A thought for my left-leaning brethren about Syria.  It’s been a widely held belief on the left that, sooner or later, our National Embarrassment is going to start a war as a distraction from all of his various and sundry investigations and self-inflicted wounds.  The result is, when a missile strike is issued, there’s not just concern but something of a group freak-out that “this is it.”  I think it isn’t and I’ll tell you why: France.

Do you remember when many Americans started calling the French “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” and eating “Freedom Fries” instead of French Fries?  That was because 43 and that Dick Cheney wanted to launch their illegal invasion on a foreign, sovereign nation based on trumped up “evidence” and France refused to allow the US to use French airspace for an attack they felt had no basis in reality.  (They were right.)

I’m not sanguine about declarations from the US government.  The fact that the UK goes along with the story doesn’t impress me, either.  The US and UK have been shown to conspire for oily purposes before and surprise is no longer on the menu for me where that’s concerned.  But France still seems to think verifiable evidence has a role in military conflicts.  I think it also matters that Macron doesn’t much like Trump (although the two seem to getting along a little better, these days).  I doubt they would “buddy up” for a military engagement lightly.

So when France came on board, I felt better that there was a solid basis for the action.  As it happens, France is MORE than “on board.”  France claims they directed the action, keeping the strikes to chemical weapons plants and slowing the so-called “President’s” roll a bit.  I’ll tell you this: if France thinks the evidence supports the position that it is, in fact, Assad using chemical weapons, I’m going to be comfortable that this is not just a distraction…