Sam Johnson's Nuke Syria Scandal

On February 19, 2005, Sam Johnson volunteered to nuke Syria before a crowd at a church who cheered. Eleven days later he was called up on the matter by Roll Call (a magazine dedicated to the US Congress) which mentioned that they had a tape of him making the remarks at the Methodist Church in Allen. Of course, Sam Johnson said it was "kind of a joke" and various explanations and analyses have been offered since. Here is a Washington Post story which shows what I'm describing. According to the article, "According to Roll Call, Johnson said he was talking with President Bush and Rep. Kay Granger (R-Tex.) at the White House about weapons of mass destruction that troops failed to find in Iraq. According to Roll Call, Johnson said he told the president: 'Syria is the problem. Syria is where those weapons of mass destruction are, in my view. You know, I can fly an F-15, put two nukes on 'em and I'll make one pass. We won't have to worry about Syria anymore.' Johnson, 74, is a former Air Force combat pilot who served in Korea and Vietnam, where he was shot down and spent about seven years as a prisoner of war. Johnson did not respond to a request for comment on Friday. But he told the Dallas Morning News that he was surprised anyone took his comments seriously and has never advocated a nuclear strike on Syria. 'I was kind of joking -- you know, we were talking between veterans,' he said. He added that Bush knew he was joking."

Where do you begin on something like this? Sam-I-Am really stepped in it several levels deep.

1. When Sam Johnson said that he thought the WMD still existed, he was already wrong, before he mentioned they were in Syria or volunteering to pretend to be Slim Pickens' character Major T.J. "King" Kong in the movie Dr. Strangelove. If Sam really said what he claims he said in front of Bush and Granger, Bush must have been thinking, "And they think I'M stupid - dang, I fired Tenet back in June of 2004 precisely because there WERE no WMD and I was sort of afraid the American people might fire ME in November 2004 if I didn't fire Tenet or blame SOMEONE for this whole Iraq thing and the fact that there WERE no WMD."

2. When Sam Johnson said that they must be in Syria, he was wrong again. First, if there were any chance to cover the mistake of the WMD-less invasion of Iraq by claiming that the WMD must have been transferred elsewhere, don't you think Tenet and Bush (not to mention Condi Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, etc.) would have been trying to establish that myth? Also, from first principles, doesn't it seem a bit odd that a nation would put its WMD elsewhere? Wouldn't they keep them in their own nation and simply admit they have them? We sure don't pretend that the USA has no WMD. Indeed, why wouldn't Iraq have told the UN, "YES we have WMD and don't even THINK of invading or we'll use them on your troops, on our own people ('invade and the Kurds get it!') or on America's occasional friends in the region (e.g., Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, etc.), or on the USA itself." Indeed, the fact that they DIDN'T use the WMD on our troops or the Kurds (or even make the threats I mentioned) is probably part of the proof that they no longer had any of the WMD we had sold them via Rumsfeld in the early 1980s when we were using Saddam to invade Iran. But of all nations, why Syria? Syria was a US ally in Desert Storm so why would he select a previous enemy? Let's even look at the idea of a friendly nation like Canada taking OUR WMD. Let's say we gave them our WMD. Now let's say we ask for them back. I think you can envision Canada's response: "UH, ahem, now about that St. Lawrence Seaway agreement - some of those islands are actually ours...and we also want a better lumber deal, and a 200 mile limit for fishing, and oh yeah, reparations for the War of 1812, eh?"

