Just maybe, we're not going to make war in Syria

let's hope not. And work to make it so. Antiwar activists turned out last night in San Francisco outside the Federal Building that houses Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi's office.


Some have memories.


A very few folks from the other side of the debate co-existed peacefully.


This protester was right in tune with public opinion on US action in the Syrian civil war. Let's make our politicians take notice of that opinion.

Disturbance in the 'hood

Things got dramatic Sunday night. We were sitting lazily, watching football, when there was shouting and the sound of many feet running outside. Looking out the window, we saw a dozen or so young men -- boys really -- yelling, pushing and shoving. They were doing that chest bumping thing, charging toward each other for a poorly aimed punch or kick, then backing off, screaming insults. It was not obvious whether distinct groups were involved.

Whatever conflict was going on seemed to be exhausting itself.

Meanwhile, we were trying to decide if we should call the police. That's not a simple decision. If this was an inconsequential juvenile storm that was going to pass by, adding the police might have bad additional consequences. Afterward, I was able to figure out what my criteria might be in the future: in descending order of urgency, I'd call the police if men were beating up on a girl, if there seemed to be a gun or knife, if someone was down and being set upon by a group, and/or if a crowd was randomly smashing cars on the street. None of this was visible, though I can't say what occurred before the fight arrived in front of our yard.

Our druthers didn't turn out to matter. Suddenly we heard multiple sirens and shouts: "Get down; get down." Looking out the window, a cop was pointing a gun at a couple of boys down on the sidewalk in front of our house, and other figures were similarly spread out on the street. There were about half a dozen patrol cars.

I'm glad to say that on this occasion, the San Francisco Police Department was restrained. One kid yelled "nigger bitch!" at a Black cop; he was quickly cuffed. I can't imagine quite what the young man thought he was going to get out of that bit of bravado.

The commanding officer asked us to come out and say what we'd seen. We did, including that whatever it was about seemed to be abating before the officers had arrived. He told us that someone had called in that a kid had a gun; hence the overwhelming force. They had found no gun. He seemed to have already formed the impression that there was less here than he'd feared.

We never will find out what the excitement was about. We'll never find out if there had been a gun, though the situation didn't feel as it it included that level of violence. ***On Monday I happened to listen to a Fresh Air podcast titled "Program Fights Gun Violence: Bravado With 'Story Of Suffering.'" I strongly recommend it. Terry Gross interviews trauma surgeon Dr. Amy Goldberg and 'Trauma Outreach Coordinator' Scott Charles. They work to bring home to North Philadelphia youth what the gun violence culture means. Here's Charles describing the kind of dangerous machismo that perpetuates youth street violence:

SCOTT CHARLES: So you know, there's a lot of mythology that surrounds guns and gun violence in the neighborhoods. But one of the things that being shot does, I believe, is that it really is the thing that suggests to the community, at whole, that somebody imposed their will on another. And as the victim of the gun injury, I think there's a sense or a desire to recoup something that was lost.

And the word is that they're now soldiers as a function of being shot. They go back out and they say it wasn't really that big a deal being shot, 'I took it like a soldier.' And I completely understand that, because their concern, I believe, is the fear of being reinjured or re-victimized. They become a target. You don't want to be seen as soft. I get that.

The problem is for those who've not been shot yet. They have no idea how bad this experience is. The reality for 80 percent of the people who get shot, more than 80 percent of people who get shot in Philadelphia and who will survive, it's really a story of suffering. And so what we wanted to do with the Cradle to Grave program is to reveal the truth about that experience. …

Gross went on to interview a kid who had been recently badly injured by a street shooting.

GROSS: How did you get to the emergency room?

GREGORY CUNNINGHAM: Philadelphia police, they came and they saved me. So there's a lot of people out there that got some bad stories with Philadelphia police, but I got a good one.

… GROSS: You know the person who shot you.

CUNNINGHAM: Right.

GROSS: Did you report it to the police?

