What’s
Wrong Today:

The New York Times has no mention of
9/11 on page one today. The first article appears on page 27.

The Wrongologist has
9/11 on the front page. On the 12th
anniversary of 9/11 it’s time to talk about Osama bin Laden.

Bin Laden
was a bad man, but he was smart, he understood America. 

Along with
his great enemy, George W. Bush, Bin Laden was one of the first truly important
men of the 21st century. Important people in history do not need to be good
people. Hitler and Churchill and Gandhi were all very important 20th
century men; they weren’t all good men.

In Islam,
there is an idea that you should deal with your local problems first, and not
worry about the far enemy. Bin Laden believed that in his world, you could
not do that. Revolution at home was almost impossible because of the far
enemy, the United States. As long as the US was the superpower, revolutionary
success would be limited because the US could cripple your economy via
sanctions, and it had the military might to attack you with overwhelming
force. 

Bin
Laden’s argument was that the US had to be defeated. That the evils being
done by local regimes (such as Iraq’s Hussein, or Egypt’s Mubarak) could not be
ended by simply fighting the local regime, but that the far regime, the US,
must also be defeated.

Whatever
you think of bin Laden, his most powerful ethical point to those in the Middle
East was that the US was responsible both for the suffering it caused directly
through sanctions, and the suffering it caused indirectly, by keeping Middle
Eastern dictators in power.

To that, bin
Laden added a decisive idea: Attack the US.

Bin Laden
saw America as similar to the USSR post-Afghanistan, a country that, with a
push, might collapse. The USSR was worn down in Afghanistan. Its military
power was bled out in that “Grave of Empires”. And soon enough, the USSR
collapsed. Bin Laden saw it happen, and he participated as a fighter.

He believed
that the US was ripe for something similar.

Bin Laden believed
that if America could be drawn to Afghanistan, they could be defeated. The 9/11
attack was mostly about getting the US to invade Afghanistan. It
succeeded in doing just that. But when G.W. Bush used 9/11 primarily as a
pretext to invade Iraq, much of what bin Laden wanted to have happen in
Afghanistan happened there, with the added bonus that Saddam Hussein (who bin
Laden saw as an enemy) was dethroned. A win/win. 

Since the
US is still around, still powerful and hasn’t collapsed, and bin Laden is dead, one can say that bin Laden lost.

But it
isn’t over yet. The cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and 9/11 was huge,
both in financial terms (deficits) and in the changes wrought to the American
psyche and by our loss of constitutional protections. Those lost years should
have been used to transition the US economy. Instead the money that could have
done that was used to fund the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

It is 12
years since 9/11 and 5 years, 8 months since the start of the Great Recession. Yet,
we have fewer people employed than at the start of the recession. Income and
wealth inequality is worse. Political sclerosis is worse; our economic plan remains trickle down, while we frack our way to energy independence (which won’t succeed in the long run).

Since
9/11, we have doubled down on the surveillance state and we continue to erode our
constitutional freedoms. This has larger economic effects than most people realize,
and seriously weakens America’s ideological and moral position in the world.

Since
9/11, one tile of fear has fallen against the next and as the dominoes fall, our politicians jockey for position, selling us the latest, greatest fear:

We
are afraid of China. We distrust Russia. We fear the spread of the Syrian civil war. We fear that our budget deficits will spiral out of
control, bankrupting the most powerful and largest economy on the planet. We
fear for our kids’ safety if they walk to school alone. We fear the mob at the gates. We fear the immigrants already inside the gates. 

You could say
that the dead guy won, but the Wrongologist doesn’t believe that. We have all
the resources we need to remain the exceptional country we believe we are.

Except today,
we seem to lack the will to work through our fears.

We need to
re-learn how to exist in an uncomfortable and anxious state, in an ambiguous world without
shutting down or being ineffectual. Lately when things get tough, we strut, shorten our attention spans, prefer form over substance and pray to god
that it all works out…OMG; we are all George W. Bush. 

