The Commentariat -- Aug. 31, 2013

The President's Weekly Address:

Dial-a-Senator. Mark Mazzetti & Michael Gordon of the New York Times: "The White House on Saturday moved to shore up domestic and international support for a possible military strike against the Syrian government.... Secretary of State John Kerry, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and other top aides to President Obama scheduled conference calls for Saturday afternoon with members of the United States Senate, where there was deep skepticism in both parties about the prospect of American involvement in another war in the Middle East, even the limited cruise missile strike under consideration.... There was no sign that the White House planned to seek a Congressional vote authorizing the use of force. In addition to Mr. Kerry and Mr. Hagel, both former senators, Adm. James A. Winnefeld Jr., the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, and Susan E. Rice, the president's national security adviser, will participate." ...

I would like to address Obama as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate: Before using force in Syria, it would be good to think about future casualties. Russia is urging you to think twice before making a decision on an operation in Syria. -- Russian President Vladimir Putin, to news agencies

... Michael Falcone of ABC News: "President Obama [Friday] said he has 'not made any decisions' on whether to launch a military strike on Syria, but sought to assure the American public and the international community that if he does, it will be a 'limited, narrow act.... We're not considering any open-ended commitment,' Obama said, adding, 'In no event are we considering any kind of military action that would involve boots on the ground, that would involve a long-term campaign":

Here's the "Government Assessment of the Syrian Government's Use of Chemical Weapons on August 21, 2013." ...

Our intelligence community has carefully reviewed and re-reviewed information regarding this attack. And I will tell you it has done so more than mindful of the Iraq experience. We will not repeat that moment. -- Secretary of State John Kerry, yesterday

... Joby Warrick of the Washington Post: "Unknown to Syrian officials, U.S. spy agencies recorded each step in the alleged attack, from the extensive preparations to the launching of rockets to the after-action assessments by Syrian officials. Those records and intercepts would become the core of the Obama administration's evidentiary case linking the Syrian government to ... the use of outlawed toxins to kill nearly 1,500 civilians, including at least 426 children. Pulling back the curtain on some of the United States' most sensitive collection efforts, the Obama administration released on Friday its long-awaited intelligence assessment [above] of the Aug. 21 event, explaining in rare detail the basis for its claim that Syria was behind the release of deadly gas, the grisly effects of which have been documented in more than 100 amateur videos. The four-page assessment and accompanying map revealed for the first time how communications intercepts and satellite imagery picked up key decisions and actions on the ground." CW: doesn't sound like a Colin Powell smoke-&-mirrors ops to me. ...

... Glenn Thrush of Politico: "Many of the leaks about U.S. strike plans for Syria ... have been authorized as a way for President Obama to signal the limited scope of operations to friends and foes. But a number of leaks have been decidedly unauthorized -- and, according to Obama administration sources, likely emanating from a Pentagon bureaucracy less enthusiastic about the prospect of an attack than, say, the State Department, National Security Council or Obama himself. 'Deeply unhelpful,' was how one West Winger described the drip-drip of doubt. 'They need to shut the f--k up,' said a former administration official." ...

It is clear that the American people are weary of war. However, Assad gassing his own people is an issue of our national security, regional stability and global security. -- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi

George W Bush couldn't have said it better. -- Digby

... Adam Serwer of NBC News: "... the administration's case that the Assad regime is responsible for the chemical weapons attack is persuasive. Less persuasive however, is the administration's case for a military response.... If Assad was willing to use chemical weapons to maintain his grip on power, it's unclear how 'limited strikes' not aimed at deposing him would dissuade him from doing so again...."

Barton Gellman & Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post: "U.S. intelligence services carried out 231 offensive cyber-operations in 2011, the leading edge of a clandestine campaign that embraces the Internet as a theater of spying, sabotage and war, according to top-secret documents obtained by The Washington Post. That disclosure, in a classified intelligence budget provided by NSA leaker Edward Snowden, provides new evidence that the Obama administration's growing ranks of cyberwarriors infiltrate and disrupt foreign computer networks. Additionally, under an extensive effort code-named GENIE, U.S. computer specialists break into foreign networks so that they can be put under surreptitious U.S. control." ...

