I realize I’m a blogger of comparatively zero significance, in terms of the influence my posts have in shaping or changing the mind of any blog reader out there, and maybe I deserve my place in the flyover of the blogosphere, either owing to the low quality of my posts or because they generally lack any intellectually provocative content — I mean really, beyond my mother & father (Hi Mom!) who cares what Happy Wife and I had for dinner last night. I get that.
But with regard to the Syria thing, can somebody explain to me why we, the USofA, are the only country in the entire world with the proper motivation and military chops to carry out a punitive missile strike on Assad’s assets, specifically the places where he either stores and/or produces chemical weapons? Why isn’t anybody talking about — and if someone is and I missed it please provide a URL where I can be so enlightened — the one exception that seems abundantly obvious to me — Israel!
Obvious for two reasons: 1) moral/humanitarian motivation, and 2) military practicality & feasibility. As I’ve said elsewhere on the internets, Can you think of a population of people who should be more thoroughly & morally outraged by the government directed murder of innocents with poison gas than the people living in the modern Jewish state of Israel? Secondly, practically speaking, Israel borders Syria. Damascus and all other places within Syria where poison gas stores/facilities reside are geographically very close to Israel, closer even than the Mediterranean Sea where I suppose the US military would position its carriers from which we would launch our missile-laden strike fighters. And clearly Israel has the strike fighters and missiles to surgically disable said stores/facilities. The Israeli Air Force recently demonstrated this capability inside Syria where they obliterated stockpiles of weapons headed for Hezbollah in Lebanon.
So Mr. Obama, why is it again you say the U.S. is the only country in world properly motivated and capable of doing this?
I can imagine one objection to the Israeli option: “Are you daft, Nibbe? If Israel were to take out the chemical weapons facilities with strike fighters it would provoke a regional war, draw Iran into the conflict, greatly destabilize the region and put “our” oil supplies in jeopardy.” But as I just pointed out, Israel has already deployed strike fighters against weapons targets in Syria, no middle-east-wide war ensued and the price at the pump was unchanged. Besides, the only middle eastern country the U.S. imports a significant amount of oil from is Saudi Arabia, and even that represents only 18% of our net annual total. So even if an area wide conflict erupted if Israel took care of this, we (USofA) could simply use our power to protect Saudi Arabia and keep the shipping lanes open. Seems like a much better and more justified use of our military power than provocative bombing in Syria.