===
Hannity and West must be either reading my mind or my memos. They too agree Obama should hit the real villain! (See 1 below.)
Lewis comes to a perverse conclusion but maybe he is right. (See 1a below.)
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A view of what a Syrian attack might look like. (See 2 below.)
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Hanson no, Kristol yes. You decide!
As for myself, I understand and empathize with those who do not believe Congress should vote in favor of Obama attacking Syria for a myriad of reasons.
First, they argue it is not in our national interest to do so carries some weight, the fact that they distrust this president to do anything meaningful carries much more weight and third, as Peggy Noonan points out, our credibility is there whether we bomb Syria or not because we have proven it time and again.
My concern is that our failure to act decisively now could be misinterpreted while Obama is president and could be seen as a pass by Iran to push forward and actually go nuclear. That will result, most assuredly, in Israel doing what it must do and has committed itself to do and we will face a serious, perhaps an even greater, consequent, later.
For certain, the arguments are strong on both sides so all we can do is stay tuned and hope for the best outcome caused by a president who should never have been elected and/or re-elected. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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Dick
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1)Hannity and Allen West: Bomb Iran Instead
By Cortney O'Brien
Sean Hannity and Col. Allen West were in agreement last night that an isolated military strike on Syria is not the best course of action, fearing, among other outcomes, that the attack could spark an Iranian retaliation against our ally Israel. Hannity voiced his distrust of Iran and why he thinks a strike on the nation would be a better option.
Col. Allen West shared Hannity’s concern about Iran, as well as his solution.
Fox News contributor Juan Williams, however, disagreed with Hannity and West on the grounds that Iran "has not directly attacked us or our allies." Williams may be right, but Iran's support of anti-Western terrorism and its history of anti-Israel rhetoric raises more than a few red flags if the nation ever gains possession of nuclear weapons.
Hannity also criticized President Obama’s plan to strike Syria as ineffective, suggesting a few days old, no-boots-on-the-ground attack would not accomplish much.
1a) Conservatives are patriots. When we see an American president in trouble, we tend to see his problems as our own.
Which makes it hard to know how to react to Obama's troubles in Syria.
I am going to make an unusual case here that Obama's Syrian stumbles actually benefit the United States and the civilized world.
If that sounds odd -- well, it is.
I can think of only one precedent: Jimmy Carter's punch in the nose from Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, which caused American voters to elect Ronald Reagan instead.
Reagan speedily restored respect for America in the world. For one thing, as soon as Reagan was elected Khomeini released his US hostages in Tehran. Ten years later the Soviet Empire crumbled.
Looking back, it seems that Jimmy Carter and his NSC advisor Zbig Brzezinski actually helped the sadistic Khomeini regime rise to power after pulling the rug out from our ally, the Shah of Iran. Apparently Carter thought the United States deserved to lose Iran as an ally because of what happened in 1953, almost three decades before, when Stalin was in power in the Soviet Union. This is plainly insane, but Carter and Brzezinski still defend their screwy reasoning today, while the Iranian theocracy kills its young people and commits aggression against us.
In the upshot, defeating Carter was a very good thing for the United States and the West.
Obama is the second fervently anti-American president we have seen. That was hard to accept for a long time, but after the overthrow of our longtime ally Mubarak in Egypt, after Obama's active support for the Islamofascist Muslim Brotherhood, after the Benghazi arms-smuggling operation to Al Qaida-allied rebels in Syria, and now, after Obama's selective outrage against Syrian poison gas attacks in a civil war where 130,000 Syrians have died -- after all those facts I don't think Obama is running a pro-American policy any more.
After all, Obama is running the "apologize for white folks" administration. It's the "American guilt" administration. It's the "bow to tyrants" administration. All that stuff looked like a farce when it happened. But it turns out to be the real Obama.
While we were scratching our heads about his oddball president, his tiny inner circle -- Obama, Jarrett, Michele, Axelrod -- were going Go 'Bama! Bow down to another murderous tyrant, please!
If that seems perverse, it was. This is the most perverse administration in American history.