... Mark Hosenball of Reuters: "The British government has asked the New York Times to destroy copies of documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden related to the operations of the U.S. spy agency and its British partner, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).... The British request, made to Times executive editor Jill Abramson by a senior official at the British Embassy in Washington D.C., was greeted by Abramson with silence, according to the sources." ...

... Robert Booth of the Guardian: "The [British] government took more than three weeks to act on authoritative information about the whereabouts of a collection of secret intelligence data leaked by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, despite now claiming the information risks 'grave damage' to the security of British intelligence and armed forces, the Guardian said on Friday. Guardian News and Media's editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, hit back at Downing Street's claims made in the high court that it 'urgently' needed to access leaked intelligence data seized at Heathrow this month from the partner of Glenn Greenwald...." ...

... Rory Carroll of the Guardian: "Microsoft and Google are to sue the US government to win the right to reveal more information about official requests for user data. The companies announced the lawsuit on Friday, escalating a legal battle over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa), the mechanism used by the National Security Agency (NSA) and other US government agencies to gather data about foreign internet users." Here's a statement from Microsoft. ...

... How Irresponsible Is This? David Barrett of the Telegraph: "David Miranda, [Glenn Greenwald's partner,] ... who was detained carrying thousands of British intelligence documents through Heathrow airport was also holding the password to an encrypted file written on a piece of paper, the government has disclosed." CW: I think it was contributor Haley S. who said she watched an interview of Miranda & he didn't appear to be very smart.

In an LOL column, Gail Collins encourages you to run for the U.S. Senate. And, hey, just because you live in, say, Brooklyn & have never been west of Buffalo, (New York, that is) don't think you can't be the Democratic candidate for Idaho. CW: I'm sensing Collins is just trying to encourage Anthony Weiner to consider a run. Aah, he's probably already filled out the paperwork. ...

... Meanwhile, There's Trouble on the Other Side of the Aisle. Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times: "Despite their careful efforts, some of the best-known and most influential Republicans in the Senate have been unable to shake threats from the right and have attracted rivals who portray these lawmakers as a central part of the problem in Washington. In Kentucky, Mitch McConnell, the party's Senate leader, is fending off a charismatic and wealthy conservative challenger. In South Carolina, Lindsey Graham, one of the Senate's most reliably conservative voices on foreign policy, is being painted by primary opponents as a veritable clone of President Obama. In Tennessee, Tea Party activists have vowed to take out Lamar Alexander, the veteran senator, former cabinet officer and two-time presidential candidate."

Society Page

Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will become the first Supreme Court member to conduct a same-sex marriage ceremony Saturday when she officiates at the Washington wedding of Kennedy Center President Michael M. Kaiser. The gala wedding of Kaiser and economist John Roberts at the performing arts center brings together the nation's highest court and the capital's high society and will mark a new milepost in the recognition of same-sex unions."

Allie Jones of the Atlantic: "Bowing to Tea Party pressure, Alabama State Senator Bill Holtzclaw said this week that he thinks The Bluest Eye, Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison's novel about a little black girl who wishes for blue eyes, should be banned in schools.... The Bluest Eye is on the 11th grade reading list for the Common Core, a set of standards that has been adapted by more than 40 states."

Jonathan Landay of McClatchy News: In Egypt, yellow journalism takes over as media outlets make laughable claims in support of the military regime & against the Muslim Brotherhood. "It's succeeding. A mid-August poll measured support for the breakup of the sit-ins at nearly 70 percent of Egypt's 90 million people, reflecting massive popular backing for the coup.... With almost no professional news outlets to present a balanced picture, the relentless vilification of the Brotherhood and its exclusion from politics could help drive members into the ranks of jihadists, risking a return of the Islamist insurgency that bloodied Egypt in the 1990s and bred some of al Qaida's top leaders." Thanks to James S. for the link.

Local News

Craig Gustafson & Mark Walker of the San Diego Union-Tribune: San Diego Mayor Bob Filner left office Friday. Council President Todd Gloria took over as interim mayor.

