How the USA gets into a War

[cthulu2016]

Step One:
Something terrible is happening. We must do something.

Step Two:
Upon considering the options, all minor steps are a futile waste of time.

Step Three:
Thus we must take major steps.

As a syllogism it is sound enough. If we must do something, and we must try to do good, and minor steps cannot do good, then we must make major steps.

The flaw in the chain is the first step, of course. One almost never needs to do *something* just to be doing something.


If we must do *something* military in Syria then we should depose Assad, install a secular Sunni opposition government and back them militarily as long as it takes.

Do we want to do that?

If not, then we should probably do nothing.


Of course it is frustrating to do nothing, but flailing about out of frustration has a poor reputation, on merit.

[Little Star]

1. k&r

[DirkGently]

2. It's always the same false framing. No one

suggested killings in the Sudan or Myanmar were the result of the U.S. "letting it happen" because "only we can help."

We can "help" with legal means. U.N. action. Sanctions. Humanitarian aid.

For how long will people fail to notice that all the special talk about issues in the Middle East and the supposed urgency of U.S. intervention is 100% related to the area's strategic importance, and that U.S. interference continually makes things worse?

How many more terrorists do we need to empower by killing people in these country's on the basis of our claimed superior morality?

How many times will we buy the lie that we are going to win another countries civil war for them, particularly when we are not in agreement with either "side?"

Why aren't we talking about the "other side," by the way. Islamic militants bent on genocide, murdering pilgrims and Kurds, sawing the heads off of children, eating people's hearts and livers on video?

You can't bomb people into liking you, or into to being nice to each other, and that's not what we're after in the first place.

It never is.