Posted on 09/07/2013 12:30:17 PM PDT by elhombrelibre
Unless President Obama can show Congress that his planned Syria strike is linked to a larger - and coherent - strategy, legislators should just say no.
So far, his explanations, and those of his cabinet members at congressional hearings, have only added to the confusion. "What is it you're seeking?" Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.) asked Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, in trying to elicit the broader goals of military action. The general replied candidly, "I can't answer that, what we're seeking."
That moment of testimony encapsulated the dilemma for the Congress and the country. If the military doesn't grasp where the commander in chief is leading, and the president can't (or won't) clarify, we're all in trouble. You can't get there if you don't know where "there" is.
(Excerpt) Read more at philly.com ...
Formulating specific foreign policy is hard work and was not done in advance in this case.
To complain about the actual or potential usage of chemical or biological weapons is only a first step. After that it needs to be determined if the action threatens our nation and if not, counter action by our nation is warfare with all the related entanglements.
Previous administrations have gone to world bodies or coalitions and gotten a unified prohibition or warning in place and once actions against that prohibition have occurred then returned to that body with the endorsement of the Congress already in place, and asked to act WITH OTHERS OF THAT BODY on behalf of that body to take specific action against the offending nation.
None of that ground work was done here. Instead, we have made needless one sided rhetoric for eight months and then announced an intention thereby giving warning. Then we have promised to act late, after the warning, in nothing but a drive-by shooting manner — a clear Act of War. Sure we asked some other big nations if they would like to join in on this and most said no with France saying we will bring a Ship over that way and do nothing ourselves.
This is not Statecraft, this is campaigning.
How Obama got things so wrong...on practically everything.
For one thing, he was intentionally miseducated, given repeated affirmative action passes on admission to learning institutions and the granting of certification from those same institutions, he has almost zero experience in real-life situations, he has never been held to account or even effectively disciplined when he has been found out of bounds, and he has no real sense of self-worth. The ultimate post turtle, he did not get where he is by any known effort on his part, now that he has gotten into the position he now holds he has no real idea how to perform in that office, and nobody who had a part in placing him there will admit he is an epic fail at the job.
“Ah, just give him another chance, he’s doing the best he can!” is a pretty poor rationalization for continuing the crazy town antics.
Syria is just the most recent of a long string of failures.
And any action taken there will fail, in the most spectacular manner and to the greater tarnish to whatever little prestige the US still holds in the world.
At some point all this HAS to stop being “Bush’s fault”.
Obama is now and always has been a clueless Chauncy Gardener!!
this is not open for debate, Congress must say NO. Make the Army oust him if necessary. He is pissing in Russia’s back yard, and I don’t want to be nuked because he is pissed off.
....and I dont want to be nuked because he is pissed off.
Obama is such a sick, evil bastard that he feels secure knowing that the new White House super bunker is there for him and to hell with everyone else.
A lot of money is being handed out by Qatar to get their pipeline to Europe pushed through Syria and the Russians don’t like that. This is a petro-war and our politicians are gathering money for next years campaign season.
Yet, the last I heard, Corker is planning to vote for Obama's war. What is it with these guys? Supposedly, "double digit" Democrats will vote no, but idiot Republicans are rushing in to take their places.
0bama is afraid. Holding 0bamacare briefings in the bunker under the WH is an indication of that. He probably wants to know where the SEALs are at all times. LOL
In a sane world both hearing and issue would have ended right there. We're contemplating dropping bombs on people and the military doesn't know why.
It didn't stop, and won't, of course. 0bama has boasted repeatedly what civilian control of the military means - "my military" - to the point where one of the signal accomplishments of his administration is the attempt to turn it gay as a fashion show runway. But "go bomb there because the Politburo says so" is not quite what the Founders had in mind.
Precisely why regime change that topples certain strong men - Gadafi, Mubarak, and now Assad - is in U.S. interests is a little difficult to determine. It is certainly in Muslim Brotherhood interests in all three cases, although now that the effort has foundered in Egypt both 0bama and his State Department have appeared completely at a loss as how to prosecute that aim, if in fact they ever thought that far to begin with.
And clearly regime change is what the current blind helmsmen of foreign policy have in mind in Syria - in candid moments they've admitted it. And that is as far as they've worked it out. What happens afterward given the close involvement of Russia and Iran would be a nice thing to have considered in the beginning, but we should be grateful that Congress and the American people have considered it at all, even at this late date. The verdict of the latter is not in doubt, of the former in doubt only insofar as money and propaganda and blackmail can suffice to swing a vote.
In a worst-case scenario there will be no vote and there will be an attack. It is doubtful that 0bama and his clown car cabinet have considered the domestic political volcano that will result any more than they have considered the results in Syria.
Just name one thing that he has got correct.
Just one.
He does not like this country as founded and is intent on making it go away.
I’m beginning to think community organizing isn’t a good presidential training ground .
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