News Ledes

Los Angeles Times: "Pope Francis has taken a key step in reshuffling the Vatican's bureaucracy by replacing his much-criticized top aide with a career Vatican diplomat who has seen service on three continents. The Vatican said Saturday that Archbishop Pietro Parolin, 58, currently nuncio in Venezuela, will take office as Vatican secretary of state, the pope's prime minister, on Oct. 15, replacing Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, 78."

Guardian: "University of South Florida researchers began work to exhume dozens of graves on Saturday at a former Panhandle reform school, in the hope of identifying the boys buried there and learning how they died." The Tampa Bay Times story is here.

The Commentariat -- Aug. 30, 2013

NEW. Anthony Faiola of the Washington Post: "BREAKING NEWS: Secretary of State John F. Kerry says the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made preparations three days before last week's chemical weapons attack on the outskirts of Damascus and fired the rockets from regime-controlled areas. This story will be updated shortly." ...

     ... UPDATE by Karen DeYoung & Anthony Faiola: "Secretary of State John F. Kerry made a forceful case Friday for U.S. military intervention in Syria, saying that U.S. intelligence has information pinning responsibility for last week's chemical weapons attack squarely on the government of President Bashar al-Assad. In a speech at the State Department, Kerry said U.S. intelligence has 'high confidence' that the Assad government was responsible for the attack based partly on knowledge of regime officials' conversations about the attack and the tracking of movements of regime personnel before and after the strike":

... Julian Pecquet of the Hill: "Thursday night's briefing by top Obama administration officials exposed divisions among key lawmakers on what to do in Syria. Lawmakers on the unclassified conference call said the officials made it clear that President Obama is still weighing his options but believes 'beyond a doubt' that Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces used chemical weapons 'intentionally' in an attack last week that rebels say killed more than 1,000 people. They left convinced that Assad's forces were responsible for using chemical weapons, and that Obama should respond. But they were split on the timeline...." ...

... AFP: "French President Francois Hollande said Friday he remained committed to a firm response on Syria despite Britain's surprise rejection of armed intervention. 'France wants firm and proportionate action against the Damascus regime,' he said in an interview with Le Monde daily to be published Saturday. Hollande said all options were on the table and did not rule out military strikes within days...." ...

... Michael Gordon of the New York Times: "The goal of the cruise missile strikes the United States is planning to carry out in Syria is to restore the smudged 'red line' that President Obama drew a year ago against the use of poison gas. If carried out effectively, the strikes may also send a signal to Iran that the White House is prepared to back up its words, no small consideration for an administration that has proclaimed that the use of military force remains an option if the leadership in Iran insists on fielding a nuclear weapon." ...

... Mark Landler, et al., of the New York Times: "President Obama is prepared to move ahead with a limited military strike on Syria, administration officials said Thursday, despite a stinging rejection of such action on Thursday by America's stalwart ally Britain and mounting questions from Congress. The negative vote in Britain's Parliament was a heavy blow to Prime Minister David Cameron, who had pledged his support to Mr. Obama and called on lawmakers to endorse Britain's involvement in a brief operation...." ...

... Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post: "The administration insisted Thursday that President Obama has both the authority and the determination to make his own decision on a military strike against Syria, even as a growing chorus of lawmakers demanded an opportunity to vote on the issue and Britain, the United States' closest ally, appeared unlikely to participate." ...

... Paul Lewis & Spencer Ackerman of the Guardian: "Barack Obama's plans for air strikes against Syria were thrown into disarray on Thursday night after the British parliament unexpectedly rejected a motion designed to pave the way to authorising the UK's participation in military action.... The timing of the British vote, 272 to 285 against the government, was disastrous for Obama. Less than 30 minutes after the vote, senior intelligence officials began a conference call with key members of Congress, in an attempt to keep US lawmakers on side." ...

... This "guidance" issued by the Prime Minister, outlines the government's legal position re: its right to take action against Syria. ...

... Mike Lillis of the Hill: "... dozens of liberal Democrats joined scores of conservative Republicans in warning the administration that any strikes without congressional approval would violate the Constitution. In a letter to [President] Obama, 53 liberal Democrats -- including a long list of Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) members -- argued that, while the human rights atrocities being committed by the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad are 'horrific,' they alone 'should not draw us into an unwise war -- especially without adhering to our own constitutional requirement.'"

