxury Damascus hotel when the attack occurred, it is hard not to conclude that Assad is inviting Obama to do his worst, in order to demonstrate to the rebels that the international community will not save them.
The usual suspects want war
Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., are already begging Obama to begin bombing. They released a joint statement Sunday, calling for immediate “limited military actions in Syria,” noting that “with each passing day, we run the growing risk that Syria’s vast caches of chemical weapons could be transferred to, or acquired by, forces that could pose a threat to the United States and our friends and allies.” No mention was made of the fact that the rebels in Syria hate the U.S. about as mush as Assad’s regime does, especially the al Qaeda-affiliated al Nusra.
Don’t expect Obama to ask permission
Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., also supported war, but he at least thought Obama should ask permission from Congress first. “I think we will respond in a surgical way,” Corker told Fox News Sunday. “And I hope the president, as soon as we get back to Washington, will ask for authorization from Congress to do something in a very surgical and proportional way, something that gets their attention that causes them to understand that we are not going to put up with this kind of activity.”
But Congress has not passed a single resolution on the Syrian conflict since its inception two-and-a-half years ago, and a recent Reuters poll showed that not only do 60 percent of Americans believe the U.S. should not get involved, buy only 9 percent of Americans believe Obama should act.
Obama didn’t bother asking Congress’ permission to rewrite the federal government’s education policy. He didn’t ask permission to rewrite Obamacare, either. And he didn’t ask permission to bomb Libya. There is zero chance he will ask Congress if he can bomb Syria.
And since we’re on the subject of the man who is undeniably the worst President in our nation’s history, Hope n’ Change weighs in with a forecast on the fecklessness of anything The Great Divider might say in commemoration of Dr. King’s dream:
Got MLK
This week marks the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have A Dream” speech. On Wednesday that speech will be commemorated by Barack Obama – who has done more to destroy Dr. King’s dream than James Earl Ray ever hoped of accomplishing.
Under this president, the color of your skin means everything. The content of your character means nothing. A yearning for equality and integration has been replaced with calls for revenge and reparations.
And sadly this has all been done by design, for the political benefit of scheming Progressive politicians who are the new, but no less loathesome, slavemasters.
This is not the future that Dr. King believed in, hoped for, prayed for, and gave his life for. But had he given a speech called “I Have a Nightmare,” you can be sure that Barack Obama would have been prominently featured. And Dr. King’s viewpoint wouldn’t have been from the mountaintop… but rather from the crumbling lip of a cliff overlooking a bottomless abyss.
To mangle a phrase from Winston Churchill, never in the field of human politics has so much been attributed by so many to a one who’d done so little.
Meanwhile, as detailed courtesy of Carl Polizzi and The New Media Journal, Der Obafuhrer’s Fifth Column marches on:
Pentagon Labels Founding Fathers, Conservatives as Extremists
One of the Founding Extremists
George Washington would not be welcome in the modern US military. Neither would Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin, according to Department of Defense training documents that depict the Founding Fathers as extremists and conservative organizations as “hate groups.”
Included in the 133-pages of lesson plans is a student guide entitled “Extremism.” The DoD warns students to be aware “that many extremists will talk of individual liberties, states’ rights and how to make the world a better place.” Under a section titled “Extremist Ideologies,” the document states, “In US history, there are many examples of extremist ideologies and movements. The colonists who sought to free themselves from British rule and the Confederate states who sought to secede from the Northern states are just two examples.”
Contemporary “extremists” extreming.
The Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute training guide was obtained by Judicial Watch under a Freedom of Information Act Request. It was acquired from the Air Force but originated from the Pentagon. “This document deserves a careful examination by military leadership,” Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said. “Congress needs to conduct better oversight and figure out what the heck is going on in our military.”
“It’s disturbing insight into what’s happening inside Obama’s Pentagon,” Fitton said. “The Obama administration has a nasty habit of equating basic conservative values with terrorism.” The Pentagon did not return telephone calls seeking comment on the training materials.
The training guide warned that participation in groups that are regarded as extremist organizations is “incompatible with military service and is, therefore prohibited.” …The document relied heavily on information obtained from the Southern Poverty Law Center, a leftwing organization that has a history of labeling conservative Christian organizations like the Family Research Council as “hate groups.” “It’s craziness,” Fitton said. “It’s political correctness run amok.”
