Category Archives: Terrorism

Mourning Mandela.

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It has been said that one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist. No statement more accurately describes Nelson Mandela.

Mandela began his career as an activist by non-violently demonstrating against South African apartheid. When the white South African government responded with exceptional brutality, Mandela and his followers reluctantly turned to terrorism. But rather than kill people, their intent was to blow up buildings in order to make a statement and disrupt the government.That led to Mandela being tried for conspiracy to overthrow the government and being sentenced to life in jail. With most of the world supporting sanctions against South Africa and, with Mandela as a symbol for freedom, the government was eventually forced to release Mandela and apartheid finally came to an end.

Yet Mandela’s political career was just beginning.

Having won freedom for himself and his people, Mandela directed his energies toward healing the wounds of apartheid. He was elected president of South Africa and, rather than seeking retribution for the crimes of the previous government, Mandela promoted national unity. Is it any wonder, then, that Nelson Mandela is now celebrated by most of the world?

That was not always the case.

Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Richard “The Dick” Cheney and other conservatives considered Mandela a terrorist and placed him on the terrorist watch list. Although Reagan publicly spoke against apartheid, he vetoed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986. His veto was over-ridden by Congress. But Reagan defiantly refused to implement many of the sanctions against the South African apartheid government, and Mandela was kept on the US terrorist list until July of 2008.

None of this should come as a surprise to anyone who follows today’s GOP.

Since implementation of the Southern Strategy beginning in the late 1960’s, the GOP has almost completely rejected its glorious past as the party of emancipation, consistently coming down on the wrong side of history. The GOP refuses to vote for comprehensive immigration reform. It has fought against gay rights and gay marriage. It has relentlessly attacked a woman’s right to make medical choices regarding her own body. Republican legislatures have pushed through unnecessary voter ID laws in order to restrict the voting rights of minorities.

Despite Mandela’s victory over discrimination, despite his Nobel Peace Prize, despite worldwide acclaim and despite the sorrow so eloquently expressed by people the world over, even now, some in the GOP refuse to acknowledge his greatness simply because Mandela believed in economic equality as well as racial equality. That made Mandela a communist and a danger to the wealthy and the powerful, a claim that defacto GOP leader, Rush Limbaugh, recently leveled against Pope Francis.

The fact is, Nelson Mandela fought the good fight. He helped to liberate tens of thousands of people. He inspired millions more. We should all strive to do even half as much. Most especially those in the GOP.

“Death is something inevitable. When a man has done what he considers to be his duty to his people and his country, he can rest in peace. I believe I have made that effort and that is, therefore, why I will sleep for the eternity.” – Nelson Mandela

Is Muslim Extremism A US Export?

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As sensational as that may seem, it’s a reasonable question. Here’s why: When the USSR invaded Afghanistan, the US moved to counter the invasion with Operation Cyclone which was portrayed in the movie, Charlie Wilson’s War starring Tom Hanks. The operation consisted of the US providing weapons, military aid and training to the mujahedeen, a ragtag group of guerrilla fighters based in Pakistan.

But it turns out there was one aspect of “assistance” not covered in Charlie Wilson’s War. I only recently learned about propaganda funded by USAID and created by the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s Center for Afghanistan Studies. According to the UNO website, the Center “organized more than 1,300 educational sites in Afghanistan and Pakistan and reached 130,000 Afghan refugees with K-12 textbooks and basic education services.” What the UNO website fails to mention is that those textbooks included images of dead Soviet soldiers, tanks, missiles, and AK47s. The books taught reading and math. They also included propaganda to turn Afghan children against the USSR and Afghan communist government. They incorporated Islamic verses from the Quran, as well as calls for jihad against the infidels.

For example, the books taught Afghan children the Pashtu language through two fictional characters named Maqbool and Basheer intended to be the Afghan equivalent of our Dick and Jane. An estimated 15 million of the textbooks were published in the Afghan languages of Dari and Pashtu from the early 1980’s to 1994.

In an article that appeared in the March 23, 2002 Washington Post, Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway wrote “An aid worker in the region reviewed an unrevised 100-page book and counted 43 pages containing violent images or passages.” They quoted Ahmad Fahim Hakim, an Afghan educator saying, “The pictures [in] the texts are horrendous to school students, but the texts are even much worse.”