Remember
9/11. Let us never forget the heroes and the victims. But we must stop
sacrificing our freedoms or our common sense, to fear.

What’s
Wrong Today:

Yesterday
was a wild afternoon. Mr. Obama overruled John Kerry, Susan Rice, and Samantha
Powers who, earlier in the day had opposed Russia’s proposal to take
control of Syria’s CW. That proposal, which would place Syria’s CW under
international control and subsequently destroy them, had been accepted by Syria
and was endorsed by the Ban Ki-Moon and David
Cameron.

The State
Department then walked
back Kerry’s remarks that Syria needed to give up its CW, and Susan Rice
said that only
regime change would do.

But later,
Mr. Obama told all the networks said that he was willing to pursue the Russian
plan. From
Politico:

The President
said his team will engage in talks with Russia and Syria. More from Politico:

Kerry? He
initiated the proposal before he was against Putin’s acceptance of his proposal
before he was in favor of his own proposal.
What a putz!

Politico
also talks about
Kerry’s actions, which it tries to frame charitably as:

With Obama
as his foil, Putin is now dominating global diplomacy; the Bismarck of our era,
dancing around Obama like a toreador contemplating a mound of steaks. He’s got game.

If Putin
gets Syria to agree and the US to stand down from attacking Syria, Obama has to
give his Nobel Peace Prize to Putin. That would give Putin a Super Bowl Ring
and a Nobel Peace Prize, and rock star status, since he would have twice
defeated the world’s only (and widely resented) superpower. He has been pitch-perfect
on the Snowden business and on Syria. Neither affair has cost him anything and
he has come out of them with greater stature as a statesman.

It is way too early to say this idea will work, but if it does, let’s look at some winners, beyond
your returning champion, Vladimir Putin:

• War-weary
  Americans: both military personnel and citizens

• Bashar
  al-Assad: The possible deal confirms his role as a ruling head of state

• Syrian
  civilians: Who would be collateral damage in the cruise missile strike

And if the
negotiated settlement works, who are the losers?

• Mr. Obama’s foreign policy team of John Kerry, Susan Rice and
  Samantha Powers: The President may need to get rid of one or more of them to
  preserve his own credibility.

• AIPAC:
   The Israel lobby has worked very hard to
  get the missile strike launched politically. Israel has a demographics problem
  in the US since younger Jews do not seem to have much affinity for Israel in
  polling, and many are firmly opposed to its policies in Palestine. It may be
  that Israel’s drive to move against Iran is driven as much by demographic
  change in the US as by Iran’s projected timetable for nuclear development,
  since demographic change in the US means Israel’s days of being able to rely on
  the US as a staunch ally may be numbered.

• The Syrian opposition: Where are their
  spokespeople?

• Al Qaeda: Less chaos and
  killing makes their job more difficult.

• Mr. Obama: While the apologists will say that he
  was playing three-dimensional chess, he looks ineffectual.

Mr. Obama, 2009:

Can America have THAT Obama back again?

The Russians game has been to copy Britain’s 19th Century
strategy in Europe which was to keep a balance of power among states. Russia’s
goal is to blunt US power where possible or to insure that the US is occupied elsewhere
so that we can’t meddle in their areas of influence. Putin, although the
American media makes fun of him, is the most intelligent leader Russia has had
since Khrushchev and unlike K, he controls both the military and security
apparatus and therefore, he has power to take his ideas to action.

On the
other hand, the strategic incoherence at the top of the American government and
the global power vacuum that has been created are frightening. And we’re not
just talking about Obama and the Democrats. The Republican Party also has no
coherent global strategy or outlook. In the Syrian matter, the Obama
Administration will come out ahead by not launching missiles, dropping bombs or
landing black helicopters full of Seals.

Russia
looks particularly good, despite the
fact that it has spent most of the past 4 decades arming Syria to the teeth.
Their strategy was to create a military parity with Israel, but once the Soviet
Union fell apart, Syria couldn’t match the Israel Defense Force.

