Hank Kalet

And so we have it, unexpectedly, a debate over the use of American military might in a foreign conflict.

President Barack Obama announced yesterday that he is prepared to lob cruise missiles into Syria as punishment for the Assad’s regime use of chemical weapons against his own people. But he wants Congressional approval first, a move that reverses the historical course and could re-empower a neutered Congress.

Obama called the Syrian gas attack “an assault on human dignity” that “presents a serious danger to our national security.”

It risks making a mockery of the global prohibition on the use of chemical weapons. It endangers our friends and our partners along Syria’s borders, including Israel, Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq. It could lead to escalating use of chemical weapons, or their proliferation to terrorist groups who would do our people harm.

In a world with many dangers, this menace must be confronted.

Because of this, he said, “military action against Syrian regime targets” was necessary.

This would not be an open-ended intervention. We would not put boots on the ground. Instead, our action would be designed to be limited in duration and scope. But I’m confident we can hold the Assad regime accountable for their use of chemical weapons, deter this kind of behavior, and degrade their capacity to carry it out.

But before he gives the order, he wants Congress to act, as required by the war-powers clause of the U.S. Constitution..

I’ve long believed that our power is rooted not just in our military might, but in our example as a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. And that’s why I’ve made a second decision: I will seek authorization for the use of force from the American people’s representatives in Congress.

The Times has framed the decision as a political one — and no doubt it is. If Congress backs the president’s plan and the missile’s fly, he can share blame for the fall out.

But more importantly, asking Congress to act means that there is the potential for a full debate over Syria and the proper responses to chemical and other weapons use overseas.

There appears to be division over action in Syria and the mainstream media is reporting that the vote can go either way:

“Obama hasn’t got a chance to win this vote if he can’t win the majority of his own party, and I doubt he can,” Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a leading Republican, said in an interview. “Democrats have been conspicuously silent. Just about his only support is coming from Republicans. He is a war president without a war party.”

He may not have a war party, but he does have a war consensus, built upon the power of the Washington military establishment and the weapons contractors. In Washington, money talks and there is no money in the anti-war position.

War, therefore, seems likely — but those of us opposed to military action and the permanent war machine have an opportunity we never expected to have. We need to engage in the debate, to be as loud as we can to make sure that the anti-war position gets out there and to make sure that the public remains on the right side of the war issue. (The vast majority of whom are telling pollsters they oppose intervention.) And we need to make sure that we make sure that we are clear about the alternatives.

The Nation, in an editorial in the current issue, outlines both the case against military intervention and the alternatives:

There can be no question that a US military attack on Syria without UN Security Council approval would be a violation of international law. President Obama admitted as much several days after the chemical weapons attack. Any attempt to get around the predicted Russian and Chinese veto by seeking NATO approval would be just as illegitimate. And the UN’s “responsibility to protect” clause, which allows humanitarian intervention to override state sovereignty in the case of systematic human rights violations, requires Security Council approval as well. The Obama administration also has an obligation to justify its actions to the American people and to seek congressional authorization.

But the arguments against an attack on Syria are more than legalistic. There are both practical and, yes, humanitarian reasons to be opposed to military action. On the practical level, there is little chance that limited airstrikes will have much deterrent effect on a ruthless regime that sees itself as engaged in an existential struggle for survival. The initial airstrikes could thus easily suck Washington into what Middle East scholar Fawaz Gerges has called “a playground for the merchants of death.” It would make the United States a direct participant in what has become a regional sectarian conflict, further destabilizing Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Turkey, all of which are now parties to the Syrian maelstrom. It would draw Washington closer to, and strengthen, a chaotic rebel front now dominated by jihadi extremists closely connected to Al Qaeda in Iraq, and it would increase the chances of direct conflict between the United States and Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, all of whom are determined to prevent the fall of Assad.

On the humanitarian level, there is a strong chance that US airstrikes, no matter how “surgical,” will kill innocent civilians. Many of the Assad regime’s missile and artillery batteries are in heavily populated districts, and some have formidable air defenses, which could lead to many grievous mistakes (in the 1999 Kosovo war, some 500 civilians were killed by a NATO bombing campaign that was intended to save lives). American airstrikes could worsen what is already a disastrous refugee crisis. In fact, one of the most constructive things America could do to relieve the suffering of Syrians would be to vastly increase aid to the 1.9 million refugees who have flooded across the country’s borders.

Instead of bombing Syria, the United States should join Russia in its effort to renew the Geneva negotiations. Moscow and Washington are in conflict over Syria, but they share an interest in not widening the war and strengthening jihadi extremists. It’s long past time for the two powers to concede that neither Assad nor the rebels are going to be defeated anytime soon. A peace agreement isn’t feasible now, but if the United States and Russia work together, they could use their combined influence to choke off the flow of arms from the outside and contain the conflict as they work toward a cease-fire. If they don’t, Syria’s disintegration will spread throughout the region.

The president has made it clear where he stands on the use of military force, so there no longer should be any illusions about Obama as an agent of change. The decision to seek Congressional approval is welcome, but his aggressive rhetoric indicates that a permanent, pro-war bureaucracy continues to rule in Washington and that he is very much a part of it.

War, as Howard Zinn made clear in a 2001 essay in The Progressive, “is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children. War is terrorism, magnified a hundred times.”

We have a responsibility to take up the challenge put out there by Obama and to cut short the rush to war.

I desperately want to understand the moral calculus that has us on the verge of entering the Syrian civil war, but leaves us on the sidelines in Egypt and elsewhere. Is it the numbers — Egypt’s death toll is far lower, at this point than Syria’s — or maybe the kinds of weapons being used? Or, perhaps, it is the Egyptian military’s longtime status as an ally?

