I might have just changed two names in it.
Follows:
What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war.
What I am opposed to is weekend warriors in this administration to
shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of
the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.
What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks
to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty
rate, a drop in the median income — to distract us from corporate
scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month
since the Great Depression. That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A
rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but
on politics. Now let me be clear — I suffer no illusions about Bashar al Assad. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own
people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions,
thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological
weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He's a bad guy. The world, and
the Syrian people, would be better off without him.
But I also know that Assad poses no imminent and direct threat to
the United States or to his neighbors, that the Syrian economy is in
shambles, that the Syrian military is a fraction of its former strength, and
that in concert with the international community he can be contained
until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin
of history. I know that even a successful war against Syria will require
a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with
undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Syria without a
clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan
the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than
best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of
al-Qaida. I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars.
