An Interview with Evil

Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. (II Corinthians 11:14)

Bashar al-Assad’s remarkable interview with Fox News Senior Foreign Affairs Correspondent Greg Palkot last week showed a man deluded by his own contradictions. His performance was a stunning demonstration of the transformative nature of evil.

The interview was arranged by Dennis Kucinich, once a Democratic congressman, now a Fox News contributor, who had a relationship with Assad from his days in Congress. At the time the interview was agreed to, an American attack was imminent. By the time the interview was conducted, that situation had changed and Russia had intervened as peacemaker with Assad’s agreement to turn over control of his chemical weapons arsenal. Although Kucinich asked about half of the questions, introductory remarks prior to airing the interview said Kucinich was not representing Fox News nor was he present in the capacity of a journalist. Perhaps his participation was recompense for having secured the interview. Still most of his questions were tough, probing, and relentless in their pursuit of an answer.

The interview is about an hour in length and can be seen online and the text of the interview is also available online. By mutual agreement, the interview, conducted in the Presidential Palace in Damascus, was video-recorded by a Syrian camera crew. But the video was not edited. There were no restrictions on the questions that could be asked nor did Assad see them in advance. His answers were given in English; no translator was present. That he would allow himself to be questioned on the world stage so openly in a foreign language was simply astonishing, revealing a solipsistic confidence that he could plausibly answer any question impromptu.

We are rightly shocked by the evil made manifest in the Boston bombings, the 9/11 attacks, and the wanton killings of last week’s Navy Yard shooting. We expect the perpetrators of such malevolence to look monstrous like Jared Loughner’s smirkingly insane face, or Beowulf’s Grendel, or Humbaba the hideous antagonist of Gilgamesh. We don’t expect the killer of perhaps 1,500 humans, including children – a man responsible for over 110,000 deaths and the displacement of millions – to act like an avuncular gentleman engaged in polite conversation as if the topic were the finer points of American literature versus its British counterpart. Yet that was Assad. Satan, Paul observed, can appear as an angel of light. No doubt his minions, Assad among them, are able to do likewise.

Kucinich began the interview by reminding Assad he has always disputed that Syria possessed chemical weapons. After some Clintonesque parsing of the word “if”, Assad conceded that Russia’s intervention and the agreement to release Syria’s chemical weapons for destruction, was tacit admission that Syria did in fact possess chemical weapons.

Kucinich: We know that President Obama and Secretary Kerry have said in the past that you were lying – that’s their word, not mine – when you said that you didn’t have any chemical weapons. A few days ago, in an interview with Russia Channel 24 you admitted you had chemical weapon stockpiles. Now, I just want to make sure we’re clear before we go forward: do you or do you not have chemical weapons?

President Assad: First of all, regarding what Obama and Kerry said, I dare them to say that we said “no” once. We never said it. We never said no, we never said yes, but we always say it’s a classified issue, we don’t have to discuss it, and if we want to talk about it, we say “if” and “if” means you may have it, you may not. So, this is a blatant lie.

Kucinich: Okay, but can you tell us now? Do you have chemical weapons or don’t you?

President Assad: Of course, when we joined the treaty last week, it means that we have, and we said that, so it’s not secret anymore.

The interview continued to another point of contention.

Palkot: Let’s go on to the latest breaking news. There’s a lot of breaking news in this region right now, and that’s the just-released UN report on the chemical weapon attack last month in the outskirts of Damascus right now. According to this report, and this is the report you said you were waiting for. You said you didn’t want to hear the US, you didn’t want to hear the UK, you didn’t want to hear France, you want the UN to speak, and they have spoken, and they have said and I quote “there’s clear and convincing evidence that the nerve gas Sarin has been used”, and they base this on environmental, chemical, medical samples, they say the killing happened on a relatively large scale, that killing included children. Do you agree with this assessment?

Assad acknowledged that he had heard about a Sarin gas attack but disputed that the report was backed up by “evidence.” Palkot averred that 40 to 50 eye witnesses had confirmed the attack. Assad’s “yes but” was that he hadn’t discussed the evidence with the UN delegation. Palkot countered that the evidence was confirmed in the UN 38-page report. But, Assad claimed, he hadn’t seen the report. Pinning down Assad is like nailing Jell-O to the wall. Palkot tried again:

Palkot: Let’s go hypothetical then. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said that this is in fact a war crime, that it is despicable, and that it is a grave violation of international law. If that event happened as they say it did happen, would it be despicable, would it be a violation of international law?

President Assad: That is self-evident of course.

Palkot: Self-evident.

President Assad: Of course, that’s self-evident, it is despicable, and it’s a crime.

The Ping-Pong match continued. Asked if he had seen the videos of children gagging and vomiting on the floor, Assad said they could be faked and that the UN would need to verify blood and soil samples. Palkot responded that the UN had verified samples. Then, according to Assad, the videos must also be verified. More Jell-O.

Palkot changed his line of attack:

Palkot: There’s a last key element to this UN report, and while the UN inspectors did not lay blame, that is they did not place culpability for the attack, there are many experts interpreting this report, some that I’ve spoken to in the last 12 hours, they frankly say this attack looks firmly like an attack coming from your government, from the Syrian government. They point to a few things; they say it was a large amount of gas, Sarin gas, maybe as much as a ton. The rebels could not have had that. They said the type of rocket, an M-14 artillery at 300 millimeters never used by the rebels before, that they needed large vehicles to send these rockets up, the rebels don’t have that, and maybe most importantly they point to the trajectory of the rockets. They say they were able to trace the rockets back from the impact point to where they came from, and in two different occasions, this is according to the UN, they say that the start point was Qasyoun Mountain, the headquarters of the republican guards. What do you say to that?