CUNNINGHAM: No.

GROSS: Because?

CUNNINGHAM: I don't want to see him in jail.

GROSS: Even though he shot you.

CUNNINGHAM: Absolutely.

GROSS: Why don't you want to see him in jail?

CUNNINGHAM: Because he don't belong there. And another thing is, I would've lost credibility in my hood had I said who shot me. So that was one of the reasons why I didn't say nothing. And another reason is I don't believe he deserves to be there. So I didn't tell the police what happened.

Fresh Air transcript

I'm not going to fault that kid for his ambivalence about law enforcement. If he and his friends live, they'll be better off for not relying on the police. But they do need someone, somewhere, somehow, to rely on, someone who can get across to them that they are valuable human beings.***My neighborhood is not North Philly. Bad things -- shootings, muggings -- can happen here, but they don't happen every day. Thank goodness. I'd flee a setting of daily violence if I were able to; most people would. But this is a city. Shit happens. Also sunrises. Here's one from our street:

Another wisp amid the fog of war ...

President Barack Obama got a huge boost from Democratic primary voters who knew that he, alone among 2008 contenders, had spoken against the Iraq invasion.

Five years later, another Democratic presidential aspirant is edging toward a position questioning a Syria war that is out of sync with his party's leader. The Baltimore Sun reports:

Gov. Martin O'Malley on Wednesday questioned U.S. military intervention in Syria, saying that although he has closely followed the discussion in Washington this week, it is still unclear to him exactly what the strike would accomplish.

O'Malley, who is considering a bid for president in 2016, said he has discussed the possibility of a strike with Maryland Democratic Congressmen Elijah E. Cummings and John P. Sarbanes, who appeared alongside the governor at an unrelated event in Baltimore.

"I think all of us need a clear understanding of what it is exactly this mission would hope to accomplish - and why should we believe that the sort of strike being advocated would accomplish it," O'Malley said. "That's what I'm, along with other Americans, hoping to better understand in the course of this congressional debate."

I know almost nothing about O'Malley except that his state ended the death penalty on his watch. For all I know, he's one of those pols who look a lot better the farther you are located away from them.

But it is important that somebody who is plausibly in the Dem field for 2016 thinks it is worth staking out a position away from the Prez against yet another war. That's democracy -- small "d" -- at work.

We can't forget about that war in Afghanistan

While we're all fixating on the prospect of a US attack on Syria, it might be worth paying attention to this Sept. 3 article from Stars and Stripes, the US military's very own newspaper.

KABUL, Afghanistan — The commander of NATO ground forces in Afghanistan says there has been no discussions that the coalition would completely withdraw after 2014, despite continued uncertainty in political negotiations over the future of the international military effort.

U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Mark Milley, the No. 2 commander for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, calls the term “withdrawal” a misnomer.

“We have no indication whatsoever of a withdrawal completely from Afghanistan,” he told Stars and Stripes in a Monday interview at his headquarters in Kabul. “We are going to change our mission, and we are going to reduce in size and scope.”

… “The current NATO mandate ends on 31 December 2014, but there’s another mission that follows that called Resolute Support which is currently in planning,” he said. There have been no signals given that U.S. troop levels will drop to zero, Milley said. “We haven’t been told to plan for that.”

WTF? So does the Obama administration intend to extend that misbegotten war? Possibly.

I'm not as pessimistic as this article suggests I should be. The administration has not yet managed to negotiate a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government. As is usually the case in SOFA talks, the US wants the right to blunder about the "host" country without our soldiers facing legal liability under the "host" country's legal system.

The US didn't get that in Iraq, where we had conquered the place, and we're not likely to get it from Karzai in a country we never subdued and where we are hated from many directions. And I don't believe Obama will keep troops in Afghanistan without the assent of the Afghan government. So the US military will eventually have to make those real withdrawal plans. But we won't admit we're slicing off with our tails between our legs for as long as possible.

