Rallying support for military action — or, more broadly, actual war — is no simple thing these days. Writing paeans to peace, in a modern democracy, is a lot easier.

Barack Obama has had this problem for a while now. Slightly more than a year ago, in July, a spokesman for Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad let it be known that the outlaw regime had stockpiled chemical weapons.

A newspaper called the New York Times reported it, and Assad did not seek a correction. His representatives gave on-the-record interviews, in fact, stating the chemical weapons — they acknowledged they were “weapons of mass destruction” — would “never be used against the Syrian people.”

The Syrian stockpiles included sarin gas, mustard gas and cyanide. Sarin is a nerve agent that goes to work within a minute, paralyzing your lungs.

Mustard gas is a cytotoxic agent that forms big blisters on your skin and lungs, and it has been around for almost 200 years. Its first known use was by the Germans, against British and Canadian soldiers in France in 1917 during the First World War.

Anyone familiar with the movies knows about cyanide; a tiny amount of hydrogen cyanide will kill you in minutes.

A year ago, Obama knew that Syria had the third-largest stockpile of chemical weapons in the world. He also knew that Syria was one of only a few states that had never ratified the international convention against the use of chemical weapons (along with Angola, Myanmar, Egypt, Israel, North Korea, and Sudan).

Knowing all this — knowing that Syria has in fact been making chemical weapons since the 1980s — Obama issued a warning. Famously, he said the use of chemical weapons was a “red line,” and the crossing of it by Assad would draw a swift and mighty response.

Last month, Assad used sarin gas in a predominantly Sunni Muslim area, just east of Damascus. This has been confirmed by the British, the French, the Israelis, the Turks, the Americans and even Doctors Without Borders. For its part, the United Nations stated that it believed chemical weapons had been deployed on at least four occasions during the nearly three-year Syrian civil war, although it couldn’t say which side was responsible.

In the not-so-distant past, all of that should have been enough. The red line had been crossed.

But in the modern era — buffeted as it is by Photoshopped images, and Internet hoaxes, and widespread cynicism fed by presidents and prime ministers spinning about “weapons of mass destruction” — Obama’s task was not made any easier.

Obama made appeals to decency, and references to the body count, and the strategic necessity of it all. In every respect — in every way — he was right. So far, however, the American people are not onside — and likewise many erstwhile allies. Congress evinced no enthusiasm for any of it, but has reluctantly gone along.

The consequences of failing to act, to some of us, were readily apparent. It will embolden Assad, and persuade him to use chemical weapons again and again. It will encourage his terroristic allies in Iran and Hezbollah, and lunatic states like North Korea.

It will suggest laws and conventions against chemical weapons are a crude joke — and likely reduce the American superpower to an international laughingstock.

It will isolate and jeopardize western allies in the region, like Saudi Arabia and Turkey and Israel.

It will magnify the refugee crisis caused by the Syrian civil war — now affecting more than 1.5 million men, women and children.

But most of all, it will render us less human. Nearly 1,500 innocent civilians were murdered by Bashar al-Assad on the morning of Aug. 21. One third of them were children.

Rallying support for military force is, as noted, no simple task. No one likes it.

But on Aug. 21, a red line was truly crossed. And if we do not acknowledge that — and if we do not act on that — we are indeed slightly less human than we once were.

History, as someone once said, is watching.

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Why? Here and here.

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This time of year, more than previous years, is making me feel a bit nostalgic.  At the end of August, and at the start of September, Summer starts to wind down, the wasps seem to proliferate everywhere, and the Toronto International Film Festival kicks off.  Over the years, I never went to any of the film festival parties or anything, because I think it is disgusting how much actors get paid to play let’s-pretend in front of a camera.  (I’ll always be a punk rock snob, I suppose: I also generally hate any popular culture that gets too popular.)

Anyway, I digress. This time of year is the time when I would start heading over to the Liberal Party headquarters – federal and provincial – on St. Mary’s Street, off Yonge.  In 2003, in 2007 and 2011, we’d take up residence in that crummy old building, and spend hour after hour campaigning under the leadership of Dalton McGuinty and Don Guy.  In 2003 we won big, in 2007 we won big, and in 2011 we won almost as big – just one seat, a few hundred votes – shy of another majority.

Everyone knows, pretty much, what happened after Dalton resigned.  It happens whenever a long-serving leader leaves, and his or her successor scrambles to depict themselves as “brand-new” and “an agent of change.”  It rarely works.  You’re there for the good as well as the bad.  The moment the media and the Opposition see you trying to frantically distance yourself from what went before, they’ve got you.  Martin learned that the hard way, Wynne hopefully won’t.

But that’s not the point of my nostalgic post.  The point is this: the people I served with on those campaigns – Don Guy, Brendan McGuinty, Laura Miller, Chris Morley, Dave Gene, Aaron Lazarus, Christine McMillan, Gerald Butts and many others – were my political family.  They were, and are, some of the finest people I know.  I will stick by them and defend them, always.  Just like I did and do with Jean Chretien, Bruce Hartley, Randy McCauley, Jean Carle and a few others on the federal scene.

I do not think I am particularly intelligent, and nor do I think I have any special skills, in anything.  The main thing I am proud of, in my political life, is loyalty.  Not loyalty when times are good – that’s not loyalty: that’s easy.  Loyalty when times are tough, like they were for Chretien’s political family in 2004-2005, and like they are now for McGuinty’s political family.  That’s not so easy.