The UN report (which Assad claimed not to have read) didn’t mention the “republican guards,” Assad asserted, and moreover, any rebel can make Sarin gas, he claimed. In fact, it is so easily made it is called “kitchen gas” because it can be made in a home. Not this kind, Palkot contended. This attack involved a ton of gas launched from multiple rocket launchers of the type in Assad’s army at the launch point.

Follow Assad’s logic in the following response.

President Assad: This realistically cannot be possible. You cannot use the Sarin beside your troops, this is first. Second, you don’t use WMD while you are advancing, you’ve not been defeated, and you’re not retreating. The whole situation was in favor of the army. Third, we didn’t use it when we had bigger problems last year. When they talk about any troops or any unit in the Syrian army that used this kind of weapon, this is false for one reason because chemical weapons can only be used by specialized units. It cannot be used by any other units like infantry or similar traditional units. So, all what you mentioned is not realistic and not true. Definitely, so far as government, we have evidence that the terrorist groups have used Sarin gas and those evidences have been handed over to the Russians. The Russian satellites, since the beginning of these allegations at the 21st of August, they said that they have information through their satellites that the rocket was launched from another area. So, why to ignore this point of view? So, the whole story doesn’t even hold together. It’s not realistic. In one word, we didn’t use any chemical weapons in the Ghouta, because if you want to use it, you would harm your troops, you would have harmed tens of thousands of civilians living in Damascus.

In saying that “chemical weapons can only by used by specialized units” Assad contradicts his previous statement about the simplicity of making Sarin gas in a home.

With the chemical weapons existence and use out of the way, although certainly not at a point of agreement with Assad, the two main issues that dominated the remainder of the interview were the nature of the Syrian uprising – whether or not it was a civil war – and the severity of the government’s response – whether it has been so violent that no end of fighting or peace is possible if Assad remains in power.

Kucinich: One of the notions about this very serious conflict is that it’s a civil war. Would you agree with that characterization that you’re involved in a civil war?

President Assad: No, civil war should start from within the society. Civil war needs clear lines, geographical lines, social lines and sectarian lines, but we don’t have these lines in Syria. Civil war doesn’t mean to have 80 or 83 nationalities coming to fight within your countries supported by foreign countries. What we have is not a civil war; what we have is a war, but it’s a new kind of war.

Kucinich: So, you’re blaming outside interests for the acceleration of war. Now, there’s just some statistics that have come out from IHS James. They’re a defense analyst group. They estimate the opposition as a hundred thousand, 30,000 of which are hardline Islamists sympathetic to the 10,000 al-Qaeda-inspired Jihadists. Are any of these Syrians? Are they all outsiders? Where are they getting their money?

President Assad: First of all, no-one has these precise numbers. This is exaggeration, because most of the Jihadists, when they come to Syria, don’t come through countries or organizations. They just come by plane to neighboring countries and they cross the border like any other one, and they just want to come to Syria for the Jihad with the other Jihadists. So nobody has these numbers. We know that we have tens of thousands of Jihadists, but we are on the ground, we live in this country. What I can tell you is 80, and some say 90 – it is difficult to be precise, you don’t have clear and precise data – 80 to 90% of the rebels or terrorists on the ground are al-Qaeda and their offshoots.

This was important dialog in the interview. Middle East observers, at least those in the West, believe the Syrian uprising was a continuation of what started in Tunisia, spread to Libya, Egypt, and Yemen – whose leaders were toppled – and erupted as civil wars in Syria and Bahrain. Because the government crackdown in Syria was much harsher than Bahrain, it gained momentum and spread. This drew foreign fighters into the conflict, hoping to topple a secular government and replace it with an Islamic one. Escalation and expansion ensued, although the numbers of foreigners fighting are a minority, nothing like the 80% to 90% figure Assad asserts.

The Syrian Free Army is as concerned about the infiltration of al-Qaeda as Assad. The SRA ambushed and killed the top al-Qaeda leader and his escorts as they crossed the Turkish border into Syria.

Palkot pressed the civil war claim:

Palkot: … move back just two and a half year ago, that was the first protest here in this country. People said that was still a sign that people were unhappy, your own Syrian people, about your move to democracy, and that was simply what they were asking for: more democracy, more reform. They weren’t even asking for you to step down at the time. Critics will say you moved in too hard, too fast, with tanks, targeting protestors, torturing, etc. That is the critique of yours, and once again, missed another chance. How do you feel about that, two and a half years on?