Following the end of the Soviet occupation, many of the violent images were removed from the books, but much of the jihadist language remained unchanged. And many of the original books are still in use today throughout Afghanistan and western Pakistan. It doesn’t take much imagination to realize that the anti-Soviet messages can be used as calls to action against Americans and our allies. Indeed, the books are more than likely used in the most extreme madrassas in the region, many of which are funded by Saudis exporting their extremist wahhabi form of Islam.

UNO is unapologetic for its role in the publication of the books. According to a 2007 article by Matthew Hansen from the Lincoln JournalStar.com, “To the center’s longtime director, the textbooks are byproducts of a dark era when Russian bombs killed Afghan schoolchildren and rebel forces fought to save their country. ‘I won’t apologize…for something done in 1988,’ Thomas Gouttierre says. ‘At the time, Afghans were being killed.’”

Of course, many others have been killed since then, including thousands of Americans.

Prelude To 9/11.

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Understandably, 9/11 is a very sensitive subject. It was the only attack on US soil since Pearl Harbor. The people who died in the attacks are still being mourned, and those who gave their lives trying to save the victims are legitimately American heroes. Additionally, there are still many questions about how the attacks happened and why they were not stopped.

To be clear, I’m not a “Truther”…never have been. I believe it’s nonsense to think that the attacks of 9/11 were engineered and carried out by our own government. Not only would it be difficult to hire people to commit such heinous acts, it would be impossible for anyone with any knowledge of such treason to remain silent. However, I do believe there is abundant evidence that the Bush administration willfully ignored numerous and dire warnings of an impending al Qaeda attack prior to 9/11.

Why would the administration do such a thing?

You’ll have to draw your own conclusions. But I suspect that it was a matter of convenience for Bush, Richard “The Dick” Cheney and the rest of their neocon Project for a New American Century (PNAC) crowd to allow them to display our military might in order to force our economic will on the world. In their defense, I doubt that they could have imagined that an attack from a few extremist Muslims could result in so many casualties. After all, only a year earlier, Bush dismissed Clinton’s attempt to destroy Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda training camp as “sending a million dollar cruise missile to blow up a camel tent.”

Nevertheless, even a relatively minor attack on US soil would give the Bush neocons an opportunity to unleash our military to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein. It would provide a showcase for our “Shock and Awe” weapons. The spectacle would serve as a warning to potential opponents and “encourage” other governments to accept our corporate demands. And, by “liberating” Iraq or, more precisely, Iraqi oil, I believe the neocons assumed they would be able to accomplish their goal of establishing a US military presence in the region to counterbalance the influence of Iran and protect our access to all Middle East oil reserves.

Pretty crazy, huh?

But when you look at the events leading up to the al Qaeda attack, it’s the Bush/Cheney neocons that look crazy. (And that’s being polite!)

National Security Council Counter-terrorism Chief, Richard Clarke, has testified that he tried to get the attention of Bush officials to warn them of an imminent attack by al Qaeda as early as January of 2001. Almost immediately after the administration had assumed office, he asked for a cabinet-level meeting with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Cheney and Colin Powell. But Rice ignored him until September 4. In the meantime, according to Clarke, he and CIA Director George Tenet were running around with their “hair on fire” in order to get the administration’s attention. Clarke recalled Tenet saying, “I feel it coming. This is going to be the big one.”

Additionally, Bush was handed a Presidential Brief on August 6, 2001 that was headlined “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.” But, according to those close to the situation, Bush dismissed the brief by telling the CIA briefer, “Alright, you’ve covered your ass now.” Further, there is evidence that the administration was warned of an impending strike as many as 40 times! But officials in the administration, particularly Rice, not only ignored the threat, according to Clarke and others, they seemed disinterested.

Immediately following 9/11, Rice, Cheney and Bush claimed that there were no credible warnings prior to the strikes. They accepted no responsibility. Instead, they blamed the intelligence community for not communicating effectively. They claimed that, had they known in advance, they would have done everything in their power to save the country.

They then set about planning an invasion of Iraq which had absolutely no role in 9/11.