Photo credit: USMC.

Summer in San Francisco

Hummingbird in our backyard; picture by a friend

The fog has lifted. It is warm enough to wear shorts and not shiver. We get our summer late, but when it comes, it is to be appreciated. I'm going outside.

Today's wisps of the fog of war ...

"Obama seeks to violate United Nations Charter: Asks Congress's Blessing"


That's legal analyst Jack Balkin's summary of where we stand.

… the elephant in the room is that even if Congress authorizes Obama's strike on Syria, it will still be in violation of the United Nations Charter.  The war will still be illegal under international law.

Under the U.N. Charter, it is illegal for member states to attack each other because they claim another state is violating international law unless they are acting in self-defense or unless they are authorized to do so by a Security Council resolution. There is no such resolution with respect to Syria. The whole point of the Charter is to keep (for example) Russia from attacking (for example) Israel because Russia claims that Israel is violating international law.  What goes for Russia attacking Israel also goes for the United States attacking Syria.

This story is being under-reported in the press.  Imagine a New York Times headline that read:

Obama seeks to violate United Nations Charter: Asks Congress's Blessing.

But that is exactly what is happening.  Obama may say that he is just trying to enforce international norms, but he is doing it by violating article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter.  To invoke a metaphor from another war, he is destroying the village in order to save it.

Writing in favor of developing international mechanisms to keep the peace makes one a target of mockery. How naive!

But let's get serious here: what stands between the people of the planet and the war of all against all? Only such mechanisms of collective security as, haltingly, the people of the world have affirmed through their governments, most notably the United Nations Charter. When particular governments turn aggressive, or are led by monsters (even if with the approval of majorities of their own people), only the collective work and will of many neighbors can curb them.

When you live in the stomach of the worlds actual rogue empire, the United States, it is hard to imagine that "collective security" could be a real force. How could the Lilliputians tie down the giant Gulliver? Probably, right now, they can't. But as the giant bankrupts and exhausts itself, someday they must and they will.

Friday cat blogging: Spanish country cats

This curious feline observed passing hikers from a wall outside the town of Buquistar in the Alpujarras.

On the cobblestone street in Pitres, there were geranium pots to slink behind if the intruders came too close.

This one, in Capiliera, looks a little worse for wear.

On a rest day, sitting in the plaza at Trevelez, we watched the local lion stalk by.

Far north in the foothills of Pyrenees, this kitten in Torla also found a safe perch on a stone wall.

Is there such a thing as "closure" after violent crime?

The Cheshire Murders

Two friends spent years making this HBO film about a grisly rape and murder in an upper middle class, white, Connecticut town. Cheshire is the sort of place where residents think horrible home invasions don't happen. But two career criminals went on a mindless rampage in 2007 and left three women violated and dead.

It's a terrible story. My movie making friends somehow won exceptional access to both the victims' family and to the lawyers who tried to avert a death penalty verdict against the palpably guilty defendants. The defense failed at that goal. During the long legal process, Connecticut repealed its death penalty, though this case is not covered by the new law. Nonetheless, it is very unlikely the two perpetrators will be executed.

Because the movie makers didn't get cooperation from town authorities or the police, the film points out but doesn't follow a lot of loose ends, especially why police seem to have stalled attempting to rescue victims who might have been saved by quick action.

Lacking this material, the movie focuses on the victim family's search for "closure." How do people come to terms with the knowledge that terrible things were done to people they love? Do survivors ever find peace?

Probably the answers are as various as humans. In this case, the family does not seem to have gotten much closure from the death verdicts.

This film lurked in the back of my mind when I read a commentary on the issues that may be present when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is tried for the Boston Marathon bombing. If he faces the federal death penalty, will all the hundreds of injured people and families be given a chance to weigh in? Certainly they have something to say here as violated involuntary bit-players in Tsarnaev's violent fantasy.

