http://lobelog.com/bombs-away-americas-latest-misguided-strategic-fad/#more-34700

Bombs Away! America’s Latest Misguided Strategic Fad

by James A. Russell
You know you’re in trouble when a group of State Department diplomats (of all people) join the hawkish consensus calling for an open-ended commitment to start blasting away at Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. Somehow they think that yet more death and destruction will short-circuit a civil war that has already killed tens of thousands and displaced nearly half the country’s population.
As indicated by press reports, the group of 51 diplomats called for a “judicious use of stand-off and air weapons” as part of a more “hard nosed” US-led diplomatic process to convince Assad to stop killing more innocent people in violation of a non-existent ceasefire. The diplomats also reportedly pointed to the moral dimensions of the suffering of the Syrian people as a principal reason for the US to take the lead in ratcheting up the pressure on Assad via US air and missile strikes. So the argument goes, the more bombs we drop on Assad, the more likely he’ll be to give up his fight for regime survival.
Regrettably, the State Department diplomats are not alone. Their sentiments reflect a disturbing, mystifying, and frightening consensus in the foreign policy establishment in Washington DC and elsewhere that the United States needs to more aggressively intervene around the world to police the Western-oriented rules-based liberal international order.http://lobelog.com/bombs-away-americas-latest-misguided-strategic-fad/#more-34700