People Are Idiots

Would you like to know what I think about Syria?  I think if I lived in Syria I would start walking west and I wouldn't stop until I got to a country where things don't routinely and spontaneously explode.  Although I suppose that would just get me to the Mediterranean Sea, and then I'd have to swim to Italy.  And if I survived the swim to Italy, I'd probably just walk to Paris, grow a beard and spend the rest of my life pretending to be Hemingway.   I seem to have lost my train of thought...oh yeah, Syria.

Would you like to know what I think the United States should do about Syria?  Nothing.  I'm not saying I think we should do nothing.  I'm saying I think nothing.  It's not that I don't care.  I think this is really important, and I think whatever the President and Congress decide to do will be an important moment for our country and the world.  It's not that I haven't had time to stay informed.  I've tried to keep up on the story as much as possible.  Unfortunately, cable news coverage is light on "facts about Syria" and heavy on conjecture about the domestic politics of military action and self-assured opinions from clowns who have no idea what they're talking about, but are 100% sure they're right.

Fox News, in particular, is absolutely positive that the President is being indecisive and weak by waiting for Congressional authorization for action.  Just like they'd be absolutely positive that the President was pissing all over the Constitution if he had decided to act without Congressional authorization.  I'm going to try not to be too hard on Fox though, this must be really confusing for them.  On the one hand, boy do they love bombing muslims.  I mean they LOOOVE that shit!  But on the other hand, the President wants to bomb muslims now too, and they fucking hate the President.  Also, half the Republican party is suddenly anti-war, it's like some Republicans don't even want to bomb anyone right now.  It's a strange time in the Republican party and you have to sort of feel bad for Fox as they try to be the propaganda wing of a party that can't figure out where it stands on the biggest story of the day.  It's tough being a worthless shill sometimes.

The truth is, I don't know enough about Syria to say anything useful.  I know Assad's name.  I know his country is in the middle of a revolution/asymmetric civil war/crazy shit going on situation.  I know Assad is a Baathist, and I know Ted Cruz thinks that means he forces people to take baths against their will.  I know something went on there with chemical weapons, and I know chemical weapons are bad. 

I also know that, if we do bomb Syria, it will be the fourth, count 'em, FOURTH Western Asian country we've had some sort of military action against in the last dozen years.  And that doesn't even count whatever meddling you think we did in Egypt.  Four!  That's a lot!  Bombing seems to be our only solution to anything.  I'm surprised we haven't tried bombing our public schools or our health care system yet.

I understand the arguments on both sides, and they both make sense.  Why take action?  Well, we told Assad not to use chemical weapons, and he apparently went ahead and used them anyway, on civilians, and children.  Even if we hadn't explicitly said we weren't going to allow that, it's still in violation of about a dozen international treaties. 

And if we don't do something, who will?  The French?  Seriously?  I heard they already surrendered to Syria, twice, just this week.  The U.N. can't do anything, and even if they could, U.N. military action is just the U.S. Armed Forces and like 15 British dudes, and the British already said they're not coming along for this one.

But why not take action?  Well, for one thing, we've been lied to about weapons of mass destruction before.  The case is clearly a little more plausible this time, and, if true, more of an imminent threat, but still.  The point of the boy who cried wolf is that eventually wolves eat all your sheep and nobody cares, and if you use Colin Powell to cry wolf you've sort of poisoned the well, because it's really hard to find someone more credible than Colin Powell used to be.

Also, as I've previously mentioned, this would be our fourth military adventure in Western Asia in the last twelve years.  Wouldn't it be lovely if we could just not be at war for a minute.  And look at how far we've moved the bar in terms of reasons for going to war.  Hitler took over Europe and turned London into rubble and it still took a Japanese attack on Hawaii to draw us into World War Two.   Now we start bombing every time a dictator looks at us funny.  Ron Paul's been complaining about the U.S. being the police of the world in Republican primaries since back when I would have actually considered voting for the winner of the Republican primaries.  And Ron isn't wrong. 

Also, Syria is in the middle of a violent civil war.  Why would we willingly step into the middle of that and pick a side when we all agree that we don't really like either side.  Why do we always feel the need to choose between the lesser of two evils in situations we could just choose to stay out of?  And there are probably five more valid arguments on both sides that I'm not getting to. 

So what do we do?  Well, polls show that an overwhelming majority of the American people don't want us involved in Syria.  But listen, here's the thing...This is one of those times when I couldn't possibly care less about what the American people think.  I would bet you a thousand dollars that half this country can't even find Syria on a map (and way too many of them would be proud and unapologetic about it).  I'm like 99% confident that if you asked Americans who the President of Syria is, roughly 5% of them would say Saddam Hussein, and another 5% would say Osama Bin Laden.

Think about it this way.  If you casually ran into the President, or your Senator, or your Congressman on the street and they asked you what you think they should do about Syria, would you 1) calmly tell them your opinion and expect them to listen or 2) panic because the people running our country are so completely out of ideas that they're asking your opinion without knowing whether or not you even have a vague familiarity with the subject matter?  I'm not saying the President and Congress should never listen to the people (although honestly sometimes I think we'd be better off that way), but on complicated foreign policy matters?  Come on.  People are idiots.  And even if we weren't idiots we wouldn't have time to get familiar enough with something like this to form an educated opinion.  And even if we did have the time, we don't have access to most of the pertinent information. 

I'm also not saying we should just follow the government blindly into war because we're too stupid to know any better.  I don't have any problem you voicing your opinion about Syria, and if you can get the Congress and the President to listen to your nonsense, then good for you.  I'm just saying that if I was the President and you told me what you think I should do about Syria I would respond to you the same way you respond to a three year old when you ask him what he wants for dinner and he yells "ice cream and pizza! Oh, ice cream pizza!"..."Really, ice cream pizza, okay buddy, I'll get right on that."

And if President Obama decides to take military action against Syria in spite of public opinion, and if it turns out to be a colossally horrible decision, and if it turns out his administration lied a little about why we were going there in the first place, then we get to shun him and pretend he was never President.  Just like George W. Whats his face. 

Now I grant you that shunning President Obama in 2017 won't fix whatever mistakes he makes just like shunning President Bush now doesn't fix the federal disaster area that was his presidency.  But the thing is, that's what these guys signed up for.  I don't want a President who hides behind Congress or polls instead of making the decision he thinks is the right one.  When you're the President, sometimes you have to make really hard decisions, and sometimes you have to make really hard, really unpopular decisions, and sometimes you might get them wrong.  If you get a big one wrong, then everybody hates you forever.  That's the job, and if you aren't up for it, then you shouldn't sit down in the big chair in the first place.