Gassing On About Syria

Let me begin with this; I hate freaking chemical weapons like I hate crab lice, karaoke, and When Justin Met Kelly.

But I find myself thinking the same thing about the latest Syrian news that I kept thinking all the while my country and its allies were bombing hell out of a different Muslim country; where's the "good choice" here?

And for a guy who supposedly was our only hope of preventing a confrontation with Russia and becoming more deeply bogged in the civil wars and internal rebellions in the Middle East young Mister Trump appears to be perfectly with the idea of confronting Russia over its support of Assad and making more trouble and more rubble in Syria because of the latest possibly-a-Syrian-government-chemical-attack.

(Perhaps I should be reassured that the current Administration seems willing to come to cuffs with its Russian pals over this. At this point I'm taking my reassurances where I can get them...)

I'd be happy to hear anyone's suggestion of how a U.S. kinetic intervention in Syria to "punish" this gassy cloud ends well. I can't think of anything, and certainly I can't think of anything that involves using U.S.-made explosives or soldiers that will somehow make a silk purse out of this Syrian donkey's ear. I'd think that the America First President would kind of be thinking the same way I do...except, apparently not.

At this point I've kind of given up. There doesn't seem to be a global geopolitical problem that the sort of people who get elected to public office in the U.S. don't see as a nail to hammer down. You'd think that the Libyan example would serve as a cautionary tale for this Syrian mess, but, no.

Update 4/7: The Thursday cruise missile strike on the Syrian government airbase at Shayrat is such an utterly perfect summation of the U.S. "foreign policy" in the Middle East as to be like a tiny little explosive jewel-box portrait of derp that it just makes me want to walk around smiling all day in that grim, sickly, "isn't that fucking special" kind of smiley way.

Militarily useless? Check. Because, although he may be a grifter with the soul of a can of Chef Boy-ar-dee Spaghetti and Meatballs, the Tangerine Toddler isn't clinically insane his administration is reported to have warned the Russian government prior to the strike to ensure that we didn't send any random wingwipers of the Voyenno-Vozdushnye Sily Rossii home in a box. The Russians, unsuprisingly, passed the warning on to their Syrian clients. So it's extremely likely that what the strike did was flatten some empty hangars and scatter bits of the buildings across the runways.

Tomahawks, so far as I know, are not equipped with delay-fused runway cratering warheads, so this couldn't have acted as an airfield-denial strike.

Geopolitically worthless? Check. Even supposing that this DID attrit the Assad government's ability to fight the civil war. Late on Thursday both Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster made it clear that these strikes wouldn't have any major effect on the actual political situation in Syria.

And, of course - as we should have learned in Libya, the enemy of our enemy isn't just not our friend but is probably a bughouse crawling with vicious factional hatred and political dysfunction. A handful of damaged Flankers won't make the Syrian rebels any less rabid, the Islamic State any less gonzo, or the hatred between the first two and the Kurds any less toxic. The vicious civil war will roll on.

A fat paycheck for our defense contractors? Check. At about $1.5m a shot 59 Tomahawks set the Navy back about 88 million bucks. This, of course, isn't an actual loss-leader but a promissary note to Raytheon-McDonnell-Douglas for 59 new units.

Just a fiscal note: the 2017 budget request for the National Endowment for the Arts was about $149 million. It's kind of nifty that although the current Administration has publicly stated that it intends to zero out that budget that it's willing to throw down about 60% of the expense for an equally useless piece of political theater.

A big happy piece of domestic dick-waving? Check! The real value of this stunt appears to be that it has convinced the media outlets that His Fraudulency is "presidential", since nothing says "Chief Executive" like blowing dusky savages up, and has excited the sorts of voters whose fourth-grade "understanding" of the Syrian Civil War is limited to imagining the place as some sort of dytopian Agrabah populated by various species of "headchoppers".

What's really sad is how little this nonsense depends on the juvenile personality of the current President. From Obama's droney pursuit of Afridis where they run to Dubya's Mess-o-potamia to Clinton's Operation Desert Fox to what seems like every administration back to Eisenhower defenstrating Mossadegh and storming ashore in Lebanon...it just seems like this crap is what the U.S. does, and particularly in the Middle East.

Does it work? WHO CARES! The important point is that We Did SOMEthing! America, fuck yeah!

Sheesh.

(Oh, and this is also so perfect I just cant leave it out; "House Concurrent Resolution 40", from the 113th Congress back in 2013. Remember those days, back when Obummer was all dick-wavy about "red lines" in Syria and the serious foreign policy panjandrums of the Freeeeeeedom Caucus needed to remind the Kenyan Usurper that "...the President is prohibited under the Constitution from initiating war against Syria without express congressional authorization and the appropriation of funds for the express purpose of waging such a war." There was talk of...impeachment!

Now? Ummm...not so much.

Consistency is SUCH a hobgoblin of little minds.)

Update 2 4/7: And now reports are coming in that the Syrian Arab Air Force is operating out of Shayrat today.

Well! You'd think that Assad would at least tell the boys to take a break in place for a couple of days or so, y'know, like how soccer players limp around after getting tackled just to show how bad their owie is? But, nooooo. Guy won't stop the fun even to help out his pals Pootie and Trumpie for being all okay with not wanting him out and probably all Gaddafi'd or Ceaușescu'd after the rebels win.

What a buddyfucker! Honestly, you just can trust some homicidal autocrats!