Don't miss this valuable interview, which took place a couple of days ago on Bill Moyer's PBS show, by Phil Donahue, with West Point graduate, Vietnam War veteran and father of a son who died in the Iraq invasion, Col. Andrew Bacevich.
It's about the Syria situation and Bacevich (who is a true conservative) brings a world of war experience and intellectual insight to the debate that is seriously lacking in the mainstream press and cable news world.
Here's an excerpt:
ANDREW BACEVICH: Well, I mean, if I could have five minutes of the president's time, I'd say, "Mr. President, the issue really is not Syria. I mean, you're being told that it's Syria. You're being told you have to do something about Syria, that you have to make a decision about Syria. That somehow your credibility is on the line."
But I'd say, "Mr. President, that's not true. The issue really here is whether or not an effort over the course of several decades, dating back to the promulgation of the Carter Doctrine in 1980, an effort that extends over several decades to employ American power, military power, overt, covert military power exercise through proxies, an effort to use military power to somehow stabilize or fix or liberate or transform the greater Middle East hasn't worked.
“And if you think back to 1980, and just sort of tick off the number of military enterprises that we have been engaged in that part of the world, large and small, you know, Beirut, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, and on and on, and ask yourself, 'What have we got done? What have we achieved? Is the region becoming more stable? Is it becoming more Democratic? Are we enhancing America's standing in the eyes of the people of the Islamic world?'
"The answers are, 'No, no, and no.' So why, Mr. President, do you think that initiating yet another war, 'cause if we bomb Syria, it's a war, why do you think that initiating yet another war in this protracted enterprise is going to produce a different outcome? Wouldn't it be perhaps wise to ask ourselves if this militarized approach to the region maybe is a fool’s errand.http://billmoyers.com/segment/andrew-bacevich-on-taking-action-in-syria/
The whole interview is well worth the time invested.
Also - if you dear reader fancy yourself a measured thinking fence sitter on this Syria issue as to whether America should take military action, go read this article - it might assist you in conciliating your position:
Take special note of a link in that article that reviews America's hypocrisy on the issue of chemical weapons usage in war - it is definitely an eye opener if one is unaware of that sordid history:
All of this information combined should, at bare minimum, be enough to give a thoughtful individual serious pause as to how wisely this country's leaders and military industrial complex are acting on the American people's behalf.
The more that The Gadfly reads and hears from untainted corporate media sources about the situation in Syria the more that he feels that Obama is, peculiarly, allowing himself to be manipulated by Neocon voices who wet dream about continuing America's Great Mid-East Adventure, thus insuring that their investor's (there's that dirty word again) profit driven military industrial complex corporations continue sucking in those billion dollar tax payer funded contracts which directly support the war machine as it grinds it's way across that godforsaken region.
And The Gadfly wonders -- what will it take to end this madness?
----TFG
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