From John McCain and Lindsey Graham, beating the drums for yet another military intervention in the Middle East:
There are many options at our disposal, including military options short of boots on the ground in Syria, that can make a positive impact on this crisis, which is destabilizing the region.
I have one question for McCain and Graham about this: what if these “options” don’t work? What’s next? Have they given this even a moment’s thought?
I know this is hardly a novel insight, but the crisis in Syria has really rubbed my nose in just how capriciously conservatives have come to treat war. They no longer even consider it an especially difficult decision to make, let alone a last resort. It’s just a routine extension of foreign policy.
The chances that an American intervention could have a positive outcome in Syria strike me as close to zero. Nevertheless, the war crowd is raring to dive in anyway. They have no idea what we should do; no idea what the outcome might be; and most importantly, seemingly no idea of how many ways the entire operation could go wrong. All they know is that there’s a bad guy somewhere in the vicinity of Israel, so we ought to go in and kick his ass.
It’s astonishing. I’m no isolationist, and I’m no pacifist. But at the very least I think war should be treated as a deadly serious matter. When did it become such a casual thing?
