Hearing the Dinner Bell

For the better part of two years, the Obama administration has told us that all options are on the table to deal with the crisis in Syria. The table is set, and dinner is about to be served.

On Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry’s words of warning were clear: there was no question that chemical weapons had been used on civilians – a moral obscenity, and the clear crossing of the so called red line had occurred.  It wasn’t all that long ago that another Secretary of State, Colin Powell, displayed graphic evidence, or so we were given to believe, of the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Ah, but this is different, right? Syria really does have chemical weapons. And apparently, the regime no longer has compunctions about using them. But as for moral outrage about this, do you think it might be possible that at least one of the 100-thousand-plus civilians who died by what we might call conventional means may have suffered equally horrible or even more agonizing deaths than the current nerve gas victims? The red line was drawn in a strange place.

What we have been learning the hard way about the Middle East is that dictatorships have served as artificial lids on boiling pots. Military action on our part won’t turn down the heat in Syria.

Is the red line really about U.S. credibility? In the case of Syria, we lost it two years ago. So is firing off a few missiles really going to send the message to Iran and/or Russia that we’re not to be trifled with? They’ve been trifling with us a long time. What is different about this moment?

To my mind, there is only one justification for military action: obtaining control of the chemical weapons or destroying them so that the Assad regime can’t use them on civilians anymore and so that they don’t fall into the wrong hands. Unless military force attains those goals, it’s a waste of time and resources. Our attention might better be paid to the plight of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians displaced by this conflict, many living in desperate situations in countries that can’t handle them.

If we really have to sit down to dinner, it might be a good time for someone to say grace – and pray hard before we pick up the knife and fork.