It’s clear
that Mr. Obama (or Kerry, Powers, and Rice) could blow this tentative deal,
either by design or ineptitude. Mr. Obama is laying the groundwork for pinning
any failure of the Russian deal on Mr. Assad’s bad faith, even if the reasons
are different.

And if
Syria’s CW are brought under the control of the UN or another entity, expect to
hear the word appeasement thrown around in Congress, along with rants about a coming
jihadist storm.

Despite
whether the deal happens or not, you will hear from Congressman Darrell Issa
(R-CA), who will certainly conduct Syriagate hearings to go along with his
Benghazigate hearings.

 

What’s
Wrong Today:

We
can no longer deny that we need a new jobs equation. The August BLS
unemployment report shows that the increase in total nonfarm payroll jobs was
169,000, with private payrolls adding 152,000 jobs of the total while government
jobs increased by 17,000.  

The
bad news in this report was that June and July were revised downward by 16,000
and 58,000 jobs respectively, or about 21% of the jobs we thought we had
created across the two months. Additionally, most of the jobs gained were low
paying.

To
continue an oft-repeated refrain at the Wrongologist, the US is now down 1,909 million jobs from December 2007, the start of the
last recession.  Folks, that was five years, eight months ago!

Here it is
graphically:

 

Yes,
that trend line is encouraging, but we need to add at least 100,000 jobs each month just to match
population growth. So, since we added 445,000 in the past 3 months, that
equates to just 145,000 net jobs added above the population growth rate.

Private
Sector jobs (jobs not in government) gained 152,000 in August. The US is still down 1,366 million private sector jobs since
January 2008.  Goods producing jobs, which are usually higher paying, grew
by only 18,000 (the goods sector includes manufacturing and construction jobs).
 Service jobs, which include our fast food and big box stores workers,
increased by 134,000.  The graph below shows private sector jobs lost
since January 2008:

On
the other hand, there were no federal government jobs created last month, maybe
due to the sequester, while local governments added 20,100 education jobs:

The spike
above in 2010 was due to temporary US Census jobs.

Looking at the graph below, Leisure
& Hospitality jobs have been a
growth sector of the economy, but it has the lowest paying jobs. This
sector gained 27,000 jobs, with 80% of those jobs being in food services and
drinking places.  Food service often pays below
minimum wage, and since January 2008, this sub-sector has gained
691,200 jobs.  For 2013, the US has created 252,300 jobs in
restaurants and bars.  This is 17.5% of all the 1.442 million jobs gained so far in 2013.
 These low paying jobs account for 7.6% of all of the private sector jobs
in this country.  Since January 2010, food service jobs represent 16.6% of
the 6.76 million jobs gained:  

These do you want fries with that? jobs will not support a family. Very low paying retail jobs and restaurant jobs as well as the
lower paying jobs in the health care sector are behind most of our job growth, and
this is not what America really needs for our middle class to recover.  

Those employed
as a ratio to the total Civilian non institutional population stands at 58.6%, a
decline of -0.1%. This ratio has been near its 1983 record low for years, and
in 1983 there were way more families with a stay at home mom. The low ratio implies
there are many people who could be part of the labor force who are not anymore.
See the graph below:

Finally,
there are millions of people who need full-time jobs with benefits who can’t get decent
career oriented positions. The number of people who could only get part-time
work increased 54,000 to 2,719,000.  We’re seeing a dramatic increase of
people who could only get part-time when they want full-time and this has not
happened since the early 1980’s as shown in the graph below:

So,
it’s clear that we need a new jobs equation and it isn’t anywhere on the horizon.
The Austerians (people who support the “Austrian” school of economic thought of Friedrich Hayek or Ludwig von Mises and desire to slash government spending
and cut deficits during a time of economic weakness or recession), may argue
that we shouldn’t create government jobs just to solve an economic problem, but
it is despicable that our government allows
millions of Americans to slide towards poverty because they cannot get a decent
job. And it continues year after year, for nearly 6 years now.

Congress is more
likely to
express outrage at chemical weapons killing children in Syria than outrage at
hungry kids in America.

