Why We Need Referendums

When looking at this Huffington Post image delineating the public's opposition to, IMHO, a disasterous military operation to be made against Syria, it shows, in spades, why referendums, as per Sweden's model, matter because if we had one today, this fubar would not happen but because we don't, our so called leaders continue to rush to war based on incomplete intel and a false sense of morality, something we lost a long time ago beginning with the removal of Iran's democratically elected Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 courtesy the CIA. To add fuel to the fire, here is a quote from David Stockman, a person yours truly finds both insightful and entertaining at the same time regarding his take on important issue like finance and, in this case, war. Needless to say, his commentary on this totally unnecessary act of folly is most interesting to say the least.

Next week Congress can do far more than stop a feckless Tomahawk barrage on a small country which is already a graveyard of civil war and sectarian slaughter. By voting “no” it can trigger the end of the American Imperium—-five decades of incessant meddling, bullying and subversion around the globe which has added precious little to national security, but left America fiscally exhausted and morally diminished.

Indeed, the tragedy of this vast string of misbegotten interventions—from the 1953 coup against Mossedegh in Iran through the recent bombing campaign in Libya —-is that virtually none of them involved defending the homeland or any tangible, steely-eyed linkages to national security. They were all rooted in ideology—that is, anti-communism, anti-terrorism, humanitarianism, R2Pism, nation-building, American exceptionalism. These were the historic building blocks of a failed Pax Americana. Now the White House wants authorization for the last straw: Namely, to deliver from the firing tubes of U.S. naval destroyers a dose of righteous “punishment” that has no plausible military or strategic purpose. By the President’s own statements the proposed attack is merely designed to censure the Syrian regime for allegedly visiting one particularly horrific form of violence on its own citizens.

Well, really? After having rained napalm, white phosphorous, bunker-busters, drone missiles and the most violent machinery of conventional warfare ever assembled upon millions of innocent Vietnamese, Cambodians, Serbs, Somalis, Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis, Yemeni, Libyans and countless more, Washington now presupposes to be in the moral sanctions business?  That’s downright farcical.  Nevertheless, by declaring himself the world’s spanker-in-chief, President Obama has unwittingly precipitated the mother of all clarifying moments.

Pat Buchanan's analysis is also apt. 

Not since the War of Jenkins’ Ear has there been a dumber cause for a great country to go to war. Is there no way out?

There is, and it’s right in front of us.

The House, Senate or both can vote no on the war resolution and Obama can then say, as did David Cameron, that, while he disagrees, he respects the decision of a Congress in which the Constitution placed sole authority to authorize America’s going to war.

Are Brits now crying “catastrophe!”? Do the Spanish no longer think the Brits will defend Gibraltar? Is Britain now wholly non-credible to the world?

For Obama, and for us, it is the other options that invite catastrophe.

Click on the graphic to get information about the War of Jenkins' Ear, another totally needless military action lasting 9 years from 1739 - 1748 between Great Britain & Spain to encourage the Spanish not to renege on the lucrative asiento contract (permission to sell slaves in Spanish America).