Syria – A letter to the President of the United States

I posted the following on "Contact Us" at http://www.whitehouse.gov.

Before you were born, the Department of War became the Department of Defense.  Unfortunately, several times since the Department of Defense has become the Department of Offense with disastrous results for troops, our citizens, the economy, and other countries' views towards us.

If we are truly to have a Department of Defense, what is the threat that dictators like Assad pose towards the U.S.?  Is he going to invade us?  If we invade Syria you can rest assured that action will breed terrorists who will invade us.

If Assad is a threat to the region, don't Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait have enough U.S. equipment to take on Assad?

If the U.S. sticks its nose into Syria, it will only give these countries cover to not take action themselves, leaving us as the fall guy when things go badly.

National Security? The emperor and his clothes

This morning at coffee, various wars came up in the conversation.

I mentioned Andrew Bacevich and his books, especially "Washington Rules, America's Path to Permanent War".  I said that the Department of Defense has become a vast bureaucracy where few question many of the assumptions.  It's another case of nobody noticing the emperor has no clothes.

A World War II veteran, shot down over France, hidden by the Resistance, and smuggled out through Spain, said, "Department of Defense!  It should be called the Department of Offense!"

Later, another person who comes up with many good puns, which unfortunately we soon forget, asked, "Does an immortal emperor have no closure?"

If the national security bureaucracy thinks it is immortal in its path to permanent war, we certainly will have no closure.