September 11, 2011.
September 11, 2012.
So, what's new this time? Yet again we are debating the idea of bombing Middle Eastern people. Except, this time we are thinking of bombing Syrians as punishment for Syrians bombing Syrians. Yeah, it doesn't make sense to me either. Just the same old same old. Fortunately, there appears to be a semi-plan in the works that might allow us to avert what will almost certainly be a disaster if the strikes our leaders are planning are carried out. We just have to wait and see.
The most disturbing part of this is that there is floating around out there a whisper of a suggestion that the chemical weapons attack we are justifiably worked up about might- just might- not have been carried out as an attack by the Syrian regime, but rather an accident of sorts caused by the incompetence of people handling these weapons. Again, we have to wait and see. But the apparent absence of discussion of this possibility brings to mind...
- The Gulf of Tonkin "incident" used as justification for our involvement in Vietnam, later turning out to be a fabrication;
- The fabricated "danger" to American medical students posed by the coup in Grenada in late 1983, which provided justification for the US invasion of that country;
- The fabricated "evidence" of WMD in Iraq, which provided justification for the invasion of that country.
I can't speak to the Tonkin thing, but in the case of both Grenada and Iraq, US officials had made up their minds to do what they were going to do, and they were explicitly unwilling to "hear" any evidence that might have derailed their plans, even when such evidence was offered to them.
And now, we have Syria. Are we absolutely, positively, 100% certain that our leaders' claims about the cause of those deaths from chemical agents, which clearly did happen, are accurate? Accurate enough to warrant killing Syrians to teach Assad a "lesson?"
I don't know.