More double-talk from Assad:

President Assad: Let’s ask a very simple question: if we want to oppress those people because we don’t accept their requests, why did the President himself – I said in one of my speeches at the very beginning of the conflict – why did I say publically that those people have legitimate demands? This is first. Second, if we are going to use the force, why did we change the constitution? Why did we change the law? Why do we have now more than 15 new political parties in Syria? Why did we change so many laws that they asked for? Because we knew it wasn’t about democracy. If they asked for democracy, how they did kill some of those people – I’m not generalizing – some demonstrators demonstrated for the reasons you mentioned, but some others they killed soldiers and killed policemen in the first week of the conflict. What is the relation between asking for democracy and killing and assassinating? So, we have to be very precise and differentiate between people who ask for democracy and terrorists. Part of those people who were opposing the government at the very beginning, today they support the government against the terrorists, because they asked for reform, but they didn’t ask for terrorists. So, you’re talking about two completely different situations between the beginning of the conflict and today. So, we’re still moving forward in the path of democracy, and part of the solution that I just mentioned few minutes ago when we sit around the table, the Syrian people will say what is the best constitution, what is the best political system. Do they want it parliamentarian, presidential, quasi-presidential, and so on. What laws do they want? Everything! So, it’s not the president who is going to set. If the people want to set up their own system, this is democracy.

Palkot attempts an end run around this response.

Palkot: Did you back your tactics in this war? A year ago, we stood in Homs, one of your great cities, and we watched as your artillery which was lined out around the outskirts of the city pound again and again relentlessly the center of the city. You say you’re going for the enemy, you say you’re going for the terrorists, but that – some would call it indiscriminate shelling – has left many, many civilians dead and, frankly, left that city, and many of your other great cities like Aleppo and others, in ruins. I mean, is this the way to go after, if you think that there are some terrorists out there, the terrorist enemies of your state?

Wrapping up the interview, Palkot made a good case that the Syrian conflict now has the attention of the international community and that, for the first time in 30 months, there may be a way forward through negotiations with representatives of the Free Syrian Army. Palkot asked Assad if he was “in” until the end or would he step aside if doing so would bring peace.

“We are going to have a free election next year in May 2014,” Assad said. Anyone may also choose to run, he said. But that wasn’t the question.

Palkot: Mr. President, as a reporter, I just want to tell you what I see as I travel around the country. I have seen this crisis going on. Right now, looking as you do at your country with maybe 60% or 70% of your territory out of your control, and maybe 40% of your population out of your control; six million people are displaced; almost third of your country have been displaced by this war. We talk about the death toll and those who were injured. Do you see any way back, do you see any way that the people could again be behind you in totality? Do you see anything that you could do at this point to make up for these two and a half years of horror, bloody grinding war which this country had been put through?     

When the mythological Pandora was given her mystical box she was told not to open it. But open it she did and all the evils it contained escaped to afflict the world.

The Syria war is like Pandora’s Box. Assad’s army has unleashed evil, mostly on civilians. Jihadists have been drawn into the maelstrom bringing their monstrous inhumanities. Video images I’ve seen show bound captives beheaded by children, their childish innocence stolen by foreign fighters who chanted encouragement from the sideline. Christian priests have been decapitated. Syrian soldiers have had their chests cut open, their hearts and livers removed, and those organs eaten before a camera, leaving me to wonder if a person capable of such heinous acts was still a member of the human race. Can a country that has experienced these atrocities ever return to “normal” even if Assad were to step aside?

As the contents of Pandora’s wondrous box escaped, a compassionate god in the Greek pantheon intervened to let her shut the lid and retain the last of its contents – the spirit of hope.

Would that Syria is as fortunate.

Vladimir Putin: Man of Peace

No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization.

A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of terrorism. It could undermine multilateral efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and further destabilize the Middle East and North Africa. It could throw the entire system of international law and order out of balance.

Syria is not witnessing a battle for democracy, but an armed conflict between government and opposition in a multi-religious country. There are few champions of democracy in Syria. But there are more than enough Qaeda fighters and extremists of all stripes battling the government. The United States State Department has designated al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, fighting with the opposition, as terrorist organizations.

Mercenaries from Arab countries fighting there, and hundreds of militants from Western countries and even Russia, are an issue of our deep concern. Might they not return to our countries with experience acquired in Syria? After all, after fighting in Libya, extremists moved on to Mali. This threatens us all.

We are not protecting the Syrian government, but international law. We need to use the United Nations Security Council and believe that preserving law and order in today’s complex and turbulent world is one of the few ways to keep international relations from sliding into chaos. The law is still the law, and we must follow it whether we like it or not. Under current international law, force is permitted only in self-defense or by the decision of the Security Council. Anything else is unacceptable under the United Nations Charter and would constitute an act of aggression.

It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan “you’re either with us or against us.”

But force has proved ineffective and pointless. Afghanistan is reeling, and no one can say what will happen after international forces withdraw. Libya is divided into tribes and clans. In Iraq the civil war continues, with dozens killed each day. In the United States, many draw an analogy between Iraq and Syria, and ask why their government would want to repeat recent mistakes.

A new opportunity to avoid military action has emerged in the past few days. The United States, Russia and all members of the international community must take advantage of the Syrian government’s willingness to place its chemical arsenal under international control for subsequent destruction. Judging by the statements of President Obama, the United States sees this as an alternative to military action.

I welcome the president’s interest in continuing the dialogue with Russia on Syria. We must work together to keep this hope alive

My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.

These excerpts, from Vladimir Putin’s recent New York Times op-ed piece regarding the Syrian crisis, are remarkable in at least three respects: (i) they are the words of the leader of a hostile nation speaking directly (through one of their major newspapers) to the American people over the head of their leader, (ii) they were published on 9/11 – a day which lives in infamy, to borrow a phrase from FDR, and (iii) they parrot the liberal anti-American drivel that Obama has been spewing since his 2008 election – i.e. the supremacy of the UN among sovereign nations, America’s unexceptional nature, America the bully, etc. Obama’s “blame America first” rhetoric was inevitably bound to be shoved in his face by our adversaries like a pie in a Mack Sennett comedy routine.

