The Ties That Blind

For all the horrifying descriptions of the chemical weapons attacks in Syria that President Obama gave last night, his heartfelt and surprisingly brief plea to Americans likely changed the opinion of almost no one. That doesn't mean Americans have become heartless after more than a decade of war, that began this date, twelve years ago, in New York City, Washington, DC, and eventually, a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

We believe that Americans are truly concerned about the horrific deaths of thousands of innocent men, women, and children in Syria's civil war. We also think that progress has been made on a diplomatic solution, at a remarkably fast pace over the last few days. Just yesterday, the Syrian government agreed to join the international Chemical Weapons Convention, and hand over their entire chemical weapons stockpile to an international enforcement group.

To paraphrase President Obama though, just making a declaration doesn't actually get the work done.

However, as we noted earlier this week, the United States can not and should not be expected to unilaterally enforce a worldwide standard, when our nation is only one of many parties to that standard. Ethically as well as fiscally, America can no longer afford to be the policeman for the world.

In fact, we'd say the type and level of attention that the world has demanded that the U.S. give since the end of World War II, seems to have blinded many in America to the fact that far too often, we've failed our responsibilities to ourselves here at home.

For example, allowing blind people to have gun permits in Iowa.

That may seem like a joke to some people, but we can assure you, that's a very real issue facing citizens in Iowa right now. If Iowa politicians and voters hadn't been blinded by nearly limitless campaign spending from the NRA - the kind that got two state legislators recalled in Colorado last night - perhaps the citizens of Iowa could have focused on better water management laws. Instead, some state funding is tied up fighting blind people with guns, instead of being used to help handle the massive drought the Hawkeye state is now suffering through.

The distractions of war have also blinded America to the monster our surveillance state has become, especially over the last decade. That most NSA queries of the database broke Federal privacy laws from 2006-2009 is a shocking display of Federal incompetence - one that Americans might have noticed much sooner, if the U.S. wasn't always expected to be the enforcement arm for international law by nearly every other nation on the planet.

None of that even begins to touch on America's current inability to elect sane political representatives who understand simple macroeconomics - like the fact that raising the nation's debt ceiling is simply paying the bills we've already racked up.

Infrastructure, unemployment, education, taxation, inequality, crime - the list of things that need serious attention here at home from all Americans is longer and heavier than most of us even want to imagine. Yet, too often, we've been blinded by our focus on helping everyone else around the world, before we help ourselves.

Americans do understand the Syrian problem facing President Obama, and we'd wager that most Americans - even if they are skeptical - desperately want the diplomatic solution that is being discussed at this time, by multiple nations, to be successful.

That said, America simply can't focus on the rest of the world's needs before our own anymore.

We've already become too blind for our own continued safety.

Accident Or Opportunity?

Experiments can bring about the most amazing results, especially when you're a kid - or at least, they did when our staff members were kids.

Even considering the scientific studies on kids over the past few decades - like the recent findings tying brain damage in adults to injuries suffered from playing football as a kid or teenager - many American parents today often seem a bit overprotective to us. As one of our staff members has a highly intelligent and somewhat precocious youngster running around the office, we regularly get to experience that mix of instant terror and instant thrill that parents enjoy, that otherwise is reserved for experiences like roller coasters.

The American - and international - media got to experience a similar feeling on Monday, thanks in part to Secretary of State John Kerry, in what some members of the media have termed an accidental solution to the ongoing debate over Syria.

In a nutshell, Secretary Kerry was at a news conference in London on Monday when he was asked what, if anything, Syria's President Assad could do to avoid military action. Kerry, in what some reporters initially called a gaffe, said that if Syria's Assad were to surrender his stockpile of chemical weapons to an international commission, within a week, Assad and Syria could almost certainly avoid U.S. military action.

In less time than it takes a resourceful child to take an accident-prone death-trap of an idea and turn it into a fantastic opportunity, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov offered a plan to do almost exactly what Secretary Kerry had suggested - namely for Russia to head up an international group to take control of Syria's chemical weapons.

