PMC Commentary

My simple question to President Obama about his very complicated Syria policy

I have a question. Now that we're in, how do we get out?

We're there, on the ground, with troops committed, in the most violent sector on earth. Regional infighting reigns, factions have ramified, ancient religious hostilities thrive; all of which makes the Balkans, circa 1910, a relatively intelligible, straightforward problem — and Southeast Asia, a half-century later, child's play. One superpower was already sucked in — willingly — and now another joins the byzantine turmoil. Once joined, how to disengage?

Will it be 50 special-ops forces disengaging, whenever that day (year, decade) comes? Most unlikely. Yesterday, a Pentagon official "call[ed] the move a first step as officials continue to reevaluate the need for more special forces troops on the front lines." A first step, continuing reevaluations and the need for more troops, which hardly makes for a hanging mystery.

Could the defense official have been more explicit? He sure could: "You shouldn't rule out anything. We'll adjust once we get a better sense of who's on the ground, their capability and what's actually needed."

Ah, they'll adjust — Pentagonese for "escalate." They don't yet know "what's actually needed."

Let's dust off the ouija board: Are 50 U.S. troops in northeast Syria likely to act as an enormous magnet to ISIS, which is itching for a recruitment-lathered fight with the West's Satan? Strike that; there's no need to ask, for the defense official had some famous last words: "The area where we're planning to place [U.S. forces] is not an area [the Russians] have struck, nor would they need to strike. It's not ISIL and it's not regime-controlled, so we don't anticipate any problems." With the Russians, that is. 

Yes, this operation should go as smoothly as did our mere advisory capacity in Vietnam. Well, sure, I mean, we did undergo the occasional "reevaluation" of what was "actually needed" there, which resulted, from time to time, in bits of force augmentation. But all in all, unanticipated problems never materialized. Why? Because that's war for you, war in a nutshell: Tomorrow is always discernible.

Of course sarcasm aside, to some degree, it is. The one absolute predicability of war is its utter unpredictability. That's a cliché, but a profoundly true one. Another knowable is that once you're in, it's nearly impossible to get out. The loss or imperilment of 50 calls for 100, 1,000 or 10,000 more — that, or turn tail and run, which can be politically lethal — which leads to even greater losses and greater imperilment.

I can't know the president's thinking behind his decision. I suspect he listened to one too many defense officials. But that he dispatched his press secretary to announce what the NYT correctly called a "huge shift" in his Syria strategy suggests the president himself doesn't quite know his thinking.

Whatever. My question to him remains: Now that we're in, how do we get out?

***

I'm reading various interpretations of why we're on the ground in Syria, which, when one stops to think about it, is rather offensive. Should 300 million Americans be left to speculate as to why we're there — presently at a numerical force of 50, which the Pentagon has virtually promised to escalate, and which American lives lost or captured would categorically guarantee? Should not the president — not a presidential spokesman — have stepped to the podium yesterday and made clear the reason for our ground intervention? Why is it that as the United States enters another Middle East war — a civil war, at that — the American people should be left wondering why? It's not rather offensive. It is offensive.  

But more than that, far more than that, is that tendered speculations as to the reason or reasons we're there leave the above, fundamental, long-term and most disturbing question unaddressed: Now that we're in, how do we get out?

Barring some miraculous political resolution to the Assad-Syria-Saudi-Iran-ISIS-Kurd-Sunni-Shia conflict — which, if anywhere among the greater powers, lies in Putin's hands more than Obama's — just how is it we exit? What's the plan? — which, assuming there is one, will undergo a thousand mutations between now and said, elusive departure.

 

U.S. troops are going where? Syria? I'm at a loss.

Taking a break from political news, this news seems to suggest a classic, uncontrolled and uncontrollable spiral. I've no idea what President Obama is thinking.

Syria is a geopolitical-sectarian snake pit, a kind of more violent Afghanistan, where our presence remains distressingly incomprehensible. Russia is there, in Syria, to its ultimate regret. The Middle East's two powerhouses, Saudi Arabia and Iran, are at each other's throats over Syria — and, naturally, its medieval "faiths," which lie at the core of Syria's madness.

What's the last place on earth the United States should have boots on the ground, a dog in the fight, a serpent among the serpents? Well, after pondering the above, let's think about that. You got it. Syria.