But how much influence should victims have and on what parts of the legal process? Legal scholar James Alan Fox presents social science research that proves the obvious: victim statements before sentencing can evoke a more severe penalty, including the death penalty. Fox argues that victims should have a chance to speak, but their emotional views should enter the proceedings only after sentencing.

The views and opinions of victims and their families, as well as their ability to influence the jury, should not be relevant in determining the appropriate penalty for a crime. ... At the end of the day, or more accurately, the end of the trial, victims and their families should indeed have the opportunity to address the court. This should occur, however, only after the sentence has been determined.

This is a perspective that I am sure would be deeply unsatisfying the Cheshire family members -- and, if followed, would be resented by some Boston victims as well.

I don't think we ever increase the quality of justice in our society by executing criminals -- but I am pretty sure we also don't do very well by victim families either. The Cheshire Murders is a powerful exploration of these issues, putting a human face on the intolerable.

Bloody hands raised at Syria hearing

I can't imagine how Medea Benjamin (left) routinely pulls this off; the Capitol police must know her, but she gets in. I am grateful for all who break through the elite Washington consensus that we must make war in Syria.

John Kerry should be ashamed of himself.

Warming Wednesdays: is the Syrian civil war a consequence of climate change?

Foreign policy analyst William Polk thinks so:

Syria has been convulsed by civil war since climate change came to Syria with a vengeance. Drought devastated the country from 2006 to 2011.  Rainfall in most of the country fell below eight inches (20 cm) a year, the absolute minimum needed to sustain un-irrigated farming. Desperate for water, farmers began to tap aquifers with tens of thousands of new well.  But, as they did, the water table quickly dropped to a level below which their pumps could lift it. 

In some areas, all agriculture ceased.  In others crop failures reached 75%.  And generally as much as 85% of livestock died of thirst or hunger.  Hundreds of thousands  of Syria’s farmers gave up, abandoned their farms and fled to the cities and towns in search of almost non-existent jobs and severely short food supplies.  Outside observers including UN experts estimated that between 2 and 3  million of Syria’s 10 million rural inhabitants were reduced to “extreme poverty.”

The domestic Syrian refugees immediately found that they had to compete not only with one another for scarce food, water and jobs, but also with the already existing foreign refugee population.  Syria already was a refuge for quarter of a million Palestinians and about a hundred thousand people who had fled the war and occupation of Iraq.  Formerly prosperous farmers were lucky to get jobs as hawkers or street sweepers.  And in the desperation of the times, hostilities erupted among groups that were competing just to survive.

Survival was the key issue.  The senior UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) representative in Syria turned to the USAID program for help. Terming the situation “a perfect storm,” in November 2008, he warned  that Syria faced “social destruction.” He noted that the Syrian Minister of Agriculture had “stated publicly that [the]  economic and social fallout from the drought was ‘beyond our capacity as a country to deal with.’”  But, his appeal fell on deaf ears:  the USAID director commented that “we question whether limited USG resources should be directed toward this appeal at this time.”  (reported on November 26, 2008 in cable 08DAMASCUS847_a to Washington and “leaked” to Wikileaks )

Whether or not this was a wise decision, we now know that the Syrian government made the situation much worse by its next action. Lured by the high price of wheat on the world market, it sold its reserves. In 2006, according to the US Department of Agriculture, it sold 1,500,000 metric tons or twice as much as in the previous year.  The next year it had little left to export; in 2008 and for the rest of the drought years it had to import enough wheat to keep its citizens alive.

So tens of thousands of frightened, angry, hungry and impoverished former farmers flooded constituted a “tinder” that was ready to catch fire.  The spark was struck on March 15, 2011  when a relatively small group gathered in the town of Daraa to protest against government failure to help them. …

And two years later, 2 million Syrians are refugees, 7 million are displaced, and over 100,000 are dead. And the United States Congress is voting on whether to jump into this cauldron of hatred and destruction. It looks to me as if they'd do more for the international peace by curbing our carbon pollution -- but that doesn't seem possible.