Asked by a reporter in 2009 if he believed in American exceptionalism, Obama answered "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." In other words, every nation is exceptional therefore no nation is. Three years ago I blogged on the origin of the concept, which was articulated in 1831 by Alexis de Tocqueville in his commentary entitled Democracy in America describing the year he spent traveling this country. The fact that Obama doesn’t view America as exceptional speaks volumes about his political philosophy. That Putin doesn’t consider America as exceptional is understandable from an adversary.

America most certainly is exceptional, Obama and Putin notwithstanding. Its exceptionalism allowed Putin to publish his critical and disingenuous remarks even though he does not have the constitutional protection of our First Amendment. And he did so on the 12th anniversary of a sacred day when violence rained death from the sky in our country. I doubt that Obama would be accorded the same opportunity to speak to the Russian people in Pravda on the anniversary of, say, the Bolshevik or October Revolutions.

As exceptional as America is, it isn’t a license to do as it pleases in a world of full of neighbors. The Syrian face-off originated with an off-handed remark Obama made last year to a reporter about Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal.

We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.… We’re monitoring that situation very carefully. We have put together a range of contingency plans.

Those are the words of war. They are at least an ultimatum that invites testing of the speaker’s resolve. Obama, however, didn’t engage in any credible activities to show Assad and the “other players on the ground” that he was prepared to back up his words with action. When the testing came, Obama blinked. He stalled for a year as the confrontation gained momentum. Putin saw a weak president, unpopular at home, who could be tangled in his own rhetoric and forced to sell a military strike to an unwilling Congress and American public. Putin’s offer of a compromise solution accomplished two things: it made him look statesman-like and it rerouted the matter through the UN where Russia can block actions not in its interests. Checkmate.

Putin can fret about the fate of the League of Nations and chide against “go it alone” actions of a sovereign nation, but the Russian president, an alleged expert in judo, used judoic diplomatic skill and judoic political leverage to exploit the corner Obama had painted himself into. Putin’s op-ed attempts to strike a chord among the war weary American public and their elected leaders by reminding them that “Afghanistan is reeling” and that Libya, which scandalously cost the lives of an American ambassador and three others, “is divided into tribes and clans” while “… in Iraq the civil war continues with dozens killed each day.” He alludes to al-Qaeda, which has infiltrated the Syrian insurgency, discredits the Syrian uprising as a democracy movement, and hints that Israel’s always-on conflict with the Palestinians could be destabilized. And then the pièce de résistance: “In the United States, many draw an analogy between Iraq and Syria, and ask why their government would want to repeat recent mistakes.” Well done, Vlad!

The op-ed comes across as a well-reasoned argument to give peace a chance. Hard to argue with that. But at what price? Assad’s use of chemical weapons is a violation of international law, the same law that Putin argues would be violated by an unprovoked American attack on Syria. Curious double standard there.

The US will have to agree not to strike independent of a UN authorization, which hangs a boat anchor around our neck. Assad will in return give up chemical weapons, or at least access to them, but otherwise suffers no international consequence for using them or for killing 100,000 of his people. Giving up his chemical weapons, if Assad ever does that, is like ordering a killer to surrender his murder weapon to the authorities but not arresting him for the murder. The op-ed is deceptively clever in its argument.

Meanwhile, don’t be swayed by a Trojan Horse wearing sheep’s clothing. Even as Vlad’s thought piece appeared in the New York Times, he was announcing to the world that Russia would be supplying a nuclear reactor to Iran complete with a picket fence of anti-aircraft missiles. What are we to think of this? But of course! Putin plans to be the major actor in the Middle East. Playing to the folks back home and for the eyes of the Middle East, Putin stood up to the bad ole US. He “saved” Syria from the legacy of American adventurism – which Obama broadcast in his first term apology tours as an American sin. And Putin invited Iran and its nuclear future to get under Russia’s protective blanket.

Obama’s presidential incompetence and the bumbling fecklessness of two Secretaries of State have led this region closer to a nightmare scenario that could ultimately pressure Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Turkey to align themselves with America or its enemies in a fight for regional dominance that could mushroom into world dominance. If you believe in the literal meaning of John’s vision in Revelation 16:16 “Then they gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon,” this could be it. Armageddon is a corruption of Har Megiddon (Mount Meggido) that overlooks the Jezreel Valley  located in Israel and  surrounded by the Palestinian West Bank, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon – the hot spot of the Middle East.

On the heels of the op-ed publication, reporters rushed to get statements from Washington’s political class, curiously concluding that anyone would care. Most politicians were publicly put off by a foreign dignitary criticizing US policy directly to the American public. Who knows if their private thoughts jibe with public comments they’ve made in the past that sound strangely Putin-like. The White House blew the op-ed off as “irrelevant.” Obama said he was more interested in “getting the policy right” than in winning “style points,” whatever that means.

Robert Menendez (D-NJ), the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which is key to Middle East affairs oversight, said the op-ed made him want to “vomit.” Interesting moralizing from a man who last year short-changed two underage prostitutes providing him room service in a Dominican Republic resort.

Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) denounced Putin’s argument as did Senator John McCain (R-AZ) who called Putin’s op-ed “an insult to the intelligence of every American.” An insult to the intelligence of every American? More than half of those intelligent Americans voted to reelect Obama.