Yet here we go, or rather there we go. The NY Times:

President Obama will deploy a small number of American Special Operations forces to Kurdish-controlled territory in northern Syria….

While administration officials plan to characterize the deployment as an enhancement of current strategy, it is actually a huge shift for a president who has said repeatedly that he will not put American combat boots on the ground in Syria.

The decision adds a new level of risk to the Syrian enterprise, as the presence of American forces, even if they are in Kurdish territory, could bring the special operations troops into closer contact with the Islamic State.

One video, just one video of a captured American soldier being torched by some maniacal band of ISIS cutthroats, and we'll be there, en masse, for years.

This … is … fucking … nuts.

***

Calling Ron Ziegler or Ari Fleischer? No need. I just watched WH Press Secretary Josh Earnest do a doubleplusgood job of explaining that although American combat troops are now entering a Syrian combat zone brimming with ISIS and Kurdish combatants, the president of the United States's multiyear pledge to keep American combat boots off of Syrian ground has in no way changed. Earnest's parsing of Obama's plain English was worthy of a second-rate public-relations hack or a third-rate ambulance chaser. Either way, it was first-rate duplicity, which is what all WH press secretaries practice. 

 

Staggering, just staggering.

Trump can poll-crow again. Reuters/Ipsos reports that among Republican primary voters, he leads Carson 29-27, when all the GOP candidates are offered for consideration.

What surprises is that Bush comes in third, at 9 percent. (Rubio is 4th, at 6.) The final day of polling, though, (10/24-28), was Jeb's disastrous Wednesday.

When candidate options were narrowed by Ipsos to only Trump, Carson and Bush, it's Carson who takes the lead, at 40 percent. That would be Ben Carson, who makes Trump look like a professor of high logic. The Donald, in this three-way race, has 34 percent; Bush, 21.

Thus only one out of five Republican primary voters would prefer the — or an — establishment candidate. That, I believe, is a new low, in every way.

 

Be innovative, be bold, be as corrupt as the system

I was just wondering. Would it be legal to say in a Trump-bashing (or whoever-bashing) ad? …  "This message paid for by Right to Rise, which is not authorized to say it is paid for by Jeb2016."

It's factual. And even if it's not legal, who's to stop it in this pre-Watergate age of Wild West finance? The impotent F.E.C.?

 

My final plea to Jeb Bush: Unleash the hounds and commence the gnawing

Welcome to the downside of your vague, presumed, gossamer-like, establishment-frontrunner status, Sen. Rubio, which is a bit like the pitfall of a mob boss's status: notoriety draws attention of the unwanted kind. Much better to be the underboss, whose scams are no less depraved, but on whom the gaze of investigative eyes is less intense.

This is just the beginning — "this" being, for example, an internal Bush document leaked to US News' David Catanese. In it, "risky" Marco is ripped for Rumsfeldian knowns already known by those who have followed the upstart's fetid rise through the ranks of somewhat organized GOP crime: his "misuse of state party credit cards," his "ties to [a] scandal-tarred former Congressman," and his funding from a "billionaire auto dealer" that "raises major ethical questions."

Why Jeb chose to keep these knowns unknown to the general public in Wednesday night's debate is a question only that joyless candidate can answer. Perhaps such an operatic assault simply had too many notes for vulgar ears to appreciate. This, I can understand. K.I.S.S. Yet that's precisely what Jeb could have done with another passage from his internal document: "Those who have looked into Marco's background" — this being a reference to the 2012 Romney campaign's unsatisfying peek into the senator's vice-presidential worthiness — "have been concerned with what they have found." That keeps it simple indeed. Romney knew Rubio would be destroyed as the #2 nominee, so why in hell would the GOP base wish to elevate him to even more vulnerable #1 status?

Well, it could be that they're reading David Brooks, who is back from his holidaying in reality. "Of all the candidates, Rubio has done the most to harvest the work of Reform Conservatism," writes Brooks this morning, "which has been sweeping through the think tank world." Maybe you've noticed the sweep; far as I can tell, though, it's been under the carpet. Concludes Brooks in a flurry of re-inspiration: "If [Paul] Ryan and Rubio do emerge as the party’s two leaders, it will be the wonkiest leadership team in our lifetime."

