Cohen: 'Do something, anything!' in Syria

"Don't just sit there, do something!  Anything!"

Do something... even if it means America's tripping on its own over-sized brass balls and landing face-first in another Mideastern civil war?

Richard Cohen cites the number of Syrians killed, displaced Syrians and refugees... but there were more deaths in Iraq, and just as many refugees flooded out -- and that was when thousands of U.S. boots were on the ground.  So U.S. troops are no guarantee of stopping any of that. And U.S. missiles? U.S. weapons transfers?  Even less likely. 

I give Cohen credit for not giving up, not changing his emotional tack.  But he's just plain wrong. Doing something, anything without a clear plan and exit strategy is usually worse than doing nothing, especially where U.S. lives and vital interests are not at stake. 

Unfortunately, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is a brutal dictator. However, it is not America's job to remove all the world's brutal dictators.  

Finally, it's a dishonest cheap shot to blame U.S. inaction entirely on Obama, because there is no support in Congress for another war, or more support for Sunni jihadi-linked groups. Cohen should blame the entire U.S. government -- and by extension, the American public, which opposes intervention -- for America's prudence.

Sorry, Rick. The U.S. answer remains the same: not this time; not our problem.

UPDATE (19.02.2014): Here's more support, from McClatchy, for what I've been saying: even if we wanted to help somebody in Syria, there's nobody the U.S. can in good conscience support: "State Dept still struggling to identify Syrian partner."

Obama’s failure to act on Syria

By Richard Cohen

February 18, 2014 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/1eKpyEU

Cohen: Where's liberals' outrage over Syria?

Neo-interventionist and "liberal" pundit Richard Cohen continues his assault on liberals' heartstrings, pleading with them to attack Syria:

I pick on the American left because it is liberal and because that suggests empathy, concern and internationalism. The American right is now going through one of its periodic bouts of lunacy, reverting to a comfy isolationism-cum-selfishness that has often characterized it. (I should note, though, that back in the late 1930s Norman Thomas, the six-time socialist presidential candidate, supported the isolationist America First movement.) Still, I look to liberals to make common cause with the underprivileged, the unfortunate and the weak. If that doesn’t describe the people of Syria, then what does? Can the United States help them? We certainly could have. We certainly didn’t.

Once again, I advise all pundits and editorial page editors to read their own newspaper. If Cohen did, he would have read an interview a week ago by the WaPo's Ezra Klein with Congressman Alan Grayson, who summed up the futility of limited U.S. military intervention in Syria:

So, a) Assad has so much [military] stuff, b) the Russians will replace it, and c) we don’t want to weaken him too much. Sometimes there is no solution to the equation.

Interventionist liberals like Cohen -- and now add Christiane Amanpour -- who cry, "We must do something!" don't seem to care too much what that something is, or what it will achieve.

Beyond that, Cohen's unapologetic assertion that the U.S. is indeed the world's policeman is, well, stunning. It's so 2001. 

The inescapable truth is that the world needs a policeman. The inescapable truth is that only the United States can play cop. We have the wherewithal. A further inescapable truth is that evil exists and needs to be fought. We should always proceed cautiously and prudently, aware of mission creep, complexity and our own limitations. I have always thought, maybe naively, that these were values embedded in the very soul of American liberalism. It seems I am wrong.

Yes, and thank God you are wrong.  It's hard to believe anybody who calls himself a liberal would dare to put this in print. "We have the wherewithal"?  "We should proceed...aware of our own limitations!"  Hello!  We have almost $17 trillion in national debt, about 10 percent of it from the Afghanistan-Iraq debacles. And Cohen wants us to put a third war on the nation's credit card?!  We have a U.S. Military that is overstretched and thinned out at the junior office ranks, the backbone of our fighting force. And what if we need to fight a war where our security or interests are actually at stake?!  Folks, this is the road to empire, overreach and collapse.  

Where’s the moral outrage?

By Richard Cohen

September 13, 2013 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/18UzZVi

No to 'humanitarian intervention' in Syria!

Beware "humanitarian intervention!"  Nevertheless, there are significant differences between Syria today and, say, Bosnia-Kosovo in the 1990s. To name a few:

• There was a united, democratic Europe on the borders of the Balkans ready and eager to contain the war;

• Bosnia and Kosovo were separate ethnic-religious enclaves that could be (almost) cleanly separated from Serbia (former Yugoslavia);

• There was UN Security Council resolution 1244 (among others) for Kosovo and dozens of UNSC resolutions for Bosnia & Herzegovina and the Former Yugoslavia that authorized international military action against Serbia, a sovereign state, that had not declared war on the U.S.-NATO;

• Russia was sympathetic to the Serbs but not openly arming and training them and threatening to up the ante;

• There was no al-Qaeda or foreign terrorist presence in the Balkans that couldn't wait to take U.S. arms and use them against us.

Beyond that, Cohen is an unreformed neocon moron who covers it up with a bleeding-heart liberal veneer.  He asks, "Does he [Obama] care that he has let this crisis [in Syria] get out of hand?"  That rhetorical accusation reeks of U.S. arrogance!  As if the U.S. President carries the responsibility of the world on his shoulders, even when U.S. strategic interests aren't at risk!

Even worse, Cohen is a dirty hypocrite. He goes further;

The operative philosophy is that you do what you can when you can. The United States has the muscle. There are few grander causes than the saving of human life.

