On Syria: State of Logic or Statist Logic

Originally published on http://denverlibertarian.com

I had an angry and negative reaction to the recent US bombing of Syria, to put it mildly. As I tucked my kids safely in their beds, missiles were flying over Syrian kids in their beds. I paced the living room, I drank a beer, I shook my head, I wanted to scream, yell, do anything to try to stop a machine that was advancing beyond my control; I was helpless and angry. During the bombing, social media was buzzing and on an endless loop, the media was showing the war porn of missiles launching over and over again, as if showing off the US military technology was all one needed to do to convince a drunken Friday night populace that we must be doing the right thing. Not to mention, the awful images of screaming children being doused with water were being seared into our collective minds. I’d be lying if I said that didn’t affect me, notwithstanding whether or not the video was verified.

Not surprisingly, later on during the following days and weeks, just about every podcast in my feed was releasing their take on the situation. I took it all in and tried to make sense of it all, appreciative that there are folks out there who get on the mic and just put their thoughts out there, critics be damned. One such podcast is The State of Logic, http://thestateoflogic.com which is a shorter 8-10 minute format podcast and one that, generally speaking, I find myself agreeing with on numerous other topics. But the episode on the Syria bombing was different: I didn’t agree with it, as a matter of fact, I was viscerally opposed to it. In that short amount of time, there were so many questions and postulations to unravel and unpack. The genesis of this article was based on a question posed by the podcast host, “Why are so many people so unhappy, I just don’t understand?” Herein, contains my answer. It goes without saying, but I encourage anyone reading this to listen to the episode from 4/16 "Syrians and the Russians are Using Information Warfare!" first and then come back and continue reading.

At the time, the initial reports were indicating a chemical weapons attack by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, ostensibly against his own people, in the city of Douma that lead to forty casualties. The typical reporting on the situation was framed in the ever popular argument of how we can’t allow chemical weapons attacks to occur, how it is illegal for anyone to use such weapons, little children were dying and look at our glorious missiles! This was a coalition of our good guy allies coming together and doing the right thing: it was a tough decision, but the right one, and here are a whole host of former generals, State Department officials and other seemingly official talking heads informing everyone that the US was in the right by taking this action.

The podcast begins with a hypothetical question, “What would you do, if President, when someone uses a chemical weapon that you’re not allowed to use...what do you do?”

My simple answer is, nothing. I would do absolutely nothing. I would also acknowledge that history exists and that the US has been known to drop nuclear bombs, firebomb entire cities and massacre civilian populations the world over; lest we forget the use of chemical weapons in the Vietnam War and biological weapons in the Korean War. Also, the US has been known to look the other way when their allies commit atrocities, such as when former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was gassing the Kurds and Iranians back when he was an ally of the US in the 1980’s. There’s no moral high ground for the US here, so speaking about weapons that you are not allowed to use or tactics that you are not allowed to employ, seems rather hollow.

The host then turns to a trust rationale and implores us that, “We have to trust our government, we have a Republic,” and that, “mob rule doesn’t work and we must be wary of believing Russian misinformation.” Expanding on this, the host alleges that Russia spends, “85% [of] time, money, and energy on falsehood and disinformation so they can get 15% through unnoticed...that’s not how we [the US] operate…” before finishing with, “Russia is known for false flag attacks.” Far be it for me to remind everyone that the US — and every other government that has ever existed — is also known for false flag attacks. Think of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, Operation Northwoods, Iraq’s alleged WMD’s, or the yellow journalism of “Remember the Maine, to Hell With Spain!” and all the jingoistic American Exceptionalism goodness that goes along with warring on false pretenses. There’s no question that espionage, disinformation and false flags are part and parcel for for any government intelligence organization. Of course, the implication here is that Russia is moral-less and is always up to no good but the benevolent USA is just out there looking out for the little guy! I do agree that it’s foolish to trust the Russian government, but it’s foolish to blindly follow any government. To put forth an argument that trusting government “A” is a terrible idea that only an imbecile would believe, but then, to flip and immediately imply that we should trust government “B” on this particular matter is rather illogical.

But let’s get to the heart of the matter: to literally avoid the disastrous history of the previous twenty years in the Middle East is the antithesis of logic. To the “we must act - this aggression will not stand crowd,” it bears emphasizing that the US played a major part in starting this civil war; we already have acted. Willfully ignorant Americans will say that this is just a blame America for everything argument, but one need look no further than the Obama era Timber-Sycamore CIA operation, wherein the CIA funded the Free Syrian Army, which was nothing more than a cabal of 1,500 disparate rebel groups who were fighting against Assad in Syria. These rebel groups ultimately clashed ideologically and one of the offshoots was ISIS. Strange bedfellows indeed and to sum it up if it is still confusing: ISIS is fighting against Assad in Syria and the US is also fighting against Assad in Syria. This situation is so much larger than any shallow moral outrage about Assad allegedly using chemical weapons on his own people, this is a proxy war turning into a hot war. But why Syria? Why now? Why does Iran support Syria? What is Israel’s goal with an attack on Iranian forces in Syria? Given the global chessboard, what better way to hurt Iran than to take out Assad? What strategic advantage would Assad achieve by gassing his own people when he was on the verge of defeating ISIS? Where are these kinds of questions and analysis in the mainstream media?