... ** SNAFU. Josh Rogin of the Daily Beast: "The Obama administration has refused to send gas masks and other chemical-weapons protection gear to Syrian opposition groups, despite numerous requests dating back more than a year and until the reported chemical-weapons attack that struck the Damascus suburbs August 21.... One former Obama-administration official said the national-security staff ... ruled out providing gas masks, though thousands sit in Defense Department warehouses all over the region, left over from the war in Iraq." ...

... ** Another Reason Obama Should Call a Special Session of Congress before Attacking Syria. David Atkins of Hullabaloo: "Those of us who know it's unfair tend to look down on those who think the Presidency is essentially an elected kingship, and who believe that the President can simply enact universal healthcare, deftly reduce the deficit and end student loan debt with a wave of his hand. But why shouldn't they believe that, after all, when the President can simply decide to drop bombs on another country without an act of Congress?" ...

... David Rieff in the New Republic: "Orwell famously said that 'if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.' Posing the question of how to respond to the Assad's regime's use against its own people of the most terrible weapon that exists, apart from nuclear bombs, in terms of punishment is a prime example of this. Such metaphors are prophylactics against thought. The United States is neither the world's parent..., with the unwelcome but necessary responsibility of administering a spanking to a delinquent child, and still less is it the world's judge, jailer, or, to judge by the Weekly Standard letter..., its executioner, tasked with putting the Assad regime to death.... I remain entirely convinced that the correct course would be to refrain from any military action against the Assad regime.

Richard Esposito, et al., of NBC News: "Edward Snowden accessed some secret national security documents by assuming the electronic identities of top NSA officials, said intelligence sources." ...

... CW: This article by Keith Wagstaff of the Week is very helpful in explaining how Snowden managed to access & download documents. I had thought his position as "systems administrator" meant he headed up a group of systems analysts, programmers &/or other systems personnel. That's not it at all; Snowden was even lower on the totem pole than I thought. Wagstaff cites Kevin Roose of New York: "The sysadmin is in charge of setting account permissions, creating and deleting accounts, and routing information to the correct people and places." Wagstaff writes, "Once Snowden had access to sensitive documents, his position as a system administrator allowed him to do what other NSA employees couldn't -- download files onto an external hard drive.... As ZDNet's Larry Seltzer notes, with only two levels of 'security access, "Top Secret" and "Unfettered", it's surprising that a Snowden-like leak didn't happen long ago.'" ...

... Barton Gellman & Greg Miller of the Washington Post: "U.S. spy agencies have built an intelligence-gathering colossus since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but remain unable to provide critical information to the president on a range of national security threats, according to the government's top secret budget. The $52.6 billion 'black budget' for fiscal 2013, obtained by The Washington Post from ... Edward Snowden, maps a bureaucratic and operational landscape that has never been subject to public scrutiny. Although the government has annually released its overall level of intelligence spending since 2007, it has not divulged how it uses those funds or how it performs against the goals set by the president and Congress.... The summary [budget] describes cutting-edge technologies, agent recruiting and ongoing operations. The Washington Post is withholding some information after consultation with U.S. officials who expressed concerns about the risk to intelligence sources and methods. Sensitive details are so pervasive in the documents that The Post is publishing only summary tables and charts online." ...

... CW: read the very last section of the report, titled "Counterintelligence." Oh, the irony. ...

... Here are the charts & "selected pages" of the "black budget" the Post has chosen to publish. CW: Again, bear in mind that Snowden gave the Post the entire black budget, including material that the Post was convinced could compromise national security. And Snowden has (or had) those compromising documents on him while he's living in Russia. ...

... Here's an interactive breakout of the national security budget, by agency. ...

... Joan McCarter of Daily Kos: "Tim Shorrock, author of Spies for Hire points out where a huge percentage of the money has gone: 'ODNI confirmed that 70% of the intel budget goes to contractors. With the new WaPo numbers, that's $36.8 billion in 2013 to BOOZ SAIC et al.' It's sustaining the intelligence/industrial complex, much like the grift that made plenty of millionaires out of the Iraq war. As with so many of the military contractors in Iraq, this is happening with very little oversight from Congress and -- until now -- no scrutiny from the public." ...

