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In a speech given on June 2 at the Air Force Academy in Colorado President Obama warned of
isolationism as 'false comfort', and got to argue the case of his
failed Syria policy yet one more time. This is what he had to say:
"Because we seized a diplomatic
option backed by our threat of force, nations came together and we accomplished
far more than military strikes ever could have," the president declared.
"All of Syria's declared chemical weapons were successfully removed."
The U.S. was justified in its 2011
intervention in Libya, Obama said, although he lamented a lack of planning
"for the day after, when deep-rooted tribalism plunged [the country] into
disorder."
The current situation in Syria is
"gut-wrenching," he said. "As a father, I see Syria's children
and I see my own." Obama then tempered the statement, remarking that
deeper military involvement has to be "fully thought through" and
evaluated.
"If Iran and Russia want to
spill their blood and treasure trying to prop up their Syrian client and get
sucked into a quagmire, that is their choice," Obama said. "As
president of the United States, I've made a different choice. The only real
solution to the Syrian conflict is a political solution, including a transition
away from Assad. And that takes diplomacy, not American soldiers being dragged
into the middle of another civil war in the Middle East. Our foreign policy has
to be strong, but also has to be smart."
To "seize the possibilities of
our time," Obama said, all diplomatic and military tools must be
considered. "Because we negotiated with Iran, we reached a deal that
prevented Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb, and we did it without firing one
shot. With diplomacy, not war."
So, Mr. Obama says: “As a father, I see
Syria's children and I see my own.” Really! I say. Shut the Fuck Up Mr.
President. Had you thought for a single moment of the children of Syria as your
own, you wouldn’t have dragged your feet on the question of intervention for
five long years and let their slaughter escalate from one to a handful to few
hundreds per month. You would have long realized that a person who was willing
to kill the people and the children he was meant to protect and that those who
are willing to empower him to do so care very little for your fucking toothless
diplomacy. If you really thought of Syrian children as your own, if you cared a
single iota about them, you would have at least taken more of them in, or at the
very least made a strong case for that. But you didn’t. And what does that say
about you?
The simple truth about this this latest self-assessment
of yours, Mr. President, is that you were told by one of your advisers that your
previous statements on the subject of Syria made you look like a coldhearted
asshole. And they did, because you are. To you, the otherness of Syrians clearly
made them seem less deserving of your help. That’s the long and short of it. You
can dance around this issue to your liberal heart’s content, it won’t make the
reality of what you did go away. It won’t make it acceptable. It won’t
whitewash it.
But do you really care? Perhaps only inasmuch
as it will reflect on your legacy. For it has surely been tainted, and scrub as
long and hard as you may, the blood won’t come off.
Meanwhile, and as some continue to argue,
if the Syrian conflict and the negotiations over the Iran nuclear program were
indeed handled as separate issues by your administration, this does not seem be
the case with Iran’s leaders. But whatever the case may be it does not make your
policy any less immoral. Members of your very administration had described your
nonchalant attitude during policy meetings on Syria, meetings in which you let
them argue amongst themselves while you chewed gum and fiddled with your Blackberry. You didn’t intervene in their conversation because
you didn’t care. Not only did you tie your hands behind your back by seeking
guarantees that no one could give, you made sure that Assad and his supporters
knew about it, you reassured them about your desire not to intervene in any way
that could jeopardize their positon. The one time they seriously fucked up, you
backed down, and were proud of it.
Now Assad still has chemical
weapons and is still using them, Syria has become a battleground of all against
all, and your decision to intervene at this stage and the manner and goals of
your current intervention make you complicit in the mass bloodletting, the
ethnic cleansing, the war crimes, etc. So, please stop telling us that you
care. Your actions speak much louder than your words and belie them at every
turn. The reality is, and
as the Washington Post put it, the children of Syria starve as America
looks on. That summarizes your attitude as well, Sir. The Syrians have a
saying about a man who gets upset because the people around him seem unable to
understand or appreciate him: he’s arguing with the flies around his face, they
say. Stop arguing with the flies Mr. President.
