Whew! Now that "Junior" Assad has accepted the cabinet's resignation, everything's going to be jim dandy in Syria, right?

(Oh, and a couple of thoughts about Libya)

Reuters caption: Tens of thousands of Syrians gather for a pro-government rally at the central bank square in Damascus March 29, 2011. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad accepted his government's resignation.

by Ken

What a relief to know that the problem in Syria was just the cabinet! Thanks goodness that's taken care of!

As for the Libyan mess, you probably can't believe how much I don't want to get into it, especially considering how uncomfortably far out of step I'm finding myself with my deliriously smug compadres on the Left. Nevertheless, I will throw out a couple of thoughts.

(1) The morally exalted, doubt-free high-grounders don't seem to get that people who aren't unambiguously and unalterably opposed to military invention in Libya, or just don't know what exactly to think, understand every word of every argument they make against intervention, every bit as well as they do, and in all likelihood better. This is the cause of our agony, of which the high-grounders don't seem to be experiencing any at all.

(2) On TV I saw Secretary of State Clinton evoking the memory of the genocide in Rwanda, and our failure even to attempt to do anything about it. She wondererd how we would live with watching inactively as Colonel Qadaffi launched his massacre of his enemies. Others, in the same vein, have raised the specter of Srebrenica, where again we knew it was going to happen, then knew it was happening, and stood by. In response I've heard from the high-grounders shameful smart-aleckry, every kind of intellectual sophistry, and a heaping helping of fairly monstrous character assassination, but amid it nothing that constitutes an answer to Secretary Clinton's point. I would like to think that the actual answer on the Left isn't: Well, let the slaughter begin, yee-ha, get the popcorn going! (Organic, of course. And maybe some nice vegan wienies.)

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