BillLawrenceOnline

If the United States were a body part, it wouldn’t be a brain, but a nose. The world’s biggest, always being stuck where it doesn’t belong.

Right now, it’s in Syria. And if America rains down bombs there, its nose will be broken yet again. How many times will we get punched before learning how to better pick our fights? As the saying goes, “You can’t always pick your friends (apparently, we have none regarding an attack on Syria), but you can always pick your nose.”

The incompetence, unconscionableness and insanity are mindboggling. Let’s review:

■ Incompetence: First, President Obama shoots off his mouth about attacking Syria. Not only doesn’t he do it, but then announces he’ll wait for Congressional approval, even though as commander in chief, he could act alone. As Congress debates endlessly — all while America proclaims to the world what and where it will strike — Syria has all the time it needs to harden targets, shift assets and move human shields to strategic areas.

Questions: If Congress nixes the idea, will the president bomb anyway? And why did he not secretly meet with key Congressional leaders first, gain their approval and strike without warning? Any third-grader playing Capture The Flag knows that the element of surprise is always — always — a strategic and tactical advantage. But the New American Way is to go public with absolutely everything, even war plans, discretion be damned. We have even stated our intention to limit the bombing to 60 days. Well, that’s a relief.

America’s worldwide loss of credibility is staggering, no matter what the final outcome on an attack.

■ Unconscionable: John McCain must go. Period. He’s a disgrace not just to the Senate and his party, but much more importantly, the people of the United States. During the extremely important hearings as to whether America will go to war in Syria (and yes, bombing a sovereign nation is war), McCain, Mr. Warmonger himself, was playing poker on his iPhone.

Hey, John, if you want to play games of chance, great. Do it on your own time. But when you are gambling with Americans’ lives by sending them into battle, and likely some to their deaths (as there will always be some boots on the ground, despite claims to the contrary), playing games — and then joking about it by tweeting, “Worst of all, I lost!” — is absolutely unconscionable. There are no higher stakes than playing with people’s lives, but that seems lost on McCain, who should know better, having been held for years as a POW in Vietnam.

This author is the last one to overreact on controversial situations, but if the Senate were smart, it would immediately remove him from that committee. And if the GOP has any brains, it would lead that charge. John McCain’s ineptness is legendary, but not punishable. His callousness and calculated misjudgment is. Kick him off, now.

■ Insanity: Talk about history repeating itself.

We are poised to bomb yet another Muslim country, which, if possible, will inflame anti-American passions even more.

But to what end?

What is the objective? Indefinable. And the strategy? Well, since there is no clear objective, there can’t be a winning strategy. That should be the first thing to consider before letting bombs fly. Instead, our modus operandi is to put it last.

Is Syria at war with America? No. Did they harm us in any way? No. Have they orchestrated terror attacks against us? No. Yet the same cannot be said about our “allies,” like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, whose governments have often funded and even tacitly supported attacks on Americans and our interests. But we want to attack Syria anyway, even though the Assad government is fighting some of the same fundamentalists America has been engaging since 9/11. Brilliant.

And is our intention just to take out targets or engage in regime change, like McCain wants to do?

Has it dawned on anyone in Washington to look at the Libyan debacle? We took out a sovereign leader who kept radical fundamentalism in check, in favor of rebels who had comprised one of the largest foreign forces fighting Americans in Iraq. Now, Libya is unstable (bet the ranch that Benghazi wouldn’t have occurred under Gaddafi) and 10,000 surface-to-air missiles are missing.

And now we are doing the same in Syria in the name of “freedom and democracy.”

Really? Do we really want to take our chances with a democratically elected Syrian government? Do that and you’ll be praying for an Assad return. A look at Egypt is all the proof you need to take that to the bank.

Here’s an idea: Become energy independent. If we were, Syria, Egypt, Libya and all the Middle East oil barons wouldn’t mean squat to us. American blood and treasure wouldn’t be expended, and our economic and national security would be exponentially bolstered.

That message has become a broken record, but if we followed it, we wouldn’t be in for another broken nose.