Thursday, September 05, 2013

The Only Justification for Attacking Syria

Once again, I write in the capacity of scribe to my politically astute husband, who tends to rant very convincingly and then go off and lift weights or whatever. Today's topic: Syria.

Paul actually advocated an attack on Syria, years ago, as an alternative to attacking Libya. Back then, the Islamic jihadists in Syria were not yet a well-organized rebellion, so we wouldn't have been assisting them.

Paul is in high dudgeon about the fact that no one discussing this issue (at least, no one he's heard) is focusing on what he sees as the only adequate justification for attacking Syria at this point: to destroy the chemical weapons before Assad's government loses control of them to the radical insurgents. The factors we must weigh: how high a percentage of the weapons can we destroy, and how heavy will the "collateral damage" to civilians be from blowing up large quantities of horrific chemicals?

Paul raised the possibility that Obama is actually thinking along these lines, and that all his squishy equivocation and talk of limited, punitive measures are just a way to preserve operational security. (I don't give him Obama that much credit -- and I expect Assad will take the precaution of hiding his stockpiles somewhere new, before we get around to taking any action.)