Syria: America's next Quagmire?
http://www.nationofchange.org/syria-america-s-next-quagmire-1378712472***snip
So, to the quantifiable costs of our quixotic military escapades of the past, we can now add one more cost that can't be quantified, namely the collapse of public trust. Almost nobody – liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat – believes anything that emanates from Washington these days, least of all the notion that we can attack Syria without going to war (!). Nor is true that punishing Syria militarily is a moral imperative and thus necessary.
Question: Is war ever necessary?
Answer: Yes. When the nation is directly threatened or attacked. Self-defense is the only moral or legal justification for going to war. Did the US alone among the nations of the world have a moral obligation to stop atrocities in Cambodia in the 1970s? How about the Balkans or Rwanda? If not, why is Syria any different?
Question: Is there any moral principle that trumps a sitting president's duty to prevent a dictator like Bashar al-Assad from committing atrocities against his own people?
Answer: Yes. The duty to serve the people who elected you. The state's first and highest duty is to protect society, to keep its citizens out of harm's way, not to squander the lives, resources, and reputation of the country in quixotic wars like we have done in the past (in Vietnam and Iraq) and are still doing (Afghanistan).
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for wanting to protect dictators and poison chemicals etc. In actuality what exactly would we do to change the situation except jerk around with some expensive damage(them, us) that accomplishes nothing toward these goals. Zero. And dedicated to zero("no regime change", "limits" "no need for UN"
) What? What in blazes are they talking about? A moral fireworks display on behalf of weapons producers? Nothing about nothing and suddenly we are told we have a referendum on a moral duty to kill. The boloney has really gone bad.
We've slaughtered more children by dicking around with health policy for the sake of useless profiteers, screwing over their education, impoverishing their families than any overseas dictator could do a little more quickly and dramatically.