By now it's impossible to avoid the conclusion that Obama is fervently anti-American. Which is what you might learn from his personal history, all the way from Mom the Stalinist, to his "mentor" Frank Davis the child pornographer, all the way to the "Reverend" Jerry Wright and the Alinsky Machine in Chicago.
They all sing the same song, and love for America is never part of it. There's no way Obama could have been marinated in that toxic stew all his life and not come out as a feverishly anti-American ideologue.
Today we see the proof.
Five years ago, after Obama was elected by our America-loathing political class, the One delivered his Message to the Muslim World from Al Azhar University in Cairo. We now know that Obama's speech signaled a radical reversal of American policy, flipping 180 degrees to support Jihadist war cults like Al Qaida, the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran's mullah cult.
On the face of it, supporting your deadly enemy in a time of war is insane. But this is Obama. Maybe he explains it to our Chiefs of Staff as a clever way to split the Sunnis from the Shiites. Lying is Obama's biggest talent, and no doubt he spins his actions in different ways to different people.
But look at the facts.
Obama is now exposed as having directly supported Islamic jihad cults in Egypt, Libya, and Syria. He has done it in close coordination with the Islamist regime of Recip Erdogan in Turkey and with the Muslim Brotherhood in America. There is a good reason why Huma Abedin was Hillary's "personal aide" as Secretary of State. Huma had worked as a magazine editor for the MBs, and her close family is Muslim Brotherhood.
There is not much doubt where her loyalties lie.
(
The fact that Tony Weiner the penis texter is married to Huma suggests that Tony has at least one other talent: Swinging enough money from the Brotherhood to run for mayor of New York. Just a wild guess, you understand. For all I know, Tony might the best qualified guy in Manhattan.)
The fact that Tony Weiner the penis texter is married to Huma suggests that Tony has at least one other talent: Swinging enough money from the Brotherhood to run for mayor of New York. Just a wild guess, you understand. For all I know, Tony might the best qualified guy in Manhattan.)
But let's get back to Obama.
Wherever Obama saw a chance he has tried to shaft our Middle East allies, including Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Netanyahu in Israel, and even the Saudis, who hate Obama's retreat in the face of their biggest threat, Iranian nukes and missiles. The Saudis live right across the Persian Gulf from Iran, and Khomeini tried to overthrow them thirty years ago. They haven't forgotten that.
Still, the Arabs have resisted Obama as much as possible. They have suffered a great deal. Today, Egypt is still in chaos. Libya is in a civil war. Millions of Syrians have fled from the war between Sunni radicals (supported by Obama) and the Assad regime. No wonder the Saudis are trying to make a deal with Vladimir Putin. America used to protect its allies.
Today we just shaft them.
On top of that Obama has orchestrated a retreat from Afghanistan by negotiating with the Taliban -- remember them? They are the sadists who blow up girls' schools over there, because women should never be educated. They also harbored Osama bin Laden and Al Qaida in the run-up to 9/11/01.
Without the Taliban, the Twin Towers would still be standing in Manhattan. Today Obama is trying to make friends with them.
Obama has bowed low to the priesthood of Iran, now under "moderate" president Rouhani, who commanded their attack on the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, killing 241 Marines on a peacekeeping mission. "Moderate" Rouhani also takes public credit for suckering the Americans long enough to build 17,000 working uranium centrifuges someplace in Iran.
In brief, none of Obama's actions have served our country and our allies.
Judging by five years of Obama foreign policy, he is radically anti-American, just like all his friends. This is all of a piece with Obama's domestic contempt for the Constitution, as shown in his flaming abuse of the IRS, the FBI, the NSA, EPA, DOJ and who knows what else.
We've got the fox in our chicken house.
Fortunately, this particular fox has a fixed habit of trying to gnaw its own tail off.
Should Americans hold their breath and hope he keeps failing?
Obama is a blunderer. He is arrogant and ideologically blind, so he always acts in an overconfident way that ignores realities on the ground. Obama routinely gets suckered by the rug merchants of Persia and the chess players of Russia.
In some weird way this means we might survive him after all.
Here are some specifics.