Congress is more
likely to agree
to authorize spending money to bomb Syria than to increase the minimum wage.

Congress is more
likely to
debate the debt ceiling than to develop a jobs program.

And
despite their wrong-headed priorities, incumbents in Congress are most likely to be re-elected
in 2014 without a struggle.

Another
week in which Mr. Obama tries hard to throw gas on the fire that is Syria. On
the other hand, the NFL season commences and Diana
Nyad shows that 64 is the new 34. The quote below is from E.B. White about being
conflicted when you are trying to change the world. Use his thought when you
construct today’s homily.

Seth Godin has thoughts about the same
subject:

Let’s
hope that Mr. Obama fails marketing in his effort to change the world. Now,
cartoons:

Sunday TV has same old comments:

Obama tries same old strategy with Congress:

Mr. Obama channels General Patton:

McCain shows his cards on Syria:

A
Succinct Summary of our Syrian Policy:

To recapitulate:

• Syria
  is not a threat to the US; its chemical weapons are not a threat either

• The
  idea of firing missiles to “send a message” is appalling; our message
  will be heard in the same language as the people who used sarin: Dead Syrians

• Secretary
  Kerry justifies a unilateral attack on Syria by referring to the Chemical
  Weapons Convention that bans chemical weapons (see more below). Supporters of
  Kerry’s policy are willing to violate the “rule of law” offshore, something they
  would never propose at home

• If
  the US claims to be enforcing international law, we ought to have an
  international consensus that something needs to be done, plus a consensus on
  what should be done, and some allies participating with us, all wrapped up in a
  UN resolution

• Without
  these things, an attack on Syria would be just an example of America
  unilaterally beating up on a small country because we can

• We
  need to differentiate between having “credibility” with the
  nations of the world and being viewed as the world’s bully

Regarding CW, the
chemical weapons ban is one of the few weapons restrictions for which there is almost
complete global compliance, only 6 nations have not signed or ratified the
treaty. Somalia just ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention while Angola,
South Sudan, Egypt, and Syria haven’t signed, and Israel and Myanmar haven’t
ratified it.

Although Syria is one of the last holdouts to the treaty,
it does not represent a risk of proliferation of chemical weapons. Few nations
have stocks of chemical weapons at all. The US and Russia are slowly
destroying the last of their stockpile. China will have the old Japanese
stockpile that is still in Chinese territory dismantled by 2022.

So, there is no truth
to the idea that chemical weapons are proliferating.

It is time for America’s
friends, Israel, Egypt and Myanmar to sign or ratify the Chemical Weapons
Convention.  It is important for the Egyptian government to
move quickly to declare and dismantle any chemical weapons it might be holding.
It is probably at least as important as in Syria.  

The fact that we are not
hearing any discussion about any of these actions by the Very Serious People of DC belies the
argument that what we are considering in Syria is only about chemical weapons.

If Assad’s regime is
to survive, he must reconstitute his government with domestic as well as global
political alliances. The claim that Assad used chemical weapons on his own
people is now credible, even among people who believed he was ruthless, but did
not think that he would use chemical weapons inside his own borders. This means
his patrons Iran and Russia, must think twice about their support for
Assad. Under any political agreement that allows Assad to remain in power, the
patrons will not let him maintain his current stock of chemical weapons or
control them in the same manner as today. It impacts their global credibility.

The real CW danger in
the world is the Do-It-Yourself creation of “good enough” chemical
weapons by militant groups, but the US and other supporters of intervention are
discounting that as a possibility in Syria. The possible proliferation of
just-good-enough chemicals by non-state actors is a much more plausible risk, one for which cruise missiles offer no
mitigation.

Pom-pom waving about
Syria by Sen. McCain and others in Congress is an appalling failure to exercise
real due diligence with their power to declare war. We have apparently learned
nothing from our experiences in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

This idea is being
fueled by Congress’ preferred stab-in-the-back rationalization, “Obama won’t
let us win”, rather than taking the time to look at the facts:

Meddling in other
countries unites their people against you–even if you think you are a force
for good, and they hate their dictators.

