If anything demonstrates the real depths of the insanity that is US foreign policy, it is when lawmakers try to outflank the executive branch by indignantly proposing something even more destructive and outright stupid than the existing policy. They like to call it “getting tough” — as if sheer force of will must being their desired outcome in events thousands of miles away about which they most likely know little.
Witness this weekend’s appearance by the Representative from New York’s 16th Congressional district, Elliot Engel, demanding that the president’s already destructive policy of covert support for the rebels in Syria (most of whom happen to be foreign jihadists) become an overt and expanded policy.
“I will be introducing legislation to allow the president to arm the rebels,” Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) said on ABC’s This Week. “I think it’s time to do that.
What, one might ask, is a Member of the US House like Representatives like Mr. Engel, who strongly and passionately supports the State of Israel doing introducing legislation that would result in a gusher of arms flowing to “the fastest-growing al Qaeda front in the world, attracting fighters from across the Islamic world.”? Does it make sense?
What will Mr. Engel then propose when the bearded radicals finally overthrow the secular Assad and install Sharia rule in Syria? Does Mr. Engel support Sharia? Or will such a worse turn of events help ignite passions in the US for yet more military action in the Middle East to root out the problems caused by the victory of Mr. Engel’s allies in Syria? Then of course it will be “on to Iran”! The worse the better?
In the meantime who will be to blame for Mr. Engel’s allies’ repeated attacks on civilians in neighborhoods that refuse to join the uprising? And is it not also terrorism for the rebels to blow up neighborhoods that refuse to join their uprising, or is any manner of civilian slaughter to be justified by Mr. Engel as long as the goal of regime change is realized? And…then what, Mr, Engel?
Follow me on Twitter @DanielLMcAdams
8:39 am on February 25, 2013