Fitton said the reliance on SPLC material is troubling. In 2012, an FRC guard was shot during an attack on their headquarters building. The gunman admitted he was influenced by the SPLC’s branding of the Christian group has a hate group.
It’s not the first time the military has been caught using training materials that depict conservatives and Christians as extremists. In April Fox News obtained an email sent by a lieutenant colonel at Fort Campbell to three dozen subordinates warning them to be on the lookout for any soldiers who might be members of “domestic hate groups” like the FRC and the American Family Association. “When we see behaviors that are inconsistent with Army Values – don’t just walk by – do the right thing and address the concern before it becomes a problem,” the email advised.
At the time the Army denied there was any attack on Christians or those who hold religious beliefs. “The notion that the Army is taking an anti-religion or anti-Christian stance is contrary to any of our policies, doctrines and regulations,” an Army spokesman told Fox News at the time.However, in a separate incident, an Army training instructor listed Evangelical Christianity and Catholicism as examples of religious extremism – along with Al Qaeda and Hamas.The same Army spokesman said the training session was an “isolated incident not condoned by the Department of the Army.”
Then again, what should/could one expect from the bootlicking Brass that brought us…
And in today’s Environmental Moment, James Taranto details the case of…
The Incompetent Stenographer
On Friday we made fun of Al Gore for asserting, in an interview with the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein, that “the hurricane scale used to be 1-5 and now they’re adding a 6.” On Twitter we also mocked Klein for being gullible–for simply transcribing everything Gore said and not challenging him on this and other dubious assertions.
It turns out that Klein did not even perform competently as a stenographer, according to Klein himself. On Friday Gore asserted that he had been misquoted–that what he actually said was “some are proposing we add category 6.”The emphasis is ours, and the italicized qualification makes the claim accurate. As we noted Friday, “some” are indeed “proposing” the addition of a Category 6.
Klein responded to the accusation Friday afternoon with a plea of nolo contendere. “I’m out-of-town and so away from my tape recorder,” he wrote in a blog post, adding that Gore’s version of the quote “doesn’t offend my memory of the discussion and it’s entirely possible I missed Gore’s qualifying sentence while trying to keep up.”
Although we have to give Gore the benefit of the doubt, the explanation doesn’t entirely ring true. If Klein really still uses a tape recorder, he must be quite a bit older than he looks.
It turns out, meanwhile, that blogger Anthony Watts dealt last year with another of Gore’s fanciful claims–namely that “amount of energy trapped by manmade global warming pollution each day in the earth’s atmosphere is now equal to the energy that would be released by 400,000 Hiroshima bombs going off every 24 hours”–when NASA warmist James Hansen put it forth. A Watts commenter ran the numbers and showed them to be trivial (quoting verbatim):
To convert Hansen’s figures to a per-square-metre value, the global surface area is 5.11e+14 [511 quadrillion] square metres … which means that Hansens dreaded 400,000 Hiroshima bombs per day works out to 0.6 watts per square metre … in other words, Hansen wants us to be very afraid because of a claimed imbalance of six tenths of a watt per square metre in a system where the downwelling radiation is half a kilowatt per square metre … we cannot even measure the radiation to that kind of accuracy.
Klein’s sloppiness with quotes and Gore’s sloppiness with facts are of a piece. Both powerfully rebut any notion that global warmism is a serious scientific endeavor.
Finally, in the “Third Time’s A Charm” segment, submitted for your perusal, a man who might want to consider either a career change…
Gun-safety instructor who shot student also shot girl in 1977
An Ohio firearms instructor who accidentally shot one of his students this month also shot a 14-year-old girl in 1977. According to the Columbus Dispatch, Terry Dunlap was a Pickerington Police Department auxiliary officer in 1977 when he accidentally shot a then-14-year-old Cathy Hessler in her right leg during a Halloween hayride.
“Oh no, he’s done it again,” Hessler, now Cathy Schmelzer, 50, told the paper after she heard of the latest shooting. “I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’” she said, according to the Dispatch.
Dunlap, 73, reportedly shot student Michael Piemonte, who was hit by a bullet in his right arm, when Dunlap accidentally fired a .38-caliber handgun during a gun-safety class on Aug. 10. The bullet hit a desk, then ricocheted, hitting Piemonte.
…or retirement!
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