... Craig Timberg & Barton Gellman of the Post: "The National Security Agency is paying hundreds of millions of dollars a year to U.S. companies for clandestine access to their communications networks, filtering vast traffic flows for foreign targets in a process that also sweeps in large volumes of American telephone calls, e-mails and instant messages.... New details of the corporate-partner project ... confirm that the agency taps into 'high volume circuit and packet-switched networks,' according to the spending blueprint for fiscal 2013.... Voluntary cooperation from the 'backbone' providers of global communications dates to the 1970s under the cover name BLARNEY, according to documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. These relationships long predate the PRISM program disclosed in June..." ...

... Kevin Poulson of Wired: NSA Director James "Clapper writes in a line [of a summary report on the budget] marked 'top secret,' 'we are investing in groundbreaking cryptanalytic capabilities to defeat adversarial cryptography and exploit internet traffic.' The Post's article doesn't detail the 'groundbreaking cryptanalytic capabilities' Clapper mentions, and there's no elaboration in the portion of the document published by the paper. But the document shows that 21 percent of the intelligence budget -- around $11 billion -- is dedicated to the Consolidated Cryptologic Program that staffs 35,000 employees in the NSA and the armed forces. In a WIRED story in March of last year -- the pre-Snowden era of NSA reporting — James Bamford reported that the NSA secretly made some sort of 'enormous breakthrough' in cryptanalysis several years earlier." ...

... Craig Whitlock & Barton Gellman of the Post: "The U.S. commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden was guided from space by a fleet of satellites, which aimed dozens of receivers over Pakistan to collect a torrent of electronic and signals intelligence as the mission unfolded, according to a top-secret U.S. intelligence document [which Edward Snowden provided to the Post]." ...

... Just Ask Ed. CW: When Ed Snowden gets through releasing all these top-secret documents, & the various media outlets get through publishing them, no other government will ever have to ask, when blindsided by some U.S. maneuver, "How'd they do that?"

Elections Matter -- 1, 2, 3

(1) Treasury Department: "The U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) today ruled that same-sex couples, legally married in jurisdictions that recognize their marriages, will be treated as married for federal tax purposes. The ruling applies regardless of whether the couple lives in a jurisdiction that recognizes same-sex marriage or a jurisdiction that does not recognize same-sex marriage.

(2) Department of Health & Human Services: "Today, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a memo clarifying that all beneficiaries in private Medicare plans have access to equal coverage when it comes to care in a nursing home where their spouse lives. This is the first guidance issued by HHS in response to the recent Supreme Court ruling, which held section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional. 'HHS is working swiftly to implement the Supreme Court's decision and maximize federal recognition of same-sex spouses in HHS programs,' said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. 'Today's announcement is the first of many steps that we will be taking over the coming months to clarify the effects of the Supreme Court's decision and to ensure that gay and lesbian married couples are treated equally under the law.'"

(3) Brady Dennis of the Washington Post: "The Obama administration on Thursday said it will not stand in the way of Colorado, Washington and other states where voters have supported legalizing marijuana either for medical or recreational use, as long as those states maintain strict rules involving distribution of the drug. In a memo sent Thursday to U.S. attorneys in all 50 states, Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole detailed the administration's new stance, even as he reiterated that marijuana remains illegal under federal law."

David Catanese of the New Republic: Democrats should invest more in trying to regain the House & less in holding the Senate. CW: Catanese rather obliquely explains why. I think the real argument is that there are enough Republican Senators who aren't Tea Party-crazy that the Senate, no matter who holds it, could work with the House & President to pass legislation. But here's the thing: right now there are enough Republicans & Democrats in the House to pass legislation in a number of area, though such legislation would necessarily be more conservative than we like. It's just that the House leadership won't allow that. The trick is to finesse Boehner, et al. Democrats don't seem to be trying very hard to do that. ...

