I am less interested in determining whether one war of another we engage in is legal than I am in whether they are logical or just. As far as I'm concerned, none of our wars--none!--since World War II has made any sense.
With Korea and Vietnam we were motivated in great measure by our irrational fear that if we didn't get involved the dominoes would fall to the ineluctable spread of evil communism.
In retrospect, while the idea of the entire Korean peninsula dominated by fascists from the north is anathema to me, it is, in the last analysis, a big so-what; try imagining how much success a North Korean tyrant would have invading Japan or how little he'd have invading [chuckle here] China.
As to Vietnam falling to communism, the fall has been virtually invisible; last time I looked, the defeated south was a flourishing example of small but unrestrained free enterprise.
Please tell me there was a logical of ethical reason to invade Iraq or any logical or ethical reason to stay in Afghanistan as long as we have.
Whether Congress gives Obama permission to strike surgically [more chuckles] at the Syrian government is irrelevant; our potential involvement remains illogical and unethical if not technically illegal. Syrians have been murdering each other for two years with guns, cannons, planes, even knives. All of a sudden we are horrified because the bastard Assad has decided to inflict death by gas. If there is any logic to our intervening, we should have intervened the moment the bullets started flying.
Our national impulse to get involved in foreign wars stems, I insist, from a disgraceful macho passion to express ourselves violently on the lamest excuses handy. Our President promises to keep America ground troops out of Syria but he is obviously willing to inflict death by air.
Of course, he claims it is our moral responsibility to involve ourselves and kill some Syrians in order to stop them from killing other Syrians. [My emphasis.]
For once idiots like Rand Paul actually have a good idea--stay away from Syria and let the savages on both sides fight it out among themselves.
Debate Magazine