 

What’s
Wrong Today:

We
are marking the sixth Labor Day weekend since the onset of The Great Recession
and Congress has yet to pass a jobs bill, it has yet to put a halt to
anti-worker tactics of many businesses and state governments, it has yet to
make poverty and hunger and homelessness a priority on the national agenda.


The working class no longer has any voice in or influence on the US government.
President and Congress have been a profound disappointment to the middle class,
the poor and the elderly. If you doubt that, remember this chart that the Wrongologist
posts regularly. It is the ratio of employed to our total civilian population:

It
is down about 4 percentage points since the start of the Great Recession. Over
the past 40 years, the plutocracy and the Conservative movement have made
certain that working women and men no longer count for much in the United
States of America.

Corporate
profits after tax just hit a record high as a percentage of GDP, while wages
are at their lows as a percentage of GDP. Workers are clearly getting less and
less of the American economic pie, while corporate profits continue to soar.
 To illustrate how bad this is, the graph below shows wages and salaries
as a percentage of GDP in red, (scale on the right), against corporate profits
as a percentage of GDP, in blue, (scale on the left).  

Why
won’t DC do anything to change these trends? This is just terrible for America
and American workers.

The
US has 2.3 million American males in prison. It has six times the rate of
incarceration per capita as China. As prison guards earn salaries, so do
lawyers and entertainers who provide parallel coverage to trials which
second-guess the legal system. All of this adds to our GDP even though they actually
are indicators of social decline.


The symbols of progress now reside elsewhere. The world’s tallest building is
in Dubai, second tallest will soon be the Shanghiai Tower, part of a complex of
three new skyscrapers. China builds more autos now than the US.

The following Labor Day cartoons
are not meant for your enjoyment:

The Wrongologist visited the Mark Twain House in West Hartford
CT this week with grand kids. Few people who have read “Tom Sawyer” or “Huckleberry
Finn” realize that he was an abolitionist. He also took a dim view of
warfare. He wrote a book (really a pamphlet) called “The War Prayer” that was rejected for publication during his
lifetime. He also wrote “To the Heathen
Sitting Alone in Darkness”, a direct attack on US entry into the Spanish
American War and ultimately the Filipino “Insurrection.” That book was
published. It contains the quote on the Church Sign below, which was quite
popular during the Vietnam War. Think about Syria, and America’s other follies
in the Middle East, and create your homily for today:

Not everyone  has the same Dream:

More wisdom from MLK:

Johnny Volcano offers advice to Uncle Sam:

But Barack, what’s the mission?

Obama’s Syrian formula is a combustible mix:

People who live in Muslim countries
know that they have rarely been at peace for long periods of time. In addition
to fighting amongst themselves, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the
Persians, the Ottomans, the British and the French have all had their turns
trying to rule, without conspicuous success.

America must evolve from our need to
intervene.

What’s
Wrong Today:

What
should we do when our President wants war but says, “there are no good options”?
From Esquire’s Charlie Pierce:

Stars and Stripes, the newspaper of the US Army, reports
on the analysis of Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Zenko
has studied the results of “limited use of force” like what Mr. Obama is
considering in Syria. He has counted 36 such operations since 1991, which have
had varying levels of success. He says these operations typically use “stand-off”
weapons like cruise missiles or drones that put few if any service members at
direct risk.

Yet
the operations are not as effective as imagined, Zenko argues. In the 36
incidents he counts, military
objectives were achieved little more than half the time, he said, while the
political goals were realized in only 6 % of the attacks.

If
political goals are achieved in a mere 6% of the attacks, then Tomahawk
diplomacy in the form of a cruise missile attack against Syria without a realistic plan to achieve a
desired political goal might make some people feel good but will not do us any good. It may backfire into undesired and unintended
consequences that could do us harm.

If
you can’t raise the bridge, lower the river. No good option means that it’s
time to get out of the box and try something different.

The
Wrongologist suggests making Assad an offer he can’t refuse.