This kind of hair-splitting is difficult and is why I have trouble with the notion of humanitarian interventions — when do we go in? To protect whom? And should we consider the potential impacts beyond the immediate crisis? Any intervention is going to tilt the balance on the ground, meaning our intervention is likely to be viewed as us taking sides in a war in which neither side deserves support. And our intervention, to be anything more than a drive-by response, is going to require American boots on the ground. Are we ready to commit American lives in this way and to this war?

Earlier today, I was accused by a commenter to an earlier post of condoning the chemical attacks on Syrian rebels and civilians, of being complicit on some level in the horrors taking place there. The argument assumes that, since I oppose military intervention, I must support the status quo. It is the same argument we heard leading into the Iraq war — if you don’t support the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, you must support his regime — and the argument is as ill-conceived and wrong-headed now as it was then.

And my question remains: Why intervene in Syria and not in Egypt, where nearly 400 protesters and others have been killed as a result of a military coup? Why not use military force to intervene in the dozen or so civil conflicts around the world?

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“Because how unfair is it to a young lady to put them in the spotlight if they haven’t signed up for that yet?” he says. “And people who think I’m gay, some part of me thinks it’s wonderful. Because I want to challenge people on their homophobia. I love seeing on Twitter when someone says I’m gay, and I say, ‘So what does it matter if I am? So be it. I hope you are not voting for me because you are making the presumption that I’m straight.’ ”

Lonegan, however, has no qualms about seeking out “the straight vote.”

In an interview with Newsmax, businessman Steve Lonegan made a point to trumpet his masculinity when he was asked about speculation that Booker is gay. The popular mayor — an overwhelming favorite to win the special election — told The Washington Post that he has no problem if people think he’s gay.

“It’s kind of weird. As a guy, I personally like being a guy,” Lonegan said. “I don’t know if you saw the stories last year. They’ve been out for quite a bit about how he likes to go out at three o’clock in the morning for a manicure and a pedicure.”

Lonegan then brought up nail care again.

“I don’t like going out in the middle of the night, or any time of the day, for a manicure and pedicure,” Lonegan said. “It was described as his peculiar fetish . . .I have a more peculiar fetish. I like a good Scotch and a cigar. That’s my fetish but we’ll just compare the two.”

If this is what he truly believes about maleness — with its implied argument that being that anything else is less than manly and deviant — then I feel sorry for him and despair that he is the candidate chosen by the Republicans to represent the party in a major election. I suspect, however, that it is more than this — he likely does believe what he says, but he also is purposely using old and ugly stereotypes to attract a certain kind of voter, to split the electorate and maybe pick up a few extra votes. “We’ll just compare the two,” he says, and you know exactly what he is trying to do.

Lonegan’s targeting of the lowest common denominator just proves a point Booker has been making about cynicism and politics. Cynicism, as Booker says, is “the most cognitively debilitating state of being” and corrosive to our politics. This race is not about the candidates’ sexuality or their sense of what it means to be a man in the early 21st Century. it is about what they would do in the Senate, and that is what we should be focusing on.

Ooh, what a price I pay,
My foolish pride.

— Gary Moore

“What I’m saying is we’re monitoring that situation very carefully,” Obama said in a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room.
But if the Assad regime were to use its weapons stockpiles, or alternatively, move it around, Obama suggested military action could be on the table.

“We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized,” the president said. “That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.”

led us to see ourselves as the indispensable nation and the only one with the moral authority to meddle in others’ affairs. We claim it is about realpolitik and pragmatism, but it is not. It is pride expressed as a dangerous national self-regard — the same prideful nonsense that kept us in Vietnam for a decade, that kept us in Afghanistan and Iraq and that has consistently had us act in foolish and counterproductive ways on the world stage.

But we have drawn that red line and our credibility is at stake — at least that is what the military establishment and the Washington pundits are saying. And, you know, they are never wrong about these things.

Major League Baseball has suspended former MVP Miguel Tejada for 105 games, the third-longest non-lifetime suspension in history, because of a positive test for Adderall, a drug used to treat attention-deficit disorder.

The suspension is being praised by many in baseball as proof that testing is working. But I am concerned that there may be more to the story. If the claims that Tejada is making are true — that he suffers from ADD — then we are not talking about another example of Major League Baseball getting its house back in order after years of ignoring a performance-enhancing-drug scandal. If Tejada does suffer from Adderall, then MLB has crossed an ethical line in suspending him.

Here is what Tejada had to say:

“I’ve been using it [Adderall] for the past five years and had medical permission from MLB. But my last permit expired on April 15 and they didn’t gave me another. I knew that I was in risk of breaking the rules, but at the same time, I could not stop using the medicine because I suffer from ADD [Attention Deficit Disorder]. It’s not a vice, it is a disease.”

Tejada has a dicey history with amphetamines and PEDs, but that does not rule out that his claims here are accurate. But the length and timing of the suspension — especially given what Tejada is saying — warranted more than this from MLB:

The Office of the Commissioner of Baseball announced today that Kansas City Royals infielder Miguel Tejada has received a 105-game suspension without pay after testing positive for an Amphetamine in violation of Major League Baseball’s Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program. The suspension of Tejada is effective immediately.

The league spent too many years tacitly condoning the home run culture that ultimately created the conditions within which steroid use grew among players. Now, as it attempts to remove the taint of PEDs from the game, it may just be going too far in the other direction.

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