Obama wants his very own AUMF

If life, death and destruction weren't at stake -- and they are -- President Obama's decision to go to Congress for his very own "Authorization to Use Military Force" (AUMF) authorizing an attack on Syria would be an occasion to break out the popcorn and enjoy the political spectacle. This should be a doozy of a political fight and citizen agitation can play a role in it.

My immediate reaction to the news was that we are seeing a break from the practice of US Presidents ever since we became top world empire after World War II. Mostly they shoot first and get Congressional endorsement later, if at all. Choosing to go to Congress before initiating hostilities is a modern rarity, not entirely unprecedented, but still a frequently neglected nod toward democratic legality. Smart observers from several political camps agree:

Even if the attacks do take place, a new caveat will have been added to any future warning the president may choose to make: We will act -- if the most feckless Congress in memory chooses to go along with him. …Whatever happens with regard to Syria, the larger consequence of the president's action will resonate for years. The president has made it highly unlikely that at any time during the remainder of his term he will be able to initiate military action without seeking congressional approval.

David Rothkopf, Foreign Policy

***It may well be the most important presidential act on the Constitution and war-making powers since Harry Truman decided to sidestep Congress and not seek their backing to launch the Korean war.

Walter Shapiro, journalist, observer of many presidents

***The shouted question at the end of Obama’s short statement, with Biden at his shoulder, about whether he will strike Syria even if Congress does not approve is the right question, and the answer is almost surely no. Why go through the motions of involving Congress unless the president will abide by its vote? But that question raises more than just awkward possibilities or embarrassing outcomes. We now have the very real prospect of a new balance of power between this President and Congress, and maybe all future presidents, that I’m not sure anyone had contemplated playing out this way even two weeks ago, before the nerve agent attack in Damascus’ suburbs. And that is probably still true even if Congress backs the President’s position.

David Kurtz, TPM

***This may be the first sensible step that Obama has taken in the Syrian crisis, and may prove to be one of the better ones of his Presidency—even if he loses the vote, as could happen. … If he loses it’s not unambiguously clear, given how ill-thought out the military strategy appears to be at this point, that Syria, or even his Presidency, will be worse off. (… [we can] wonder for a minute if getting the Gulf of Tonkin resolution through was such a victory for [President Lyndon] Johnson.)

Amy Davidson, New Yorker

Meanwhile the political ramifications of going for a Congressional vote are fascinating. As I keep remembering, President Obama probably owes his narrow victory over Hilary Clinton in the 2008 primary to some light-weight remarks questioning the Iraq invasion before he was elected to the Senate. His opponents had voted to endorse that disaster; he had not. Democrats with ambitions for higher office will take note. A substantial fraction of the Democratic party base -- 50 percent perhaps? -- are instinctively opposed to wars of choice in far flung outposts of empire.

After Iraq and the festering sore in Afghanistan, the country is at large is deeply war weary and not easily sold on the need to slay foreign monsters in places they can't locate. Rand Paul and friends are reviving the classic Republican sort of isolationism, a gut revulsion to getting involved with "those foreigners" who are so often black or brown.

It doesn't help the President that his case for attacking Syria is both hypocritical and weak. Here's a summary from Mike Lofgren, a centrist former Congressional staffer who is disgusted with both political parties:

Attacking Syria is simply not in the US national interest; and absent an objective assessment from a neutral inspection team, and absent a UN resolution, the US has no legitimate authority under any law or treaty to act unilaterally. Period. The US Government claims it is upholding international norms; but in so acting it is violating those very same norms. The US has in the recent past violated international norms on aggressive war, torture, rendition of POWs, assassination, use of chemical weapons (phosphorous, napalm, etc.), land mines, ad infinitum. The US acting in this manner is like a serial wife beater judging a case of spousal abuse.

