Diplomats join the warmongers

The George W. Bush administration is infamous for its neocons from Vice President Cheney, to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld over ruling the State Department to ignite criminal war. We usually look to the career diplomats, whose experience and wisdom argues against unnecessary war, to keep the presidential warmongers at bay. That's why is troubling that 51 career diplomats used the State Department 'Dissent Channel', a mechanism whereby diplomats can voice their dissent without fear of career reprisal, to argue for more bombing of the elected Syrian regime of President Assad. They're upset by their claim Assad is violating the tenuous civil war ceasefire, arguing we can bomb him to eternity without fear of Russian intervention on behalf of their ally. 

General Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewicz (1780-1831) was a political theorist who wrote in his famous tome 'On War', "War is the continuation of politics by other means."  Alas, that wise aphorism is lost on the diplomatic corp we should be relying on to avoid more murderous and criminal war. Too many of them are joining the neocons outside of State to twist von Clausewicz's wisdom into 'War is America's first diplomatic choice to control the world'.