Amen to this post; Fie on Operation Hand Slap

Submitted by Belladonna Rogers (United States), Aug 28, 2013 at 03:35

As Dr. PIpes writes, "Warfare is a very serious business whose first imperative is to deploy force to win – rather than to punish, make a statement, establish a symbolic point, or preen about one's morality." But "winning" is nowhere on the horizon.

As I understand it, Kerry and the leader of the free world find it unacceptable that Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons to kill civilians, including children. So the adminstration's solution to this problem is lobbing American and British missiles "against the regime." But there's no assurance that these missiles won't also kill civilians and children. However, because we're killing the civilians and children, the cause is just and the deaths we inflict will be in pursuit of a higher cause than Assad's cause: so that the bien-pensants among Obama and his ilk can, in Bill Clinton's deathless prose, "feel good about it."

Oh, really?

And it's not as if we have an exemplary or dependable record when it comes to "surgically precise bombing." Remember May 7, 1999 when five American JDAM guided bombs struck the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, in the misguided belief they were hitting a Yugoslasv target nearby? Three Chinese reporters were killed, 27 Chinese nationals injured ---enough to cause the United States to pay $28 million in reparations to the Chinese government for this SNAFU by the end of 1999..

As Dr. Pipes notes, two days of "punishment" could and likely would have devastating effects all around, both within Syria and, of course, as retaliation against Israel.

It is the height of irresponsibility for the Obama adminstration to assuage its collective sense of outrage first by dithering over "consolations" that have now produced an egregious, hare-brained decision to satisfy the tender sensibilities of those such as Samantha Power and other great military strategists who believe that Operation Hand Slap will take care of everything.

Boy, will that show Bashar al-Assad who's The Man.

Has a more feckless administration ever been in power in the United States, one so intellectually incapable of following the course of its actions to their logical and indeed, all but inevitable conclusions?

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