Oh really?  Is that why Cohen urged on our war of choice in Iraq, (and before that supported the deadly decade-long embargo of Iraq), to savehuman lives?!?  In 2011, Cohen admitted he was wrong to cheer on the Iraq invasion; he said he supported it out of emotion.  Well Cohen is wrong again, he just doesn't realize it yet.  Good thing we don't make war on the advice of hot-headed pundits tapping away on their Macs in their safe, cozy offices.

I'll say it again: Obama's decision to arm the rebels is wrong.  It's another Obama half-measure meant to kind of please everybody.  But at least he's not sending them rockets and heavy artillery that will wind up in the hands of terrorists!

Obama’s increasingly muddled Syria policy

By Richard Cohen

June 18, 2013 | Washington Post

URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/richard-cohen-obamas-increasingly-muddled-syria-policy/2013/06/17/6be2a17e-d77b-11e2-a016-92547bf094cc_story.html

Lib'rul media hawks squawk for war with Syria

Not one but two op-eds today in the "liberal" Washington Post urge the U.S. to get involved militarily in Syria.  Wow. 

Columnist Richard Cohen's calling liberals against military intervention in Syria "cold-hearted" is like Charles Krauthammer calling conservatives a bunch of "bleeding hearts."  That landed below the belt.  

Well, now we see once again how the good ole' lib'rul media ain't so liberal when it comes to sending U.S. troops and weapons into Arab-Muslim countries.  Then they're all blood & guts, John McCain style.

Let me repeat: Syria is not our country, it is a sovereign state.  It hasn't attacked us.  There are no UN resolutions allowing us to take military action there, legally.  The U.S. Congress has not declared war on Syria.  And it's a country filled with nasty people on all sides.  Oh, and if we arm the other side, the first thing that will happen is the al-Qaeda affiliated Islamists will kill the other "liberal" rebels.  Or they'll do so immediately after they (we) topple Assad.

Moreover, Russia really cares about Syria.  They have a naval base there.  It's their last position of power in the Mideast.  They are willing to fight hard to keep Assad in power.  Are we?  Are we ready for a proxy war with Russia?  What's in it for us?  Nothing.  This is not to mention Turkey, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Jordan and other regional countries' interests there.  The spillover potential is immense.  

Significantly, Israel is taking a cautious approach to Syria in their own back yard.  Although Assad is aligned with Iran and Iran-backed Hizballah, many Israelis favor Assad as "the devil we know," and according to Time, "Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered government officials to keep mum about Syria."  Of course Israel may just be waiting for the U.S. to make up its mind....  

Don't let the media wear you down on Assad and Syria like they did with Saddam and Iraq!  All this talk by liberal hawks about the U.S. "squandering its leadership" is just that -- talk.  This is all France and Britain's fault, high off the toppling of Qaddafi in Libya, they thought they could make the same thing happen in Libya.  Now it's their problem.  Obama is absolutely right not to make it ours.  

And finally, remember the "Pottery Barn rule:" the same chickenhawks typing at their Macs in Washington, DC today that we have no choice but to get involved in a war in Syria will be the same ones typing tomorrow that we have no choice but to take responsibility for Syria's nation-building, peacekeeping and anti-terrorist operations after Assad has been "taken out."  I guaran-fucking-tee it.  We've been there, done that, folks.  Forget it! 

If we really want to help, we can continue to aid Syrian refugees and send food, medicine and flak jackets to Syrians stuck inside. 

UPDATE (06.08.2013):  Here's another great analysis by McClatchy describing the wonderful folks whom the McCains, Grahams, Krauthhamers, et al want to give U.S. weapons and airpower in Syria: "Analysts: Foreign militant Islamists streaming into Syria to face Hezbollah."

UPDATE (06.17.2013):  Just to make it perfectly clear that they're not satisfied with half measures, the neoconservative Editorial Board at the "liberal" Washington Post called President Obama's decision to send "limited" arms supplies to Syria's rebels too little, too late: "U.S. intervention in Syria must be robust."  They want Obama to give the rebels anti-tank rockets and anti-aircraft systems because "the war in Syria threatens U.S. vital interests -- from the fight against al-Qaeda to the security of Israel."

Cold-hearted liberals have abandoned Syria

By Richard Cohen

June 4, 2013 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/17Udsf6

The U.S. has tragically misplayed Syria

By Michael Gerson

June 4, 2013 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/17Uh155

How fast we forget 'lessons learned' in Iraq!

Now here we have the "liberal" Washington Post's foreign affairs commentator Richard Cohen repeating his past mistakes in Afghanistan and Iraq -- mistakes he admitted to and regretted on the 10th anniversary of 9/11!

Once again he is urging the U.S. to get involved in a Middle Eastern war.  (The original title of his op-ed was, "Deadly delay on Syria.")

What skin does the U.S. have in this game?  Why should we take sides in a civil war, when the eventual victors, whoever they may be, are going to be pretty unsavory and undemocratic by our standards?  Haven't we learned anything?

Conservative MSM haters, take note, this is the real media bias when it comes to U.S. foreign policy: only "fools" talk about peace and non-interference, while the "realists" and grownups in Washington talk about how fast we can get our hands bloody.

UPDATE (03.21.2013):  Here's a look at the unsavory characters whom we'd be arming in Syria, if John McCain, et al, got their way.

Does Obama have a plan for Syria?

By Richard Cohen

March 19, 2013 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/WzSJWS