The Obama administration’s efforts in the Middle East appear to be ending in a series of dead ends. Take Syria.

A recent Pew research survey found little optimism for the outcome of the ‘Arab Spring’ in that country. Ninety five percent of Lebanese, 80% of Jordanians and 60% of Turks were concerned the war there would spread to their own countries. Or if not, then to some other country at the least. Eighty nine percent of Tunisians, 79% of Jordanians, 78% of Israelis, 77% of Egyptians and 74% of Palestinians believe conflict will cross the border into some other country.

Nor is there much optimism that the leaders from behind can steer the wreck. The survey shows only a small margin of support for Western aid to Syrian rebels. Even Arab support for the rebels is weak.

Only the Jordanians (65%) and Lebanese Sunnis (63%) back Arabs arming the rebels. Nearly all the Shia (97%) surveyed in Lebanon are opposed to such outside intervention.

At the same time, there is no public support in the United States, Western Europe or in Turkey for sending arms and military supplies to the anti-government groups in Syria. Eight-in-ten (82%) Germans oppose such assistance, as do more than two-thirds of the French (69%) and the Turks (65%) and a majority of the British (57%). Nearly two-thirds (64%) of Americans were also against arming the rebels when the survey was taken in the first two weeks of March.

Invoking the threat of chemical weapons increases public support for intervention, but by surprisingly little. Pew says “since then evidence has emerged that the Assad government may have used chemical weapons in its fight against opposition forces. In a subsequent Pew Research Center poll taken April 25-28, Americans, by a 45% to 31% margin, favor rather than oppose the U.S. and its allies taking military action against Syria, if it is confirmed that Syria used chemical weapons against anti-government groups.”

But if the rebels are not particularly loved, Assad is deeply hated, the survey found. To a surprising extent the region seems to share the Kissingerian hope that it would be best if both sides could lose.

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Steven Pressfield talks about the difference between Western societies and Afghan ones. It is a fascinating monologue and probably largely correct.

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And now Israel prepares for the inevitable response. The Washington Post reports “Israel’s military has deployed a rocket defense system to the north of the country following reported Israeli airstrikes in neighboring Syria targeting weapons believed to be destined for Lebanon’s Hezbollah militants.” The retaliation for Israel’s attack on Assad will not be long in coming. The only question is how heavy it will be.

Amos Harel at Haaretz says Israel, quite without its public becoming distinctly aware of it, is now facing a volatile situation on the northern border. The danger had been building up for a while, a fact obvious to all who were watching.  But it never quite got the press attention it deserved.

It seems this kind of escalation between Israel and Syria has been simmering behind the scenes for quite some time. Over the past year, Bashar Assad’s regime has steadily been losing its hold in Syria. Assad’s loyalists are throwing everything they have into near-desperate attempts to save what is left of his regime — the capital, Damascus, the Alawite salient in northwestern Syria and the narrow corridor between them. Assad is highly dependent on Hezbollah’s aid in this fight. Perhaps because of that, he cannot really refuse when Hezbollah asks him to transfer arms into Lebanon — and the Lebanese allow this because they believe Assad cannot hold out much longer.

The bottom line is that Israel, after years of successfully standing aloof from the ‘Arab Spring’ has now finally been dragged into the fray. And it is extraordinarily perilous because there are lots of moving parts churning in this drama, few of whom are good, and some of whom are not even sane.

But even the Left wing Israeli newspaper admitted that the light bulb is only now going on in Barack Obama’s head.  Against all odds he seems surprised it has come to this. “The Obama administration must admit, too little and too late, the high likelihood that Assad’s loyalists used chemical weapons against their opponents twice in March, once near Damascus and once near Aleppo. Despite President Barack Obama’s reservations about increased American involvement in the war itself, the discoveries could encourage the transfer of significant military aid from the United States to the rebels.”

