If crimes committed far away by bad people against other far away bad people are important enough for Americans to go to war over, they are important enough to call Congress back to work early from summer vacation to vote for war or peace.
If they are not important enough to interrupt congresscritters summer vacation, they are not important enough to go to war over.
What was the rubber stamp congress in the USSR called? The Supreme Soviet? Maybe that’s the model toward which we’re careening.
While we generally have a congress that rubber stamps whatever the bureaucracy does, it actually does get to exercise authority over the army.
The hierarchy is permanent civilian government employees on top, then the supremes and the courts, then the president and regular politicians, then the army at the bottom of the state.
Funny. I posted somewhere that even the Supreme Soviet had some cards to play.
Well of course they did. All they would have had to do was show up for work and watch. I don’t know what they were, but if even the little local Soviet had status then surely the Supreme ones did.
Not going to war being the point. He called for this right after Cameron lost the vote in Parliament. Thank you England, you have again in a way affirmed our Independence.
Obama doesn’t want to do this, you see. He has deftly punted to Congress which of course doesn’t want to do it either.
Give the man credit. This is in many ways his finest hour. I’m quite serious, and if I were any more anti-Obama the Secret Service would drop by.
The Imperial President is only Imperial in the sense of Chess. He’s been quite the prisoner since the New Deal. This one has deftly Rooked out of the tight spot, for at least 10 days.
10 days is a long time in war you know.
So do contact your local Congress Critter with the words: Support the President, VOTE NO on Syria.
I have. Exactly.
In fact…I may be wrong…but when was the last time a President Rooked?
It quite escapes me if it happened in the last century.
For instance had Wilson decided the League of Nations should fail, he deftly timed his stroke so Congress could kill it, as they should have. As they did.
I wouldn’t give Barry quite as much credit. He strikes me as a class president who does what the teachers want: he thinks the teachers want Syria punished; he thinks the teachers want him to consult Congress.
Nah, he thinks that if this war goes bad, which it probably will as each side is more evil than the other, the teachers are going to hang him out to dry.
The main difference between this war with Baathism and the previous war with Baathism is that Syrian government is already at war with Al Quaeda.
Kissinger said of the Iran Iraq war that it was too bad that both sides could not lose, whereupon Reagan proceeded to make sure that both sides did lose.
For that masterpiece of double dealing and creative inaction, Reagan was roundly condemned as an idiot, traitor, criminal, and so on and so forth, and would have been impeached had not some very minor underling taken the blame for running the entire brilliantly successful US government policy on the Iran Iraq war while Reagan allegedly slept at his desk, so alas, Reagan’s tactics are unlikely to repeated.
People these days find the strategy of Cardinal Richelieu too cynical, cruel, and horrifying to contemplate.
“People these days find the strategy of Cardinal Richelieu too cynical, cruel, and horrifying to contemplate.â€
Not entirely. Kissinger claims to be a fan of the Eminence Grise, and Kissinger is not without his own fans. Given the way that most bien pensant react to Kissinger with fear and loathing, however, your main point stands.
All men, ultimately, are realists, for there is no alternative.
Wasn’t the American left against widespread USA war involvement in foreign Middle Eastern countries a while ago? What happened? Is it because “their man” is now in power? Or is it because he is not “their man” at all but a puppet for somebody or something else?
I wished somehow that Obama’s African parentage was Horn of Africa East African (think Djibouti, Somali, Ethiopian, Eritrean) instead of Kenya. When people of the Horn of Africa mix with white people, their children come out more Caucasoid looking.
–> http://www.madote.com/2010/10/photos-of-mixed-ethiopians.html
–> https://www.facebook.com/EthiopianMixedAreBeautiful
Generally I think don’t like half black or black women, but the half ethiopians are pretty good, and the many of the half ethiopian, half asian women, are way hot.
I think they have more confidence that Obama the lightbringer will spread the shining light of progressivism across the middle east, than confidence George Bush would spread the shining light of progressivism across the middle east.
He is requesting authority from Congress to make war on pretty much everyone in the general vicinity of Syria, which might be a sinister plot to get us involved in a big war in Syria, or might be, as some commenters have suggested, that he is under pressure from the state department to make war, and wants congress to tell the state department “No.”, so that he can say to the state department he did his best, but those meanie republicans in Congress would not let him make war because he is not white enough.
If NA does anything to Syria then collapse in 2050 or so seems about.