President Obama announced this weekend that he has decided to use military
force against Syria and would seek authorization from Congress when it returned
from its August break. Every Member ought to vote against this reckless and
immoral use of the US military. But even if every single Member and Senator
votes for another war, it will not make this terrible idea any better because
some sort of nod is given to the Constitution along the way.
Besides, the president made it clear that Congressional authorization is superfluous,
asserting falsely that he has the authority to act on his own with or without
Congress. That Congress allows itself to be treated as window dressing by the
imperial president is just astonishing.
The President on Saturday claimed that the alleged chemical attack in Syria
on August 21 presented "a serious danger to our national security." I disagree
with the idea that every conflict, every dictator, and every insurgency everywhere
in the world is somehow critical to our national security. That is the thinking
of an empire, not a republic. It is the kind of thinking that this president
shares with his predecessor and it is bankrupting us and destroying our liberties
here at home.
According to recent media reports, the military does not have enough money
to attack Syria and would have to go to Congress for a supplemental appropriation
to carry out the strikes. It seems our empire is at the end of its financial
rope. The limited strikes that the president has called for in Syria would
cost the US in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen.
Martin Dempsey wrote to Congress last month that just the training of Syrian
rebels and "limited" missile and air strikes would cost "in the billions" of
dollars. We should clearly understand what another war will do to the US economy,
not to mention the effects of additional unknown costs such as a spike in fuel
costs as oil skyrockets.
I agree that any chemical attack, particularly one that kills civilians, is
horrible and horrendous. All deaths in war and violence are terrible and should
be condemned. But why are a few hundred killed by chemical attack any worse
or more deserving of US bombs than the 100,000 already killed in the conflict?
Why do these few hundred allegedly killed by Assad count any more than the
estimated 1,000 Christians in Syria killed by US allies on the other side?
Why is it any worse to be killed by poison gas than to have your head chopped
off by the US allied radical Islamists, as has happened to a number of Christian
priests and bishops in Syria?
For that matter, why are the few hundred civilians killed in Syria by a chemical
weapon any worse than the 2000-3000 who have been killed by Obama's drone strikes
in Pakistan? Does it really make a difference whether a civilian is killed
by poison gas or by drone missile or dull knife?
In "The Sociology of Imperialism," Joseph Schumpeter wrote of
the Roman Empire's suicidal interventionism:
"There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged
to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman,
they were those of Rome's allies; and if Rome had no allies, then allies
would be invented. When it was utterly impossible to contrive an interest
- why, then it was the national honour that had been insulted."
Sadly, this sounds like a summary of Obama's speech over the weekend. We are
rapidly headed for the same collapse as the Roman Empire if we continue down
the president's war path. What we desperately need is an overwhelming Congressional
rejection of the president's war authorization. Even a favorable vote, however,
cannot change the fact that this is a self-destructive and immoral policy.
