I really think we need a new word to describe how despicable some people are, or maybe several new words to differentiate between the various preferred types. An
Inhofe, for example, would be a person so obsessed with manufacturing self-promoting conflicts that they no longer have
any internal convictions of their own.
Four months ago, Inhofe demanded that “President Obama step up and exhibit the leadership required” to show Syria’s Bashar al-Assad “that his barbaric actions have consequences.” Writing in USA Today, Inhofe added: “Continued inaction by the president, after establishing a clear red line, will embolden Assad and his benefactors in Tehran to continue their brutal assault against the Syrian people.” Inhofe floated the idea of a “no-fly” zone or even “boots on the ground.”
But last week, as Obama moved toward military action to enforce his “red line,” Inhofe issued a statement saying that “[o]ur military has no money left” for a strike on Syria. On “Fox News Sunday,” Inhofe reiterated his position that “I would oppose going in and having military intervention against Syria.”
To be clear, I have little interest in what position Sen. Jim Inhofe has on anything, a policy I clearly share with Inhofe himself. When there was little chance of engaging in Syria, Inhofe and a great number of other unserious legislative desk-thumpers were demanding it; now that action appears likely, many of the same voices oppose it just as loudly. They can even write supposedly
deep-thinking columns supporting whichever of the views you like, from one month to the next, or rather whichever of the views might afford even the most minor opportunity to be oppositional for the mere sake of it. (ed. note: I originally mistyped that last phrase as
for the mere sack of it, which is probably at least as valid, if not more so. I probably should have left it that way.)
It has to be at least a little disconcerting to see, vividly, that even our conversations about which people to kill in which of various ways for which reasons are for the most part unserious, self-promoting, and rote. There are good reasons to support intervention in Syria and good reasons to oppose it, but if each of those reasons has laid down roots only in the first few millimeters of partisan soil, it goes without saying that none of them will be very sturdy. It should be another blow to the supposed stature of any statesman who had one deeply held opinion a few weeks ago and the opposite opinion now—but only if we were supposed to treat their arguments seriously in the first place, and we were not. Jim Inhofe put his name under an op-ed about intervening in Syria several months ago not because Jim Inhofe gives two shits about barbaric actions in Syria, but because all serious thinkers needed a cheap avenue to weigh in on a serious issue, and there is no policy statement nearly as easy to concoct as whatever the other guy is doing, I am against that.
Sure enough, the ones with the most prominent political aspirations are the ones most visibly rudderless on the issue; Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio deserve special mention for the boldness with which they can valiantly change their core convictions on the topic—apparently being presidential in certain circles consists of having all possible opinions in the hopes that the "right" one will eventually consume its many, many siblings, leaving it and it alone for mention in a future preening autobiography.
Put me down on the against side; the national conviction that an increasingly long list of international crises can be solved by remote weaponry has gotten more than a little out of hand, and no longer seems to be paired with even the token promise of aid of the non-blowy-shitty-uppy variety after the flames die down. Having the president reassure the nation by announcing that the proposed military action is not intended to accomplish any particular military goal did not help. (The interventionist side is not without its own logic, mind you, but the key to successful interventionism is the follow-through, and at the moment we do not even have the follow-through to keep our own government running, much less someone else's.)
The peacocks, though. The damn peacocks. We used to have hawks and doves, now we have Rubios and Ryans and Inhofes, people who can change their very loud and angry core convictions as easily as changing a roll of toilet paper. It is more than likely that the final legislative branch decision on whether or not to "authorize" military action against a collapsing foreign government will have far less to do with the merits of the arguments, or the preferred outcomes, or the possible unintended consequences than it will be based on calculations of personal electoral needs, party needs, and the absolute necessity of lodging an oppositional position in nearby op-ed pages. Whenever someone blathers on about the world's greatest deliberative body, remember these moments, and despair.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2008—War Porn Gets Standing Ovation From GOP:
Congratulations, GOP, for the tackiest, bloodiest bit of propaganda devised in recent memory. Using footage of everything from the Marine barracks bombing to 9/11 in service to a vile, crass, ham-handed, historically botched propaganda piece for your convention.
And their little "film" didn't even make a bit of logical or historical sense. It was just the worst Republican masturbatory fantasies about how the world works, said in a grave voice while they showed pictures of people dead and dying. On their watch.
What trash these people are.
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Tweet of the Day:
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On today's
Kagro in the Morning show,
Greg Dworkin started us off with the morning roundup.
Armando parsed questions about who trusts whom on which of the many issues Syria presents.
Joan McCarter added observations on the refugee crisis, pointed us to William Polk's eye-opening
primer on Syria, reprinted with permission here by
Meteor Blades, and previewed her story of continuing Republican efforts to sabotage the rollout of the ACA. We closed with procedural issues surrounding the authorization for military intervention in Syria, and Brian Beutler's article on how Ted Cruz is breaking politics.
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