Let’s
accept that Assad’s regime committed the crime. Let’s further postulate that by
now, Mr. Assad knows who gave the order to arm the rockets with CW, and who
gave the orders to fire those weapons at civilian populations in the Damascus
suburb of Eastern Ghouta.

John
Kerry, Prince of Ketchup, seems to have detailed knowledge of the inner
communications of the Assad regime on the night of the attack and the regime’s
internal discussions about the event. If we know, then Assad knows. The
proposal is:

Tell Mr. Assad to publicly execute
the members of his government and military who bear direct responsibility for
the CW attack.

Give
Mr. Assad 10 days to conduct the executions and to make a statement about how
he will not tolerate further CW attacks.

Should
he fail to comply? Take out Mr. Assad. With Tomahawk missiles, or otherwise. Hit
all the targets that leave Mr. Obama with “no good options”. Hit them twice so Assad’s chances of winning the civil war are degraded. Tell Mr. Assad that this is
what we will do if he fails to execute the perpetrators of CW on his own
people.

This
will help America’s credibility. It gives Syrians more time to get out of harm’s
way if he does not. It gives Assad a way to preserve the status-quo in his
civil war.

It
avoids an attack that ultimately pleases al-Qaeda and Israel while angering the
rest of the Middle East.

What
do you think?

What’s
Wrong Today:

Despite
the UK Parliament’s vote against attacking Syria, Mr. Obama so far seems to
continue to want
to go it alone. The “senior officials” quoted by the NYT are probably from the National
Security Council. Mr. Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice is most
likely the one who is driving the bus, and it is looking like she is pointing
it at a wall.

The miss-management
of the Syria event ― a rush to war then retreat, an attempt to block the UN
observers, presenting dubious intelligence, bad management of potential allies ―
could end her career and take Mr. Obama with her.

Any claim
that the US would attack Syria in service of some “international community”
is now looking weak: We have the French on our side, proving they want to
demonstrate a muscular interventionist foreign policy, just like America. But let’s
count who is against bombing Syria: The UK, the UN Security Council, the UN
Secretary General, the US military,
the US intelligence
community, the public in the United States, Israel, and Turkey.

Obama is now in a catch 22. Speaker Boehner
(R-OH) demands
answers to detailed questions about the war Mr. Obama wants to wage. Today,
the scuttlebutt is that the WH will spend the day trying to answer them. Here
are some of the questions:

Imagine,
Mr. Boehner has managed to seize the high ground from Mr. Obama on Syria. That’s some principled leadership by Mr. Boehner. His
“demanding answers” on Syria isn’t particularly surprising, nor is the chutzpah
displayed by Boehner’s assumption that his political history gives him some leverage with which to
assume the moral high ground. But, he has the moral high ground, at least for
the moment.

Another quarter weighed
in: Javad Zarif, Iran’s Minister for Foreign Affairs posted on Facebook:  

It is a terrible inflection point when
John Boehner and the Iranian Foreign Minister make more sense than Susan Rice
and President Obama. (Ignore for the moment that Iranians domestically are blocked from Facebook.)

If the
president calls Congress back from vacation to vote on a war resolution he will
risk as Mr. Cameron did, public defeat. If he does not call back Congress and
proceeds with a strike he will face serious opposition from both Republicans
and many Democrats.

He can of
course stand down on the issue but, that has its own political fall-out: He may
be damaged goods in international politics.

This should be a matter for the Congress
to decide according to the Constitution.

And while
we’re talking about Congress, how many of our jolly statesmen remember what happened the last time Americans took on
the Syrian army?

It
happened in Lebanon when the US Air Force decided to bomb Syrian missiles in
the Bekaa Valley
on December 4, 1983 (Saint Ronnie was our president). An American A-6 fighter bomber
was hit by a Syrian ground-to-air missile and crash-landed in the Bekaa; its
pilot, Mark Lange, was killed, its co-pilot, Robert Goodman, taken prisoner and
jailed in Damascus.