To this day, Bush, Cheney, Rice and the rest of the neocons have never been forced to answer for their treachery. Instead of being impeached, Bush was re-elected. Instead, of being charged with war crimes; with invading Iraq under false pretenses; with authorizing torture; with causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands, Bush and his posse have ridden off into the sunset. A presidential library has been erected in Bush’s honor. Rice has been awarded a cushy position at Stanford University and given the honor of helping to select the college football teams that will participate in the championship playoffs. And Cheney walks around with someone else’s heart beating in his chest, still trying to justify the invasion of Iraq and still pushing the PNAC.

These people have not only escaped justice. They have proven that there is no justice.

New World Order Paranoia Is Nothing New.

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Reports that the shooter at LAX may have been motivated by the so-called “patriot” movement and the New World Order conspiracy theory should come as no surprise to anyone. Fears of a New World Order have been around for decades. Some even believe that our Founding Fathers were part of the conspiracy to create a global government. Some imagine that Freemasons were at the heart of the conspiracy.

Such conspiracy theorists have become more crazy and violent over time.

It was a combination of anger toward what they considered a “tyrannical” federal government, racism and fear of the arrival “black-shirted, jackbooted thugs” that inspired Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols to blow up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Fear of a one world government has inspired militias and other domestic terrorist groups for many years. And, more recently, the New World Order conspiracy has been embraced by the Tea Party, Libertarians and substantial numbers within the Republican Party.

Here, in Arizona, I’m reminded of the so-called conspiracy all the time. Newspapers carry letters to the editor that stridently warn of the United Nations. Tea Party meetings rail against our president who, in their words, is trying to usher in an era of UN domination…ie, a New World Order. They warn of the impending arrival of black helicopters. Even the marginally more mainstream Republican Party meetings often host speakers who espouse this nonsense.

Indeed, the three state legislators who represent my legislative district are UN conspiracy advocates. So, too, is my Tea Party-backed congressional representative.

In particular, these Tea Party parasites…er, “patriots” fear Agenda 21, a UN initiative to make our world more sustainable through such radical ideas as city planning, sustainable farming practices, new sources of alternative energy, forest management and environmental preservation. The tinfoil hat crowd is also opposed to the new international treaty on arms control. The treaty is intended to control the sale of weapons to radical governments and terrorist groups. Yet the right wing crowd is convinced that it will lead to confiscation of their handguns, assault rifles and buckets of ammo by UN troops. Of course, it won’t. The treaty specifically states that it does not impact the laws of sovereign states. But truth and reality have never found a home in the tiny minds of the Tea Party.

Not surprisingly, the people who are most fanatical about the conspiracy are the most ardent gun “collectors.” Many, encouraged by the National Rifle Association and a variety of “reality” TV programs have amassed substantial armories. Such irrational fears combined with modern weaponry will inevitably lead to more violence.

House Of Horrors.

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No, it’s not The House On Elm Street. It’s not Norman Bates’ home. The US House of Representatives has claimed the crown! Populated by a host of psychopaths, spooks, bloodsuckers and zombies, it strikes fear into intelligent people around the globe.

Within its terror-filled chambers, Speaker Boehner plays a modern-day, orange-tinted Mad Hatter with a Tea Party no less crazy than that from Alice In Wonderland. Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor are like Freddie Krueger and Norman Bates trying to slash food stamps, Social Security and Medicare. Michele Bachmann talks glowingly of the end times. Louie Gohmert wields a verbal chainsaw attacking everyone and everything in sight. Steve King (not to be confused with the less frightening Stephen King), Trent Franks, Joe “You Lie” Wilson and Ted Poe lead the rest of the freak show.

Across the hall, honorary member and defacto House leader, Ted “the headless horseman” Cruz, unleashes a seemingly endless stream of hatred and nonsense.

With a cast like this, is it any wonder Washington has spun out of control? Is it any wonder that Congress has become dysfunctional? Moderate Republicans have fled for their lives, allowing the John Birch Society and Ayn Rand-inspired zombies (aka the Tea Party) to take our government hostage. So it’s now up to Democrats and Independents to put an end to their insanity.