This "reform conservatism" wonkiness is what WaPo's Catherine Rampell now calls "legerdemath." Ryan, of course, has his famous magic asterisks when it comes to budgeting the future, and, notes Rampell, "When Marco Rubio was asked [Wednesday night] why his tax plan gave the average rich person a bigger tax cut than the average middle-class person in percentage terms, Rubio decided he would just redefine how percentages work."

That may be. But the Washington Post's Rampell is part of the diabolical mainstream media, whereas Brooks, at the NY Times, is not. Paul Krugman, also at the NY Times, is, however, part of the mainstream media. So when he observes that "There was a time when Mr. Rubio’s insistence that $6 trillion in tax cuts would somehow pay for themselves would have marked him as deeply unserious," Krugman's observation can be dismissed by the elevaters — because "the Republican base doesn’t care what the mainstream media says."

Which brings us back to Rubio's fresh notoriety, investigative eyes, and "the beginning." The Republican base, Mr. Bush, doesn't read US News' David Catanese any more than it reads Paul Krugman or Catherine Rampell; hence leaking your document of Rubio-damnation to Catanese is equivalent to mum's the word. You must instead unleash your FBI-like budget of $100 million on Rubio directly — on the airwaves — while also exposing Ben Carson's scams and Donald Trump's morbidity. And you must do it now, as in, now. There will be no later, for your money will have run.

I offer this bit of advice in the almost laughably desperate hope of your survival and eventual nomination, Mr. Bush. Because you'll be a helluva lot easier to beat than the glib Sen. Rubio, even with his past depraved path and legerdemath.

 

The Donald can chill about Jeb now

Quentin Tarantino's prescience has been making the rounds:

Nate Silver agrees:

We pride ourselves on being skeptical of the conventional wisdom here at FiveThirtyEight…. But being skeptical is not the same thing as being a contrarian. There are plenty of times when the conventional wisdom is right. This is probably one of those times.

I was appalled by Bush's performance last night, even by Jeb-standards. He consumed only 24 more seconds of blather time than did Rand Paul, who was virtually invisible. For the most important two hours of his political life, he came overrehearsed and underwhelming. He can't really want this. If he does, no matter. The money will now seek safer refuge — and that's not a question of conventional wisdom; it's an inescapable fact.   

At least we won't have to endure another Clinton-Bush contest.

 

Paul Ryan: hypocrisy on stilts, and now with a gavel

I listened to most of Paul Ryan's "maiden" speakership speech, and I'm tempted to be harsh in regard to its democratic mush; its sappy, humble odes to the little people, who wish only virtue in their reps. But I shan't be harsh, for such is the argumentum ad pabulum required of every member of the United States House of Representatives, or anyone else who seeks to pacify the monkey cage.

What irks is the man, himself, who prattled it. Lurking in Ryan's ode was, of course, oodles of Ayn Randism that is intent on sociopathically inflicting as much injury on The People as The People's House can possibly inflict. In terms of what we might call an "outsider" ideology, it's as legitimate as most other ideologies; it is simple-minded, it is all-encompassing, and it's all-answering. I begrudge no ideologue his or her intellectual fantasies. As a socialist, I hold a fair share myself.

But for such ideological sociopathy to come from an insider — that is what maddens. Except for a few youthful gigs such as driving the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile and flipping grilled toxicities at McDonald's, Paul Ryan has drawn nary a private paycheck in his life. He has been at the public trough, year after year, slopping up as many big-government godsends as his oblivious soul could absorb.

What Ryan would deny others, he lavishes upon himself. But you know what? Ryan seems so friggin' oblivious, I wonder if he can appreciate just what a hypocritical toad he really is. Like all designing ideologues, he imagines, I suppose, that he's on a sublime mission, that he's doing some sort of God's work. That six-figure government income, government perks, government benefits, government travel and a doting government staff? Hey, he didn't ask for all that. It just comes with the job, and so he suffers it.

OK, so I got a bit harsh; but, as promised, not about his maiden speech.

 

Tough love

I'm in a Twitter mood today. Bear with me. It's temporary, I assure you.

 

Caring people, or GOP people?

I'm sorry I missed this post-debate interview with Chris Matthews (reported by The Hill), in which … 

 

[John] Harwood and fellow moderator Sharon Epperson criticized the candidates for obfuscating the facts. They specifically mentioned Sen. Marco Rubio's (Fla.) accusation that Harwood mischaracterized his tax plan, which Harwood said was not true, as well as Trump telling moderator Becky Quick that he had never criticized Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg when the criticism is included on his campaign site.