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Although the Israeli airstrike in Syria was billed as a strike against “chemical weapons” the details of the attack now emerging suggest it was aimed at key components of either the warheads or the delivery systems. Haaretz, quoting sources in Syria, describes attacks on 5 locations in the Damascus airport area: “aircraft fuel tanks, Syrian army ammunition storerooms, the army’s runway and a civilian cargo plane that had arrived from Iran to Damascus were destroyed”.

the attack was carried out on five sites in the airport area. Some were close to each other, while the civilian aircraft was a kilometer away from the other targets. The source explained that the number of targets and the distance between them refutes the Syrian government’s claim that Syrian Free Army forces attacked the fuel tanks, as these factors mean that they must have been attacked from the air rather than by mortars. The website also reports that nearby “noises were heard of aircraft breaking the sound barrier.”

As an element of conflict it has more characteristics of a beginning rather than an end. The Israeli strike is far too small to ‘end’ the Syrian chemical threat. However, Haaretz notes that a number of consequences are now likely to arise from the Israeli attack.

First, Assad may use it to unite Arabs against Israel. “The Syrian opposition is publically distancing itself from all contact with Israel, as it will be seen as relying on the national enemy in order to defeat the government”.

Second, the the response will likely take the form of a “second front” in Lebanon.  And Haaretz continues, “such Israeli involvement is likely to provide legitimization for Iran’s and Hezbollah’s involvement in the fighting in Syria, as well as to the opening-up of another front in Lebanon.”

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One of the most puzzling things about ordinary life is the question of where all lost ballpens and drug store sunglasses go. Some eventually turn up under the cushions of the sofa or reappear under the refrigerator. Yet when compared to the sheer numbers that are bought they are never enough; and it is hard not to think there does not really exist some mysterious dimension into which they disappear.

Those who imagine that we find eventually find each other’s lost  items should consider that we must come into the possession of the total number of objects aggregately purchased which would mean we would all be the proud possessors of about 135 ballpoint pens, 15 pairs of drugstore sunglasses and 17 baseball caps all of each other’s.

The same question can be asked of all the information we throw away. Where does it go?

Victor Davis Hanson has an piece in the National Review describing the systematic misplacement of what we know. Hanson argues that by a Borg-like process, the collective American brain was made to throw away whatever it knew about the Muslim Brotherhood, or the Jihad, or Nidal Hassan, and pretty well everything the Russians communicated to the security forces about the Boston Bombers.

He might have added we’d taken the trouble to forget a whole bunch of other stuff as well. Such as forgetting that Afghanistan was a “war of necessity” or that the Guantanamo prison was supposed to be shut. That there was once a promise to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed somewhere, someplace.  Maybe that memory runs together with the announcement — faded now — that the Arab Spring was going to bring freedom to the Middle East. Can we be mistaken in recalling that once we knew that Iran was never going to get a nuclear weapon?

Now we no longer knew that we even knew that.  And speaking of ballpens, isn’t there somewhere in our recollection the faint trace of the vow that the attackers of the US Consulate in Benghazi would be brought to justice? Jay Carney when reminded of it thoughtfully replied that was “a long time ago” as if the passage of a few months was enough to consign something to permanent oblivion. Indeed the Benghazi vow is now older perhaps than even the stirring “red line” drawn by President against the use of chemical weapons in Syria, now itself forgotten.  Who can say? The dates all run together, disappearing in a point ‘a hundred years ago when white males wrote something’.

And yet, like the ballpens and sunglasses that we knew — they must be somewhere. Victor Davis Hanson has a conjecture. He metaphorically suggests they’ve been burned, like the trash in which our lost junk probably finished up and have gone up in smoke.  For surely knowledge like that must be burned on one of the numerous altars with which our secular and atheistic world abounds because it is too dangerous to leave such things lying around. Hanson describes one altar:

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While the US is focused on its own domestic dramas, Europe as the Economist puts it, “is bleeding out”. Silently, exsanguinating below the fold, but bleeding all the same.

