Monday, September 16, 2013

The Elites Stumble on Syria

As our nation contemplates the awful assault on innocent Americans on September 11th twelve years ago, elected officials in the Washington beltway elite are contemplating an attack in Syria, an attack which will aid the very groups who perpetrated those 2001 attacks. These elites are supposedly the best and brightest among us, but this situation with Syria reminds us, as so many other issues have in recent years, that they are no longer capable of leading us. I submit they are not the best and the brightest, but simply the most arrogant and isolated.
Consider: in the past year, we have seen a president threaten Syria with a 'red line' dare involving chemical weapons -- an ultimatum he now appears unfamiliar with, and astonishingly credits to Republicans in Congress and even the world community at large. At the same time, he ignores the very real possibility that this phony challenge was a tip off to al Qaeda rebels in Syria -- a tip on how to bring the United States to war against their enemy, Bashar Assad.
Then earlier this week, that same president spoke to the nation to propose an attack on Syria that he himself had already abandoned -- all for the dramatic theatre of appearing simultaneously wiser than everybody else and above the fray, even while stymied by a Congress he has rarely bothered to consult. This high-stakes playacting, with so much on the line, fooled few. That is, outside of our Jurassic mainstream media and a few senators such as Lindsey Graham. Apparently captivated by a dreamy middle school crush, Graham emerged from the recent presidential speech as one of the few people on the planet still under the teleprompter's spell.

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