Some Syria stuff

We just got back from Vegas and for better or worse we were able to stay connected with the rest of the world and particularly with the latest Syria developments primarily via Twitter.


We've been rather unsparing of our criticism of the relative silence of the liberal-left with respect to a potential military intervention into Syria and though some of the usual suspects like Code Pink for all their odiousness are at least consistent in their anti-war stance, so good for them.


Having said that, hello, there, Hollywood!


John Ekdahl, writing for BuzzFeed has a tremendous piece on 14 principled celebrities that have put it on mute of late concerning Syria while they were in full-throat opposition when ol' you-know-who was in office 10 years ago.


We figure alien abduction, right? These folks were just so strident, earnest and so full of human compassion in making the case against the Iraq War that being spirited off by E.T. could be the only rational explanation.



Fortunately, Ed Asner has his own reason for going AWOL and though we don’t know if he’s speaking just for himself, this isn’t our first time at the rodeo so his explanation may cover quite a few other folks as well.

Liberals in Hollywood are not speaking out against President Barack Obama's call for military strikes against the Syrian government because they fear being called racists, veteran actor Ed Asner says.

"A lot of people don't want to feel anti-black by being opposed to Obama," Asner told The Hollywood Reporter.

Ehhh... We'd always suspected it but this just confirms that for the liberal-left in this country everything is viewed through the prism of racial-identity politics. And everything, including one's integrity and credibility (whatever true amounts of it celebrity-ville possesses) will be sacrificed at the altar of racial-identity politics.


If this is indeed the reasoning for this deafening silence, we suppose we still do have a race problem in this country.


It bears repeating then that going to war because of the hew of the Commander-in-Chief’s skin is the weakest of weak sauce and we've had nothing but for the past two weeks.





And just today, lying, disgruntled Vietnam War vet and current Secretary of State, John Kerry, who has been as incoherent on making the case for war as humanly possible may have actually gaffed his way into throwing his boss a life-line and extricating him from this whole mess when he appeared to be open to backing off military action in exchange for Syria handing over all their chemical weapons and opening up the vaults for U.N. inspectors. But did he really?

The government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Monday said it welcomed a Russian proposal to avert U.S. military strikes by having Damascus turn over control of its chemical weapons to international monitors.

The statement by Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem in Moscow offered the first indication that a diplomatic solution may be possible to the international standoff that has evolved since apparent chemical weapons attacks on rebel-held suburbs outside Damascus on August 21…

Moualem said Syria “welcomes the Russian initiative,” but did not say whether his country would agree to what Russia was asking. “We also welcome the wisdom of the Russian leadership, which is trying to prevent American aggression against our people,” Moulaem said.

Hours earlier, in London, Secretary of State John F. Kerry sketched out a similar transfer-of-control scenario, then dismissed it, after being asked by a reporter whether there was anything that Assad could do to avoid an attack. “Sure, he could turn over every bit of his weapons to the international community within the next week, without delay,” Kerry said. “But he isn’t about to.”

(italics, ours)

Even Kerry seems to be skeptical of this too-good-to-be-true proposal.



An agreement broached by the Russians that would entail a meaningless inspection regime (explain to us the logistics of inspecting in the middle of a civil war) in return for having to do absolutely nothing when the President indeed promised the country we would do our best to do next to nothing.


Our advise to the President on exchanging one meaningless gesture for another: Take it, Preezy, take it!



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