Putin’s op-ed closes with a nice subliminal flourish: “We must work together to keep this hope alive.” Ah, the audacity of the hopeful man.

Putin won this round of face-off handily. He got everything he wanted. We got nothing.

The Pros and Cons on Syria

The Syria civil war has been going on for 30 months and despite “red line” threats from Obama he has not sought to insert the US into that conflict. Even the promise of weapons to the rebels has yet to produce the delivery of one rifle. The war’s toll is estimated to have caused over 100,000 deaths and over two million refugees thus far. But last month’s alleged use of chemical weapons by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, killing between 500 and 1,500 civilians and insurgents, raised the table stakes and forced Obama to make good on his red line threat or look feckless in the eyes of the world, which include eyes in Iran and Russia.

I use the term “alleged” because several analyses of the photos and videos believe them to be staged. Moreover, the intelligence is suspect that the deaths, if indeed they occurred, were the result of chemical weapons because the ratio of survivors to deaths is 10:1 – unheard of in a chemical attack. The videos of the attack showed people “dying” unlike they die in gas attacks, and the people shown handling the corpses and survivors did so without any protection. The White House “evidence” is detailed in a carefully-worded statement available online.

Oddly, when Obama and Friends were persuaded that Assad had violated the Chemical Weapons Convention – a curious piece of morality that specifies the right and wrong way of killing one’s enemies – there was no move to call Congress back into session to collaborate on a red line response. Instead, Obama took in a round of golf and then hopped on Air Force One to go abroad for a while, as he is wont to do when confronted with a dilemma. Abroad he denied he had set a red line, blaming the world for setting it. And while denying that he needed congressional approval for him to commit an act of war against Syria, the US Constitution notwithstanding, Obama asked for speedy congressional approval for him to commit an act of war against Syria. Helping the insurgency topple Assad, whom Obama says must go, would ally America with al-Qaeda, against whom we’ve declared war, because AQ fighters are fighting with the Free Syrian Army.

Are you following all of this?

Meanwhile Secretary of Bumbling, John Kerry, held up his end of this Keystone Kops routine. In London he put his size 13½ in his mouth by saying Syria could avoid an American attack by handing over its chemical weapons to international authority. Russia said, “I’ll take that bet,” and Syria seconded the motion. Oops. Checkmate. The attack is on hold while Syria and Russia pretend to negotiate the international control agreement – for a couple of years. Stunned, the State Department tried to walk back what Kerry said, calling it “rhetorical” and “hypothetical.” Kerry rhetorically gave Assad one week to turn over his chemical arsenal.

After calling Assad a “thug” and a “murderer” and comparing him to Hitler, Kerry parried a London reporter’s thrust about involving America in another war, Kerry said that what his boss had in mind was “a very limited, very targeted, very short-term effort” attack that would be “unbelievably small.” Unbelievably small? You mean compared to Hiroshima? Like a wrist slapping maybe? And an unbelievably small attack is going to make Assad behave and be a good boy? Kerry is being relentlessly mocked for his unbelievably unconvincing rationale for doing anything against Syria and Obama’s chances of getting congressional approval went from slim to none.

The Syrian situation is a mess, made worse by the incompetence of Obama’s non-existent Middle East policy. When your enemy (and friends) can’t predict what you’ll do, you’ll be tested – a lot. Whether a chemical weapon attack happened or not, Obama and Friends have signaled they believe it happened. Now what? What are the pros and cons for taking action now?

First the pros.

There is a consequence for doing nothing. With Obama’s red line rhetoric, he loses credibility if he does nothing. Worse, America loses credibility with allies and potential allies around the world. Future presidents will assume office with Obama’s credibility gap and will be forced to prove themselves. Given the choice between the world – friends and foes – fearing the US or not, I’ll take fear every time. You tend to be left alone when feared. So high on the pros list would be that as a country, we don’t win with a weakened president, even one whose performance is unacceptable to 57% of the people. We still have 40 more months to put up with this guy.

Another pro, somewhat related, is that our enemies – notably Iran and Russia which have high stakes in the Middle East – are watching our response to a violation of the International Chemical Weapons Convention. Syria is not a signatory, but we are and so are most of the 190 countries in the world. I fail to see the distinction between killing people with bullets or gas – they are just as dead either way – but if opponents are going to fight to the death both sides ought to have an equal chance to die. If bad guys can use chemicals and get away with it, a new normal is established.

An argument in favor of toppling Assad is that he does possess a known chemical arsenal. For all of its other nasty attributes, chemical weapons are instruments of terror as much or more weapons for killing. The knowledge that they can be used has force in the balance of power. As a client of Iran and Russia, Assad is a threat that weapons of this ilk will proliferate in the region if not beyond and threaten regional stability including American military assets in the region.

Another pro for intervention in the Syrian war is that it is spilling over into neighboring countries that are our allies – Jordan and Turkey, for example. The al-Qaeda jihadists who are fighting alongside of the Free Syrian Army cannot be allowed to establish a presence in these other countries. If they do, they will cause instability which could ultimately topple governments that are on “our side” more than the side of the region’s bad guys.