 

"They are hoping that people don’t really care about the facts and I think they are wrong about that," Epperson said.

 

If by "people" Epperson means GOP primary voters, then I don't know what Epperson means. 

 

Loose lips sink dips

What in hell is the evangelical-chasing Trump thinking when he retweets someone like this?

What, among his 4.69 million followers, he couldn't find a thumper to say that? 

 

Amidst all the GOP debate's government-bashing, only media-bashing "distinguished" the winners

It would be futile to search for any depth or dignity in last night's squalid, untethered ferment of a debate, so I won't try. I shall instead content myself with the eminent Matt Drudge's headline that Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio were the shallowest and least dignified of the 10 contestants, and so they were the "winners." That, anyway, is what Drudge's readers believe.

Out of more than 224,000 votes cast online by the Druidlike Drudgers (as of 6 a.m.), Trump's scorecard registered 55 percent, Cruz's was at 21 percent, and Rubio's 10. (I take it that Drudge's disciples are nonetheless an impious lot: Ben Carson received only 4 percent in the voting. No white puffs of smoke for Ben.)

Are online polls unscientific? Doubtless they are. But when it comes to pseudoconservative doctrine, one need look no further than The Drudge Report, where, as in all doctrines, ideology wafts over reality, and thus reality the ideology becomes. At least for the truest believers.

Drudge's Trump-propping poll consoled me (you hang in there, Donald, you hang in there), for that wickedest of all political players — the fearsome mainstream media — has declared Rubio and Cruz the winners. Why? From what I can gather, it's because Rubio and Cruz blasted the media more than did other contestants — which is something of a paradox, since the media are fearsome precisely because they are so doggedly biased. Yet here are those blasted media slackers praising the very two demagogues who blasted them most.

One would think the virulent media would go out of their way to bash those who bashed them. But I further gather that the media, while flagrantly biased against against all conservatives (as well as the liberal Hillary Clinton and all other liberals), are also too incompetent to take revenge. This piles one paradox of a question atop another: If they're so blasted incompetent, how can the media be so dreadfully fearsome?

I must leave this for another day, or perhaps never, for I meddle in religious beliefs. It is an article of deepest faith among partisans that the mainstream media are out to "get" their guy or gal, be he or she conservative or liberal; indeed, if only the dastard media were fair and balanced (as are non-media folks such as Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow), each partisan's candidate would be headed straight to the White House. The electorate would shed its media-imposed blinkers and roar in support of the one and only true candidate — all, what, 17 of them, not counting assorted third-party candidates?

That aside, there is one knowable. Bashing the biased, fearsome, incompetent media is the surest way for any candidate — especially a Republican — to incite the masses and thus get loads of swooning press, as Rubio, Cruz, and Trump proved last night and are again proving this morning. Republican candidates have a clear edge in the media-bashing game, for they have been at it since Nixon-Agnew; their partisans are pre-primed. Just assault the media, the crowd goes wild, one's poll numbers jump, simple as that.

And Jeb Bush couldn't figure that out, which is why, by now, he is just that.

 

#CNBCGOPDebate - in 25 words

Rubio & Cruz's media-bashing; Kasich's outrage; Fiorina's fantasies; Paul's invisibility; Huckabee's desperation; Carson's befuddlement; Christie's horseshit; and Bush's relative silence. Good night, Jeb, and so long. 

(Oh, and Trump's "That's not a nice question." And that makes 33.)

This was at first amusing. It is rapidly slipping into the very depressing. To think that these clowns are of the party of Abe Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower. But, that's in name only; that party no longer exists — and these wretched minutes, ticking away so painfully, are proof of it.

… Well, it's finally, mercifully over. I was in acute despair listening to such abundant folly. And I don't know why. I'm plenty used to it, but there was something about tonight's government-bashing — it's bad, government is all bad, it's wicked and malicious and a deliberate torment — that was indescribably disturbing and, as previously noted, deeply depressing. To call the thinking we just heard "shallow" is to be wildly charitable. It was but podium-to-podium pandering to the worst instincts of an already diseased base. It was an abomination, and it was sickening.         

 

First GOP debate of the evening. There is not a solitary thing worth saying about it. 

