Lindsay Graham promises War in Syria if elected

[Torie]

I thought polls showed most Americans now wanted soldiers to return to Iraq and that it was the Republicans slamming Obama for supporting the Syrian rebels. Now when Graham makes the next logical step he's some neo-liberal right-wing warmonger coming out of left field.

The McCain/Graham school of hawks supports arming "moderate Syrian rebels", because they think we need to prop up US-allied factions over there.  The Cruz/Bachmann school of hawks think any kind of political solution on the ground in Iraq and Syria is hopeless, so we should just bomb them all and let God sort it out.  Peter Beinart explains the dichotomy between these schools of thought:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/09/how-to-defeat-isis-according-to-ted-cruz/380500/

EDIT: Also useful on understanding the two camps of GOP hawks: This ~3.5 video segment from a Bloggingheads discussion from 2011: http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/3105?in=13:03&out=16:38

Presumably Cruz et al just want to bomb ISIS in Iraq and Syria, in their redoubts, as opposed to bombing Damascus and Bagdad, no?

[Torie]

My guinea pig is more electable than Lindsay Graham.

If ISIS brought a nuke in a suitcase into NYC and blew up Penn Central Station, that might give him some real traction, don't you think?  Sometimes, electability is a function of events. But no, in the present environment, he is just like all but 3 or 4 of the Pub candidates - whatever they are doing, if they think it is because they have some realistic chance of getting elected, they are delusional. Most are not delusional I strongly suspect. They have other motives. Lindsay for example, might just want to give more exposure to his foreign policy ideas, in hopes of persuading some of his point of view.

[Torie]

I thought polls showed most Americans now wanted soldiers to return to Iraq and that it was the Republicans slamming Obama for supporting the Syrian rebels. Now when Graham makes the next logical step he's some neo-liberal right-wing warmonger coming out of left field.

The McCain/Graham school of hawks supports arming "moderate Syrian rebels", because they think we need to prop up US-allied factions over there.  The Cruz/Bachmann school of hawks think any kind of political solution on the ground in Iraq and Syria is hopeless, so we should just bomb them all and let God sort it out.  Peter Beinart explains the dichotomy between these schools of thought:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/09/how-to-defeat-isis-according-to-ted-cruz/380500/

EDIT: Also useful on understanding the two camps of GOP hawks: This ~3.5 video segment from a Bloggingheads discussion from 2011: http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/3105?in=13:03&out=16:38

Presumably Cruz et al just want to bomb ISIS in Iraq and Syria, in their redoubts, as opposed to bombing Damascus and Bagdad, no?

Yeah, I was exaggerating about the "bomb them all and let God sort it out".

My point is, Cruz basically thinks that we have no allies in the Arab world.  We should just bomb our enemies (in this case ISIS), and not worry about creating any kind of political solution, because a political solution is impossible.  McCain and Graham say yes, we do have allies in the Arab world, and we should be arming them, and using them to create a political solution.

Well, I doubt that Cruz thinks we have no allies in the Middle East (e.g. Saudi Arabia, some of the Gulf States, and Egypt, and of course Jordan), but it is just that they can't get the job done even if we arm them, so we have to. I suspect Cruz might be right as to the first point. The "we have to" as to bombing will get the job done, is however perhaps equally problematical. The dirty little secret is that there may be no real solution at all - just like Israel and the Palestinians. "Solutions" are elusive in that part of the world. There may be no workable objective function at all. Who knew?

[Torie]

Graham is refreshingly pro-war. The rest usually drop BS peace from strength lines and talk about coalitions.

Graham just wants to go to war dammit and we need to get in it before peace breaks out.

Your post brought out a belly laugh in me. Well done!