So who’s speaking out this time (except mistermix at Balloon Juice)? Atrios notes that the trip explains why McCain was mysteriously absent from all four Sunday morning shows.
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State Department, Schmate Department. With Congress around, who needs ’em? Next up, junkets to visit arms dealers.
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It is Bad situation over there….
But props to McxCain for taking the trip…A tradtion that has beeen long for America…
A complex problem that US needs to resist stepping into although Obama probably will in the end….
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He already has stepped in it. He’s been arming and training the Islamist rebels. That’s part of how weaponry reached Benghazi and other theaters.
You’re right though that we should stay out of it. Muslim on Muslim violence isn’t something the US should concern itself with unless it interferes with oil production. We’ve no real interest in the region beyond that and should bother with internal Muslim issues.
If we absolutely MUST get involved, we should be backing the current government, which is stable and not particularly problematic to the rest of the world, but solely because of the biochem weapons stockpiles they maintain that we don’t want to fall into Islamist hands.
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@ jonolan,
Every report I’ve read indicates that the Obama administration has supplied only humanitarian supplies and not arms to the rebels. If you have evidence otherwise, I’d like to know it.
As for backing the Assad government, nasty as it is, I could actually get behind that if I thought it would stabilize the area. Because oil production is what it’s all about. Not just Middle East stability is at issue but that of the whole industrialized world. My understanding of Assad though is that he is joined hip and thigh to Hezbollah. Some stability! No, there are no good options here, at least not yet.
I say, let ’em fight and be ready to pounce as needed on WMD’s. (Which is what Big O has been doing.) Of course, Russia isn’t making it any easier by supplying state-of-the-art anti-air missiles to Assad. Now we have all the makings of a weapons proving ground for us, China and Russia. (The rebels have no airplanes.) We just might get to see just how “compromised” our major weapons systems have been by the computer hacking!
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The teevee reports of McCain’s trip have breathless anchors saying he ‘talked to the rebels’. Heh – which rebels one must ask. jonolan is correct that we should not get involved in sectarian wars. That Sunni-Shia conflict is underway all over the Middle East, except for in Iran. And they’re giving financial and arms support to Shia militias everywhere – and yup, to Assad. Bigtime.
It would be utter insanity to get involved beyond what we’re doing now (and jonolan, Jim is right – we’re NOT supplying arms). Except for oil (but renewables BAD, green BAD, subsidizing research BAD cuz war is so CHEAP), our interests there have nothing to do with national security.
Obama is rightly ‘pivoting’ as they say US attention to the Pacific. That’s where our economic interests lie. The MIddle East is a bottomless pit. Islam has to go through its own Reformation, and I think that’s begun. We need to remember that the West’s own Reformation (informed by the Renaissance) took 150 years.
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Currently, there’s no reports of Obama actually providing weapons to the Syrian rebels. We’re just, insofar as what’s been done openly, providing training for them and a lot of combat gear that isn’t technically weapons…Though, as of last month, that limitation was being “re-evaluatated.” I’d be willing to bet, however, that we’re quietly arming the rebels just as we’ve done so many times in the past. 😦
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jonolan, what I see happening since Iraq is an incremental lessening of our involvement in the Middle East. And I think that’s appropriate. We got into awful trouble supporting the dictators in South America and Vietnam. We hurt ourselves badly with Iraq. Afghanistan has been a clusterfuck.
I think we’re beginning to learn a lesson there – although the war lovers like McCain will never see it. I heard him say how brave and determined the rrebels are and how he admired them for that. I’m guessing Assad’s forces are pretty determined as well. I hate that sentimental nonsense.
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