The Rude Pundit: Defending Not Wanting War with Syria
A couple of things need to be tossed aside like used condoms in the brain-fucking rhetoric of the march to Syria chemical weapons degradation bombing, also known as "war."
First, let's stop comparing this to the bullshit that led to war in Iraq. Yeah, sure, there's some valid similarities: intelligence being tailored to fit the agenda, the fainting-chair act of being shocked that a crazy dude would use chemical weapons. But there's a major piece missing that invalidates the comparison. See, while George W. Bush and his scabby band of syphilitic liars was willing to ass fuck us into diseased complacency on war, they also gave our fears a reacharound and a nice rub-and-tug. The Bush administration told us that Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction was an apocalyptic crisis for the United States, that nukes and germ bombs would be heading our way. Oh, and Iraq was involved with al-Qaeda and, well, maybe 9/11. It was all smoke screens and nonsense, but at the very least, for those who wrongly supported the war, they could say they were too shit-scared and freaked out because we might be annihilated. (By the way, if you were wrong about the Iraq War - ahem, John Kerry - then you probably should be shutting the fuck up about this one.)
The other historical reference that needs to be shitcanned is the Hitler nonsense. No, Secretary of State Kerry, this ain't a "Munich moment." Hitler was already making waves about invading Poland and Czechoslovakia when Neville Chamberlain made his fateful, much-maligned statement about "peace for our time." And, truly, comparing the despicable use of chemical weapons in a civil war to the Nazi concentration camps, as Kerry and others have done, is like comparing apples and six million corpses. Random chemical bombings do not a Holocaust make.
The Rude Pundit doesn't mind hyperbole in his arguments. But, for fuck's sake, a little dignity, a bit of accuracy, and a tincture of historical reverence go a long way in making you not sound like a screaming paranoiac.
When the Rude Pundit says "Fuck Syria," he does so with full knowledge that the Assad regime may very well be responsible for horrific attacks on its citizens. He does so with full knowledge that over 100,000 people have died in the civil war. He does so with full knowledge that the refugee crisis is mind-blowingly enormous. He doesn't want those people to die or suffer. But he doesn't want to blow another few hundred billion dollars on another war, not now, not with an economy that is still crawling when it should be walking upright, not after more than a decade of war in Afghanistan, a war that's still going on, in case you didn't notice, with American soldiers still dying there.
"I voted for Obama because he said he was going to keep us out of war," said a pal of the Rude Pundit today. Yet there was Obama asking, if the United States doesn't take action, "How credible is the international community when it says 'this is an international norm that has to be observed?'" What he hasn't explained is how a very limited, nearly unilateral bombing of Syria does anything more than pry open the can of war worms. He hasn't explained why the United States has to act nearly alone (yeah, yeah, France). And he hasn't given us a reacharound other than that we should do it because chemical weapons are bad and we are the good guys. Well, shit, isn't all this what the United Nations and the Hague are for? If the international community's credibility is on the line for the enforcement of international norms and treaties, then why the fuck do we have to get all bomby just because our leaders have an unending hard-on for war?
Oh, right. That probably answers the question right there.
And if this anti-war position makes strange bedfellows or some such bullshit, well, you know, the Rude Pundit is pretty sure that Pat Buchanan and Rand Paul like ice cream and pie, too. Just because they do doesn't mean that he ain't havin' the Dutch apple a la mode.
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We need more voices of sanity -- especially colorful ones!
- K&R