This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden

  • Most Americans oppose “punishing” Syria

    The Washington Post reports that in their latest polling, most Americans oppose any strike against Syria;

    Nearly six in 10 oppose missile strikes in light of the U.S. government’s determination that Syria used chemical weapons against its own people. Democrats and Republicans alike oppose strikes by double digit margins, and there is deep opposition among every political and demographic group in the survey. Political independents are among the most clearly opposed, with 66 percent saying they are against military action.

    I’m not saying that we shouldn’t strike Syria merely because the polling says we shouldn’t, there are myriad reasons and our foreign policy shouldn’t be conducted by opinion polls. But the poll is entirely the fault of this administration’s refusal to lead Americans to war. “Because f*** you…that’s why” is not explaining the reasons we should take military measures against Syria. I know that’s how this administration has shoved their policies down Americans’ throats, but its only because those linguine-spined Republicans don’t want to be called racists for opposing unAmerican policy that has nothing to do with race.

    Republicans will cave to the will of the President because it’s no skin off their nose if we end up in shooting war again. They can always blame the Democrats and hope none of the shit splashes back on them. Republicans have consistently voted with this President passing the most ridiculous shit because they don’t want to appear to be meanies.

    No one is asking what victory will look like after this “punishment” of the Syrian government or what our national security interests are like they would under the direction of their own party’s president.

    Of course, the Left is no better; Where are the hippie human shields flocking to Syria to protect their baby milk factories? Where are the congressmen on the roof of Assad’s palace declaring him more trustworthy than our own president?

    There is no leadership in Washington these days, there is only politicians punching tickets for reelection hoping that this whole Syria thing blows over in time for Americans to forget about it before the midterm elections.

  • Voting “present” on the red line

    The President just voted “present” on the “red line” that he drew in regards to Syria’s use of chemical weapons. From The Weekly Standard;

    “First of all, I didn’t set a red line,” said Obama. “The world set a red line. The world set a red line when governments representing 98 percent of the world’s population said the use of chemical weapons are [inaudble] and passed a treaty forbidding their use, even when countries are engaged in war. Congress set a red line when it ratified that treaty. Congress set a red line when it indicated that in a piece of legislation entitled the Syria Accountability Act that some of the horrendous things happening on the ground there need to be answered for. So, when I said in a press conference that my calculus about what’s happening in Syria would be altered by the use of chemical weapons, which the overwhelming consensus of humanity says is wrong, that wasn’t something I just kind of made up. I didn’t pluck it out of thin air. There’s a reason for it.”

    So, it’s Congress’ fault that we have to attack Syria because they ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1975. As near as I can tell, the CWC only forbids it’s signatories from acquiring and stockpiling or contributing to the spread of chemical weapons, there’s no requirement to attack anyone who is using the weapons (by the way, Syria signed the CWC without ratifying it).

  • Show Us the Evidence, Mr. President

    As I stated in an earlier post, it is a sad state of affairs when we find the diplomatic reasoning of our old Cold War nemesis, Russia, to be more thought provoking and believable than the arguments for military action against Syria being advanced by our own government. Applying but a modicum of common sense to the issue renders the Russian account more credible than that coming from the Obama administration. The Russians sensibly point out that it would be totally counterproductive for Assad to defy the world community by using chemical weapons in a war he is already winning by conventional means. As the Russians note, the Assad regime doesn’t need to use WMD to defeat the acrimonious amalgam of rebel organizations that are trying to unseat him. The despot is doing quite well with conventional warfare, thank you.

    But on the other hand, on the other quite tentative, uncertain side of the fight, all those less than fungible factions fighting Assad for disparate reasons have every motive in the world to manufacture an incident that would help capture world interest and sympathy. Pontificating politicians and mournful moderators on television delivering dirge like discourses of the horrors of death by nerve agent, play strong on the sympathies of those whose thinking is ruled by the touchy feelings on their sleeves and not the machinations of their minds. For those on the losing side, it’s all about controlling the media narrative and cynically manipulating the good feelings and intentions of the caring people around the world.

    To add to my skepticism regarding the Obama administration’s version, expounded by the president himself and his phony war hero secretary of state, there exists somewhere in my mind a niggling wariness that the same folks who are doing their best to sell this dubious story to the world are the very same folks who told us that the Benghazi uprising was the result of a video created by some poor shmuck who unwittingly made himself the perfect fall guy to hide criminal negligence in the Obama administration.

