Intellectual dishonesty

Let me get this straight …

An evil Middle Eastern dictator, who used to be our ally, is attempting to suppress an internal civil war. The opposition is comprised mainly of a religious group that feels oppressed under the regime and has managed to stake out parts of the country, while fighting the government to a standstill.

The evil dictator instructs his military to use chemical weapons on his own people in a show of force to scare the rebels back into compliance. The world is outraged, the United Nations issues proclamations and the dictator ignores and/or obstructs the U.N. The United States, along with a few allies says “enough’s enough” and launches military strikes against the dictator with the not-so-subtle goal of destabilizing him enough that the rebels can gain an advantage and forcibly remove him from office.

I could go into detail about the consequences of such an operation, but it’s not like I can see into the future of Syria because I’m talking about Iraq. Saddam Hussein used nerve gas against the Kurdish people in northern Iraq in 1988 and killed nearly 5,000 people while injuring another 10,000. That’s not an allegation or my opinion, it’s a fact.

You may have forgotten some of the comments our leaders made on the war in Iraq: “The wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time” (Sen. John Kerry, 2004) or “A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.” (Sen. Barack Obama, 2002.)

So what’s different now?

Give some credit to Sen. John McCain, Noam Chomsky and a few others, who remain consistent in their beliefs for or against war, regardless of whether it’s Iraq or Syria.

For the rest of these people, basing your enthusiasm or objection to a military strike in Syria solely on the political party of the president shows a level of intellectual dishonesty that I find tragic.