I see this morning that the President is signaling some willingness to accept limits on a Congressional AUMF. This is important. People of the United States need to understand that the "legal authority" under which our Presidents have been shooting people in countries with which we are not at war like Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen as well as spying on the whole internet is the emotional Congressional vote after 9/11 for Bush's AUMF. I imagine many Congresscritters thought they were voting to kill Osama Bin Laden, not for permanent war across the globe against poorly defined "terrorists". If a broad measure comes out of Congress for Obama's AUMF, watch out for whether it can be twisted to endorse war against Hezbollah in Lebanon and against Iran. Emptywheel has more.

Naturally the President will pull out all the stops to round up votes and I wouldn't bet against him. The guy has shown few political skills beyond winning elections (okay, I'll credit him with Obamacare, something that may work) but he enjoys very competent Congressional leadership in his own party. This will be one of those times when this San Franciscan is without representation in Congress; Nancy Pelosi can be counted on to round up votes for the President, regardless of her constituents' antiwar sentiments or even any skepticism of her own.

But many Congresspeople will be far more open to constituent views than mine. It's time to get on the phone -- if you don't already know how to call your member, click here.

Workers still at work on this day

On this Labor Day, let's offer some thanks for the workers still laboring at the ongoing disaster that is the Fukushima nuclear plant. The Guardian reports Fukushima radiation levels 18 times higher than previously thought.

Every since the earthquake put the plant into meltdown, I've carried gratitude for the people who are shortening their own lives to save millions of people -- as well as the necks of their corporate employer. Assuming this burden became their job; I'm sure they didn't ask for it.

The video clip dates from mid-August. These sorts of reports surface repeatedly because the radiation danger is not close to contained.

Resting from my labors

... on this holiday.

Having flown in from Seattle last night, returning from a somewhat exhausting visit with an old friend who is fighting illness, I googled the phrase in the title.

A woman who I don't know has written a reflective blogpost by that title, so this morning I'll just refer you to her.

And I'll add this picture of a tribute to the good people who make it all possible from outside Spain's Alhambra palace.

You can't have a tourist magnet without the people who clean, guard, and maintain it!

Racial derangement marks responses eight years after the storm

“Hurricane Katrina” still occasions crazy responses with a racial tinge.

On August 29, 2005, the Category 3 storm drowned New Orleans and nearby areas of the Gulf Coast. Nearly 2000 persons perished in landfall’s wake. Municipal, state and national government responded miserably, leaving millions to fend for themselves without help for days. President George W. Bush’s inept disaster bureaucrats came under a media spotlight as the evacuation and aid effort stumbled repeatedly.

“Katrina” became a synonym for callous racist brutality inflicted on the Gulf Coast’s poor, heavily Black, population.

Recently Public Policy Polling plumbed the memories of some residents of Louisiana.

In answer to the question, "Who do you think was more responsible for the poor response to Hurricane Katrina: George W. Bush or Barack Obama?," 29 percent of a pool of Republican primary voters in Louisiana blamed Obama, who took office in 2009, and 28 percent blamed Bush, whose term lasted through 2008. Hurricane Katrina hit on Aug. 29, 2005.

Nola.com, 8/21/13

In 2005, Barack Obama was still in his first year as a newly elected Senator from Illinois. What ails Louisiana poll respondents? The Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank asked the pollster:

"Obama derangement syndrome is running pretty high right now among a certain segment of the Republican base," Tom Jensen, director of Public Policy Polling, told me. "There's a certain segment of people who say, 'If you're going to give me the opportunity to stick it to Obama, I'm going to take it.'"