 

For Jeb Bush, this is it

Norman Ornstein:

Here is the most important and enduring fact of the GOP race so far. In every recent national poll of Republicans, including those with likely voters, with or without leaners, the breakdown is that the five main outsider candidates (Trump, Carson, Cruz, Fiorina, Huckabee) combine to generate between 63 and 70 percent support. The three main establishment candidates, Bush, Rubio, and Kasich, combine to between 12 and 19 percent.

If an establishment nominee it nonetheless be, Ornstein favors Rubio. Bush, he notes, is "floundering," and his "evident disgust for a party process that now strongly favors the outsider insurgents," combined with "his poor performance in debates and on the trail, [might] lead him to follow Scott Walker and drop out."

I can't argue with that. I do question the timing of Ornstein's piece, which was posted today at 11:22 am Eastern. By 10:30 pm Eastern, we'll know if Bush can stay alive.

However awkwardly he does it, I expect Jeb to huff and puff and add that exclamation point tonight. This debate should be a barnburner, in that for Bush and his massive boodle, it is live or die. If he needed motivation, he sure has it now.

Of course it may be that Bush is simply incapable of even impersonating an aggressive, passionate politician. In that case, my expectation will be flattened. At the moment, though, I'm not as sour on Bush's chances as Ornstein seems to be. In five hours, either the bell will toll for Jeb — and the Bush dynasty — or rockets will glare. Surely he can put in at least one competent performance, right?

Right?

 

God bless it, Breitbart.com goes to war on the left's closed-mindedness

Also amusing is this — "The Left's War on Comment Sections" — from Breitbart.com:

The internet was born open but is becoming closed everywhere. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the rush to shutter readers’ comments sections at major news organisations. Cheered on by intolerant, snobbish cultural elites, news organisations from The Verge to The Daily Beast have, in recent months, informed their readers to take their opinions elsewhere.

Dozens of progressive blogs and news outlets are following suit, citing "abuse" and "harassment" as the primary reasons they no longer want to hear the opinions of their readers. But that’s not what is really going on.

So … I hear you cry … what is really going on? Breitbart is ready with the answer:

Psychologists have long been aware that political extremists have the most negative reactions to contrary information. Combine that with [leftist "cultural elites"] disdain for free speech, a core cultural authoritarian value, and you get a frantic rush to remove the opinions of ordinary people.

I love it. "Ordinary people." That sounds a bit elitist itself, but never let it be said that Breitbart.com is self-aware.

What intrigues me about this article is that a few years ago I posted a comment on the right-wing FreeRepublic.com. I doubt my comment survived, for when I went to post a subsequent comment, I was informed by a FreeRepublic editor that my comment was unwanted, and thus both it and I had been banned. A regular commenter here, Peter G., informs us that his observations are banned at RedState.com, and I can only assume they're banned elsewhere in the pseudoconservative blogosphere.

This is not to argue that "progressive sites" are, on the whole, much different. As for sheer numbers, I can't say, but the level of thin-skinnedness out there can be breathtaking. To wit, after I once critiqued the hysterically progressive Stonekettle.com, I went to see what wisdom its scribbler had on his main page — his Facebook page. But there was nothing to see, you see, for Stonekettle's proprietor had banned me from even accessing his FB page (which I didn't even know was possible). He was — is — that terrified of criticism. (By the way, I had no intent to leave a comment. I was just curious.)

That leads us to the real divide here, which Breitbart, unsurprisingly, fails to mention. Some sites — the intellectually shallow, emotionally infantile sites, such as Stonekettle and FreeRepublic — ban commenters or even readers simply because the sites can't handle criticism. Other sites, however, have banned commenters because of an onslaught of abusive language, harassment, and so on. This, Breitbart does acknowledge, but also dismisses. Yet the second type of censorship is entirely legitimate; no respectable site should tolerate unrespectable comments, which merely detract from the subject at hand.

I have been lucky. Criticisms roll in here — which are most welcome, indeed the most welcome — but abuse has been exceedingly rare. In the past few years I believe I have banned a total of maybe three or four commenters for having relentlessly committed that sin. They were quickly un-banned (though I doubt they realized it). I just don't like bans. Period. Still, when it comes to distracting abuse, that's a different matter — which Brietbart has so characteristically twisted out of all recognition.

Want to have some fun? Link to this piece in Breitbart's comment section. I'd love to hear from its unabusive readers.