printThe punditocracy is shouting almost in unison that Russia and Syria have pulled one over us. The US, they say, has been weakened because someone halted the momentum of the American war juggernaut.
You see, the pundits and the pols cannot perceive of greatness outside the state because they are part of the state apparatus; and depend on it for status and income.
Individual Americas who have nothing to gain and only losses to sustain from a war are somehow mistakenly identifying with the state and its emissaries—politicians and pundits—who have everything to gain from the great theatre that is war. “In Syria (and all else), it’s ‘Us’ against ‘Them.'”
Think about it. Who benefits when America goes to war? Not you. Not ordinary Americans. Those who benefit “function within the nimbus of great power” in D.C. and around it—the media-military-congressional-industrial complex.
What happens to the bluster of Bill O’Reilly, his sidekick Dennis the Menace or Charles Krauthammer if the US is no longer dictating the terms of war (lots of it) and peace (too little of it) in the world? Their immense egos suffer. Maybe even their incomes, eventually. But not you, the ordinary American. Krauthammer, ridiculously, equates the failure to go to war against Syria with “Russia supplanting America as regional hegemon.”
But the proof is in the Putin, who stopped a war. Why is stopping a war tantamount to supplanting US power?
Rather, the Russians are replacing bully power with a balance of power. And this is good for Americans (if not for their overlords who art in D.C.)
He who saves you from war is better than he who sends you to war.
UPDATE I: Gerson, another neocon:
“This allows Moscow to supply proxies such as Syria and Iran with weapons while positioning itself as the defender of international law and peace.”
UPDATE II (9/15): Yet another Republican pundit (albeit one of the few talented ones) who depends on The Party for status and income. Here Ann Coulter praises Republican wars.
She promotes and profits from ’em; YOU fight ’em.