Cripes. It's worth it to ignore today's news, or take it with a shaker of salt and a margarita and spend your time reading news magazines over one year old.
Funny how Syria is all of a sudden Obama's problem: the area has been begging for help for years because of chemical weapons. The talking heads are at it again. I want to hear reasoned and intelligent discourse; I want to see real people making real decisions.
Haven't been able to stand Boehner for years: last week he wept on presenting a talk about dead children -- Syrian dead children I believe. Now I see that Boehner is human, and as such is not a one-dimensional political being (though many are, evidenced by their hard-lline ego-driven politicism). Goldwater wept and gained understanding. Richard Nixon's tears never got me: they were tears for himself, not for others.
As to seeing real people making real decisions: let's hear it for flippant diplomacy. Whatever works:
"Is there anything Assad could do?" asks a reporter.
"Yes. Turn over all his chemical weapons,"says our Foreign Minister.
and somehow Vladimir Putin, whose government has been supplying Assad's government with weapons, says, "Yes. Assad can give them to us for safe-keeping."
Well, hell, we have the Atom bomb for safe-keeping. A world with weapons locked away and held by different powers is better than one in which everyone wanders the streets armed with AK-47s.
Who's most vociferous about "Obama's failure" to seize Syria's chemical weapons? I'd hazard a guess that it is the same people who are violently opposed to gun control in the US. Kaff kaff.
I'm going back to reading my issues of The Week from 2011.