... BUT. Lori Montgomery of the Washington Post: "The Obama administration and a group of Republican senators abandoned efforts Thursday to hammer out a budget deal and avoid a showdown over the national debt, saying they had failed to resolve their long-standing dispute over taxes."

Tim Egan: media figures like Rush Limbaugh & Matt Drudge stoke racism every time they hear of a black-on-white crime, & Internet sites anywhere in the nation instantly bring to mind an "Alabama Klan meeting."

Republican Means Never Having to Tell the Truth. Tommy Christopher of Mediaite: "One of the controversies surrounding the 50th anniversary celebration of the March on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King's 'I Have A Dream' speech has been the absence of Republicans at the event, despite many of them having been invited. One prominent Republican, Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) [the only African American senator], told Roll Call through a spokesperson that he had not been invited, but the paper reported, Thursday afternoon, that an email confirms that Sen. Scott's office declined an invitation to the event earlier this month." Here's the Roll Call story.

Camille Dodero of Gawker comments on the reported execution of Hyon Song-wol, the ex-lover of North Korea's dear boy-leader. See also yesterday's News Ledes.

Senate Race

It seems Newark Mayor Cory Booker, who is running for the U.S. Senate, has an imaginary friend -- a drug-dealer whom he named "T-Bone" & whom Booker used to mention regularly in his speeches & interviews. Eliana Johnson broke the story at the National Review, but J. K. Trotter of Gawker debunks her source's claim that a New Jersey dealer would not adopt the handle "T-Bone." Gawker commenter "Not a Snort" sez, "... Back in the mid-90's, I used to hang out with a friend who was a Newark native, called himself Sirloin, and we would buy heroin together in some of the roughest neighborhoods there. Our regular dealer was a fellow named Rib Eye. His girl was an exotic dancer from Queens who went by the handle of N.Y. Strip. I remember being terrified of his 300 lb enforcer named Ground Round and his apprentice, Chuck. We used to meet up at a shooting gallery called the Porter House and just get wasted all day. Good times, if you overlooked all the bad cholesterol that was in the air."

Local News

Michael Barbaro of the New York Times: "Frustration with New York City's unaffordability and its aggressive police tactics is elevating Bill de Blasio, once dismissed as a left-leaning long shot, into the lead of the Democratic mayoral primary field, according to a poll by The New York Times and Siena College. Christine C. Quinn, the longtime front-runner in the nomination contest, is now lagging far behind Mr. de Blasio and struggling to connect with members of her own party: forty-five percent of likely Democratic voters view her unfavorably."

News Ledes

New York Times: "Seamus Heaney, a widely celebrated Irish poet who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995, died at a hospital in Dublin on Friday after a short illness, according to a statement issued on behalf of his family. He was 74."

Washington Post: "The FBI has arrested a man accused of making violent threats against freshman Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) -- threats that included her decapitation."

War, Words & Wittgenstein

This commentary by Akhilleus appeared near the end of yesterday's thread. In hopes of giving it a wider readership, I've copied it here:

On the use and misuse of language for political purposes.

A piece in the current New Yorker by Teju Cole on the ways in which clichéd approaches to language result in trite and defective thought processes led me to consider the way political expositions are currently being used in the run up to whatever the hell it is we are planning in Syria.

Akhilleus, August 29, 2013

It also reminded me of two old friends who have expressed similar trepidations regarding language and thinking, George Orwell and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Wittgenstein concerned himself with the limits and uses of language in two of his most important works. As a gunnery soldier in WWI he spent much time considering the problems of locution and propositions thereby expressed. This work became the “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus”. He later, in his “Philosophical Investigations” reexamined much of his thinking on language and explored how inaccurate use and understanding of the limitations of language could lead to unsound and imprecise thinking.

George Orwell, in an essay on “Politics and the English Language” reached pretty much the same conclusions albeit in a more congenial fashion. He was concerned that sloppy, unclear language begets similarly sloppy thinking and demonstrates (hilariously) how clichéd political language is used to hide rather than rectify spurious thinking underlying terribly erroneous decisions.

