While we were Boltonizing and fretting over our pensions, this seems to be cropping up...
US-Iraq Battle Touches on Syrian Border.
I haven't seen this diaried here today, unless I've missed something (which is altogether possible, because I'm somewhat inattentive and stupid at the moment owing to misc. and sundry real-life shit going on). But this strikes me as important, and worthy of further banter.
Is anyone here having "Lusitania" or "Remember the Maine" or "Gulf of Tonkin" flashbacks yet?
Is it much of a stretch of the imagination to think that tonight _(Edited here to add: Ok,not necessarily "tonight," that might be hyberbole; amend to read "very soon")_ a "surprise attack" by "possible Syrian-aligned forces" could result in a sizeable number of US casualties, and resultant immediate calls to reduce Syria to a sea of glass?
Well, let's look at the historical record. We've used civilian passenger liners to ferry arms and munitions ("Lusitania now boarding..."). We've used Red Cross facilities to conceal spies and RC-marked vehicles to transport troops and guns. We've used the (original) Air America to traffic cocaine to fund secret central american proxy wars and death squads. And we've protested our own innocence at every juncture, until 20 or 30 years later it is finally revealed that, well yeah, we DID massacre all those civilians underneath that bridge in Korea, and yeah, we DID secretly bomb cambodia, and yeah, we DID fund terrorist bombers in nicaragua and death squads in el salvador...
Looks to me like more dirty american business as usual, this time with the aim of inventing a pretext for another unprovoked war on a hopelessly outmatched "enemy." I'm thinking "any second now."