It is a car crash of a data release. One simply can’t look away. Hard to know precisely which part of the euro area’s latest unemployment report is the most grimly compelling. …

Individual country numbers inspire their own brand of horror. Greek joblessness topped 27% in January (the most recent month for which data there are available), while Spanish employment has risen to 26.7%. Joblessness in France rose by slightly more in the year to March than it did in Italy. And did you know that Dutch unemployment rose by 1.4 percentage points over the past year? German unemployment, of course, has held steady at 5.4% since last summer.

It is the youth figures that are most remarkable, however: 59.1% of those under 25 are unemployed in Greece, 55.9% in Spain, 38.4% in Italy, 38.3% in Portugal, 26.5% in France—3.6m youths in all.

Yet that would not appear remarkable to anyone who understands what state-controlled economies really are. Hope and Change economies are crony capitalist systems which pick winners and losers. They maintain the status quo at all costs — and reward those who have captured government over those who innovate. Thus the Reuters headline “Banks saved, but Europe risks ‘losing a generation’” is perfectly comprehensible.

What else would happen but that?

Naturally this plight is explained to the desperate voters as the consequence of the remaining vestiges of capitalism. The growing impoverishment, we are told, is occurring because socialism hasn’t gone far enough.  Only give the government more power and all will be well. And so the low information voters turn out in the streets offering to exchange what little freedom they have left for some low paying jobs and a little welfare.  The poorer they are the more eager they become to trade their last liberties for one more benefits check.

It wasn’t supposed to be that way.

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The Daily Mail reports that Saudi Arabia warned the US in writing about Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2012.  The Saudi official cited by the Mail said the warning “was separate from the multiple red flags raised by Russian intelligence in 2011, and was based on human intelligence developed independently in Yemen.”

Citing security concerns, the Saudi government also denied an entry visa to the elder Tsarnaev brother in December 2011, when he hoped to make a pilgrimage to Mecca. Tsarnaev’s plans to visit Saudi Arabia have not been previously disclosed.

The article says the warning letter was given to the DHS. But while one DHS official confirmed knowledge of it to the Mail, the agency itself denied ever having heard of the Saudi warning.

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Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah has openly upped the ante in Syria by declaring his organization on the side of Syrian President Assad.  ”Nasrallah – a close ally of Assad – also hinted that Russia and Iran, Syria’s principal supporters, would intervene militarily to prevent his defeat.”

By throwing his turban into the ring Nasrallah served notice that the Syrian conflict might drag in Israel via Lebanon or the long-range rockets Hezbollah has aimed at the Jewish state. In short, Hezbollah has escalated the Syrian conflict and internationalized it. The Guardian writes “‘Nasrallah just made sure Syria will get a lot worse,’ quoting analyst Emile Hokayem of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.”

Meanwhile the President — who drew the Red Line on chemical weapons in Syria, a line which has now been crossed — is parsing and parsing and parsing. Having in the words of Andrew McCarthy, “judicialized” the fight against al-Qaeda he  judicialized the chemical weapons threat in Syria. In a press briefing Obama said of the chemical weapons whose use proclaimed would be punished ‘we have evidence’ of use of weapons but says ‘what we don’t know is who used them’.

“What we now have is evidence that chemical weapons have been used inside Syria,” Obama told reporters. “What we don’t know is who used them. We don’t have a chain of custody. Without evidence of what happened, how can I make a decision what to do? I have got to make sure I have got the facts.”

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The regular media is finally covering the Kermit Gosnell trial in a big way. It’s as if they woke up from a deep sleep to notice that a poor black doctor offering a service to the community is being lynched in Philadelphia by ‘racist’ and ‘elitist’ prosecutors.  Now they’re making up for lost time. The Washington Post’s head is, “in closing remarks at Pa. abortion clinic trial, defense asks jury to look beyond politics”. CNN banners, “case against abortion doctor is ‘hype and exaggeration,’ defense says”.

But the New York Times comes closest to stating the issues when it leads “they are known as Baby Boy A, Baby C, Baby D and Baby E, all of whom prosecutors call murdered children and the defense calls aborted fetuses — the very difference in language encapsulating why anti-abortion advocates are so passionate about drawing attention to the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, which wrapped up here on Monday with summations by both sides.”