1. In Egypt Obama was directly involved in stirring up the vaunted "Arab Spring," which was a gambit to bring the radical Muslim Brotherhood to power. In the end, modernist Egyptians rebelled against the MBs, and today our friend Brother Morsi is awaiting trial for inciting the murder of Egyptian civilians.
2. In Libya, Obama's Ambassador Christopher Stevens helped to whip up a rebellion against Muammar Gadaffi, helped by direct US and NATO bombing. Yet Gadaffi had kept the peace in Libya for decades, and had surrendered his nuclear program to the Bush Administration. He posed no danger to us. The Libyan adventure was a blatant double-cross of Gadaffi.
Obama's bizarre Libyan policy was exposed in the Benghazi fiasco. Ambassador Stevens was in bandit country of Benghazi, far from the capital of Tripoli, supervising CIA arms shipments of Libyan arms to the Al Qaida rebels in Syria. He made alliances with Al Qaida gangs, who ended up stabbing him in the back, the way they always do.
In the end the Qaida types got away with burning the CIA "annex" on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11/01, a symbolic date if ever there was one. They also bagged 400 ground-to-air missiles, which can be used to shoot down civilian airliners for years to come.
Benghazi was a huge defeat for the Obama "policy," and it ended up exposing him just before the last election. That is why it had to be covered up by a bizarre pack of lies that no sane observer believed. Benghazi exposed Obama's pro-Jihadist policy for all the world to see.
It was a sad day for America, but it was worse for Obama's anti-American shenanigans. Benghazi was the beginning of public exposure for radical ideologue Obama, the man who suckered us in two presidential elections.
Both Egypt and Libya were Obama gambits to shaft our allies and support our enemies in the Jihad War. Whether his inner cult figured they were splitting the enemy, or whether they were simply running a subversive anti-American policy, is hard to tell. In any case, the American people need to know the truth, and Congressional hearings are the only way they ever will.
Now comes today's Syria fiasco.
3. In Syria, Obama allied with Turkey and Saudi money men to stir up a Sunni revolt against Assad. The Assads, father and son, are pretty evil, as we know by now. But they are not worse than the Al Qaida maniacs who seem to be running the "Free Syrian Army." Assad at least promised stability. Al Qaida doesn't believe in stability.
We are therefore facing a lose-lose situation in Syria. If Assad wins, the Iranians will threaten U.S. allies including Israel, Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.
So we lose in Syria -- no matter which side wins.
How's that for brilliant American statesmanship?
A few weeks ago this column warned that Obama was getting trapped in Syria. Today the trap has snapped shut, and Obama's self-inflicted wounds are making headlines around the world. And while he is trying to evade the consequences of his folly by making the U.S. Congress responsible, in fact this is the fifth year of Obama's overreach and the resulting failures.
So here is Obama's scoresheet.
1. Egypt: Massive overreach and failure.
2. Libya: Massive overreach and anarchy, plus the Benghazi fiasco.
3. Syria: Another overreach and a classical lose-lose trap.
But here's the real kicker.
Obama's failurex may be good for America and for the world. I can't remember a time when a major foreign policy defeat looked like good news for the United States. But then I can't remember a time when a president was so perversely anti-American.
In these strange times, Obama's five years of overreach and defeat in the Muslim world must be considered good news for civilization.
1a) )Dangerous Times: Are Obama's Syrian Stumbles Good for America?
By James Lewis
It is very possible that the president will not obtain a join authorization to bomb Syria; if he chooses to go ahead and attack anyway, Obama will incite a constitutional crisis—the first time in history that a president has decided to go to war against the declared wishes of Congress. The public and the courts will adjudicate the legality of that act, and it would be contentious.
So the corner that Obama has painted himself into is now inescapable. Defying Congress will put the country into a Watergate/Monicagate mess. Not doing anything will confirm the administration’s impotence and only enhance Russia, Iran, Assad, China, Islamists, and almost anyone else who does not like the U.S. Doing something small, with or without congressional approval, will be looked upon as a cynical waste of human lives to restore Obama’s credibility, the sort of craven, immoral political act that a younger Obama made a career out of mocking. Doing something big will invite public and global outrage if only moderately successful, and doom the Obama presidency if unsuccessful.
