Syria: An Epic Tornado of Bullshit Assumptions

[Catherina]

12:14 p.m. September 5, 2013

Syria: An Epic Tornado of Bullshit Assumptions

By David Sirota

...

Not surprisingly, an aversion to constitutional fact and historical context defined this latest spectacle from the moment President Obama announced his desire to start yet another military campaign in the Middle East. As Washington quickly hooked the drums of war back up to the media's assembled amplifiers, few seemed to even notice the oxymoron of such an announcement coming a mere 72 hours after the same president pledged his loyalty to the ideals of Dr. Martin Luther King - aka the man who self-righteously derided the U.S. government as "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world."

Even fewer seemed to notice the inadvertent comedy in Obama's decision to request Congressional authorization for an attack on Syria. Despite that being a crystal clear constitutional requirement, our self-congratulatory president deemed it a "pretty big idea" - as if he sincerely believes it is a radical notion to simply follow the law.

All of that, of course, was just the beginning. As the drums now thrum louder, so many history-averse assertions and fact-free presuppositions are now swirling through the discourse that it is probably inaccurate to call the back-and-forth over Syria a "debate." This is an epic tornado of Bullshit Assumptions carrying Dorothy, Toto and the rest of us away to a militaristic Land of Oz.

....

Bullshit Assumption #1: The United States and its Western allies are vehemently opposed to chemical weapons, so when Syria used chemical weapons, it crossed the West's sacrosanct "red line."


...

Bullshit Assumption #2:...
...

https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/syria-bullshit-tornado/f4f7bd1ae409bd4e9ecd024cd0bb81471a33a869/

[DJ13]

1. Good post, thanks

[Mnemosyne]

2. K&R nt

[truebluegreen]

3. Big thumbs up, thanks.

[HardTimes99]

4. This morning, Taverner said we should call it a 'Shitnado'. I failed to

bookmark the thread, but the more I think of it, the more I like it.

K&R.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

5. #1 was sufficiently silly and ignorant that I didn't bother to read further, I'm afraid.

It a) ridiculously downplays the probability that the Assad regime was behind the Sarin attacks, and b) cites as examples of chemical weapons useage things that simply weren't, suggesting that they don't actually know what the legal definition of chemical weapons is.

[Maedhros]

7. Well aren't you a special snowflake.

You don't even need to READ an article to critique its contents!

[nikto]

11. Special Snowflake...

Ha!
I like that.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

15. Which bits did I critique without reading? N.T.

[Maedhros]

17. The parts past point #1.

Which you implied were too silly to consider.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

18. You mean the bits I didn't say anything about?

If by "critique" you mean "not say anything about" then yes, I consider myself qualified to critique things I haven't read.

But I think you'll find that's not the traditional usage...

[Maedhros]

20. Semantics.

Meh.

[HangOnKids]

22. He has his magic 8 ball!

To hell with reading the piece. Ian has his shit going on.....better than the rest of us. Didn't you get the memo?

[Warren Stupidity]

16. Who benefits from that attack?

Or to rephrase the question, given the public announcement earlier this summer by the Obama administration that a chemical weapons attack would trigger a us military response, which side in the internal conflict stood to gain from triggering this attack, and which side put its existence at risk?

Why would the Assad regime do this when they were, by all accounts, winning the civil war?

[WillyT]

6. HUGE K & R !!! - MUST READ STUFF !!!

Thank you for posting that!

[maindawg]

8. fucking bizarre

Obama is pushing war all of a sudden. am I living in bizarro land ? What the fuck is happening ?

edit; and he is at the G20 where everyone is like, no man,its not cool', and hes walking around all like, lets get crazy'? Really, that is happening? Right now. I feel like when I found out my wife was fucking some other dude.

[nikto]

12. I think Obama has been secrety replaced by a pea-pod-grown alien double, as in...

Invasion Of The Body Snatchers.


You're Next!

[MotherPetrie]

9. K&R

[KoKo]

10. Recommend!

[whatchamacallit]

13. K&R An Epic Tornado of Bullshit Assumptions Indeed n/t

[99Forever]

14. Superb article.

Thanks for posting it, Catherina.

[xchrom]

19. du rec.

[sabrina 1]

21. Bullshit Assumption #1! He hit the nail on the head there. The sheer arrogance and lack of

self awareness of our leaders to even imagine the world wouldn't notice OUR war crimes if we pointed fingers at someone else's.

Good article

[KoKo]

23. More Snips...from the end of the article:

Words like "surgical," "limited," "targeted" and "precision" are the preferred newspeak of the 21st century. They are crafted to both mislead a war-weary public and pretend "shock and awe" isn't more accurately titled "blood and guts." This week, these terms are everywhere, and for a specific reason: they are designed to remove the corpsy smell of the Iraq debacle from the Syria proposal and every future plan for a Mideast invasion.

When the architect of the Syria strike blueprint says the plan will not work and when Obama himself admits that "we cannot resolve the underlying conflict in Syria with our military" it is a sign that the proposal to attack Syria is being driven by other forces than those being publicly acknowledged. The aforementioned assumptions - and the many others at work - are tailored to avoid revealing what exactly those forces are.

As noted, some of it probably has to do with the defense budget. No doubt, some of it also has to do with oil and the attendant Great Game in the Middle East. And some of it has to do with American neoconservatives' ongoing dream of a war with Iran.

You may agree with those motives. You may disagree with them. That's not the point. What matters here is that before anyone can hope to have an informed position on what to do about Syria, we need to shovel away the bullshit. Only then can we have any idea what a military confrontation with Syria is actually all about - and whether such a confrontation is really just a proxy war for something else.