Patrick Buchanan, in a recent article for The American Conservative, summed up one aspect of this situation as such, “What is Israel’s motive? Israel fears that the Iranians, having contributed to Bashar Assad’s victory in Syria’s civil war, will stay on and establish bases and a weapons pipeline to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel has launched scores of airstrikes into Syria to prevent this.” There is a lot going on here, something much bigger than most in the US are thinking, one would think that with the capabilities of a 24-hour news cycle, social media and myriad online publications, someone could explain the situation to the masses. That, of course, would require sitting and listening to a geo-political discussion for thirty minutes, perhaps an impossible task in our society. Many thanks if you are sticking with me thus far.

Now if we are truly concerned with the moral outrage of dying children in Syria, are we concerned with children dying every day in Yemen? The short answer is a resounding no. We have been fully supporting Saudi Arabia’s bombing and economic blockade (i.e. starvation campaign) in Yemen for at least two years now. So what is different about this situation? Saudi Arabia is a regime that we support, but if we are using moral outrage as a defense for firing missiles at a sovereign nation, shouldn’t we be attacking, not supporting, Saudi Arabia? It’s absolutely clear that there’s not some magical moral high ground about taking action to avenge the deaths of innocent children in this part of the world. We’ve never had a problem with killing children: think back to that infamous interview, when then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was asked about the devastating effects of imposing sanctions on Iraq in the 1990’s, she replied, “it’s a tough question, but it was worth it.” Of course, the “it” refers to an estimated 500,000 dead Iraqi children. Clearly, children in the Middle East are expendable. I can’t imagine why anyone would hate the US.

But I digress, let’s return to the podcast with the host pondering on the question of why no one trusts the media anymore and a not too subtle shot across the bow aimed at “Twitter journalists,” who are certainly not reputable and who should not be trusted. I agree that no one trusts the media and I agree everyone should be wary of any news report, mainstream or otherwise. That being said, the mainstream media has done nothing but parrot the official government line in full force since 9/11, so why would anyone expect the truth out of them? They aren’t going to stray too far from the official narrative for fear of losing future access to top government officials and press releases. It bears emphasizing that the media is beating the war drums based on an unverified YouTube video to influence a hungover populace on a Saturday morning, a video to be long forgotten after a weekend full of kids’ activities and nothing more than a distant memory come Monday morning. And why, amid all of the war porn and blaming Assad for the attack in Douma, has there been no emphasis on the alleged sarin gas attack by Assad just last year? Not three months ago, former US Secretary of Defense James Mattis admitted that the US had no proof that Assad had used sarin gas on his own people. That seems like an important tidbit to discuss when considering a new alleged chemical weapons attack, no? So you tell me, why doesn’t anyone trust the media? The media’s concerns lay elsewhere. Consider this recent clip https://thefreethoughtproject.com/cnn-yemen-war-good-business/ featuring an interview of Rand Paul by Wolf Blitzer, wherein Paul repeatedly objects to the Syrian bombing and Blitzer comes back with a blatant Military Industrial Complex sponsored comeback of, “but what about the weapons makers’ jobs??” Indeed, those Russians must be at it again with that level of misdirection and disinformation.

The host then continues, professing that we, “Couldn’t have asked for a better outcome, this is as moderate as Trump has ever been. Four days to digest and let all the actionable intelligence come in...” and that Trump then, “brought in our allies, what else do you want from these people?” Speaking of what people want, let us not forget about the pro-Assad demonstrations in the streets that occurred after the bombings. The Syrian people understand that a secular Assad dictator is far better than a Bin Laden-ite caliphate that ISIS would install, should they find their way to victory, but who would take over if Assad were to be deposed? We have seen this damn story before. The US has wrecked countries all over the Middle East, what would be different this time? Admittedly, I do agree that Trump did show tremendous restraint in waiting four days to launch the attacks. It’s also worth noting that there was a third party going in to Douma to investigate, why not wait another day?

Continuing on, the host implores us that we have to take action, “When we know that it happened or at least we can assume that it happened because the federal government took action and so do the Brits and so do the French? [Meaning the French and British knew it happened, too] We have to get back to this place of sanity.” How is that sanity? How does that assumption = logic. If any other nation decided to take out any ole city in Michigan because they had “actionable intelligence” from reliable allied sources because, I don’t know, say, the city was poisoning its resident’s water, would we all just sit back and say, “now wait just a minute, let’s all calm down, I’m sure they did the right thing, let’s trust that government and when it’s safe for the information to come out, then we can judge their actions.” It’s perfectly legitimate for the US to use the act-first, judge later justification, but we don’t afford that luxury to anyone else.

Finally, I would be remiss not to mention that the host does repeatedly say that he doesn’t know if this was the right thing to do and I have the benefit of writing this a month after the event, although I’m not sure if waiting longer would matter for the host. I think the only logical conclusion is that we did what Israel wanted us to do for larger geopolitical plans for the region, plans that you and I aren’t privy to. Republic be damned. Sovereignty be damned. The US makes the rules, the rest of you get democracy bombs.