How did Obama get himself into this mess? It was bound to happen, given his past habits. All we are seeing now is the melodramatic fulfillment of vero possumus, lowering the rising seas, faux Corinthian columns, hope and change, the bows, the Cairo speech, and the audacity of hope. Hubris does earn Nemesis.
1) His inclination is to damn straw men, blame others for his self-inflicted errors, and spike the ball when he should keep quiet and become modest (cf. the bin Laden raid). So in Syria we heard the same old, same old: A host of bad guys, here and abroad, wants to do nothing. Obama alone has the vision and moral compass to restore global and U.S. credibility through his eloquence; but the world disappointed him and is now at fault for establishing red lines that it won’t enforce: He came into the world to save the world, but the world rejected him.
After five years of this, the world caught on, and sees juvenile and narcissistic petulance in lieu of statesmanship—and unfortunately a sinister Putin takes great delight in reminding 7 billion people of this fact almost daily. In terms of geostrategic clout, Obama has nullified the power of his eleven aircraft-carrier battle groups, Putin through his shrewd insight and ruthless calculation of human nature, has added five where they didn’t exist.
2) Obama thinks in an untrained manner and for all the talk of erudition and education seems bored and distracted—and it shows up in the most critical moments. Had he wished to stop authoritarians, prevent bloodshed and near genocide, and foster true reform in the Middle East, there were plenty of prior, but now blown occasions: a) the “good” war in Afghanistan could have earned his full attention; b) the “bad” Iraq War was won and needed only a residual force to monitor the Maliki government and protect Iraq airspace and ensure quiet; c) the green revolution in Iran was in need of moral support; d) Qaddafi could have been continually pressured for further reform rather than bombed into oblivion;
e) postwar Libya needed U.S. leadership to ensure that “lead from behind” did not lead to the present version of Somalia and the disaster in Benghazi; e) long ago, the president could have either kept quiet about Syria or acted on his threats when Assad was tottering and the resistance was less Islamist; f) he could have warned the one vote/one time Muslim Brotherhood early on not to do what everyone in the world knew it would surely do; g) he need not have issued tough serial deadlines to Iran that we have not really enforced and probably have no intention of enforcing.
Instead, Obama relied on his rhetoric and talked loosely, sloppily and inconsistently from crisis to crisis, the only common denominator being that he always took the path of least resistance and thus did nothing concretely to match his cadences. Usually to the degree he made a decision, he made things worse with empty, first-person bombast
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2)US Air Force will also target Syria’s air force, ballistic missiles and sections of its air defenses
The reports coming out of Washington in the last 24 hours indicate that US President Barack Obama has resolved not just to degrade Syria’s chemical capabilities but also to take down Bashar Assad’s air force, destroy his air bases and knock out his ground-to-ground ballistic missiles, using giant B-52 bombers and B-2 stealth bombers. Some of the bombers will fly in directly from the US; others from the Al Udeid base in Qatar. F-22 Raptor fighter-bombers are also scheduled to take part in the US air offensive.
Obama decided to expand the scope of the US operation for Assad’s use of chemical warfare against civilians on Aug. 21, when his experts advised him that these additional blows would dramatically diminish the Syrianj ruler's military edge over rebel forces without toppling him. These air raids could moreover be conducted from afar without American aircraft coming within range of Syrian air defense batteries.
The US operation will also target the Syrian army’s 4th and Republican Guard divisions, protectors of the Assad presidency and regime, which were responsible for using chemical weapons, but not the weapons themselves. Military sources say they can’t be destroyed by air assault - only by ground forces, which the US president has ruled out in advance.
It was that conclusion which led Washington to considering air strikes for taking down the ballistic missiles, which may be used as the vehicles for delivering the poison gases both within Syria and beyond its borders.
This expanded inventory of targets portends a broader operation in scope than Obama’s first plan, which was designed only to caution the Syrian ruler of his peril for engaging in chemical warfare. The extensions to this plan would go a lot further than a deterrent warning and seriously downgrade his military and strategic capabilities.