    To compound my skepticism, the administration, claiming it has solid evidence to prove that the Assad regime conducted the chemical strike, refuses to reveal that evidence, hiding behind the convenient shield of national security. What, some staff wienie ventured out onto the green at the eighth hole and showed it to you on her IPod? But we, the people, can’t be trusted to see it? Excuse me but that’s another truck load of Barack Obama, Chicago style, pure, unrefined bull crap. You have the convincing evidence, Mr. President? Then the American people are entitled to see it before we send our young warriors into harm’s way. Show us the evidence.

    I don’t know about the rest of you out there, but I get just a little queasy about committing American forces into a strike against Syria, defended as it is by Russian control of its air defenses, when the only justification we are getting for such a strike comes from an administration that is demonstrably dishonest, especially when it comes to military matters in the Middle East. Incredibly, and shamefully, it appears the Russian government and its leader, Vladimir Putin, is being more honest with the world than our own leadership. It’s damned near breathtaking how the liberal Democrats have managed to diminish this country in the eyes of this world in only five years. Their ineffectual deceptions are becoming a laughingstock; as is their maximum leader. Once again, I ask simply, show us the evidence, Mr. President.

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • John Kerry’s “Munich moment”

    On Saturday, John Kerry compared Bashar al-Assad, the ruler of Syria to Hitler and Saddam Hussein (but I thought Hussein was a benevolent leader who deserves to still reign over Iraq according to the Democrats) because Assad used chemical weapons. Today, Kerry told House Democrats that they are having a “Munich moment” in deciding whether to strike at and punish, Syria for their alleged use of chemical weapons.

    Kerry’s derisive comments on Assad and his reference to the 1938 Munich agreement between Adolf Hitler and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain — after which Chamberlain infamously declared it would lead to “peace for our time” — showed the hard line the White House is taking in its drive for congressional approval of the Syrian resolution. Top administration officials argue that a failure by the United States to respond to the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime will only lead to more violence and instability in the region.

    So much use of Nazi-related hyperbole. Especially since those same people railed against the Nazi hyperbole when used against Hussein’s regime. I think the Democrats’ Munich Moment came with the three Congressmen on the roof of Saddam Hussein’s palace claiming he was more trustworthy than the President, back in 2003. And if Assad is Hitler, why aren’t we trying to remove him power as a stated goal instead of just “punishing” him? We “punished” Hussein for 12 years and accomplished nothing.

    Or this could be a Munich Moment in 2009 when Kerry was lobbying for his current job;

    John Kerry's Munich Moment

    Another Munich Moment in 2007 when the Bush Administration was trying to isolate Assad and Pelosi was trying to engage Assad;

    Pelosi's Munich moment

    Kerry also said that Israel, America’s closest ally in the region, backed the need for a U.S. military response.

    Since when did what Israel wanted ever matter to this administration?

  • A Sad State of Affairs

    Indeed it is when I find myself lending more credence to Vladimir Putin than I do this dithering, incompetent cowbird the Democrats put in our White House. One charge you most certainly cannot lay on the serving President of Russia is incompetence and our clueless Prez is about to learn that lesson first hand when he travels to Moscow this week for the G20 Summit. I wonder what lines the Vegas odds makers are laying on our permanent campaigner/dedicated duffer coming away from that conference with anything more than his tail, and, by extension, America’s, between his legs. Think about that matchup: we send a former community organizer to lock eyeballs with a former KGB colonel. Good grief! Talk about bringing a knife to a gunfight! And it’s a liberal-approved, school-safe, rubber knife at that.

    Don’t kid yourself that there aren’t plans afoot in the Kremlin to take every advantage of Barack Obama’s crumbling credibility and by now globally recognized ineptitude. Russians have long experience in how to deal with an inexpert opponent who foolishly ventures onto the thin ice. Worse, there is probably feverish planning going on in world palaces and foreign ministries all round the world, from major allies to tinhorn despots, seeking ways to exploit the bumbling, fumbling disaster that is the Democrat foreign policy as expounded by Obama, Hillary and Kerry. It’s enough to make you want to push your index finger right in the collective face of the Democrat power structure and scream, “See? See what you get when you sacrifice good governance of our country for pure political expediency?”

    I’m almost to the point of wondering if we might not be wise to run John McCain again in 2016. Let Hillary landslide bury our own RINO bumbler and inherit the mess that Obama will most assuredly leave to whoever follows. Let Hillary deal with the crumbling economy, the disaster of Obamacare and America’s third-rate diplomatic status compared to Russia and China on the world stage. Give Hillary four years to make things even worse with her own discredited socialist programs and then run a strong, conservative Republican in 2020 to set things right once again. It’s the old “Give ’em enough rope…” ploy. And make no mistake, the Democrats with their unworkable socialist policies are committing a slow form of political suicide.

