AIPAC vs. The American Public

At the end of this morning's story "House Leaders Express Their Support for Syria Strike," by Mark Landler, Michael Gordon and Thom Shanker, finally comes a mention of the reality that Obama and his war cabinet are trying to subvert:

The calendar is Mr. Obama’s enemy: Many members from both parties are still back in their districts hearing from constituents, and the feedback, based on numerous interviews, is overwhelmingly negative. 

On Tuesday, however, a powerful pro-Israel lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, threw its support behind military action in Syria, citing the need to send a strong message to Iran and the militant group Hezbollah, both of which support Mr. Assad.

Any gauge of sanity and basic fairness, given the decade-plus ongoing foreign occupations following 9/11 and the recent Snowden revelations of an omnipresent surveillance state that has metastasized since then, has the American public clearly in the right on this issue. Public opinion was wrong to support Bush II's invasion of Iraq, but Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld & Co. were shrewd in their use of the fear and anger 9/11 created to sow enough confusion with their bogus intelligence to pull off the crime (so far) of the century.

Now is a different time. We're coming to the end of the 9/11 era, which also happens to be the end of the Arab Spring. People might have looked the other way on Libya because of a heady rush caused by toppling Arab dictators, but no mas. The 2012 Benghazi attack put to rest the fallacy of a problem-free intervention.

The American citizenry has been treated to a series of budget crises by a divided national political class. And suddenly that political class is coming together, but not to fund a public works project or expand early childhood education. No, the national political leadership is joined in an embrace of the Obama request for an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF). In other words, folks, you get to carry and pay for guns but you get no butter.

And the public understands the screwing it's getting. Support for bombing Syria has not grown since the Obama team has "flooded the zone" and the nation's fourth estate has resumed its role from the run up to Iraq's invasion -- cheerleader for illegal warfare and megaphone of tendentious intelligence. It is unquestioned in the Western media that the Syrian government is responsible for attacking the Damascus suburb of Ghouta. The unverified death toll of 1,400 is unquestioned as well. Pleas to "Save the children!" are made incessantly by beautiful, young cable news anchors. But despite all this American public opinion is unmoved.

This is not to say that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) doesn't have a few tricks left to pull on us. Opinion might tilt a few points in the direction of launching the Tomahawks. But I don't think so. I think this will be a clear case of "which side are you on?" The 10-7 vote in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee augurs a divided Senate. But the real challenge for AIPAC and other warhawks will be in the House.

If the AUMF passes the House of Representatives, given everything that we've been through since the millennium, I think it's safe to say that electoral democracy is officially dead in this country.