This expanded inventory of targets portends a broader operation in scope than Obama’s first plan, which was designed only to caution the Syrian ruler of his peril for engaging in chemical warfare. The extensions to this plan would go a lot further than a deterrent warning and seriously downgrade his military and strategic capabilities.
Russia and Iran are already getting set to replenish by air and sea the losses the US air and missile offensive is expected to inflict on the Syria military.
US Secretary of State John Kerry and ambassador to the UN Samantha Power stressed in the last few hours that the US felt fully justified in going forward against Syria’s use of chemical weapons without a UN mandate and, indeed, they indicated, the president would consider such action “the right thing to do” even if US Congress withheld its support.
For now, Obama will be spending all his time on a blitz to win lawmakers round to the strike against Syria, while Kerry seeks European and Arab partners for the operation, in addition to France which has already come forward.
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3)If It Wasn’t Syria, It Would Have Been Something Else
)It is very possible that the president will not obtain a join authorization to bomb Syria; if he chooses to go ahead and attack anyway, Obama will incite a constitutional crisis—the first time in history that a president has decided to go to war against the declared wishes of Congress. The public and the courts will adjudicate the legality of that act, and it would be contentious.
3)If It Wasn’t Syria, It Would Have Been Something Else
)It is very possible that the president will not obtain a join authorization to bomb Syria; if he chooses to go ahead and attack anyway, Obama will incite a constitutional crisis—the first time in history that a president has decided to go to war against the declared wishes of Congress. The public and the courts will adjudicate the legality of that act, and it would be contentious.
So the corner that Obama has painted himself into is now inescapable. Defying Congress will put the country into a Watergate/Monicagate mess. Not doing anything will confirm the administration’s impotence and only enhance Russia, Iran, Assad, China, Islamists, and almost anyone else who does not like the U.S. Doing something small, with or without congressional approval, will be looked upon as a cynical waste of human lives to restore Obama’s credibility, the sort of craven, immoral political act that a younger Obama made a career out of mocking. Doing something big will invite public and global outrage if only moderately successful, and doom the Obama presidency if unsuccessful.
How did Obama get himself into this mess? It was bound to happen, given his past habits. All we are seeing now is the melodramatic fulfillment of vero possumus, lowering the rising seas, faux Corinthian columns, hope and change, the bows, the Cairo speech, and the audacity of hope. Hubris does earn Nemesis.
1) His inclination is to damn straw men, blame others for his self-inflicted errors, and spike the ball when he should keep quiet and become modest (cf. the bin Laden raid). So in Syria we heard the same old, same old: A host of bad guys, here and abroad, wants to do nothing. Obama alone has the vision and moral compass to restore global and U.S. credibility through his eloquence; but the world disappointed him and is now at fault for establishing red lines that it won’t enforce: He came into the world to save the world, but the world rejected him.
After five years of this, the world caught on, and sees juvenile and narcissistic petulance in lieu of statesmanship—and unfortunately a sinister Putin takes great delight in reminding 7 billion people of this fact almost daily. In terms of geostrategic clout, Obama has nullified the power of his eleven aircraft-carrier battle groups, Putin through his shrewd insight and ruthless calculation of human nature, has added five where they didn’t exist.
2) Obama thinks in an untrained manner and for all the talk of erudition and education seems bored and distracted—and it shows up in the most critical moments. Had he wished to stop authoritarians, prevent bloodshed and near genocide, and foster true reform in the Middle East, there were plenty of prior, but now blown occasions: a) the “good” war in Afghanistan could have earned his full attention; b) the “bad” Iraq War was won and needed only a residual force to monitor the Maliki government and protect Iraq airspace and ensure quiet; c) the green revolution in Iran was in need of moral support; d) Qaddafi could have been continually pressured for further reform rather than bombed into oblivion; e) postwar Libya needed U.S. leadership to ensure that “lead from behind” did not lead to the present version of Somalia and the disaster in Benghazi; e) long ago, the president could have either kept quiet about Syria or acted on his threats when Assad was tottering and the resistance was less Islamist; f) he could have warned the one vote/one time Muslim Brotherhood early on not to do what everyone in the world knew it would surely do; g) he need not have issued tough serial deadlines to Iran that we have not really enforced and probably have no intention of enforcing.
