So, it looks like John McCain may get his war, inasmuch as the Congress has voted to authorize U.S. aid to the rebels in Syria. The rebels are the “good guys”. For the moment.
Anyway, this got me to thinking. It is an article of faith among Republicans that the government can’t do anything right. That is how they justify the lack of a decent health care system, the hollowing out of the middle class, and any other social ill that they prefer to do nothing to remedy. The government is, they assert, simply unable to do anything about the ills that bedevil our country.
Yet, these same people insist that this same government, impotent at home, is fully capable of improving the lives and societies in places which we know virtually nothing about. This, despite massive evidence that we are, in fact, quite capable of making things better here when we put our minds to it, but have been historically unable to impose our will on other people, at least not in a fashion that doesn’t inevitably blow up in our collective faces.
I remain somewhat hopeful that Obama will tread water until Election Day and then publicly abandon this whole idea. I mean, when even the CIA admits that it can’t succeed (it never does succeed, but rarely admits it in advance) you might think a president worried about his legacy would think twice before following the Bush example.
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