Doctor Death

Almost half a million dead --
Assad and Putin have much to celebrate.

The Syrian Civil War is on its way to half a million war dead, nearly twice the death rate of the rebellion put down by Assad's father 35 years ago. I always thought of Bashar al-Assad as a mild-manner, pro-western gentleman. At least, that was the image that he projected. It is clear to me now that he is a psychopathic sadist who has little regard for the people of his country. I'm sorry, but if my beloved country was in the throes of one of the worst humanitarian crises in modern times I would NOT be caught smiling for a photo op.

How did the world allow Syria to get to this point? Was there anything anyone could have done to prevent this level of bloodshed? I believe that there is, and I believe that Syria could be peaceful today if certain things had been done years ago.

Quite early in the conflict the Obama Administration drew a red line in the sand: if Assad were to use chemical weapons against its citizens he would face consequences. On the 21st of August of 2013 that line was crossed, when rockets with sarin gas landed on the rebel-occupied city of Ghouta, Syria to devastating effect.

Some of the almost 1,500 victim of the nerve gas attack.

Unfortunately, neither the U.S. nor NATO acted, which left a gap into which Russia has stepped, thereby insuring that the Assad regime will retain control of Syria and that the conflict will continue with no end in sight.

So, what could have changed this outcome? What needed to happen as early on as possible was for Assad to feel enough pressure to force a negotiated outcome, and there were a few things the U.S. and NATO could have easily done in response to the gas attack to put strong pressure on Assad:

• Bomb the airstrips to prevent aircraft from taking off and landing.
• Create a naval blockade to control the flow of weapons into Syria.
• Use drones to target and destroy missile batteries whenever they are used to launch missiles.
• Use superior U.S. air power to keep Syrian aircraft grounded.

These actions would have leveled the playing field and would, in my opinion, have quickly forced brokered negotiations that would have led to a transition government with international support.

Unfortunately, President Obama, while making it clear he did not need Congress in order to take military action and acknowledging that failing to act in response to the chemical weapons attack would make a mockery of Western resolve, deferred to Congress who debated a 60 day war authorization but ultimately failed to pass anything.

Now, instead of a peaceful outcome, the Syrians are faced with a war that could easily go on for 10 years or more, costing over a million lives, displacing over 15 million people, creating regional instability and providing opportunities for Islamist groups to gain strength, all the time promising little hope that the despotic authoritarian regime whose abuses led to the rebellion will ever be deposed.

Nice work, World.

Post 9/11 Lessons We Can Learn

Fifteen years after the 9/11 attacks there definitely are some lessons we can learn.

The 9/11 attacks were decidedly low tech and inexpensive to execute. Our response, on the other hand, was anything but, and in this fact lies the crux of the problem.

Groups like Al-Qaeda can never hope to conquer us directly, but like a bee sting or virus, our reaction can have the desired effect. Like the immune response to the influenza virus, or the allergic response to a bee sting, it is the organism's own defenses that are its undoing.

The best that Al-Qaeda ever hoped to achieve was to send a powerful message and hope that the injury and economic dislocation would create enough upheaval to force us to alter our routines, lose productivity, and sacrifice the personal freedoms that make our Republic great.

On those counts, the 9/11 attacks probably exceeded Al-Qaeda's expectations. A small band of radicals with box cutter knives triggered over $4 trillion in war spending (and counting), all of which was financed by issuing debt instruments. The Patriot Act, as well as a series of additional pieces of legislation and executive orders, have resulted in massive domestic surveillance by our own government, and the economic measures implemented to help stimulate the economy (such as a relaxing the bank reserve requirements) led directly to the mortgage crisis and the economic crash of 2008.

Once the shock had resided, we should have acknowledged that we left ourselves vulnerable by not anticipating that a hijacker might use a plane as a weapon. And, it's not like that possibility wasn't discussed, it just wasn't something that we took seriously. By comparison, Israel has had reinforced cockpit doors and a no-negotiation policy for hijackers for decades ... we simply should have known better. So, one logical response would be to tighten up airline security.

Additionally, we should have used the massive goodwill and sympathy felt for the U.S. around the globe to increase world peace and form coalitions of sympathetic nations to act to interdict Al-Qaeda and their supporters/financiers wherever they may be. Similar to President George H. Bush's successful organization of a coalition that enabled us to push the Iraqi Army out of Kuwait and back to Baghdad and have all our expenses covered along the way, we could have formed a similar coalition to move against Al-Qaeda in an effective way that helped distribute the costs. Finally, our decision to use the nation's predisposition for war to invade Iraq was the biggest mistake of all. The deposed Iraqi Army leadership is now the secret to ISIS's success.

Also, there was no reason to believe at the time that a massive domestic surveillance machine, including a data warehouse that stores virtually all emails, texts and voice communications that ALL of us send and receive, would have interfered with the planning and execution of the 9/11 attacks. Perhaps if the FBI had paid attention to calls from instructors in Florida who reported having foreign students in their classes who only had interest in learning how to fly an airliner, but not how to take off or land. Instead, our legislators have granted the government powers that can easily be used in the future to intimidate and silence dissent.

Bottom line -- just take it easy. Never let anger, hatred or a desire for revenge distort your thinking. The higher the stress level, the more methodical and deliberate your decision-making must be. And, never, ever overreact.

The Martian Has Gone Insane

How do we intend to colonize another planet if we can't even transition
away from fossil fuels here at home?

Frankly, it is time to take a good, long, hard look at NASA and the future of space exploration.

The most common argument I've heard as to the reason we are pushing for a Mars colony is to preserve the human race in the event that life becomes impossible here on Earth. Are you kidding me? Is that even a remote possibility? And, if that possibility exists, WHY AREN'T WE PUTTING EVERY POSSIBLE EFFORT INTO PREVENTING IT FROM OCCURRING?

From my way of looking at it, as goes the Earth, so goes the human race. We are inextricably linked to our home planet, as we should be. I consider notions of moving the human race to another planet to be fundamentally heretical and insulting to a world that has provided us so with much.

There are still parts of the NASA program that are valuable and necessary, in particular the program to track objects in Space that might be on a collision course with us, and the program to monitor the Sun. The programs to sent orbiters to other planets to explore their composition are clearly fascinating, but of limited utility to us at home. The programs that have enabled us to look back billions of years and time and see some of the first clouds of gas condensing and forming stars is amazing stuff that helps us better comprehend our place in the Universe, but is, in practical terms, of limited use to us at home.

Casting a shadow over all of this is one difficult to refute fact: we are altering our climate in ways that could cause global temperature and weather to spin out of control. It's like we are standing in the middle of the road, peering upwards into the stars, while a tractor trailer is bearing down on us.

I would like to see the vast majority of NASA's budget repurposed to focus on climate change and renewable energy source development. We need to train those powerful telescopes back on Earth and work to get us weaned off of fossil fuels. Let's make that the new "moon shot".