At nearly light-speed, politically, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem - who was already meeting with Russia's Lavrov - released a statement quickly welcoming the idea of putting Syria's chemical weapons under international control. Shortly thereafter,  U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon took things one step further, proposing that the U.N. Security Council not only immediately back the handover of the weapons, but also help to destroy them as fast as safely possible.

And just like that, in one afternoon, America and much of the world may have been backed down from a potentially disastrous military engagement by the United States in Syria - and the U.S. didn't even have to play supercop to get the desired results.

Admittedly, we're less sure that this was a happy accident than a carefully planned set of actions arranged by Kerry and his counterparts, to save face for all nations involved. Still, if this plan moves forward, we believe most of the world will be happy about the results - results we're sure America and the world will hear more about Tuesday night, when President Obama speaks in prime time.

One group that may not be so happy are some of our colleagues in the U.S. political media, who've been insisting that a "no" vote by Congress on military action - delayed by Monday's diplomatic whirlwind - would be the apocalyptic end to President Obama's second term.

As both Greg Sargent and Jonathan Bernstein noted on Monday, unless America ends up getting bogged down in Syria's civil war, there's no way members of Congress - especially Republicans in Congress - are going to be any more or less likely to handle the debt ceiling and budget issues like adults, no matter what happens.

Which, for America at least, means the policy roller coaster experiment of September 2013 is only beginning. Grab your helmet and don't tell your parents.

Who's The Boss?

Congress returns to work in DC this week, and for all the hand-wringing Reid Epstein at Politico did over the weekend about the calendar pressing on President Obama, the list and gravity of tasks facing Congress is much longer, much heavier, and more complex than what the President is facing - and Congress only has nine work days scheduled to finish it all.

Of course, the first order of business in both houses when Congress returns will be the vote on whether to authorize a military strike in Syria.

The White House continued prosecuting its case in the national media over the weekend, and the President is scheduled to speak to the nation on Tuesday about the decision on Syria that Congress will pick up this week. However, neither the facts or the numbers have really changed from what we outlined on Friday, when we pointedly noted multiple polls that confirm Americans do NOT want to get involved militarily in Syria.

At his press conference at the G-20 Friday, President Obama said that the decision to strike shouldn't depend on public opinion - a comment we firmly disagree with.

If America is going to play policeman to the world once again, there are two solid questions we believe most Americans want answered before Congress votes.

First, is Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad directly responsible for using chemical weapons on his own people?

Regardless of what Secretary of State Kerry and others were pushing on the Sunday shows, the facts about the chemical weapons attacks of August 21 are anything but clear. Over the weekend, CBS's Charlie Rose interviewed Syria's President Assad, who noted that there is no concrete evidence that he attacked his own people with chemical weapons.

German intelligence sources over the weekend also confirmed that Syrian government forces may have carried out the attack without Assad's permission. Further, as Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida confirmed in both an interview with Ezra Klein, and in the Congressman's own op-ed in the New York Times, the Obama Administration has no 'smoking gun' that proves Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad is directly responsible for using chemical weapons on his own people.

The second question Americans want answered is also relatively simple: Would an American strike of limited scope, durability, and duration likely stop Assad's forces from using chemical weapons - or any weapon of mass destruction - again? As multiple sources confirmed over the past few days, many at the highest levels in the U.S. military don't support military action in Syria, for a whole host of reasons, and they don't think the kind of limited military action being discussed would be effective in truly deterring future use of chemical weapons.

It's easy, then, to see why Americans are so anxious to keep our role as "World Policeman" restrained. We can't be sure the person the world claims is truly responsible actually is the guilty party. Further, the proposed punishment for the crime would admittedly be ineffective. Based on those facts, and the fact that most of America doesn't want our nation to take military action in Syria, the decision by members of Congress shouldn't be very difficult.

Then again, military and weapons manufacturers have been stuffing the campaign coffers of many, many members of Congress from both parties, for many years.

The votes on Syria by each member of both the House and Senate will tell us all a great deal about who they really think they should pay attention to. We hope voters will remember these upcoming votes in 2014 and beyond - and vote accordingly.