In other words, a large number of that 29 percent who said Obama was responsible for the Katrina response knew that he wasn't but saw it as a chance to register their displeasure with the president. Obama has driven a large number of Republican voters -- Jensen puts it at 15 percent to 20 percent of the overall electorate -- right off their rockers. …

It’s not hard to guess the race of this fraction of respondents. It is also worth noting that the guy who takes these measurements believes the incorrigibly racist fraction of the United States’ whole is “only” 15 to 20 percent. ***The Institute for Southern Studies, by way of the Bridge the Gulf Project, provides another take on the eighth anniversary of Katrina. Derrick Christopher Evans is a native of the Mississippi Gulf Coast and he’s got some questions. Watch this:

… The word "hurricane" is from the Caribbean Islands, from the Taínos. It's an indigenous word -- huracán. Huracán was a deity, a god of chaos and destruction, that they celebrated. Why would they celebrate it? Because what it did was it blew out and eliminated the old, the weak, the dying, or whatever it didn't want to have stick around, to create new life. To them, it was like the god of creation.

And what burns me up to this day about the recent disasters in this part of Turtle Island, these disasters that have plagued the Gulf Coast haven't fulfilled that hope or promise of Huracán. I would have thought -- I did think, like a fool -- after Hurricane Katrina that the very best minds from academia, from every sector of American life, would have blown in to combine with the good that survived here to create a bold, better, and creative, sustainable, healthy future.

But in the aftermath of Katrina, and every day since then, and in the aftermath of BP, all of these emperors with no clothes, they can't get nothing right. Use total destruction, total chaos, to come back better, come back stronger. I mean, why waste a good huracán? Why waste a good BP oil disaster, you know?

Could it be that “they can’t get nothing right” because these disasters have overwhelmed the wrong people, poor and Black people?

Saturday scenes and scenery: a walk around Seattle’s Green Lake

 

 On a perfect late summer day, it’s hard to imagine a more bucolic urban stroll than around this 2.8 mile circuit.

Some users trot along, vigorously.


And some seem to be managing a small crowd.


Pleased as this young man was, the fish was too small to keep.


A few people have found a way to get out on the lake.


While for others, more cerebral exercise is available ...


Reading in the park is a kind of exercise, isn’t it?


Others have vigorous private routines.


At some turns on the shore, there was the slightest hint that autumn might be not far away.

Dumb wars; dumb means

The man in the White House came to prominence, at least in part, because almost alone among prominent Democrats, his gut reaction to Dick Cheney’s Iraq adventure was that it was a “dumb war.”

Apparently there is something in the water in Washington that makes Presidents think that repeating dumb actions over and over will eventually produce a different result. Although the Arab League, the United Nations, and now the Brits have said “no” to launching an air attack on Bashir al-Assad’s Syria in response to chemical atrocities, President Obama seems bent on going forward, just the U.S. military alone, on his say-so without even a Congressional vote.

The Presidential fantasy that there’s a way to achieve the impossible on the cheap through the air is not new. According to Lynne Olson in Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America’s Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941 Franklin Roosevelt pioneered a variant in the 1930s:

He was captivated by the idea of waging war from the air, telling his cabinet that it “would cost less money, would mean comparatively few casualties, and would be more likely to succeed that a traditional war.”

Air Force generals and the companies that live off building bombers and missiles always advertise that this time they’ve come up with a sure weapon that will impose their user’s will without cost. But events have never proved to be so simple and smart leaders should know that by now. In the great world war in which FDR led the United States, it wasn’t air power that triumphed over Hitler and Imperial Japan. Defeating these brutal expansionist powers took massive armies, ours and our allies.

Now that his likely partners have backed off, couldn’t the intelligent man in the White House come to his senses? Okay, so he made a dumb remark about a “red line” against the use of Syria’s chemical weapons. But sending in the bombers and missiles is no less dumb.

Simon Jenkins, reporting the British debate for the Guardian writes:

Syria: it takes more courage to say there is nothing outsiders can do …
In Syria the human misery is intense and agonising to watch. It merits extremes of diplomatic engagement and humanitarian relief, to which outside attention and expense should surely be directed. Bombs are irrelevant. They make a bang and hit a headline. They puff up the political chest and dust their advocates in glory. They are the dumbest manifestation of modern politics.