But there are no silver bullets, no wooden stakes. And unlike horror movies, you simply can’t turn away from the terror or walk out of the theater when it gets too scary. In this story, it’s as if the 3D psychos have jumped off the big screen to threaten us all. Moreover, their tactics will have real consequences for the poor, the hungry, the young, the elderly and the middle class. Our only defense is our vote.

Around Halloween, everyone likes a good haunted house or horror film, but this is a horror story that may not end well…if it ever does. That’s your cue to scream!

Rebels Without A Brain.

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Sunday’s demonstration of anger, racism and stupidity at the WW II monument revealed far more about those speaking than about our government shutdown.

Waving the Battle Flag of Northern Virginia (aka the Confederate flag), holding “Impeach Obama” signs and hiding behind a few hundred veterans, Canadian-born Sen. Ted Cruz, failed VP candidate and former Alaska Governor, Sarah Palin, and Larry Klayman of Freedom Watch demanded that President Obama put down the Q’uran and resign. “I call upon all of you to wage a second American nonviolent revolution, to use civil disobedience, and to demand that this president leave town, to get up, to put the Q’uran down, to get up off his knees, and to figuratively come up with his hands out [sic],” said Klayman.

They decried the exploitation of veterans for political purposes even as they exploited veterans and the WWII Memorial. “Our vets have proven that they have not been timid,” said Palin, “so we will not be timid in calling out any who would use our military, our vets, as pawns in a political game.” And in an equally absurd show of hypocrisy, they blamed the shutdown on the president, even though the Teapublican-controlled House passed a funding bill that denied funding for “Obamacare” knowing the Senate would not pass it and the president could not sign it.

Still, it was the waving of the Confederate flag in front of the White House that rightfully drew the most criticism by the media and many Americans. This is not only the flag of secessionist states that tried to rend our nation apart, resulting in the deaths of 650,000 people. It is the flag of racists, having been proudly flown by slave-owners and those who continued to deny equal rights to African-Americans during the days of Jim Crow. Even to this day, it is the symbol of white supremacists.

To fly this racist symbol in front of the White House currently occupied by the nation’s first president of African-American heritage is not only clueless and tasteless. Since it represents the Confederacy, it borders on sedition!

Why You Can’t Negotiate With Terrorists.

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Long ago, our law enforcement agencies learned that you can’t negotiate with terrorists, especially those who take hostages. The reason is that their demands are always unreasonable and they never live up to the negotiated agreement.

House Republicans are no different.

The President and Senate have been negotiating the federal budget for more than four years, trying to strike a fine balance between keeping our fragile economic recovery going and bringing deficits under control. Under President Obama, the deficit has dropped faster than at any time in history. And Democrats reluctantly agreed to make permanent the $70 billion in cuts to the federal budget that were part of the sequester. But after agreeing to the cuts, Speaker of the House betrayed the Senate Majority Leader by allowing the defunding of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to be included in the budget bill.

When the President and Senate refused to agree to the measure, the House offered a ”compromise” by attaching an amendment that would delay “Obamacare” for one year. Some compromise.

Since House Republicans have already voted to repeal or defund “Obamacare” more than 40 times, what assurance is there that they won’t vote to repeal the law another 40 times over the coming year?

After all, terrorists seldom live up to their word. And if they are willing to take our government and economy hostage once, they’re likely to do it again. Indeed, this is at least the third time in my lifetime that Republicans have shut down the government.

Republicans and their Tea Party parasites are always quoting the Constitution. It’s time they actually read it. Not just the 2nd and 10th Amendments…but the entire Constitution. If they would, they’d find that the House is only one part of the federal government, and it doesn’t have veto power. If they want to have a bill passed, they have to find agreement with the Senate and gain the signature of the President.

Only the President has veto power.  And the House doesn’t have the votes to override a presidential veto.

That means the House terrorists have only one option – to fund the government, at least temporarily, and then demonstrate that they can negotiate in good faith.

I, for one, don’t think they’re capable of that.

How Many Mass Shootings Will It Take?

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Recent polls have shown that, after being mired in continuous conflicts for the past 12 years, Americans seem to have lost their appetite for war. Various polls found that more than 6 in 10 Americans were against any form of military action in Syria.

