September 5, 2013--Smart Piece From a Good Friend

I asked a good friend what he would do about Syria if he were commander-in-chief. As always with him, I got much more than I asked for. And, as usual, it was very smart--

I'm a little light on answers here. I think it is much more complicated now by Obama's red line that it was before. I'm also trying to sort out how to approach this. 

If you look at it from where we are right now, where we have a lot of involvement in the Middle East behind us, even with a lot of shaky results, the choices -- bomb or not -- look one way, within that framework. But if you think that such a level of involvement is too much or otherwise ineffective or ill advised, then you get different questions. What exactly should the US be doing outside its borders, anyway? As far into Middle Eastern affairs as we are now, it is harder to take a step back, much harder than it would have been even 10 years ago. I think Obama has produced a situation surrounding Syria with no really good options. 

My own preferences have long been running toward a much more modest role for the US in world affairs, and I'm very skeptical whether an attack has any real strategic effect in this environment. Chemical weapons are horrible, but I think more and more that we're better served leaving other countries to their own devices and horrors, rather than trying to intervene in conflicts where we can't even identify the players and issues. It's hard to watch a government kill its civilians -- this all started with peaceful, Cairo-style Arab Spring demonstrations -- but I don't feel comfortable with an intervention. Obama hasn't made a strong case for the strategic benefits of intervening or even that it would change anything in Syria. 

Another part of this whole development over many decades of involvement via the Executive branch is the terrible effect this has had on democracy in America. The Executive has seized a lot of power over a long period, and Congress has given away its prerogatives to the Executive with both hands. It can't seem to surrender its powers fast enough, even as many there rattle on and on about the sacred and perfect Constitution we are supposed to have. 

We seem to have built a national security state of huge proportions, capable of wiping out any and all parts of the Bill of Rights without even a challenge, taking us into wars on its own motion. The security/terrorism threat -- back to the Middle East -- has been the basis for changing how this country really works. Start adding some of the developments coming from corporate influence in politics and elsewhere into the mix, and the country starts to look way different from what we want to think. 

The security state has been bankrupting us, hurting the economy, damaging political freedom at home, and now has us trying to figure out whether another Middle East intervention is essential or not. Less empire, more focus on international trade and investment systems, standards issues, resolution of conflict, a better model for social justice at home -- that all seems more productive to me.