There is something the United States could do that might help the suffering people of Syria: commit real resources to aiding both the refugees from that awful civil war and the neighboring states that have taken them in. That would be a smart response to ghastly horrors.

Do we always have to be dumb? Not to mention murderous?

Friday cat blogging: Spanish city cats

If you ever find yourself traveling with me, you’re likely to find yourself walking down a street when I blurt “Cat!” and suddenly become absorbed in trying to snap a photo.

Here’s such a scene from the Spanish city of Tarragona.

That Siamese was cautious, but cooperative.

Otherwise, Spanish cities didn’t provide frequent cat subjects. Maybe the urban hubbub spooks them? This calm beauty watched us eat in a quiet outdoor cafe in the Albaicin neighborhood of Granada. There was no car traffic there, though plenty of wandering tourists.

A true exception to the cautious custom of cats, this one greeted the hordes visiting the Alhambra, clearly well adapted to whatever attention they might bring.

Next Friday I’ll post a collection of Spanish country cats, a much larger set.

On disturbing the "conventions of what is"

The Christian Science Monitor reports that a person who I take to be a Russian security intellectual (and spook?) drew an interesting conclusion about a trio of controversial figures whose actions have made them heroes to those of us who still hope to rein in the universal surveillance state.

Alexander Konovalov, president of the independent Institute for Strategic Assessments in Moscow, says the Snowden saga shows that all the nations involved, including Russia, were reacting to moves made by a very smart fugitive who represents a cause that is new – and probably unwelcome – to all big governments. ...

"After all, Snowden spilled his secrets to the Guardian, not to us [the Russians]. He wasn't looking to work with our special services at all, but to inform the world public about a threat he perceives...

 "Snowden, [Chelsea] Manning, [Julian] Assange are all a new type of people that nobody appears ready to deal with. In the past, people defected for ideological or more venal reasons, but these people are children of the new information society and believers in total freedom. Snowden probably frightens Putin as much as he scared the US establishment. Hence all the official confusion. But these people have followers in Russia, and around the world, and we probably need to expect more of this in future," he adds.

It seems ironic that today President Obama, in a speech at the Lincoln Memorial commemorating the great 1963 March for Jobs and Freedom, gave a shout out to young disturbers of the established order.

"There’s a reason why so many who marched that day and in the days to come were young, for the young are unconstrained by habits of fear, unconstrained by the conventions of what is. They dared to dream different and to imagine something better. And I am convinced that same imagination, the same hunger of purpose serves in this generation."

Really Mr. President? Your prosecutions and your charges against people who try to recall the powers-that-are to their professed principles tell a contrary story.

Let's hope such brave and foolish shit-disturbers continue to rile the governments of the world.

Photo from a London demo by way of ChelseaLibera.

Today's commentary on impending US belligerence

U.S. Army Soldiers of Regimental Higher Headquarters Troop, 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment, Tennessee Army National Guard participate in training, Dec. 12, 2009, in preparation for a scheduled deployment to Iraq...Photo by Staff Sgt. Russell Klika )

Here's Soonergrunt, retired US Army/Army National Guard.

So Assad most likely used chemical weapons against his people in Syria.  Well, that’s bad.  It’s pretty fucking horrifying, actually, but those people are no more dead than the people who’ve been killed with bullets, bombs, rockets, and whatever else was at hand.  It is only in the minds of people who’ve never seen incoming that this matters.  Dead people are dead people and every weapon system ever devised including thrown rocks has lasting effects beyond the immediate strike.

My children have never known war, hunger, or want.  But they live with the after effects of war every day of their lives.  I submit to you all that barring some major threat to US National Security that can only be reduced or eliminated by American military action, that we shouldn’t be doing that to people, and we shouldn’t help others do that to people.

All the more reason why a President should not make war on his own say-so, especially when polls show strong majority opposition and no debate has taken place.

Warming Wednesdays: more accurate naming plan for extreme storms

After all, the extremity of our situation is caused by some humans ...