A Murder of Fools Gary L Crowder 3 September 2013

A gathering of crows is called a murder. While the entomology of the term is somewhat uncertain, at least by some accounts it refers to an odd practice in which flocks of crows apparently participate. On occasion, crows reportedly have been observed gathering in a group, passing judgment on one of their own, and mercilessly attacking, killing and ripping to shreds their convicted comrade. In crow logic, there may well be a perfectly sensible reason for this behavior, perhaps simply a more lethal form of ostracism practiced by ancient Greeks. However, to those human observers lacking avian DNA or the ability to know or understand what or how crows think, the practice is utterly nonsensical. Which brings us to the ongoing debate in Washington on whether or not the United States should go to war against Syria. That is the topic of debate despite the protestations of our erstwhile Secretary of State. Launching missiles at a sovereign nation is an act of war, just as attacking Bosnian Serbs in 1995, Yugoslav Serbs in 1999, and Libya government forces in 2011 with air and missile strikes were acts of war. There may have been valid reasons for each of those operations and there are certainly those who are seeking to justify going to war against Syria. Yet, in none of these instances was there reasoned public debate, the articulation of a coherent strategy, or a clearly defined set of stated objectives, outcomes or desired end states. To an outside observer, not intoxicated with the heady Washington DC beltway liqueur of power that passes for reason, this course and substance of this debate makes little sense. For me, as a seasoned military planner with over 30 years of service and experience in fighting, planning, executing or assessing every US air operation from the first Gulf War, this debate is positively insane. Syria is engaged in a civil waras were Bosnia, Serbia and Libya. Civil wars are profound tragedies. They are often bitter, brutal, cruel and rapacious. They create factionalism, hatred and human scars that take generations to heal, if they can be healed at all. Simply witness the emotions that often accompany discussions of Americas own Civil War, now over 150 years distant but still capable of arousing anger with the uttering of a single word or display of a single symbol. Civilians suffer and die disproportionately in war. In civil wars, where the home front and war front are often indistinguishable, that suffering is magnified. The break down of civil society (police, law and order, norms of behavior), disruption of food, water, and medical structures and distribution systems, and the pervasive spread of violence are all events to which civilians are peculiarly susceptible. So they suffer and often die. This suffering and these deaths are tragic,

but the United States can no more prevent civil wars on a global scale than it can prevent the loss of life that accompanies them. So why are we going to war in Syria? Suffering and death accompany war. The fact that some civilians starve to death, die of privation and exposure during forced migrations, are deliberately slaughtered in artillery barrages or during air raids, or are killed with Sarin gas makes little difference to the dead. The only reliable way to stop the suffering and death is to stop the war. The is no public support in this country to perform the necessary far ranging and extended operations to stop the civil war in Syria, no extant political courage necessary to make the case for a widespread intervention to bring the conflict to and end, and utterly no evidence that such actions even could be effective at bringing peace and stability to the region. As awful as the situation in Syria is, as heart wrenching as is to watch and hear the widespread suffering, there is almost nothing the United States can do to stop it. So why are we going to war in Syria? We are not going to war in Syria to stop the war. We are not going to war to overthrow the Assad regime. We are not going to war to protect civilians; we can no more protect Syrian civilians from ships in the Mediterranean than we can from cockpits at 20,000 feet. We are not going to war to eliminate Syrian chemical weapons; such an objective would be problematic at best, impossible to accomplish in two to three days, and nearly impossible to assess. So why are we going to war in Syria. We are going to war in Syria because we have a foolish, nave President who, in a moment of feigned courage, uttered the words chemical weapons and red line in the same sentence. We are now told that Americas creditability is on line if we do not back up the incautious words of foreign policy neophyte. The Presidents creditability is on the line, not Americas. Americas creditability in the region is already shot, a direct consequence five years of American Middle East policy lacking, strategy, coherence, or even common sense. We are going to war in Syria for the sake of our Presidents ego. I suppose it would be a natural tendency for politicians in Washington, foolishly isolated and distanced from those who put them in office, to equate their personal egos and our national interests. It is also quite dangerous. We are going to war in Syria without a strategy for what to do either in Syria or the broader Middle East. We have no clearly defined objectives. There has been no discussion of second or third order consequences of US missile strikes, intended or otherwise, and little political or military preparation for such eventualities. There has been no public discussion or debate on precisely why such strikes will directly or indirectly further US interests in the region. Americas politicians are waltzing the nation into war like the dance band on the Titaniccertain of their apparent fate and heedless of their certain peril.

This administrations pretending and outright proclamation that war is not war does not make it so. Not putting boots on the ground in Kosovo, did not mean NATO did not conduct and offensive war against Serbia in 1999. After calling for, initiating, enabling, and then leading from behind with intelligence and logistical support, and command and control, calling such operations non-kinetic did not mean the United States did not actively enter the Libyan civil war as a belligerent on the side of the rebels. Politicians who seek to change the meaning of common words are liars, charlatans and fools and, populations who allow them to do so are complicit in their deceit and chicanery. So our politicians will take us to war and we will all go back to watching Duck Dynasty. In 1912, Germany was embarked on an aggressive naval building program whose only possible outcome was to threaten Great Britain directly and sour relations with a hereditary and potential natural ally in Europe for the first decades of the 20th century. When asked why Germany would pursue a policy with almost certain to have negative consequences for German national interests, the German Chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann von Hollweg, is reported to have responded: It is for the general purposes of our greatness. German political and military leadership engaged in actions that directly threatened their national interests for the sake of their national ego. The results, although certainly not inevitable, were entirely predictable. Why are we going to war in Syria? Are we going to war for the general purposes of our greatness; for a public performance in a stylized demonstration of our great power status for an international audience to make ourselves feel better? Or, is it to assuage the egos of foolish, myopic politicians equating their own personal pride with national interests of over 300 million Americans. Or, are we all simply witness to a murder of fools, a carrion assemblage of black clad politicians, feverishly engaged in a debate among themselves, planning and executing despicable act. It may make perfect sense to these foolish, pompous rhetoricians crowing madly at one another on Sunday talk shows. For the rest of us, however, those firmly entrenched in the human world, lacking the avian wisdom and insights of our gathered political crows, it is utterly impossible to make sense of their planned actions.