Balkinization  

Monday, September 09, 2013

Beyond the Beltway Bubble

Frank Pasquale

My colleague James Grimmelmann hits the nail on the head today:
It is said that we have exhausted our other options. We have not. We could spend the many millions of dollars a Syria strike would cost on easing the suffering of the refugees from the civil war, or on the many other urgent humanitarian crises around the world.
It is said that the United States will lose credibility if it fails to strike now. Perhaps it will. It will certainly lose credibility, both political and moral, if it strikes with little effect and then walks away.
Every bad habit of the Obama administration is on display in this deplorable episode. Having chosen the most politically expedient course of action (in light of its delusional sense of politics), it now seeks to persuade the world that its choice is both most the likely to work and the most morally upstanding. It is neither, and brazen insistence to the contrary in the face of overwhelming evidence is shameful and sad.
It's sobering to contemplate how rare (and oft-ignored) such clear-headedness is in the fog of war.

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