Syrian Crisis Brings Out The Worst In Our Leaders

Who Is The Most Despicable; Cameron, Obama, Hollande?

The Hands Down Winner Though Is U.S. Secretary Of State Kerry.

“This guy threw his fake medals over the fence at the White House, told lies about what our troops did in Vietnam, accepted lies and spread lies about our military in Iraq all to advance a political agenda, all to oppose the political agenda of a Republican president”

It’s hard to say which of the politicians seeking “action” over Syria is the more nauseating.

Step forward British Prime Minister David Cameron with his fatuous grandstanding flouting the country’s armed strength. In the next breath he slashes the defence budget and undermines our armed forces. Every action this man takes is measured by what it does for him, then how effective might the policy be. Think Libya. And the speech in Cairo  lauding the Arab Spring.

Then there’s U.S. President Barrack Obama. His dithering foreign policy and setting of a red line for chemical weapons has bought this crisis to a head. Obama doesn’t need congressional approval for a slap on the wrist for Syria but he doesn’t have the stomach for action. Asking Congress for approval is simply a move which has two great advantages for him. He can get what he wants and do nothing, while at the same time he will be quick to blame Republicans if Syria performs any more nasty operations. My advice to the Republicans is to abstain from voting, saying the Commander in Chief already has all the authorisation he needs. That way Obama will be forced to take responsibility one way or the other.

Incidentally, all this hand-wringing over the use of chemical weapons and the faux outrage by the likes of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and British foreign minister William Hague, makes me wonder what people thought in the 1920s, when the Geneva Convention banning the use of chemical weapons was introduced. The Great War had seen the slaughter of millions through the use of machine guns, bombs and mines, but the politicians only wanted to outlaw chemical weapons, which killed thousands.

And of course the third stomach churning candidate is Francois Hollande, President of France. Case closed? His feeble attempt to cling to Obama’s coat-tails is costing him most of the small amount of support he still has in his own country. Pass the sick bag, Alice.

Kerry’s credentials
But wait. To be fair to the participants in all this, you have to include the credentials of Secretary of State Kerry. He’s a prominent Democrat with such a self-serving and cynical past you wonder why the U.S. media lets him get away with it. And I’m not even talking about the “Swiftboat” allegations as he feigns moral outrage. Here’s a part of what Conservative broadcaster Rush Limbaugh had to say about him the other day. I’m surprised the airwaves didn’t melt down.

“They’re the same people (the Obama administration) who can’t be moved to do anything when four Americans are dead in Benghazi.  But these are the people led by John Kerry, who called our military members terrorists and rapists.  John Kerry accused Marines of busting down the doors of Iraqis in their homes, terrorising their children, raping the women — accepting as true any allegation made against the military in Iraq simply out of partisanship and opposition to George W. Bush.”

“They could not be made, could not be moved to do anything about Saddam gassing his own people, the Kurds — or slaughtering his own people, murdering them in any number of different ways.  They were calling Bush a liar and joining with every one of his fellow Democrats and calling David Petraeus and anybody else that had anything to do with the United States effort in Iraq a liar.”

Park Avenue
“Now he (Kerry) has the audacity to show up on a set at the State Department made to look like an elitist Park Avenue dining room to tell us what we know about the horrors and atrocities committed by Bashar Assad — and it’s so bad, it’s so horrible, we can’t get one nation to join us to do something about it.  We didn’t go to the UN.  We can’t.  Nobody cares!  The Brits told us to take a hike.  The Germans have told us to take a hike.”

“These were the people that knew it all. These were the people that were gonna be the answer. These were the people that were gonna renew American respect around the world. These were the people that were gonna renew the love and adoration for this country around the world. These were the people who were the smartest people in the world.  These were the people who could speak French and therefore had the ability to relate to Europeans.  These were the people who, in fact, were Europeans in their roots!  These were the people, the chosen ones! These were the best and the brightest.  These are the people that said, “George W. Bush better get a coalition, he better go to the UN, he better go to Congress!”

“This guy threw his fake medals over the fence at the White House, told lies about what our troops did in Vietnam, accepted lies and spread lies about our military in Iraq (I don’t forget this stuff) all to advance a political agenda, all to oppose the political agenda of a Republican president.  These people were trying to secure defeat in Iraq and hang that around the neck of George W. Bush.  I remember telling people that on this program  in 2007/2008.”

Best not to get on the wrong side of Mr Limbaugh.

Syrian moderates
And earlier this week Kerry testified to Congress that if only we could arm the moderates in Syria, (echoes of Hague) the country might be saved from this atrocious and destructive civil war. He agreed with a question from Senator John McCain who quoted from a Wall Street Journal story by Syrian expert Elizabeth O’Bagy. She said the media has it all wrong. The moderate secularists are still the main opposition to Bashar Assad, and could still be rescued if they received some meaningful aid from the West. But this does look like a lost cause, given that Obama has fallen over backwards to say no U.S. boots on the ground.

 So what is to be done?

 Nowithstanding O’Bagy’s views, it does look as though the choice in Syria is between the bad guy we know (Assad) or mad medieval mullahs that we don’t. (I must take time out to figure the difference between Shias and Sunnis). This reminds me a bit of the Spanish civil war, where both sides deserved to lose, but that didn’t stop dumb lefties wasting their lives for Russian backed Communists. The Iraq experience is important. I supported the U.S./U.K. invasion of Iraq, and the removal of Saddam. The Americans didn’t have the British Labour Party’s hang-up about regime change, which is why Blair had to manufacture the dodgy dossier and the imminent threat from weapons of mass destruction. The conventional wisdom has it that the Iraq invasion failed because of lack of planning about the Saddam succession. The reality is different. Some of us naively felt that as soon as freedom beckoned ordinary Iraqis would get together to mold a free future. I hadn’t realised the strength of the childish, medieval, murdering mentality of Iraqis and their adherence to their stultifying religions. A secular state is what’s required in Iraq, not to mention Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Syria. Given that it would appear the locals can’t handle that, a military dictatorship is the only way to achieve stability in most of the region.

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