I’m not uncritical in my loyalty, of course.  One friend of some 30 years lied full-on to my face about something important, in the past year, and if I don’t ever see him again, it’ll be too soon.  Another one was never, ever there during some very tough times.  He voted with his feet, so I did too.  See ya.

But those McGuinty folks? They are good and decent people, and I don’t believe one scintilla of the bullshit being said about them by the media or their detractors, inside or outside the Liberal Party.  (Those kinds of people are just cowards: sucking up to those with power, making big bucks lobbying or whatever, and then disappearing when the going gets tough. I call it the Dominic LeBlanc Syndrome.)

You shouldn’t believe the bullshit, either.  And you should also believe me – if you are in a campaign, or if you are contemplating one – when I say this: in politics, all that counts is loyalty.  That is what matters most, more than winning or losing.

So, that’s what I’m thinking about, a bit wistfully, as I contemplate TIFF, the wasps, and some great times in that run-down old building on St. Mary’s Street.

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Dear Men:

Good God Almighty.

I’ve given up on swimming, starting right about now.  You?

Sincerely,

Warren

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…on his new book.

As someone who has written seven books, I am always gratified to hear about newcomers like this “Stephen J. Harper” fellow.

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I plan to write more about this in my Sunday column. But, as the debate heats up in Congress today, here are a few reasons why I feel we are compelled to take action, in no particular order. Comments welcome.

1. Morality: More than 1,400 were killed by Assad’s Sarin gas, many of them children. We cannot allow that to happen again. This is a profound humanitarian crisis. We have a collective moral and legal responsibility to prevent further use of chemical weapons.
2. Red Line: Obama said a year ago that the use of chemical weapons was a red line – he cannot back away from that now. U.S. credibility – particularly in Israel and with pro-U.S. Arab states – is at stake. (And, as Obama noted this morning, it’s the world’s red line.)
3. Terrorism’s arsenal: If Assad is permitted to use such weapons with impunity, there is every reason to expect his allies – Iran, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda – will seek to do likewise. Assad will reward them with chemical weapons for their support in the nearly three-year war.
4. Proliferation: Chemical weapons, as I wrote in my first book, are cheap and easy to produce. They radically change the way in which war is waged. Their increased use will make the Middle East (and therefore the world) a much more dangerous place.
5. Stronger Assad: If his targeting of civilians with chemical agents remains unpunished, his stature is increased, and the rebels’ predicament gets increasingly dire. Iran, Hezbollah and others benefit.
6. Allies onside: Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, Turkey – all of them are advising to strike now, and ensure that Assad is driven out. They are in the region; their perspective is highly relevant. We must listen to them.
7. No more waiting: Those who said waiting would work were wrong. The situation has gotten dramatically worse – a massive refugee crisis, and more than 100,000 dead. Action is needed, now.
8. Others are watching: North Korea et al. are watching closely. A failure to act will only encourage them.
9. Consensus: While Bush Sr. didn’t wait for Congress with Kuwait – and while Clinton and Chretien didn’t wait for the U.N. in Kosovo – Obama has sought bi-partisan congressional support. He is getting it. Most Western governments are onside. That matters.
10. Public onside: An NBC poll found that a clear majority favour action if (a) Congress approves and (b) U.S. allies are with Obama and (c) the engagement is limited. Conditions (a) and (b) will be met; condition (c) is what Obama has promised.

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If Syria’s regime is permitted to continue gassing its own citizens to death – and, rest assured, it did just that last week, killing hundreds of men, women and children – then George W. Bush and Tony Blair share some of the blame.

Already, the effects of Bush and Blair’s ill-advised war in Iraq are being seen. Western efforts to cobble together a military response to the use of chemical weapons by Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad are falling part, in Britain and elsewhere – because of Bush and Blair’s disastrous quest for non-existent “weapons of mass distraction” in Iraq a decade ago.

Late in the week, Britain’s Conservative government was obliged to dilute a Parliamentary resolution authorizing military action against the Hitlerite Assad. Skittish Labour Party members – as well as Conservative MPs – now insist on United Nations approval first. That effectively means all that Assad will be facing, for the next while, is stern words.

The civilized world’s approach to the Syria crisis has devolved into tragedy and farce. When Assad can gas children to death with impunity – contrary to every known international law, contrary to whatever human decency is left – then all of us share in the blame.

Bush and Blair, as noted, can lay claim to a greater share. Their WMD misadventure has given too many faint-hearted legislators – on the Right as well as the Left – the excuse they need to delay and deny firm action.

The outcome will be more slaughter – more than 100,000 are believed to have been killed in Syria’s ongoing conflict – and, likely, more use of chemical weapons by an emboldened Assad.

Barack Obama may choose to go it alone, as Republican leaders in Congress have favoured military intervention in Syria for many months. If chooses discretion over valour, however, he runs the risk of reducing his international reputation to tatters. His fabled “red line” will be rendered a joke.

In order to remain human, the novelist Graham Greene once said, one must choose sides.

It is time to choose military intervention in Syria, as limited as possible. Barack Obama and David Cameron are right to push for it.

George W. Bush and Tony Blair were wrong to start a war over weapons of mass destruction that did not exist.

But it is manifestly worse to use Bush and Blair’s mistake to justify doing nothing now in Syria. Inaction in the face of such a calamity, per the truism, is complicity.

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Took this up at the cabin, as we were preparing to leave. Summer is truly over, isn’t it?

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