Dear All,
It appears the Bush/Obama administration's next military fiasco may be in Syria, as the President is claiming that Syria's government has used chemical weapons in its battle to retain power, an allegation that has been no less credibly asserted about the U.S. financed Al-Queda controlled rebel/terrorists, Al-Nusra Front.
.
In truth the U.S. government could not care less what Mr. Assad does to his own people and you can be sure there would be no moral platitudes emanating from the White House if the region's main export product was cotton or sugar.
.
So what would be a sufficiently compelling pretext to risk setting off a doomsday military chain reaction in the most explosive region of the world? Qatar requires Syrian land for a natural gas pipeline it wants to build to meet European demand (and which demand is currently met by Russia). A trumped up moral crusade fits the bill nicely. Say what you want about the British, their considerably older yet somewhat functioning parliamentary system still manages to prevent politicians from playing with Tomahawks on a whim.
.
"[W]hy are a few hundred killed by chemical attack any worse or more deserving of US bombs than the 100,000 already killed in the conflict? Why do these few hundred allegedly killed by Assad count any more than the estimated 1,000 Christians in Syria killed by US allies on the other side? Why is it any worse to be killed by poison gas than to have your head chopped off by the US allied radical Islamists, as has happened to a number of Christian priests and bishops in Syria?
For that matter, why are the few hundred civilians killed in Syria by a chemical weapon any worse than the 2000-3000 who have been killed by Obama's drone strikes in Pakistan? Does it really make a difference whether a civilian is killed by poison gas or by drone missile or dull knife?"
Jeff