The call of the tar baby

Congressional committees have approved funding for our impending involvement in the Syrian civil war according to the Washington Post;

The agreement allows money already in the CIA’s budget to be reprogrammed for the Syria operation, a covert action that President Obama approved early last month. The infrastructure for the program, which also includes training, logistics and intelligence assistance — most of it based in Jordan — is already in place and the arms would begin to flow within the next several weeks.

Some lawmakers have criticized the proposal as insufficient to make a difference on the battlefield, and called for U.S. air support for the beleaguered rebels with attacks on Syrian airfields or establishment of a no-fly zone over rebel-held territory.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that Martin Dempsey has provided Congress with his estimates of what operations in Syria will require along with a list of operations;

It came as the White House, which has limited its military involvement to supplying the rebels with small arms and other weaponry, has begun implicitly acknowledging that Mr. Assad may not be forced out of power anytime soon.

The options, which range from training opposition troops to conducting airstrikes and enforcing a no-fly zone over Syria, are not new. But General Dempsey provided details about the logistics and the costs of each. He noted that long-range strikes on the Syrian government’s military targets would require “hundreds of aircraft, ships, submarines and other enablers,” and cost “in the billions.”

General Dempsey, the nation’s highest-ranking military officer, provided the unclassified, three-page letter at the request of Mr. Levin, a Democrat, after testifying last week that he believed it was likely that Mr. Assad would be in power a year from now.

On that day, the White House began publicly hedging its bets about Mr. Assad. After saying for nearly two years that Mr. Assad’s days were numbered, the press secretary, Jay Carney, said, “While there are shifts in momentum on the battlefield, Bashar al-Assad, in our view, will never rule all of Syria again.”

So, where’s the talk in the media about “the rush to war” and the questions about the US’ national security interests in the operations? Apparently, the media is fully on-board with this. I don’t see Code Pink in front of the White House marching to-and-fro with some vacuous chant. But I remember weeks after the 9-11-01 attack there were protests in the Capitol in regards to our impending operations in Afghanistan.

This thing in Syria is clearly not our fight, and not worth the inevitable cost in blood and treasure, but the administration and Congress are treating it as if it’s a foregone conclusion. I guess it’s up to me to don my vagina costume and protest all by my lonesome.

Category: Terror War