Instead, Obama relied on his rhetoric and talked loosely, sloppily and inconsistently from crisis to crisis, the only common denominator being that he always took the path of least resistance and thus did nothing concretely to match his cadences. Usually to the degree he made a decision, he made things worse with empty, first-person bombast.
3) Obama cannot attract top talent. Those from prior administrations who are gifted and worked for him or who were promoted by him—Robert Gates, David Petraeus, Paul Volcker, Richard Holbrooke, James Mattis, Stanley McChrystal—either were treated badly, not fully utilized, or ended up regretting their experience. Instead a host of mediocrities are recruited on the basis of either their partisanship, loyalty or demonstrated past lightness—an Eric Holder, Joe Biden, Susan Rice, Timothy Geithner, Chuck Hagel, etc.
Nowhere than in the present crisis is this unfortunate trend more telling: Pro-war John Kerry has opportunistic anti-war baggage, pontificates rather than persuades, and freelances into serial embarrassments; Martin Dempsey, to his credit, cannot square the circle of being an honest man assigned to say things he knows simply cannot be true, and so pleads the military’s version of the Fifth; Chuck Hagel has not recovered from the confirmation hearings, and just wishes Syria would go away; anything that a surprisingly quiet Joe Biden says on the crisis will probably be incoherent and incendiary, and surely contradictory of some past statement; Susan Rice astutely outsourced this crisis; Hillary Clinton whose “what difference does it make?” fingerprints are all over the Syrian and Libyan fiascos wisely got out of town ahead of the posse.
What is now the least bad choice between terrible and even more terrible alternatives? If the congressional vote is yes, the choice is cynically wasting a few American lives for a possible point, or killing lots more people for a more possible point. Not good choices.
If the congressional vote is, as I hope, no, Obama should quietly (i.e., don’t blame Congress, the world, the public, etc.) back out of the bombing mode, more quietly continue the belated work of promoting a pro-Western resistance to Assad, mend fences with allies most quietly, and prepare very carefully (but without the bombast) for a real crisis on the near horizon that will need the public, the Congress, our allies, and the president’s full attention and response. In our new Vienna-summit-to-Cuban-missile-crisis era of danger, I fear our enemies and rivals are digesting the Syrian misadventure and calibrating to what degree they might soon turn our present psychodrama into a real American tragedy.
.
3a) The Right Vote
BY WILLIAM KRISTOL
The statesmanlike case for voting Yes on the congressional resolution to use force against the Assad regime has been made widely and well by conservative foreign policy thinkers. At the end, the case boils down to this: As a policy matter, a Yes vote may be problematic in all kinds of ways. But a No vote would likely be disastrous for the nation in very clear ways. Statesmanship requires choosing the problematic over the disastrous.
It’s true that Republicans on the Hill lack confidence in President Obama’s execution of the military action they are being asked to vote to authorize. So do conservative foreign and military policy experts, and so do we. But voting Yes doesn’t preclude criticizing—indeed, it makes it easier to constructively criticize—much of what President Obama has done and will do in Syria and in the Middle East. Indeed, if Republicans want to cast a broader vote of no confidence in President Obama’s conduct of foreign policy, there are other ways to do so, and we’d support many of them. But using this resolution to cast a vote of no confidence against Obama would empower those abroad making the case against placing confidence in the United States. That would be damaging. And in the real world, a vote against Obama will be seen as a vote for Bashar al-Assad, and for Vladimir Putin, and for the regime in Iran.
The fact is that Obama is the only president we have. We can’t abdicate our position in the world for the next three years. So Republicans will have to resist the temptation to weaken him when the cost is weakening the country. A party that for at least two generations has held high the banner of American leadership and strength should not cast a vote that obviously risks a damaging erosion of this country’s stature and credibility abroad.