Thus the while facts may not be in much dispute the debate over whether a crime has been committed is alive and well. More vital and living than any of babies, fetuses or tissue in Gosnell’s clinic. Nor are definitions important only in the case of Gosnell. Events have always been subject to interpretation. But perhaps never has action been more contingent on interpretation. Take the problem of whether or not to punish Assad for crossing the “Red Line” in using chemical weapons in Syria.

That should have been straightforward. In Syria the victims are presumably adults. Not baby A, B, or C. They are not even fetuses or embryonic tissue. Has Assad killed them by crossing the Red Line? It should be clear … but

… but.

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Ed Driscoll has a fascinating article on President Obama’s hatred for the Internet, especially social media,  as described by Chuck Todd on ‘Meet the Press’. Todd described how the President clearly made his feelings felt at the end of the White House Correspondent’s dinner.

CHUCK TODD: What I wonder how many people realized at the end [of Saturday's White House Correspondents' Dinner] when he did his, you know, there’s always this part at the end where they get serious for a minute. And it’s usually the part where presidents say, “You know, I think the press has a good job to do and I understand what they have to do.” He didn’t say that. He wasn’t very complimentary of the press. You know, we all can do better.

It did seem, I thought his pot shots joke wise and then the serious stuff about the internet, the rise of the internet media and social media and all that stuff — he hates it. Okay? He hates this part of the media. He really thinks that the sort of the buzzification — this isn’t just about Buzzfeed or Politico and all this stuff – he thinks that sort of coverage of political media has hurt political discourse. He hates it. And I think he was trying to make that clear last night.

‘But why should Obama hate outlets like Politico?’ asks Driscoll. After all, more than few of its staff members are his supporters.  Ed Driscoll writes, “Politico has numerous journalists who during the campaign in 2008 were on the infamous “JournoList,” which dubbed itself the “non-official campaign” for Obama’s election bid.”

Part of the answer to Driscoll’s question comes from Andy McCarthy, who painstakingly examines the administration’s efforts to shape the narrative in the Tsarnaev case.  He traces how the administration took credit for preventing the future Times Square bombing when that plot is not even mentioned in the charges against the suspect. He points out how some overly zealous Federal judge showed up to Mirandize Tsarnaev and ostensibly stop the FBI in its tracks when “it was not the magistrate judge who decided Tsarnaev should be Mirandized. It was President Obama and Attorney General Holder”.

He comes to the conclusion that’s it a show, a very deliberate campaign to demonstrate to the public that the “judicialization” of the fight against terrorism works even when it doesn’t.

Because you are being softened up. Steered by its Gitmo Bar veterans and Lawyer Left compass, the Obama administration is executing a massive national-security fraud: the farce that the jihad against America can be judicialized, that civilian-court processes are a better answer to enemy warfare than are combat protocols. …

So in the effort to tame you into believing civilian due process has proved wildly successful in the Marathon bombing investigation, just as Obama and Holder promised it would, the government is now strategically leaking interrogation details.

Sure it may look like the investigation was a tragicomedy of errors in which our $100 billion national-security edifice, despite investigating Tamerlan Tsarnaev for a year and a half before the bombing, had to ask the public’s help in identifying a picture of him. But look: We stopped a spectacular bombing at Times Square! And sure, there’s a lot of innuendo about Islam and overseas “extremists,” but after 16 hours of penetrating scrutiny we’ve figured out that this was just wanton “homegrown” violence committed by a couple of confused kids — the sort of thing that is bound to happen if we don’t crack down on gun ownership and Islamophobia.

The fraud is on. Will we keep falling for it?

Shows are a part of governance, but shows will require a script. In answer to McCarthy’s rhetorical question, many will probably fall for for the show, now that the administration has had time to produce it in the leisurely aftermath of the arrest. But there was a frightening moment while the action was breaking —  driven by the Internet and especially by social media — when the drama was unfolding faster than the establishment’s feedback loop could cope.  When they couldn’t issue talking points fast enough to their buddies in Politico to spin it. The action outran the script.

That is why the President hates the Internet.

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