Outside Counsel

Apparently Miley Cyrus was provocative during the Video Music Awards, and this has people in a lather. Ron Emkhe has a nice post about it on FB here, and several people have linked to this piece in The Onion. My first thought was that all the fuss was just Silly Season stuff: the news gets slow during the Dog Days of August, and people who have to say something need to say something at all times, so they look for stories about cats chasing dogs, or celebrities doing the stuff that celebrities do and write about that. Ron notes that this particular flap resembles the story (I was going to say "coverage") of Janet Jackson's Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction-- but that was actually an event with long-term legal consequences, and big fines, and serious implications for media in general. I don't think this is that-- I think it is much, much more significant. While people are fuming about an attractive young woman singing a catchy little song weapons inspectors have determined that Syria has uncorked the poison gas, and the President is experiencing increasing pressure to intervene there. (From whom? Hard to say. From John McCain, and his sidekick, Tweedle Graham are two that I know. I'm not sure who else thinks that sending in the bombers would be a swell idea.) Egypt is, as far as I can tell, in a state approaching collapse. Congress has roughly six weeks to stop doing what it has been doing for the past year and is on the verge of plunging the world economy into darkness... I mean, I don't want to be Chicken Little about this, but if Miley Cyrus' twerking is what has our attention, maybe we deserve what we get.

 Oh, America-- why are you so oblivious? Miley Cyrus is the answer to an easy question: What do you think about a pop singer being sexually provocative? Meh, not much. Hard questions, the kind that require serious thought, and actual evidence? Who wants to think about those? Plenty of right-thinking people seem to believe that some sort of intervention in Syria is called for; quite a few more, if we are to believe the polling data, believe that it is best to stay out. Looking past the polls to the arguments is where the challenge lies. Just because we can doesn't mean we ought to, and the place where people start thinking pretty much determines where they end up on the argument. For example, I hear people making comparisons to American intervention in WWII, which impress me as inapt: the Holocaust could have been largely averted if its victims had been given some place to go, but neither the US nor anyone else wanted to admit the refugees. This is not that: the people being gassed in Syria don't want out: they want to take over the country. That goal, however laudable, impresses me as an internal matter, however horrific the means. And, you know, it's not like we have so many examples of international intervention working out so well in circumstances like these. Keep in mind that with very few exceptions tactical bombing is a terrible tool for accomplishing most objectives. I suppose it worked in Libya-- early days yet-- and they say it worked in Kosevo, but those are the only two examples of accomplishing a foreign policy objective in that manner that I can think of. If the goal is to get Halliburton the contracts to re-build, that's one thing. If it is to end the suffering on the ground, and see a government more aligned with US and European interests installed I have my doubts. Bombing the hell out of a place is not a good friend maker.