NP - It's Not About Syria

[David Morris]

http://www.juancole.com/2013/09/attack-donohue-bacevich.html

ANDREW BACEVICH: Well, I mean, if I could have five minutes of the
president’s time, I’d say, “Mr. President, the issue really is not Syria. I
mean, you’re being told that it’s Syria. You’re being told you have to do
something about Syria, that you have to make a decision about Syria. That
somehow your credibility is on the line.”

But I’d say, “Mr. President, that’s not true. The issue really here is
whether or not an effort over the course of several decades, dating back to
the promulgation of the Carter Doctrine in 1980, an effort that extends
over several decades to employ American power, military power, overt,
covert military power exercise through proxies, an effort to use military
power to somehow stabilize or fix or liberate or transform the greater
Middle East hasn’t worked.

“And if you think back to 1980, and just sort of tick off the number of
military enterprises that we have been engaged in that part of the world,
large and small, you know, Beirut, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, and
on and on, and ask yourself, ‘What have we got done? What have we achieved?
Is the region becoming more stable? Is it becoming more Democratic? Are we
enhancing America’s standing in the eyes of the people of the Islamic
world?’

“The answers are, ‘No, no, and no.’ So why, Mr. President, do you think
that initiating yet another war, ’cause if we bomb Syria, it’s a war, why
do you think that initiating yet another war in this protracted enterprise
is going to produce a different outcome? Wouldn’t it be perhaps wise to ask
ourselves if this militarized approach to the region maybe is a fool’s
errand.
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