Regime Change Redux

I was walking along one day and came across a guy repeatedly striking a tree with an axe, chips flying everywhere. “Are you chopping that tree down?” I asked him, being the witty conversationalist that I am. “No,” he replied, “I certainly am not, but I am not going to stop hitting it with my trusty sharp axe until it falls down.”

That was President Obama regarding our military assault on Libya. The sanctions which he extracted from the UN prohibited regime change, so he disavowed any such motivation but openly declared that we were not going to stop pummeling Libya until Gaddafi was gone. How he expected anyone to then believe his disclaimers of regime change escaped me at the time, and his approach to Syria is making it even harder to believe in retrospect.

Hillary Clinton was in Istanbul, holding talks to “set up a working group with Turkey to plan a joint response to the Syrian crisis.” Why we have a dog in that hunt is unclear, but we can look to Mrs. Clinton for clarification,

"Our number-one goal is to hasten the end of the bloodshed and the Assad regime," she said. "Our intelligence services, our military have very important responsibilities and roles to play so we are going to be setting up a working group to do exactly that."

Ending the Assad regime using intelligence services and the military. Of course, why didn’t I think of that brilliant idea? When asked if we would create a “no fly zone” she “did not rule it out.” Of course not; "all options are on the table." Does it ever end?