It is amusing to read the reactions of the pro-war contingent now that Syria has promised concessions on its chemicals. McCain, who thankfully is not president or we’d already be in a war with Iran, first expressed skepticism over Syria’s promises, suggesting they were a delaying tactic. Today he sees Putin’s editorial as an “insult”. We know where McCain stands and what his pathology is.
Then there’s Menendez, the uber-hawk from New Jersey (he’s a senator). His reaction to Putin’s editorial was chauvinistic: “I almost wanted to vomit. I worry when someone who came up through the KGB tells us what is in our national interests, and what is not. It really raises the question of how serious the Russian proposal is.” Any excuse for moving toward war will serve, including Putin’s life in the KGB.
Fox News, reliably hawkish, hired a sympatico voice named Chris Stirewalt, and so he naturally has this slant. Putin, he says, has taken a double slap at Obama. And he too wants Americans to see Putin’s remarks as a Cold War KGB maneuver making suckers out of all peace activists: “But Putin was doing exactly what his bosses at the KGB showed him back in the day, especially when it comes to Democrats: tug at the pacifistic heartstrings of the left when trying to hamstring an American adversary at the negotiating table.”
We cannot even take a baby step toward peace without these neocon warmongers trying to shove us back into the “Fight the dirty un-American commie bastards” mode of thinking. What a bunch of chauvinists (jingoists, nationalists) these guys are.
The most amazing of all reactions comes from the Syrian rebel coalition. Assuming the translation of their position is accurate, they “announce our definitive rejection of the Russian initiative to place chemical weapons under international custody.” I find this amusing. The group that Kerry-Obama supports with arms and military training, the group that Obama-Kerry were willing to bomb for in the name of curtailing chemicals in warfare, that group rejects a huge Syrian government concession to give up its chemicals and sign an accord too against their use. This group, supported in the name of democracy and good government and against the name of Assad, has NO principled stand against chemicals in warfare. Obviously, its rejection shows that it wanted the bombing in order to weaken the government’s force structure.
2:27 pm on September 12, 2013
