Its the first weekend of College Football.
I live in the South.
That means that blogging will be almost non-existent tonight while I watch LSU beat the living dog shit out of TCU. I was reading my blog roll and Defense News posted this piece. Read it all here but...
Obama looks reasonable by holding off on sending tens of Raytheon-built Tomahawk missiles to pound Assad regime and military targets. If either or both chambers of Congress opts against coming back from a weeks-long recess a week early to debate and vote on a Syria use-of-force resolution, given those disapproval numbers, Obama is betting Americans will view lawmakers as unreasonable.I beg to differ and it has nothing to do with politics. It has everything to do with leadership. The President stated that this must be done. He also stated or it was leaked, that time was of the essence. That we needed to punish the Assad Regime now so there would be no confusion about why we were launching strikes.
That’s doubly so because a large number of lawmakers from both parties and both chambers this week urged Obama to let Congress debate and vote before he green-lighted any military strikes. The president some have called too unwilling to engage in political warfare with Congress just called their collective bluff.
What’s more, this decision very well could allow Obama to play tiebreaker in chief. The GOP-controlled House has tried to block or de-fund just about everything Obama has pushed. And with over 70 percent of Americans skeptical about a Syrian strike, there’s plenty of reason to believe he will lose Democratic House members when the chamber finally votes on Syria.
And now he decides to wait.
That's chicken shit leadership. If you are utterly convinced that your course of action is a matter of national security and you're President of the US, then you are duty bound to act. I might disagree but I'm not looking at the intel briefings every morning. If this is a clear and present danger to our nation then he's duty bound to do the deed.
But we all know its not about that. Its about a guy that bluffed, got called on the bluff and is now trying his best to not be seen as changing his mind/backing down...whatever.
This is about ego. Not national security.
Allow me to disagree. It's not about the President, punishing those who use WMD's, making Iran think we're serious, etc. This is now about the prestige of the United States. Given that, delaying the strike to get Congressional approval is ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteI could care less about Obama's ego. He made a mistake putting the nation in this position and instead of acting he's trying to get political cover. All we're going to get is the extremes on both sides telling us we have no business in a civil war vs those who say we have no business making a show strike without a serious long term objective.
As far the strike itself not for nothing but Israel has bombed Syria, including Damascus, about 5 times this year. They've had no problems and suffered no retaliation. Assad is a bit busy trying to survive and doesn't need to start a conflict with an outside player capable of taking him and/or his family out.
Maybe in a perfect world we'd not get involved or maybe we should have taken the rebel's side two years ago. At this point it doesn't matter but our national prestige does. Of course the White House announces any strike is not about regime change. Exactly what would be a better target than all the command and control involved in using the chemical weapons? It's as if we're living in the Twilight Zone.