But we’re in the midst of our own war right here at home.

Monday’s shooting at the Washington, DC Navy Yard is just the latest in a long line of mass shootings in America. There has been an average of one a month since early in 2009! The victims have included theater-goers, citizens visiting with their congressional representative, elementary school children…even dozens of military and military contractors. In addition, there are many individual gun homicides – more than 11,000 per year according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The reaction from the NRA and other ideologues is to fight any form of common-sense measures such as universal background checks and bans on high-capacity magazines which allow mass shooters to fire up to 100 rounds as fast as they can pull the trigger without the need to reload. In order to intimidate anyone contemplating such measures, the NRA and other gun nuts targeted two of the Colorado legislators who actually had the intestinal fortitude to help pass such legislation. That may intimidate politicians, but it shouldn’t intimidate the majority of Americans who favor universal background checks.

After all, we’re the ones who elect these people.

Of course, the NRA responds to each shooting by first saying, “This is not the time to discuss gun legislation.” Then, after the shock from each event dies down, they come out with another lame statement such as that following the Sandy Hook massacre. “The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

Obviously, that is utter nonsense.

At both the Navy Yard and Fort Hood, there were dozens, if not hundreds, of armed and trained guards in the immediate area.  At Fort Hood, 13 were killed and 32 were wounded before the armed good guys could stop the shooter. At the Navy Yard, at least 12 were killed before the shooter was stopped.  Those numbers are not significantly different from the mass shootings in which victims were unarmed.

By comparison there were 13 fatalities at the Columbine High School, 6 at the Tucson “Congress on Your Corner” event, 12 at the Aurora, Colorado movie theater, and 26 at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. (The number of deaths at Sandy Hook likely had more to do with the size of magazines used by the shooter and the ages of the victims.)

Moreover, the most thorough study to date on the availability and presence of firearms by Professor Michael Siegel and two coauthors at Boston University clearly shows that more guns equal more gun deaths, either by suicide or homicide.

In other words, good guys with guns do not diminish gun homicides.

As for the NRA’s fear that universal background checks will lead to a national gun registry, there is already a gun registry. Not by the government. By the NRA!

Another specious argument by the NRA and its cowboy wannabes is that gun ownership is the only deterrent for a tyrannical government. That presumes that hunting rifles, shotguns, handguns and semi-automatic assault weapons could deter a government military with tanks, fighter jets, bombers, attack helicopters and drones. Besides, if you’re so fearful of our democratically-elected government that you’re watching the skies for the black helicopters, you should just go ahead and join the Sovereign Citizens movement, renounce your US citizenship and move abroad. You’re too paranoid and too dumb to remain in the US!

It only took 17 mass shootings in Australia before the Australian government banned semi-automatic weapons and most other guns. We have nearly that many mass shootings a year and we can’t even pass universal background checks. Are we that much different than our Aussie friends?

Sovereign Citizens: America’s New (Bowel) Movement.

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If you’re wondering about the headline, it’s not a typo. I feel it’s an accurate description of the freeloaders who have renounced their US citizenship and refuse to pay taxes or obey laws while taking advantage of our nation’s freedoms, services and benefits.

Each time one of these nitwits burns his driver’s license, Social Security card, birth certificate and other forms of identification, it’s as if our nation is shedding waste.

Now all we need to do is give them a good flush.

If they truly don’t want to be citizens of our nation, we should load them up and ship them to one of the many lawless nations in the world, such as Somalia, Yemen or Syria, where they can practice what they preach. There are plenty of immigrants who would gladly accept US citizenship, pay taxes and obey our laws. Indeed, many of our undocumented workers are already paying taxes knowing that they may never directly receive benefits from those taxes.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the Sovereign Citizens movement is large and growing, with much of the growth coming since the election of our first president of African-American heritage. An estimated 100,000 people currently living in the United States are “hard core” Sovereign Citizens who have already renounced their US citizenship. The SPLC estimates another 200,000 are “just starting out” by resisting traffic tickets and drug charges. By conservative estimates, there are an additional 200,000 tax protesters who refuse to pay taxes. By deporting all 500,000, we would be freeing up room for 500,000 of the “Dreamers” and other grateful immigrants who are seeking US citizenship.

