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.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Monday, September 9, 2013
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.
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.
Friday, September 6, 2013
Sticky & Uncomfortable
We're willing to admit: When our staff members disagree with each other, or with acquaintances that we usually concur with, the feeling is a bit uncomfortable. It's like realizing, after several minutes of hollering, that you've been trying to get the attention of someone with earbud headphones on, who can't hear you.
Like Brer Rabbit screaming at the Tar Baby in the legendary American folktale, both the pro-military action and the anti-interventionist sides of the Syria deabte seem to be stuck on a similar inability to communicate and have their positions recognized as legitimate.
On the pro-interventionist side, the similarities to Brer Rabbit don't end with screaming for recognition. There's also the fact that some members of the media who may have been lumped into the pro-interventionist camp like Greg Sargent, John Harwood, and Steve Kornacki, don't really appear to agree with the idea of involving the American military in action in Syria.
Sargent, Harwood, and Kornacki simply pointed out in open discussions online on Thursday a basic fact: The anti-interventionist side is in danger of losing the overall battle by insisting no sane logical member of Congress would vote us into yet another conflict when so many Americans are against it. As Greg noted, some insiders on Capitol Hill still think there's a decent chance of passing an authorization for use of military force in Syria, even though the "No's" from their constituents keep piling up.
That danger of getting stuck - also like in the tale of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby - means that our nation could once again easily get buried in yet another foreign war, just as we got stuck in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and Vietnam before that.
Greg's writeup Thursday afternoon on the Congressional kabuki being choreographed in Washington confirmed that some of our elected "leaders" in Washington are indeed stuck on the idea of intervention. Many more of those in both political media and politics itself seem certain that no matter what the American people say, America's military interests are going to push our political leaders to get us involved in Syria.
We don't believe that's a certainty.
The numbers of people contacting the White House and their Congressmembers' offices right now are off the charts - and as a few sources we have on the Hill have confirmed, the numbers of calls and e-mails are running hundreds of Americans against, to only a handful of Americans in favor of military action.
That kind of reaction historically is like a stick to the head of most members of Congress, that reminds them of who really controls their futures - especially with an election coming in 2014.
Still, what Greg and those like him are saying about the many different 'Whip Count' guesstimates floating around the political media isn't that they agree with intervention in Syria. It's simply that - until the final vote tallies are taken in Congress - intervention is still entirely possible, no matter what some members of Congress have already claimed publicly. If you believe President Obama is willing to risk potential impeachment from both Democrats and Republicans, intervention might even be possible even if Congress votes no.
Until the final votes are held on Capitol Hill next week, if you want your members of Congress to stick to a specific position on Syria, contact them today - loudly, firmly, and politely - and every day until the final vote, to make sure your message is heard.
Like Brer Rabbit screaming at the Tar Baby in the legendary American folktale, both the pro-military action and the anti-interventionist sides of the Syria deabte seem to be stuck on a similar inability to communicate and have their positions recognized as legitimate.
On the pro-interventionist side, the similarities to Brer Rabbit don't end with screaming for recognition. There's also the fact that some members of the media who may have been lumped into the pro-interventionist camp like Greg Sargent, John Harwood, and Steve Kornacki, don't really appear to agree with the idea of involving the American military in action in Syria.
Sargent, Harwood, and Kornacki simply pointed out in open discussions online on Thursday a basic fact: The anti-interventionist side is in danger of losing the overall battle by insisting no sane logical member of Congress would vote us into yet another conflict when so many Americans are against it. As Greg noted, some insiders on Capitol Hill still think there's a decent chance of passing an authorization for use of military force in Syria, even though the "No's" from their constituents keep piling up.
That danger of getting stuck - also like in the tale of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby - means that our nation could once again easily get buried in yet another foreign war, just as we got stuck in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and Vietnam before that.
Greg's writeup Thursday afternoon on the Congressional kabuki being choreographed in Washington confirmed that some of our elected "leaders" in Washington are indeed stuck on the idea of intervention. Many more of those in both political media and politics itself seem certain that no matter what the American people say, America's military interests are going to push our political leaders to get us involved in Syria.
We don't believe that's a certainty.
The numbers of people contacting the White House and their Congressmembers' offices right now are off the charts - and as a few sources we have on the Hill have confirmed, the numbers of calls and e-mails are running hundreds of Americans against, to only a handful of Americans in favor of military action.
That kind of reaction historically is like a stick to the head of most members of Congress, that reminds them of who really controls their futures - especially with an election coming in 2014.
Still, what Greg and those like him are saying about the many different 'Whip Count' guesstimates floating around the political media isn't that they agree with intervention in Syria. It's simply that - until the final vote tallies are taken in Congress - intervention is still entirely possible, no matter what some members of Congress have already claimed publicly. If you believe President Obama is willing to risk potential impeachment from both Democrats and Republicans, intervention might even be possible even if Congress votes no.
Until the final votes are held on Capitol Hill next week, if you want your members of Congress to stick to a specific position on Syria, contact them today - loudly, firmly, and politely - and every day until the final vote, to make sure your message is heard.
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