Holy jumpin' Jehova, does it ever!
This brouhaha in Syria has got Likud Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut singing from the same page in the hymnal as Al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri. Who can even imagine such a thing?
"It's time to help the brave Syrian freedom fighters" Lieberman declared today on CNN.
"Amen", declared Ayman. In fact al-Zawahiri has got his boys in country already. Seems Bashir al-Assad isn't kidding when he says he's fighting Al Qaeda. The smart money says the suicide bombs in Aelpo the other day were Al Qaeda handiwork.
But wait a minute here... Assad is fighting Al Qaeda, we're fighting Al Qaeda, but we're going to support Al Qaeda in their fight against Assad? Does this mean that al-Assad is a greater evil than Al Qaeda?
Not at all. What it means is that yet again contradictory streams in American foreign policy are rising up to bite us on the ass.
As everyone knows, except apparently the toadying Canadian Foreign Minister who last week made an embarrasing attempt to upstage the toadying US congress on his bag-licking mission to the Holy Land, Israel has no greater friend than the US.
We tolerate Assad because he does a pretty good job of keeping things cool on Syria's border with Israel, in spite of the ongoing open sore that is the Golan heights. Do we care about "unarmed protesters" being slaughtered in their thousands? Of course not.
What we care about is that the last couple of generations of stability on that border might be threatened. If Assad goes, we want to have a hand in deciding who is going to replace him.
To that end, the US has been busy busy busy coordinating the "Free Syrian Army" from an American base in Turkey. This is not a secret and has been written up extensively in major media outside the US. Only in America is it deemed un-newsworthy.
Oddly enough, al-Zawahiri and Al Qaeda have precisely the same motivations as we do. If Assad is doomed, they and their Saudi paymasters want to have a say in what happens next.
Which brings us to the real reason we're so concerned about those "unarmed protesters" in Syria; Iran.
The ill-fated debacle of the US invasion of Iraq didn't just destroy that country, it greatly enhanced Iran's influence within it. Have you noticed that the Shia-dominated government in Iraq is not participating in the embargoes on either Syria or Iran?
The war cheer-leaders in Congress and beyond want to make sure that whatever we do in Syria, it doesn't ultimately enhance Iran's influence in the region even more.
Syria is just another front in our war on Iran.
And if that means we have to arm Al Qaeda fighters, we're willing to do it.
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