A Dictator Goes to War in Syria

I am not talking about Assad.   I am talking about Barack Obama.   Despite the media-mis-information blitz, only 9% of the American people support getting involved in the civil war in Syria.  Nor are people buying the story that Assad's regime ordered the attack - they were already winning the war, it was the rebels- who have already used poison gas- who had every motivation to frame Assad.  The Dictator, Obama, has not even bothered to ask Congress for permission to do this, as is required under the Constitution.  Dictators have no need to regard either legislatures or constitutions.

Former President Jimmy Carter correctly observed, "We are no longer a functioning democracy."   We have evolved into a sort of revolving dictatorship.   The men behind the curtain change who gets to wear the big hat every four or eight years, but the main policies do not change.    As General Smedley Butler even in the 1930s observed in his book "War is a Racket", once large American corporations figured out that they could get a higher return on their dollars in foreign nations than at home, the dollars went overseas and our military went overseas to protect their dollars.   Our military has often been abused and turned from its righteous purpose of defending our nation and constitution.   It has been mis-used as corporate muscle.

Notice that there is no "opposition party" to American military adventurism on behalf of the global corporate interests which control our former Republic.   Bush ran on "a more humble foreign policy" than Clinton.  He was elected and went on a global rampage, including a war in Iraq even though they had nothing to do with 9-11.   Over time, people got sick of the ongoing wars and occupations of foreign nations and turned control of the legislative branch over to the Democrats in large part because they promised the peace.    Bush pushed on regardless, so people elected a Democrat President who promised peace.  In 2007 Candidate Obama said in an interview with Charlie Savage ...

Obama:  The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.

The two party cabal has spent the last twenty years taking turns sending the American people candidates who get elected by lying to us about their desire to avoid war and about their beliefs on their own authority to initiate it.

Despite Obama's Nobel peace prize, the policy of dropping bombs and intervening all over the world did not change.   So will going back to the Republicans again change it?    Of course not.  Peace is not an option for the regime which really controls our nation, regardless of what the people want.  We no longer have a functioning Democracy (or Republic), remember?    The two parties are merely a front to prevent most people from realizing this.  Heck, the "leadership" in Congress is not even really trying to stop Obama from launching war against Syria.

Nor is going to war the "moral" thing to do, even in the off chance the Syrian government was stupid enough to order the gas attack.  Humility is a moral virtue too, and Americans have exercised too little of it when we assume we can go take over countries and successfully re-order societies of which we are almost wholly ignorant.  Where have we really helped the people of any of these nations we have warred on and occupied?  Where have we brought anything but debt, death, and disfigurement?   Have we set them free, or only exchanged their masters for radical Islamist crazies?

Since it is far from clear that our past interventions have been a blessing either to our children or theirs in any of these nations, why do we charge into yet another misguided moral crusade, on the flimsiest of evidence?   And even if the evidence is true, what to people care if their families are killed and maimed by chemical weapons or drone strikes?  Is one really so morally superior to the other?

And of course, none of these people who are calling for war in Syria are calling for their taxes to be raised to pay for it.  That is also a part of the moral equation- loading the next generation with more debt to sooth some vague desire to say we "did something".    We have already immorally loaded the next generation with debt in order to pay for the present consumption of our government.  Bankers win every war, because the debt both sides tend to use to finance it swells the asset side of their balance sheets.

When it is time for America 2.0, and many consider that time is coming, let's remember the lessons taught in Localism, A Philosophy of Government.  Let's arrange our political system so that power cannot be concentrated in two national parties, our Executive so that it cannot ignore the legislative, and our military so that even if a President finds a way to do so they simply cannot unilaterally position our forces for an foreign military intervention, and our financial system so that neither the bankers can not profit when we do so.