Ted Cruz, Rand Paul — You Go Guys

No, I haven’t turned into a teabagger or anything.  Like they say, a broken clock is right twice a day.  And this whole Syria controversy is sure making some strange bedfellows.

For once I’m glad to see congressional Republicans obstructing Obama‘s agenda, even if it’s for all the wrong reasons (i.e. “if that there Kenyan Muslim is for it, we’s agin’ it”).  And the civil war between GOP factions is as amusing as ever.  Newt Gingrich has urged Congress to vote No on the authorization to attack Syria.  John McCain says whatever Obama wants to do in Syria, it’s too little too late.  And Donald Rumsfeld — “I think with the brain I have, not the brain I wish I had” — says Obama is a pitiful weakling for not bombing Syria into smithereens yesterday.

Ted Cruz nailed it by calling the U.S. military “al Qaeda’s air force” if we attack Syria.  We have absolutely no idea who’s who over there.  They know a lot more about us than we know about them.  The Sun Tzu command to “Know Your Enemy” is followed almost everywhere in the world except here.  If we stage a “surgical strike” against Syria, it’ll be the umpteenth time we’ve waded into somebody else’s civil war and “helped” a group of “victims” who later turn on us.  Either that, or we end up supporting the most corrupt bloodthirsty dictator in the world just because he’s anti- (Communist, Muslim — whoever our villain of the moment happens to be).

Rand Paul insists he’s not going to filibuster the authorization bill, which probably means he IS planning to.  Either that or he’s hoping to muster up enough votes against the bill to make a filibuster unnecessary.

And what’s with this Syrian Electronic Army we keep hearing about?  It this just an urban legend?  Supposedly Syria has an “army” of computer hackers who will hack into America’s computer systems — the computers that control all of our weapons, banks, all commercial websites, you name it — if we attack Syria.

I first heard of this concept about twenty years ago, when Mainland China kept threatening to “re-unite with” (i.e. invade) Taiwan.  (This was before China had made their huge technological advances.)  Taiwan supposedly had an army of hackers who were ready at a moment’s notice to disable China’s missile systems and aircraft and stop them dead in their tracks.

I never knew if that was true, and I have no idea whether the Syrian Electronic Army is for real or not.  But I hope so.  It has a great deterrent effect.  It’s like the NRA’s famous slogan about “an armed society is a polite society.”  If every country in the world — no matter how poor, how small — is able to hack and disable every other country’s military and financial institutions, there won’t be much incentive for large countries to prey on smaller ones.  A world armed with hackers is a polite world.