3. Naturally, the really crazy part is the notion of nuking Syria. Here's a nation that never attacked us (rather like Iraq), where the number of provable insurgents from anywhere other than Iraq (much less from Syria) is trivial, and we're discussing attacking them? Arguably, the fact that we invaded Iraq and it DIDN'T have WMD is one of the many reasons Iran is not only fast-forwarding the tape on its OWN WMD program (a REAL one with NUKES instead of 'merely' chemical and biological agents) but that it is also now going in the WRONG direction politically. You'll recall that after the Ayatollah Khomeini died, we got Rafsanjani - not a Western Liberal, but a vast improvement. Then we got Khatamei. Things were proceeding in the correct direction. There were student demonstrations, most of the folks in Iran were born after the revolution, kids were sneaking off to the woods and each other's private parties and doing non-Islamic things, etc. Even during the recent elections in Iran Rafsanjani was running again, the former chief of police was running and the music was so raucous and the ululating women were so wild in their dancing at his rallies that a few years ago, he'd have had to have arrested them. As we now know, Iran is now going very much in the wrong direction with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with his remarks about wiping Israel off the map or moving it to Alaska or Europe, denying the existence of Hitler's mass killings of Jewish people, and claims that he'll share his nuclear weapons with all Islamic nations. Naturally, the invasion of Iraq ON ITS OWN is probably responsible for Iran's bad turnaround, but Sam Johnson's Syrian statements may have helped. Thanks a lot, Sam.

4. Given that Sam's hostile talk came at about the same time that Hariri was killed in Lebanon, and that Condi's talks with Syria about their pulling out of Lebanon could have been jeapordized, were his remarks really responsible from that standpoint?

5. Usually if something is a joke, the audience laughs (or groans and boos if it's a bad pun, etc.). But when an audience for a Congressman cheers at a remark, it's usually considered a political statement unless he immediately says, "hey, I was just kidding." However, let's assume he was kidding. What he probably WASN'T kidding about was the idea that we should INVADE Syria. Quite apart from whether another such invasion would give cause to other nations to hurry up even faster and get some nukes of their own, let's face it - we CAN'T invade ANYONE right now, even GRANADA, while all our troops are tied down in Iraq. Is Sam Johnson thinking about a draft for this purpose?

6. Teddy Roosevelt said some not-so-good things about American Indians, but he said one good thing about power: "Walk softly and carry a big stick." To the extent that Sam and others in the Administration are 'talking tough' when all our troops are tied down in Iraq with no schedule by Bush, much less Sam Johnson, to pull them out soon, we create the impression that we actually "walk cockily, but carry a limp noodle." The Iranians in early 2005, even before Ahmadinejad, said "Condi likes to talk tough, but she doesn't have anything to back it up." Seems like the same critique is true of Sam Johnson.

7. I'm not a veteran myself, but my father was. He volunteered for WWII the day after Pearl Harbor and NEVER discussed his war experiences. I have personally known lots of veterans from WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and even a few from WWI and the more recent Iraq conflicts. VERY few of them EVER discussed the military. In fact, when I went to a Republican funtion back in Florida in 2004 and mentioned to a group of vets how phony Kerry sounded dredging up his medals and war experiences all the time since, as I said, no veterans I knew EVER talked about their experiences, every mouth dropped all of a sudden (you could practically see the Beavis-and-Butthead lightbulbs go off over their heads) and they all joined in saying, "You're RIGHT!!! MAN, I never even THOUGHT of that!!!" "I NEVER even talk with my WIFE about that stuff!" etc. I guess that in the name of my late father, I rather resent the notion that the 'typical' vet 'gets off' getting all macho and talking about killing as if it is 'kind of a joke.' The only time my father IMPLICITLY talked about war was when my mom, brother, and I were trying to claim that if they put Calley in prison for the My Lai killings, they should probably put Medina in prison too. My dad very angrily responded, the only time I've ever seen him get that angry, banging his fist on the dining table: "THERE IS NO JUSTIFICATION for taking WOMEN AND CHILDREN and THROWING THEM IN A DITCH AND MACHINE-GUNNING THEM!!!" Thus, the idea that a bunch of veterans actually DID cheer for this probably is an example of selective sampling bias. Most of the vets who did their time and saw REAL killing (a very small percentage since there was a 9 to 1 ratio in Vietnam between support personnel putting bombs on the planes all day and actual soldiers shooting at VC or North Vietnamese or flying F15s) probably didn't go to the event and have tried to put war out of their minds. My hope is that most people realize that most vets DON'T sit around laughing about nuking innocent civilians.