On Sunday morning's Meet The Press, permanent cast member, Sen. John McCain, weighed in on the increasing tensions between Syria's strongman, Bashar al-Assad, and the international community over his alleged use of chemical weapons. McCain's recommendation? Invasion, of course. McCain's reasoning for starting yet another war in the Middle East is as specious as all of his other
Because the public is supposed to believe that McCain is very worried about the"David, we should not be...our actions should not be dictated by whether Bashar al-Assad used these chemical weapons or not, first of all. Sooner or later he mostly likely would, in order to maintain his hold on power but what has happened here is the President drew a red line about chemical weapons, thereby giving a green light to Bashar al-Assad to do anything short of that..."
He did try to bury the idea of boots on the ground by advocating smaller steps such as establishing a "no-fly" zone, using cruise missiles and drones to wipe out any grounded air power Assad has, and arming the rebels. Yet McCain lambasted Obama for his "incrementalism," suggesting that were the United States to engage in any of McCain's proscribed solutions, he would immediately move the goal post from "No boots on the ground" to "We're not doing enough."
Comment: Dr. Lance deHaven-Smith, Professor, School of Public Administration and Policy at Florida State University, speaks below on elite political criminality. DeHaven-Smith coined a term in 2006 to delineate crimes of high office: State Crimes Against Democracy, such as Watergate, Iran-Contra, Plamegate, the assassinations of JFK, RFK, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the staged Gulf of Tonkin incident.