Reich Makes Right

Facebook post by Robert Reich raising alarm--or at least asking for debate--on Syria, and domestic fallout.

We're about to go into Syria. I can't tell you at this point how, but the U.S. is readying an offensive. We're rounding up allies, as we did before we went into Iraq. The White House is preparing the American people, as another White House did before Iraq. But doesn't this at least deserve a real debate? The silence in America is deafening. Didn't we learn anything from Iraq? Or, for that matter, from Vietnam?

I'm as appalled as anyone by the Syrian regime and its use of chemical weapons on its own people. But what exactly do we expect to achieve by entering this fray? And at what cost -- to us, to the Syrian people, to the tinderbox of the Middle East?

Normally I don't venture into foreign policy, but foreign and domestic policy aren't easily separated. At a time when almost one in four American children is in poverty, when the middle class is struggling to make ends meet, when inequality is widening, and we're dis-investing in infrastructure and education, can we really afford what this initiative could easily mushroom into? We have seen the power of the military-industrial-congressional complex to get its way, to get the dollars it wants, and to sway public opinion in the direction that will be most profitable to it. At the very least, we deserve a full and frank discussion of what the Obama Administration is about to get us into.