40 Clowns in a Clown Car

And A Lot of Horn Honking

That's the Obama White House and the State Department.

The problem is, Americans aren't the only ones noticing that.

Putin is laughing so hard that he's squirting tears.

Assad is also.

What's so funny, you ask?  

Here's where we're headed:  Putin will broker a deal whereby a UN team is charged with accounting for, collecting and safeguarding all of Syria's chemical weapons.  Assad will say "Of Course!  Come on in!"  The UN will put together a detail to go to Syria and accomplish that.  

Guess who will be on that detail?  Do you think there will be any Russians?  Chinese?  When has the UN EVER sent anyone but Americans to do anything really serious?  So, you see, we will be sending American troops.  Tens of thousands of them.

The rebels want those chemicals.  They know where they are.  They will fight to keep them available for capture.

The UN force will have to fight the rebels for those weapons. Assad's forces will help.  The UN force - mostly Americans - will be, in effect, part of Assad's army, navy, and air force.  Killing rebels and getting killed.

Putin will be helplessly rolling on his Kremlin floor, laughing so hard that he can't even talk.

Are Putin, Assad, and your Ostrich Killer the only ones who can see this coming?  Aside from my regular readers, I mean. 

Brain dead, the entire lot of them clowns.

Any service members reading this and considering re-upping soon, my advice is get the hell out now while you're still alive.  The clown show is going to kill a lot of your buddies.

The ONLY Case for Striking Syria

Presidential Credibility

When a president of the United States says that we will do "X" if "Y" happens, then when "Y" happens we must to "X."  

Assad did "Y."  Therefore Obama must do what he said he would do.

To not do it would be to diminish the credibility of presidential rhetoric, including that of future presidents.  That would be very unhealthy for the entire world.

So let's hope that doing "X" does a lot of collateral damage to the rebels, as well.  We do NOT want to weaken Assad enough that the rebels can prevail.  Frankly, gentle reader, your Ostrich Killer is in favor of this war stretching out far into the indefinite future.  Two of our enemies are fighting each other.  So there's no hurry to stop them.

Flak Trap

Syrians Have Russian Air Defense Systems

Russia has sold Syria many different types of military hardware, including some pretty exotic air defense systems.  Russia has a habit of providing Russian crews for their more sophisticated weapons.

They also like to test newer systems in actual combat, if they get sufficient notice to allow them to deploy those systems in a combat theater.

American standard procedures include neutralizing enemy air defenses.  Will that mean killing Russians?  Only Putin knows for sure.  But you can be sure he'll tell us if it happens.

In the meantime,  some Syrian or Russian schemer is trying to figure out where and how the Americans will hit so they can build a flak trap.

What's a 'flak trap?'  It's a scheme to lure attacking aircraft into an area where they can be surprised by large volumes of deadly anti-aircraft fire.  It can also be a valuable target array that is protected by large volumes of different types of anti-aircraft systems - guns and missiles, low and high altitude, etc.

Let's hope they don't out-think our strike planners, because our pilots will pay the price if they do.

An Old Arab Saying

Sometimes The Best Course of Action is None

Syrians are killing each other.  On one side, the rebels are in bed with Al Qaeda and hezbollah.  On the other side the government is repressive and is killing rebels and, through what appears to be collateral damage, others.

Whichever of these two forces prevails, you can be sure they won't be friends of us or our allies.  So why do we care which one wins?

Old Arab saying:  "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

Al Qaeda is our enemy.  The Syrian government is our enemy.  They are killing each other.

What could be better?  Both are doing our work for us.

Oh - chemical weapons, right?  That means we have to stop it, right?  

Why does it matter if people die from chemical poisoning instead of being riddled with shrapnel from artillery?  They're equally dead either way.

If the rest of the civilized world deplores the use of chemical weapons sufficiently, maybe they will risk the lives of their young military men and women and intervene.  But I doubt it.  Therein is another even better reason for us to NOT intervene.

Let 'em keep killing each other.  Let the rest of the world whine and wring their hands and make stirring meaningless speeches.

If that sounds heartless, o gentle reader, your Ostrich Killer was rooting for both sides in the Iran - Iraq war too.  Remember that war?  Reagan the Realist was selling obsolete, about-to-be scrapped TOW missiles to Iraq and tank ammo and other arms to Iran.  Then he sent the money to the pro-American rebels (Contras) in Nicaragua.  Remember the Iran-Contra affair?  Your Ostrich Killer thought that was a stroke of genius.  

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend."  Indeed.