Our contemporary political discourse is not much better. Euphemisms such as “collateral damage”, “limited strike” “Shock and Awe” and “symbolic attack” obscure the linguistic landscape in clouds of dusty metaphor. But if you’re talking about dropping bombs as a symbol, I’d have to say that most symbols I’m familiar with don’t kill people. Poor or willfully misleading expressions of bad ideas lead inevitably to regrettable outcomes (see: War, Iraq).

If we are intent on sending a message of international disapproval, because that’s pretty much all this is (no regime change intended, at least so we say), specifically because of the use of chemical agents, then why have we not sent “messages” to other regimes whose intentions and actions toward their own people have been equally nefarious and deadly?

A more accurate and careful use of language, that is, an approach that jettisons clichés and anodyne, mystical euphemisms would demand clearer, more nuanced thinking. Defaulting to political bromide-speak serves only to cloud the goals and methods and offers little opportunity for judicious, rigorous thought. And if such issues have already been carefully parsed then the employment of political, euphemistic language to sway public opinion presents its own set of problems, namely, that of inaccurately describing intentions and methods, as ruefully seen during the Bush debacle.

A sidebar on chemical warfare: I’m not entirely convinced that chemical agents are that much worse than bombs, bullets, and rockets (but I’m open to opposition on this). Granted it’s much harder to protect oneself from a chemical attack, but if one’s house has rockets raining down on it there ain’t a much better chance of surviving attacks by conventional weaponry. And consider this, we didn’t care when Iraq gassed the Iranians. In fact, we helped. We didn’t care when Saddam gassed the Kurds. We shrugged our shoulders. Sure he was an evil prick, but he was our evil prick. And there are plenty of other evil pricks in the world besides Assad. Do we go after all of them? No one cared about genocide in Rwanda or the Congo or Cambodia (conventional weapons like machetes and AKs are equally useful for killing hundreds of thousands, even millions). So why here, why now? (The question is rhetorical.)

Chemical warfare has been used for centuries dating back to the use of poisoned arrows, which does not, of course, make it okay (don’t ask me to explain what part of any war is “okay”), but is rather an acknowledgement that chemicals in war have a long history. The original (fictional) Akhilleus, was felled by a poison arrow. German tribes being attacked by Roman Legions poisoned their water supplies, a move first decried then gleefully adopted by Rome. In 1899, a Hague Convention declared the use of chemical warfare out of bounds, with only one nation voting against it, the United States, whose representative was the influential military envoy Alfred Mahan. Captain Mahan's rationale for opposition was the desire not to tie the hands of future US weapons makers, improvements in the industrial manufacture of cool new chemical agents offering many exciting options for killing a shitload of people at once.

And after all, would a cloud of sarin gas have been worse than the firebombing of Dresden? The end result would still have been tens of thousands killed.

But, as I said, this is a sidebar. This isn’t to say that the Geneva Conventions should be set aside, but let’s be clear. It’s a weapon. It kills. That’s its purpose. Sure it guarantees a maximum impact against the enemy with little or no exposure (so to speak) for those using the weapon. But drone strikes do something similar (not on the same scale, of course).

And if we attack a country that offers us no imminent threat, other than some made up bullshit, then this is no better than what Bush and Cheney did in Iraq. It doesn’t take an enormous facility with clear language and clarity of thought to arrive at that conclusion, but it would help us think through this situation and perhaps allow us to either defenestrate this plan and come up with something that we (and the world) find more acceptable (such as what Marie suggests), both strategically as well as philosophically and politically, or find a clearer, more supportable rationale for moving ahead with the current plan of “symbolic bombing” , minus the weasel words and threadbare thinking.

It’s clear that the Obama administration feels that they are in a "damned if they do, damned if they don’t" situation, but that’s just another way of defaulting to clichéd thinking. There doesn’t have to be only those two outcomes. Clearer heads may very well come up a way of thinking and talking about this problem that will pry us free from clunky ideas and poorly examined options. And keep Orwell from another spin cycle in his grave.

And what would Wittgenstein say? He famously concludes his Tractatus by declaring that there are things that even the best language cannot accommodate:

“Concerning that of which we cannot speak, we must remain silent.”

In other words, just because you CAN say something, doesn’t mean it should be said or that it has any useful meaning in the world.

Advice rarely followed by politicians. Or political commentators.