{"id":37213,"date":"2013-08-23T09:20:10","date_gmt":"2013-08-23T13:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=37213"},"modified":"2013-08-23T09:30:11","modified_gmt":"2013-08-23T13:30:11","slug":"even-a-stopped-clock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=37213","title":{"rendered":"Even a Stopped Clock . . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Apparently reality is <em>finally<\/em> beginning to impact thinking in the Pentagon regarding the civil war in Syria.<\/p>\n<p>In <a href=\"http:\/\/democrats.foreignaffairs.house.gov\/113\/Letter_for_Rep_Engel_19_Aug_13.pdf\">a 19 Aug letter to Rep. Eliot Engel of New York<\/a>, GEN Martin Dempsey &#8211; CJCS &#8211; indicates reluctance at this time to begin US military involvement in Syria.\u00a0 The stated reason is that the Syrian rebels are not today willing to support US interests.<\/p>\n<p>No joke, General. That&#8217;s been obvious for some time.<\/p>\n<p>Some <a href=\"http:\/\/www.armytimes.com\/article\/20130821\/NEWS\/308210010\/Dempsey-details-reasons-U-S-military-shouldn-t-intervene-Syria\">media outlets are touting this as Administration &#8220;opposition&#8221; to US military action in Syria<\/a>.\u00a0 That is an overstatement.\u00a0 The letter is worded as are most bureauratic or diplomatic documents, and has IMO more &#8220;wiggle room&#8221; than a 6-year-olds loose tooth the day before it falls out.<\/p>\n<p>In particular, it does <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">not<\/span> categorically rule out US military involvement in the current Syrian conflict.\u00a0 It merely says that &#8220;Syria today is not about choosing between two sides but rather about choosing one among many sides. It is my belief that the side we choose must be ready to promote their interests and ours when the balance shifts in their favor. Today, they are not.&#8221;\u00a0 Should that change, future intervention is not excluded.<\/p>\n<p>Still &#8211; IMO it&#8217;s a breath of fresh air, given previous statements from the Administration implying willingness to become involved militarily.\u00a0 It&#8217;s just a pity it took so long for reality to register.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Apparently reality is finally beginning to impact thinking in the Pentagon regarding the civil war in &hellip; <a title=\"Even a Stopped Clock . . . .\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=37213\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Even a Stopped Clock . . . .<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-foreign-policy","category-military-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37213\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}