America is the world’s only super-power. With that arguably comes the responsibility to keep the global neighborhood safe and away from US shores. Thus, another possible pro is that there is no practical way to be isolationist in today’s world. A threat to peace that is allowed to flourish and gain power like a hurricane at sea ultimately comes ashore as a threat to US interests. Think about the rise of Nazism between 1933 and 1940 which went unchallenged, swallowed almost all of Europe, and became a threat to the free world. Conquering it required almost five years and cost 60 million lives, half of them Russian.

Finally, Americans are a compassionate people. We can’t right every wrong, but it’s hard to sit on the sidelines while a petty despot slaughters his people or warring factions kill each other as happened in Rwanda and Darfur, and until UN sanctions, Bosnia.

Now for the cons.

There are no American interests involved in the Syrian civil war. After 2½ years of fighting neither side can claim victory and no end is in sight. While Assad has the military assets, his army is becoming demoralized. Desertions and defections are a growing risk as the war goes on. The chemical weapons attack may have been an act of desperation by Assad since he has been unable to land a knockout punch. We should all be repelled that a despot would kill his own people, but the chemical attack killed between 500 and 1,500 allegedly. Over 100,000 have been killed since the war started which failed to move the Obama administration (or the UN) to act.

When Obama made his Rose Garden announcement at the beginning of this month arguing that Assad’s use of chemical weapons was a threat to our national security and justified a US military strike, it apparently was not enough of a threat to justify calling Congress back into session. Schlepping off to Sweden and a meaningless G-20 meeting for three days in which most of his time was spent sightseeing didn’t signal that this new threat to national security was keeping him awake at night.

The second con, in my opinion, is that the insurgency fighting against Assad has become radicalized since the war started. Al-Qaeda jihadists are pouring into the fight. Look at Libya and Egypt to see how this is likely to turn out with Assad gone. We should ask ourselves if life is better for the Egyptians and Libyans now than it was under Mubarak and Gaddafi. If Assad is toppled the chemical weapons are in play. We would be compelled to intervene to prevent their ending up in al-Qaeda hands.

Unintended consequences – my third con – always follow intervention into the affairs of another country. Our batting average for interventions in this part of the world isn’t good. Saddam Hussein’s army was defeated in months; we spent years dealing with the insurgency. So let’s say we lob a few missiles into Syria. What are we going to do if Assad uses chemical weapons again? What will we do if all of the Israel-haters in the region rain hell on that country in retaliation? What if our naval assets in the region are attacked, Middle Eastern oil is disrupted, sleeper cells in the US repeat Boston bombings, and/or Russia, Iran, or China enter the fray we cause? There are real threats that these things can happen today without our intervention in Syria. Will we increase their likelihood with an intervention?

How effective will an “unbelievably small” strike be? Obama has practically given Assad the date, time, and targets. Everything that can be hidden among the civilian population will be. Our strike will surely kill civilians. What then is the difference in our killing Syrian civilians and Assad doing it? Images – real and fake – of the collateral damage caused by our attacks will be streamed to the world. Our image in the world, already in tatters, will become even worse.

Another con is Obama himself. Who has confidence in his leadership, especially in things military? He has no grand strategy for the Middle East. What he says and what he ultimately does are often different. He is a politician turned amateur president whose silver-tongued oratory and two elections confirmed H. L. Menken’s famous observation: “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public” – at least the majority that voted for him twice.

With a job approval rating in the low 40s he is not likely to risk his reputation further in bold strikes. The strike he has in mind will be mostly symbolic. Last week’s Reuters poll had 56% of the public opposed and 19% for Syrian intervention. Congressional phone-ins are running ten to one against intervention. Only 33% of this week’s Wall Street Journal poll favored congressional authorization of a strike and less than one in four believed military action was in the nation’s interest.

Obama the dove is suddenly Obama the hawk. The UN, which Obama has argued repeatedly should always sanction US interventions, hasn’t authorized US action and isn’t likely to with Russia and China on the National Security Council. The British Parliament embarrassed its Prime Minister by turning thumbs down on any involvement in a Syrian retaliation – the first time a Prime Minister’s request has been rejected by Parliament since the 18th century. Only the vast military armada and fighting resolve of France stands with us. Bottom line. We go it alone – another con. We are trying to be the world cop even as Obama is stripping the military to feed money into his domestic agenda.

With the IRS scandal, the NSA snooping, the unanswered questions on Benghazi, the looming debt ceiling debate, and government spending, among many domestic issues dogging Obama, one has to wonder if Syrian intervention is a “wag the dog” deflection of the public’s attention. Too cynical? Remember when Clinton ordered a missile attack on an aspirin factory in the Sudan on the same day Monica Lewinsky appeared before Ken Starr’s grand jury? Stranger things have happened.

Since a Tunisian street vendor immolated himself in late 2010 igniting the “Arab spring,” Obama and Friends have been behind the power curve – paralyzed by if and how to provide leadership in the developing situation. Obama’s paralysis has not gone unnoticed by Russia’s Putin, who threw our amateur president a life line this week by playing the chemical weapons control chip.

Russia is no longer a world super power, but unlike Obama’s faux red line, Russia’s red line for sustaining the Assad regime has teeth in it. Among other reasons, Russia’s only Mediterranean seaport is in Syria – a deal sealed in 1971 when big daddy Assad was running the family business. Its anchorage there may only be rusting Soviet era ships but it is symbolic that Russia is still a player to be reckoned with in Middle East politics. Putin won’t stand aside for another ally to be toppled as happened with Gaddafi in Libya.

