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31 CommentsHistory says don’t do it. Most Americans say don’t do it. But President Obama has to punish Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s homicidal regime with a military strike — and hope that history and the people are wrong. If it is true that the regime killed hundreds of civilians with nerve gas in a Damascus suburb last week — and Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Monday that the use of chemical weapons is “undeniable” — then Obama has no choice. Such use cannot be tolerated, and any government or group that employs chemical weapons must be made to suffer real consequences. Obama should uphold this principle by destroying some of Assad’s military assets with cruise missiles. I say this despite my belief that Obama has been right to keep the United States out of the Syrian civil war. It is not easy to watch such suffering and destruction — more than 100,000 people killed, millions displaced, cities pounded into rubble — and do nothing. Now I believe we are obliged to hit Assad. But then what?Obama should have never drawn a red line. By doing so, he boxed himself in to using military force if the line was crossed.
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13 CommentsThe problem in Syria is that the opposition is no longer preferable to the regime and the regime is beyond redemption. Until I see evidence that contradicts it, I am not going to assume that Samantha Power is unaware of this conundrum just because she wrote a book condemning historical indifference to genocide in the West. The assumption is that she favors military action because she's always argued that we should not stand idly by while evil regimes slaughter their own people. But all that tells us is that she is morally opposed to doing nothing when we can intervene at an "acceptable risk." The problem in Syria is that there are no acceptable risks.
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32 Comments...parents, especially, are increasingly pleased with their neighborhood schools and more displeased with the rising use of standardized, multiple choice tests to evaluate, and potentially punish, teachers, a new Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll suggests.The GOP's efforts to trash public schools and vilify public school teachers may have had some impact, but, like so much of conservatism, not the anticipated impact.
(Parents are) displeased with the rising use of standardized, multiple choice tests to evaluate, and potentially punish, teachers, a new Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll suggests.
