Foreign Policy For People Who Don't Understand Foreign Policy

In a recent episode of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart mocks Obama and Kerry's competence in the proposed intervention in Syria. However, he also mocks those who are unhappy with the solution proposed by Putin and accepted by Obama.



Stewart rants:

Who did we lose to? Sanity? "You've beat us this time, rational forethought, but we'll get you!" Who cares how we avoided a war and got a dictator to give up his chemical weapons if we avoided a war and got his dictator to give up his chemical weapons? ... oh, Putin gets the credit! If we caught Charlie Manson, who gives a beep who gets the collar?

And I get that Fox opposes the Syria peace plan because its modus operandi is to foment dissent in the form of a relentless and irrational contrarianism to Barack Obama and all things Democratic to advance its ultimate objective of creating a deliberately misinformed body politic whose fear, anger, mistrust and discontent is the manna upon which it sustains its parasitic, succubus-like existence, and, uh, but--  

wild cheers from the audience

Sorry, I blacked out for a second, was I saying something? But for some reason, even CNN's Chris Cuomo seemed disappointed with the turn of events.... On the one hand, geopolitical reality just shifted one hundred percent, but on the other hand, we built this graphic

shows CNN 'Crisis in Syria' graphic.

Look, Jon, I get that you're making fun of peoples' lack of enthusiasm for the peace plan plan because your modus operandi is to foment dissent in the form of a relentless and irrational contrarianism to Fox News and all things Republican to advance your ultimate objective of creating a deliberately misinformed body politic whose fear, anger, mistrust and discontent is the manna upon which you sustain your parasitic, succubus-like existence, but there are actual reasons why this peace plan is a bad idea.

For the sake of people, like Jon Stewart's viewers, who don't understand foreign policy and aren't interested in it beyond its usefulness as joke fodder on The Daily Show, let me take you back to the classic movie, The Untouchables, with Kevin Costner as Eliot Ness, Robert de Niro as Al Capone, Sean Connery as gruff Chicago cop Jim Malone, and Billy Drago as vicious mob hitman Frank Nitti.

Except, in our version, Vladimir Putin is Capone, Obama is Eliot Ness, Assad is Frank Nitti and the victims of the gass attack collectively play Sean Connery and Nitti's other victims.

This didn't happen in the movie, but imagine Ness had Nitti caught dead to rights for Malone's murder, but he suffers a crisis of courage, because he knows that if he prosecutes Nitti, he becomes target #1 of the mob. The mayor (Kerry) wonders if there's a better way out of the whole thing. Suddenly, Al Capone steps forward as a concerned member of the community. "This whole thing has been overblown. I'm sure we can settle things if we just make sure Mr. Nitti turns in his guns. I assure you, he'll suffer harsh censure by the Chicago community. And Ness caves. He lets Nitti go.

Meanwhile you're screaming at the screen, "No, you idiot! Nitti works for Capone! He's not going to give up his guns! He's not going to stop killing people!"

That's what just happened. Assad is Putin's client dictator. The chemical weapons will not be turned over, except for some tokens to mollify the press and U.N. inspectors. Assad will not be weakened. He'll get off Scot free and actually emerge with greater international credibility. And Al Capone gets to look like a frickin' hero, while making Ness look cowardly and ineffectual.

That's what just happened in Syria.

Now, as Obama likes to say, let me be perfectly clear. I was never in favor of a military intervention in Syria. That's where the Untouchables metaphor ends. Obama made unwise statement after unwise statement over the past several years and backed himself into a corner. In the long run, it's probably better that Obama look weak than we blunder into an ill-advised war. But this was a major diplomatic defeat, and it will take a Reagan-like individual following Obama's Carter impersonation to win back our prestige.

I have no doubt it can be done, but that, Mr. Stewart, is why people are not happy with the outcome.

A compromise solution might have been to outright reject the weapon turnover plan as unrealistic, Assad's stated willingness to cooperate as insufficient and unconvincing, and continued to try to build international support, but that would have been a whole lot easier if Obama hadn't already been saber-rattling for unilateral strikes without any U.N. or international approval. He could have continued to bully the European and International communities for their own cowardice in failing to address the issue -- put the onus on them, as they seem very fond of moralizing about U.S. actions and inactions. the E.U.'s collective military might is more than enough to handle a tin-pot dictator like Assad. Only express willingness to go in when U.S. forces represent less than 25 percent of those committed.

That would have put him in the moral high ground, because this was supposedly a crime against international standards (even though Syria isn't a signatory to the chemical weapons ban), so it requires an international response. U.S. interests weren't at stake in any dire way, so U.S. risk should be minimal. If the so-called international community wants international standards to have meaning, it has to show that it has some balls of its own.

Of course, it doesn't, and that would have gotten us off the hook. This isn't the movie High Noon and if the rest of the international community is too cowardly or unwilling to uphold its standards, then the U.S. doesn't have any obligation to go it alone.

Update: It's starting already.

"It's a clever proposal from Russia to prevent the attacks," one Assad supporter said from the port of Tartous, site of a Russian naval base. "Russia will give us new weapons that are better than chemical weapons," he added. "We are strong enough to save our power and fight the terrorists."

Somehow I'm not expecting an apology from Jon Stewart admitting that Neville Chamberlain Barack Obama did not achieve "peach in our time."