McCainMenendezSyriaVote9-4-13.JPG

"Wacko birds" of a feather: John McCain and Menendez confer before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations voted to advance a resolution authorizing the use of force against Syrian government targets. McCain called opponents of the ill-fated intervention "wacko birds" but he and Menendez helped ISIS with the intervention.

(EPA/JIM LO SCALZO)

When I was a lad my mother would on occasion ask me why I did something.

"Because Johnny told me to," I would reply.

"If Johnny told you to jump in the lake, would you jump in the lake?" she'd reply.

In the case of Bob Menendez, apparently so. He not only jumped in the lake, but he pulled a lot of people in with him.

That's the only logical conclusion after reading that op-ed piece he wrote attacking me for pointing out that his advocacy of a rebellion in Syria led directly to the rise of ISIS in that country and Iraq.

Menendez doesn't deny that it was his goal to have Syrian strongman Bashar Assad deposed. He doesn't deny that the rebellion he and others advocated permitted ISIS to move into the parts of Syria formerly controlled by Assad.

Instead he complains that:

Or in other words, "They told me to jump in the lake and I jumped."

At the time he and the rest were deciding that "Assad must go" as they put it, Menendez was the chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee. If he had dug in and pointed out that the U.S. would be better off propping up Assad as a bulwark against the Muslim Brotherhood, he might have had some influence in heading off this fiasco.

But how could he have known the effort to depose Assad would go so horribly wrong and lead to the rise of ISIS?

Uh, by reading my columns. When it comes to foreign policy, I seek out the people who understand the Mideast. See my prior columns warning of the folly of "liberating" our enemies here. These are not politicians. I've yet to meet one who had even the vaguest notion of who's fighting whom in that neck of the woods.

Instead I seek out ex-CIA agents like Bob Baer or ex-Green Berets like Pat Lang. These guys saw this fiasco coming from the very beginning.

An example from a column critical of GOP presidential contender and leading "neo" conservative Rick Santorum's foreign policy stance in which I cited Baer (italics mine):

Baer said that in my column way back in 2011. If Menendez had been talking to Mideast experts instead of Beltway insiders back then, he would have known that deposing Assad would lead to the rise of Islamic fundamentalists.

Then there was this advice from Baer in May of 2013 concerning the disaster in Benghazi that followed the fall of Moammar Gadhafi:

Almong those neocons were Menendez's committee comrades John McCain and Lindsey Graham.

Sen. Rand Paul endorses Steve Lonegan for U.S. Senate in 2013: Paul called Menendez the leading proponent of getting us involved in war in Syria.

McCain was so crazy he actually traveled to Syria to give moral support to the rebels - something we're now prosecuting average citizens for doing, by the way.

Yet Menendez listened to them instead of trying to get a more realistic point of view from people like Baer. In October of 2011, I quoted Baer about Santorum's pledge to support Syrian rebels:

By the way, it's been obvious for more than 30 years that there are no white hats in Syria. Back then, Assad's father had to blow up an entire town to halt the Muslim Brotherhood in its effort to take Syria.

Yet there's Menendez, still looking for "vetted moderate rebels" to fight against Assad in Syria.

And now his defense is that everyone else inside the Beltway was just as naive?

Pat Lang could have cured that naivete - if only the senator had sought him out. The former Vietnam Green Beret and longtime denizen of the Mideast was among the experts I quoted in a column I did on the "Assad must go" consensus last July:

Hostile sullenness: That's a perfect description of our senior senator's attitude. He could simply admit he was wrong, but instead he attacks those who were right.

By the way, among them was a guy who could be challenging our governor for the Republican nomination for president next year. Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is the leading genuine - as opposed to "neo" - conservative in Congress. He had this to say when I asked him in 2013 about the pressure being put on Obama to attack Syria:

The best I can say for Menendez is that at least he's a Democrat. I can't stand it when Republicans like McCain and Graham fall for this bleeding-heart nonsense about "liberating" the people of the Mideast at U.S. expense. But Democrats believe in wasting our money on social engineering. So at least he's consistent.

But he's catching a lot of heat from his fellow Democrats for his attack on President Obama. Menendez accused Obama of repeating "talking points straight out of Tehran" in a speech about the need to negotiate with the Iranians over nuclear issues.

But thanks to people like Menendez, Obama's got little choice but to be nice to the Iranians. Like it or not, the Iranians are our de facto ally in the effort to eliminate ISIS from Iraq and Syria.

Once Menendez and the neocons kneecapped Assad, there was no one left to fight the Sunni madmen that rose to power in the vacuum. Now it's up to the Shia to beat back their ancient enemies the Sunni.

And the Shia in Iran actually know how to fight, unlike the Shia that George W. Bush put in charge of Iraq.

Menendez pats himself on the back for having voted against the Iraq War. But back then his vote had little meaning; it was one of 435 in the House.

During the run-up to the Syria debacle, however, he held the single most powerful foreign-policy position in the Senate. And he said things like this:

That air power is now being used to bomb ISIS. But if Menendez had had his way, those

planes would be stuck on the ground.

As for "vital national security interests," we never had any concerning Syria. Assad was willing to work with us on any effort against Islamic fundamentalists, for the simple reason that they have always wanted to overthrow his secular regime.

There's plenty more of this to be found, all of it equally shortsighted. That's bad enough.

Worse, even at this late date Menendez doesn't seem to realize the dimensions of the debacle he helped create as chairman. What he helped create is nothing less than a Sunni-vs.-Shia war for control of the region.

You've got to pick one. If you oppose Iran, then you support ISIS. If you oppose ISIS, then you support Iran.

And it should be obvious to anyone taking the traditional America-first position, which side to take. The Shia make up less than a tenth of the world's Muslims and they are concentrated in a small area in the Mideast. Iran is a regional power with a defense budget one-hundredth the size of our own.

The Sunni, by contrast, control major countries such as Pakistan and have colonies all over the world, including in such countries as France, Great Britain and the U.S. They have vast oil wealth and expansionist goals.

And then of course there are secular leaders like Assad. Why anyone would believe it is in the U.S. interests to depose a secular leader in a Muslim land is a mystery to every true conservative in America.

Menendez does not pretend to be a conservative of course. He's a flaming liberal and unlike McCain, Graham and the rest of the neocons, he admits it.

But the sole job of a politicians is to make decisions. You have to take your pick which side you're on. There's no middle ground. Anyone who can say "vetted moderate rebels" without laughing should be disqualified from further comment on the Mideast.

And it's no excuse to say that someone told you to say it. If they told you to jump in the Potomac, Senator, would you jump?

I think we know the answer to that one.

I'll lend you a wetsuit. The water's cold this time of year.