    Let’s just hope they don’t kill our country in the process…

    Thereby threatening Israel’s existence.

    And possibly plunging the planet into global war.

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • Boots on the ground

    USS San Antonio

    The USS San Antonio has joined the carrier groups off the coast of Syria. The USS San Antonio is an amphibious ship designed to land 800 Marines on coasts throughout the world, although, according to news reports, there are only 300 Marines on the ship on it’s current mission;

    According to the Washington Times the Marines are members of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit.

  • Voting present on Syria

    It seems that even after Secretary of State John Kerry’s breathless demand for action in Syria in response to the apparent use of chemical weapons by the Assad government against rebels, the President has passed off responsibility for any military response to Congress. According to the New York Times;

    In one of the riskiest gambles of his presidency, Mr. Obama effectively dared lawmakers to either stand by him or, as he put it, allow President Bashar al-Assad of Syria to get away with murdering children with unconventional weapons. By asking them to take a stand, Mr. Obama tried to break out of the isolation of the last week as he confronted taking action without the support of the United Nations, Congress, the public or Britain, a usually reliable partner in such international operations.

    “I’m prepared to give that order,” Mr. Obama said in a hurriedly organized appearance in the Rose Garden as American destroyers armed with Tomahawk missiles waited in the Mediterranean Sea. “But having made my decision as commander in chief based on what I am convinced is our national security interests, I’m also mindful that I’m the president of the world’s oldest constitutional democracy.”

    Yeah, a risky gamble to hand off the decision to Congress. If the president is so convinced that there’s an actual national security threat, as commander-in-chief, it’s his responsibility to take action – in fact the constitution demands that he take action and the War Powers Act gives him the authority. But, apparently, polling tells him that it would be unpopular for him to take action.

    An actual leader would present his case to the American public and sway popular opinion to his side, but then no one has ever called Obama a leader, well, except him. Of course, the Washington Post blames Bush for Obama’s indecision;

    Ten years ago, Bush urged the American public, the Congress and the international community to believe intelligence assessments that Saddam Hussein’s government possessed weapons of mass destruction — a claim later proved wrong.

    Now Obama is holding Syrian President Bashar Assad responsible for a reported chemical weapons attack and saying that justifies military action against his the Damascus government. But there are doubts about whether the evidence is convincing.

    “The well of public opinion was well and truly poisoned by the Iraq episode and we need to understand the public skepticism,” British Prime Minister David Cameron said…

    Yeah, well, I think most Americans know that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, you know, like the 500 tons of yellowcake uranium that we shipped from Iraq to Canada, and many of the chemical weapons we’re seeing in Syria came from Iraq in the weeks leading up to the removal of Hussein from his throne. Most of the world was convinced that Hussein had chemical weapons since he’d used them twice against the Kurds and countless times against Iran in that war. I can’t believe that I’m still pointing all of that out – that the anti-Bush crowd are still denying the obvious.

    The only reason any well is poisoned is that this administration, and the Cameron coalition, can’t prove a national security interest in attacking Syria to merely punish the Assad regime with no real effect on the civil war there. Either there is a provable national security interest, or there isn’t. And what will victory in Syria look like when we punish them? How will we know they’ve learned their lesson?

    Fox News is reporting that the Obama Administration is poised to take military action in spite of how Congress votes;

    One senior State Department official, though, told Fox News that the president’s goal to take military action will indeed be carried out, regardless of whether Congress votes to approve the use of force.

    Other senior administration officials said Obama is merely leaving the door open to that possibility. They say he would prefer that Congress approve a military attack on the Assad regime, in response to its alleged use of chemical weapons, and will wait to see what Congress does before making any final decisions on authorizing military force.

    So, basically, the Obama Administration is just hoping that Congress is willing to share the blame with him when his military action/punishment backfires.

  • Bite Me in 2007

    Joe Bite Me in 2007 talking about then-President Bush; Bite Me claims that attacking a country that hasn’t attacked us or is not about to attack us is an impeachable offense.

    At about 6 minutes into the video, Bite Me says that he assembled a bunch of constitutional scholars who agreed with him and wrote him a statement to read to the Senate. I wonder what he thinks now. Where are those scholars?