Jesse Jackson
traveled to Syria to get him back, amid many clichés about
“ending the cycle of violence”. Another American plane – this time an A-7 – was
also hit by Syrian fire but the pilot managed to eject over the Mediterranean
where he was plucked from the water by a Lebanese fishing boat. His plane was
also destroyed.

While our planes are better, (the A-6 was retired in 1997), so are the Russian missiles that sold to Syria. We are told that Syria will be a short
mission, in and out, a couple of days. That’s what Mr. Obama likes to think.
But think Iran. Think Hezbollah. Think Russia.

Revolutions
started with people refusing to pay for the King’s wars: The English (in the 17th
century), the French (in the 18th century), the Russian revolution was started
by Russians tired of fighting in WW1.

Be
careful plutocracy, the people are watching.

What’s
Wrong Today:

The
most depressing thing heard yesterday was from Mr. Obama:

We must
teach Assad a lesson. After all, we have a Responsibility to
Protect, (R2P).

R2P is a UN initiative established in 2005. It is an aspirational set of
principles, based on the claim that sovereignty is not a right, but a
responsibility. R2P focuses on preventing and
halting four crimes: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic
cleansing, which it places under the generic umbrella term of Mass Atrocity Crimes. R2P has three pillars:

1. A
   state has a responsibility to protect its population from genocide, war
   crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing;
2. The
   international community has a responsibility to assist the state to
   fulfill its primary responsibility;
3. If
   the state manifestly fails to protect its citizens from the four above
   mass atrocities and peaceful measures have failed, the international community has the responsibility to intervene
   through coercive measures such as economic sanctions. Military
   intervention is considered the last resort.

However,
it is not clear who makes this decision on behalf of the “international
community”. Nor is it clear who has the responsibility to protect, except the
UN, it doesn’t mention the US.

Conor
Freidersdorf in The Atlantic hits
the nail on the head:
(emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Why is the
Main Stream Media legitimizing pro-war
pressure? Why are they describing it as the prevailing story line,
despite the fact that the people who are applying the pressure represent a clear
minority position? Why does the MSM ignore the pressure against intervention, that
is to say, the majority position?

 “Legitimacy” in these circles is a matter of
social standing and institutional affiliations, not track record. Americans are
well aware of the disastrous mistakes made by these elites, having suffered from
their performance in Vietnam, the Bay of Pigs, Beirut, Iraq, Afghanistan, and
Libya.

The MSM is
reporting about how Mr. Obama’s credibility depends on his deciding to strike
Syria. They say the president’s credibility hinges on him doing something just
9% of Americans want him to do. “Credibility” to them means his
credibility among the people who matter.
That is, the DC chicken hawks who
inflate their importance with glib answers to tough questions and by otherwise acting
tough.

Finally, from Moon
of Alabama, it is
looking like the effort to round up the usual suspects to form another
“coalition of the willing” is not progressing smoothly: 

Don’t
know about all of you, but the Wrongologist is not part of the “willing”. The
Syria discussion looks a lot like Iraq 2.0, Obama edition, just scarier because:

• It
  is taking very little time, effort (and so far, flimsy evidence) to sell it

• The
  American people are, if possible, even less skeptical now than they were in
  2001-2003 during the marketing of the intervention against Iraq

• The
  fact that this is Obama and not some Republican seems to be blinding a lot of
  liberals who would be screaming bloody murder if it were, say, Chris Christie in the
  White House

It
would be nice to trust Mr. Obama more than we trusted Mr. Bush, but a
politician is a politician. If he supports the use of “humanitarian
bombings” and it turns out that the allegations against Syria are false,
or just inconclusive, or a false flag operation by actors inside or even
outside Syria, what will THAT say about Mr. Obama’s “credibility”?

He
has to do more than consult with Congress. Congress needs to put their names
and reputations on the line with an up or down, roll call vote on intervention.

If Obama
fails to intervene in Syria, his credibility among the American people won’t
suffer at all. If the DC pundits want to intervene in Syria, let them be the
first Americans to hit the beach.