Recent events surrounding Syria have prompted me to speak directly to the American people and their political leaders. It is important to do so at a time of insufficient communication between our societies.He makes a number of trenchant points:
Relations between us have passed through different stages. We stood against each other during the cold war. But we were also allies once, and defeated the Nazis together. The universal international organization — the United Nations — was then established to prevent such devastation from ever happening again.
The United Nations’ founders understood that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by consensus, and with America’s consent the veto by Security Council permanent members was enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this has underpinned the stability of international relations for decades.
No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization.
- Syria is not a battle for democracy, it is a power struggle where much of the opposition are foreign fighters driven by sectarian triumphalism..
- That much of the violence is fueled by foreign weapons supplies.
- The evidence presented so far by the White House is thin.
- Ignoring international law encourages nations to accumulates WMDs.
- Surgical strikes don't exist, you will kill innocents.
- American exceptionalism is a dangerous myth.
American exceptionalism does not exist, it's just an excuse of a people who have not seen war on their shores for 150 years to bring war to other people's shores.
I agree with them all, though I think that Charlie Pierce's take on this, that Putin is embracing and his Pwn493 (ownage) of America's needlessly bellicose foreign policy.
Read both Putin and Pierce. (Pierce is way funnier, but Putin is a bit more substantive)
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