Obama cannot attract top talent. Those from prior administrations who are gifted and worked for him or who were promoted by him—Robert Gates, David Petraeus, Paul Volcker, Richard Holbrooke, James Mattis, Stanley McChrystal—either were treated badly, not fully utilized, or ended up regretting their experience. Instead a host of mediocrities are recruited on the basis of either their partisanship, loyalty or demonstrated past lightness—an Eric Holder, Joe Biden, Susan Rice, Timothy Geithner, Chuck Hagel, etc.
Nowhere than in the present crisis is this unfortunate trend more telling: Pro-war John Kerry has opportunistic anti-war baggage, pontificates rather than persuades, and freelances into serial embarrassments; Martin Dempsey, to his credit, cannot square the circle of being an honest man assigned to say things he knows simply cannot be true, and so pleads the military’s version of the Fifth; Chuck Hagel has not recovered from the confirmation hearings, and just wishes Syria would go away; anything that a surprisingly quiet Joe Biden says on the crisis will probably be incoherent and incendiary, and surely contradictory of some past statement; Susan Rice astutely outsourced this crisis; Hillary Clinton whose “what difference does it make?” fingerprints are all over the Syrian and Libyan fiascos wisely got out of town ahead of the posse.
What is now the least bad choice between terrible and even more terrible alternatives? If the congressional vote is yes, the choice is cynically wasting a few American lives for a possible point, or killing lots more people for a more possible point. Not good choices.
If the congressional vote is, as I hope, no, Obama should quietly (i.e., don’t blame Congress, the world, the public, etc.) back out of the bombing mode, more quietly continue the belated work of promoting a pro-Western resistance to Assad, mend fences with allies most quietly, and prepare very carefully (but without the bombast) for a real crisis on the near horizon that will need the public, the Congress, our allies, and the president’s full attention and response. In our new Vienna-summit-to-Cuban-missile-crisis era of danger, I fear our enemies and rivals are digesting the Syrian misadventure and calibrating to what degree they might soon turn our present psychodrama into a real American tragedy.
3a)Republicans on the Hill know this. The vast majority are not followers of Pat Buchanan or of Ron and Rand Paul. They don’t actually believe in abandoning our responsibilities, forsaking our allies, and trying to construct a Fortress America.
But they do believe the politics of this vote is awful. They believe, perhaps correctly, that President Obama has cynically thrown this ball into the lap of Congress in order to get Republican fingerprints on an action that may not succeed. They believe, correctly, that their constituents are against intervention. They believe, therefore, that the politically prudent vote is No.
They’re wrong. Winston Churchill noted that “the Muse of History must not be fastidious.” Likewise the Muse of editorialists. So we’ll be forgiven, we trust, for briefly laying out the crass political reasons why Republicans should vote Yes.
A Yes vote is in fact the easy vote. It’s actually close to risk-free. After all, it’s President Obama who is seeking the authorization to use force and who will order and preside over the use of force. It’s fundamentally his policy. Lots of Democrats voted in 2002 to authorize the Iraq war. When that war ran into trouble, it was President Bush and Republicans who paid the price. If the Syria effort goes badly, the public will blame President Obama, who dithered for two years, and who seems inclined to a halfhearted execution of any military campaign. If it goes well, Republicans can take credit for pushing him to act decisively, and for casting a tough vote supporting him when he asked for authorization to act.
A No vote is the risky vote. In fact, the risk is all on the side of voting No. The only thing that can get Obama off the hook now is for Republicans to deny him authorization for the use of force against the Assad regime. Then the GOP can be blamed for whatever goes wrong in Syria, and elsewhere in the Middle East, over the next months and years. And plenty will go wrong. It’s a Yes vote that gets Republicans in Congress off the hook.
A Yes vote seems to be statesmanlike. (Actually, it happens also to be statesmanlike, but we’re now talking politics.) Establishment foreign policy voices, including conservative ones, may not move voters—but they do have some pull in the media and with influentials across the country. Casting a “tough” political vote is a way for members of Congress to appear to be rising above mere party politics. In fact, many voters do like to think they’re voting for someone who has at least a touch of statesmanship, and so casting what appears superficially to be a politically perilous vote could well help the stature of Republicans with many of their constituents back home.
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