The Hezzi’s, the Syrian military personnel we kill, the additional rebel attacks that won’t be suppressed because we’ve weakened the government’s ability to respond. It all adds up.
Yesterday, I read a comment from some Obiedroid about how different this was from Iraq because there we didn’t have any clearly defined goals, and it got me to comparing the goal to stop Saddam from killing his own people, which we accomplished, the goal to remove Saddam from office, which we accomplished, the goal to stop Saddam’s paying bounties to the families of suicide bombers, which we accomplished, etc. Then I compared that to the stated goal here which is to... uh... do something or other that won’t actively stop the use of chemical weapons, won’t remove Assad from office, won’t hamper his ability to wage war, but’ll maybe show him that a community activist is miffed at him, and I thought, “oh yeah, this is a lot different from Iraq all right.
If this happens, it’ll make shooting a camel in the ass look like bold and effective action.
It has been scientifically established that people pick their party first, and then dream up rationalizations after.
I’ll never forget, from when Ray Shamie was running against Ted Kennedy, I heard about a guy who called into a radio show in Boston, and said: “There’s only one guy who will cut spending, and cut taxes, and get tough with the Russians—Ted Kennedy!”