Candidate Obama promised to transform America if elected president. Criticizing America’s so-called colonial past, as reflected in its intervention in foreign countries, he went on an apology tour and shocked Americans by bowing to foreign leaders as if bent on destroying this country’s power and influence in the world.

At least in one commentator’s mind, he has succeeded. A week ago Conrad Black began his weekly column with these words

Not since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, and before that the fall of France in 1940, has there been so swift an erosion of the world influence of a Great Power as we are witnessing with the United States.

I’ll second that.

The Federal Reserve and Its Discontents

As we approach the centennial of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 in December, it is at least a symbolic opportunity to look back from the perspective of a hundred years and argue (in a rhetorical sense) that (i) the law accomplished what its framers hoped and (ii) the country has benefitted from having a Fed regardless of the framer’s intent.

One place to start would be to observe that, in the century since the Fed took over the chore of maintaining stable prices, prices have increased by 2,241% – far more than the inflation in the hundred years preceding the Fed’s guardianship. Price inflation is due largely to the depreciation of the dollar, whose value the Fed is also supposed to protect. The Fed’s record isn’t too good in doing that either; the dollar is now worth 3.8 cents. Dollars deflate in value because too many are printed for the available goods and services – a quantification unknowable even to omniscient beings like Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke.

Of course, they and their Fed forebears would argue that the Fed doesn’t print money. True, but money is soooo yesterday. The Fed accomplishes the same effect by creating out of thin air a credit to a reserve account (i.e. an accounting transaction that increases the cash balance) on the Treasury Department’s ledger in return for an interest-bearing Treasury note (an IOU) which the Treasury Department created out of thin air … and printed … along with the dollars represented by the Fed’s reserve credit. A lot of these dollars are turned over to the Fed’s best customer – the US Government – to pay for its profligate spending (and its borrowings.) And some of the dollars turn up in private commercial banks as the other half of a loan transaction. The private banks lend it to the private economy to earn interest – their stock in trade.

When the real economy – the one that sells goods and services for a profit (hopefully) – realizes that their cash profits don’t buy as much as they once did, because of the Fed invariably misreads how much money needs to be chasing the available supply of goods and services, they raise prices. ‘Course other merchants in the real economy are doing the same thing for the same reason. Consumers don’t escape this cycle either. They realize that their wages aren’t adequate to maintain their standard of living, so in time wages go up. One day Jack comments to Jill that he can remember when he bought the family car for $10,000 that now costs $30,000. He fails to recall that his wages have also gone up by about the same amount … more dollars but about the same purchasing power. It’s like a 1980s newspaper ad I recall: “1970 … ‘If I only earned $60,000, I’d be on Easy Street.’ 1980 and $60,000 later … ‘They moved the street.’”

“They” is the Fed.

Like the wheels on the bus that go “round and round” in the children’s ditty, the unvirtuous cycle of printing money, deflating the currency, and inflating prices goes round and round. It’s a bit more complicated than I’ve explained – but not much. The scary thing is this: there’s no natural limit on the Fed and Treasury in doing this trick.

The economic cycles we call booms and busts (recessions and depressions) occur, for the most part, when production and consumption get out of whack. Other circumstances can contribute – natural disasters and war, for example – but the origin of economic cycles is man-made. American society has suffered 18 recessions since the Fed was created to assure recessions didn’t happen. And with each recession, folks have to get out of the workforce so that production – which was overstimulated by Fed policy – gets back in line with consumption.

Unfortunately, like Mickey Mouse in Fantasia’s “Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” the Fed realizes too late that there are too many brooms carrying water. And like Mickey the Apprentice, the Fed jumps in to correct what it caused only to make it worse.

Why do you suppose that happens? Because Fed hubris tries to anticipate and manage human behavior through its policy – a fool’s errand. A big fool’s errand. In Milton Friedman’s magnum opus, Monetary History of the United States, which he wrote with Anna Schwartz, he argues that the Fed created the Great Depression and kept it going for years with its monetary policy mismanagement.

In a speech about ten years ago to celebrate Milton Friedman’s 90th birthday, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke agreed that Friedman and Schwartz had gotten it right about Fed policy:

Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again.

In the end, it would be World War II, not Fed monetary policy, which pulled the country out of the economic hell of the Great Depression.

Bernanke’s promise to Friedman and Schwarz notwithstanding, there is more than ample evidence the Fed policy was the culprit in the tech bubble of the 1990s and the housing crisis of the late 2000s. While markets are willing to play along with the Fed during the money-making stage of a boom-bust, it is the private sector that sees the folly before the Fed, and when the private sector pulls out of the game the boom turns to a bust.

The Federal Reserve System has been a target of criticism from both sides of the political aisle since its inception. Its 1913 creation was the third attempt to fashion a central banking system in this country. In the first attempt, Alexander Hamilton bargained for southern support for the First US Bank by trading New York City for Washington as the US Capitol site. Thomas Jefferson, among other Founders, hated the idea of a central bank, calling it an instrument for speculation. Two years after he left the presidency the bank’s charter expired and Congress refused to renew it.

The second attempt occurred in the administration of James Madison, the fourth president, who signed the charter for the Second US Bank. But the seventh president, Andrew Jackson, hated debt of any kind and believed its creation was the business of banks. Jackson grew up poor; as a child and an adult he saw what debt did to a society dependent on it. He pulled all US funds out of Madison’s bank and paid off the national debt (the only President to achieve that distinction) and when Second Bank’s charter expired, Congress once again failed to renew it.

