Yes, it's been a while. But just like events kept pulling Michael Corleone back into the godfathering business, events keep luring my index fingers back to roughly tickle the keyboard of my electronic Underwood, like every other schmuck for the last few generations.
I thank Brendan Behan for the following: "There is no human situation so miserable that it cannot be made worse by the presence of a policeman." Nearly thirty years of professional interaction with members of the "thin blue line" have revealed the absolute unassailability of Behan's wisdom.
And it applies not just to the corner tavern, but internationally, as the world's hypercop, having drawn a line in the sand (for domestic consumption as much as for foreign admonition) prepares to show the world once again that "we meant what we said and we said what we meant" no matter what the cost in innocent lives and dwindling treasure.
I think the President did not believe he was setting the bar for our interference too low when the administration let it be known that use of chemical weapons on the rebels could not be tolerated. But civil wars are the worse kind of conflict, where a basic fellow-feeling between former neighbors and co-workers will not stay the slaughter, even as it did among the multi-national combatants in the trenches on that first Christmas of the Great War.
So here we are, rattling that well-used sabre once again. Donald Rumsfeld has helpfully and entirely hypocritically announced that the case for intervention has not been made. I suppose he'd advise the fabrication of more evidence before committing to the use of force.
And the national response is at best anemic. Most of us in the U.S. haven't wanted war since Rumsfeld and his unindicted co-conspirators fabricated the last casus belli. Only a very few pachycephalids want any sort of military response to the present situation. But who listens to the mass of the American people? No one. So strap yourselves in, folks, and keep your arms and legs inside the car for your own safety.