We would also be lowering the deficit through increased tax revenues.

At the same time, we would be making our nation safer. After all, the FBI classifies Sovereign Citizens as anti-government extremists and domestic terrorists. The SPLC classifies them as a hate group which was spawned by Christian Identity minister William P. Gale, the Posse Comitatus movement and several other racist and political groups of the lunatic fringe. (On second thought, strike the word fringe. That’s being much too kind.)

At the heart of the Sovereign Citizen movement is the belief that there are two classes of citizens in America: “original citizens of the states” and “US citizens (“Fourteenth Amendment citizens”) that include descendants of freed slaves. Since the “original citizens” of the states were here first, they claim not to be bound by federal, state or local laws. (It’s not clear how this applies to Native Americans.)

Like the Tea Party movement (that also needs to be flushed), Sovereign Citizens have selective memories and are selective readers of the Constitution. They also completely ignore the many statements made by our Founding Fathers that express the view that our Constitution placed everyone personally under federal authority.

And, like the Tea Party, Sovereign Citizens subscribe to a number of bizarre conspiracy theories and demand a return to the gold standard. The SPLC describes them this way: “Sovereigns believe that they – not judges, juries, law enforcement or elected officials – get to decide which laws to obey and which to ignore.” They often resort to violence in defiance of authority. Indeed, many are heavily armed, posing a serious threat to anyone with whom they disagree.

They’re not only in the wrong country. They’re in the wrong century!

The Bush Legacy Of War.

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Whatever your position on military action in Syria, your decision has likely been influenced by the Iraq War.

In 2003, the Bush administration told the US and the world that the invasion of Iraq was necessary in order to overthrow a sadistic leader; a leader who had used chemical weapons against Iran (with our blessings) and had even used chemical weapons against his own people (we drew no red line then). We were told that there was a growing mushroom cloud over Iraq and that, if we failed to act, that mushroom cloud would likely appear over the US. We were told that the invasion of Iraq would take a matter of days or weeks and that it would pay for itself through the profits from Iraqi oil.

We now know that the Bush administration lied. Even General Colin Powell who made the case before the UN admits that he was given faulty information and misled.

Now many of the same people behind the invasion of Iraq are calling for war with Syria’s Assad. John (the Warhawk) McCain was the first to weigh in, along with his partner in war Lindsey Graham. Former Bush Secretary of Offense, Donald Rumsfeld has also made his opinion known. So has Richard (The Dick) Cheney. They tell us that the reputation of the United States is at stake; that if we fail to strike, our enemies will walk all over us.

Really?

Do our enemies not already know that we spend more on our war machine than the next seven nations combined? And most of those are allies. None are actual enemies. Given that fact, it’s hard to imagine that a failure to strike against Assad in Syria will cause our enemies to start assembling their forces off our shores.

Today, our real enemies are small rogue nations and terrorist groups angered by all of our previous missteps, mostly in the Middle East, as the world’s self-proclaimed police force. Some of these enemies are the very people who are trying to defeat Assad. They will not be threatened by any strike against Assad. However, Syria’s allies, Russia and Iran might be.

The consequences of a rushed and ill-considered strike could be devastating. It could provoke Russia and Iran. It could destabilize Syria, much like Iraq. And it could embroil the entire region.

If the Obama administration is determined to send a message to Assad, it is going about it the right way in asking for a vote by Congress. (A strike against another government is, after all, an act of war and only Congress has the power to declare war.) Unlike Bush, the Obama administration should encourage that vote by presenting what we actually know about Assad’s use of chemical weapons. Not just what we think or want to believe.

Once Congress has voted, the US should take a well-substantiated case to the UN. After all, the ban of the use of chemical weapons is the result of an international treaty. We should not go it alone. We should not be rushed into action. We should not be pushed by the warmongers from a few countries in the region. And we should all recognize that, after Bush’s misadventures in Iraq, much of the rest of the world is understandably skeptical.

If the UN does approve military action against Assad, there should be a real coalition. Not some “coalition of the willing” as Bush claimed in Iraq. Any nation that votes for action should be willing to participate. And they should be willing to help pay for it.