The country was without a central bank for the next 75 years which included the Civil War period. There were recessions, depressions, and “panics” – bank runs – because there are greedy people in society. The bank run that got everyone’s attention was the Panic of 1907. An economic meltdown was averted only by the intervention of J.P. Morgan who called a meeting of the leading bankers in his home and locked them in his library until each signed up for a share of the money needed to pump liquidity into the economy. Morgan’s private banking syndicate became the prototype for the future Federal Reserve.

Given their experience in the 1907 Panic bankers concluded that the banking system was too decentralized to prevent another future panic and pushed Congress for consolidation. But the public thought the banking system was too centralized and that credit shortages were the fault of Wall Street bankers. The public wanted the big banks broken up. Forced to do something, Congress navigated for a solution between the Scylla of the banks and the Charybdis of the public.

Their task was made easier by the election of 1912 in which the Democrats won control of the Congress and White House. This allowed them to enact their liberal agenda the following year which included establishment of the income tax (16th Amendment) in February, the direct election of Senators (17th Amendment) in May, and the creation of the Federal Reserve System in December.

President Wilson’s demands for banking reform were met with the Wall Street bankers’ demand for a strong privately-controlled central bank.  William Jennings Bryan, Wilson’s populist Secretary of State, led the charge to make banks accountable to public supervision aka government management. Farm belt interests whose livelihoods depended on credit, wanted no part in making banks more powerful than they were. Each special interest group had its stake in the ground. Unfortunately, J.P. Morgan’s leadership in crafting a solution was sorely absent. He had died in March while abroad. No one in the country understood banking better than Morgan and he would have likely had a dominant and quite probably a positive impact on the design of the final product.

The principal sponsor of the Federal Reserve Act was Representative Carter Glass (D-VA) – an inveterate defender of state’s rights. He saw the need for banking reform and proposed privately-owned regional banks that would be free of Wall Street banking influence. When Woodrow Wilson proposed governance of the regional banks by a presidentially-appointed Board, Glass and Wall Street pushed back. This looked and smelled like a central bank.

In the end a compromise was struck that (i) would provide “elastic currency” which meant the ability to expand and contract the money supply to control inflation, (ii) would create a market for commercial paper as a method for managing bank liquidity, and (iii) would supervise banking practices. Nothing was proposed that gave the Federal Reserve a role in regulating economic activity, which it wields today.

The framers of the Federal Reserve Act, however, left so many details out that it’s unclear they understood how the system would operate. After all, they were politicians not businessmen. Morgan, had he lived, would have forced out the details. But it’s unlikely that any of the politicians present at the creation believed the Federal Reserve Board would become so powerful or that a man like Greenspan or Bernanke would hold such sway in economic affairs – both in this country and abroad. Certainly none envisioned a system not backed by gold whose only method of making good its promises was to tax money out of its citizens.

What evolved in the century following the passage of the Federal Reserve Act has been a system accountable to no private, public, or elected agency. It has no budget. It is not subject to an outside audit. Its activities are secret except for recaps of meetings released six weeks after those meetings.

Two decades ago Henry Gonzalez (D-TX) mounted a serious effort to bring accountability to the Fed. He did not propose Congressional control of the Fed's purse strings, but he did call for videotaping of their meetings, detailed minutes to be released within a week of policy meetings rather than bland summaries released six weeks after meetings. Gonzalez wanted independent audits of the Fed's operations and he wanted the President, who appoints the Chairman and Board of Governors, to appoint the presidents of the regional banks instead of their current method of selection. These don’t sound like unreasonable requirements for a shadowy organization that has so much impact on the American economy, businesses, and society.

Chairman Alan Greenspan objected to the Gonzalez proposals:

The lure of short-term gains from gunning the economy can loom large in the context of an election cycle, but the process of reaching for such gains can have costly consequences for the nation's economic performance and standards of living over the longer term. The temptation is to step on the monetary accelerator, or at least to avoid the monetary brake, until after the next election.

The reforms proposed by Gonzalez were shot down by the newbie Democrat President Bill Clinton because they ran the risk of undermining market confidence in the Fed. Huh? We’re not talking the Wizard of Oz here. Is the Fed so oracular in his judgments that making it more transparent undermines confidence in it?

Former Representative Ron Paul (R-TX), no fan of the Fed, introduced the Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2011, which passed the House last summer and predictably died in the do-nothing Senate. As law it would have required an audit of the Federal Reserve Board and the twelve regional banks, with particular attention to the valuation of its securities. One has to wonder why the Democrat-controlled Senate would object to such benign transparency, particularly since audits are routinely required in business organization by lenders and stock exchanges.

Representative Kevin Brady (R-TX) is Chairman of the Joint Economic Committee.  He believes the Fed centennial is an opportunity for a commission “to examine the United States monetary policy” and “evaluate alternative monetary regimes.” The commission has almost no chance of getting out of Brady’s Republican-majority committee let alone into law. It seems that Congress is content with the monster created by its legislative ancestors a century ago.

Whenever there has been an attempt by Congress to rein in the Fed, it has been met with a fusillade of defensive arguments that the independence of the Fed would be compromised if transparency was introduced. Allegedly the Fed would never be able to make the tough decisions in its never-ending battle against inflation – a battle which seems never to have victory or control of that evil enemy in sight – because the pursuer and the pursued are one and the same.