With the 2003 Iraq war, President Bush dealt with a widely-acknowledged threat to world peace, a dictator who had attacked no less than four of his neighbors (at different times, with one such war costing probably over a million lives), and who sheltered and supported various terrorists.
Bush had the participation of 40 other nations in a coalition. The move was authorized by an accumulation of 17 U.N. resolutions, which had effectively voided the dictator’s sovereignty and promised him action over his continued flouting of the U.N.
Most important, Bush’s move was authorized by Congress (as required by the U.S. Constitution) and as well, was supported by clear majorities of the American people at the time.
We can still argue (with hindsight) about the wisdom of the move, if its aftermath was planned right, etc. But the above were and are facts. Do any of them apply to what President Obama has done in Libya, or may be about to do in Syria?
Lefties bleated that Bush had plunged America into a unilateral, illegal/unauthorized “war of choice”. Their claims were wrong on the facts, but let’s set that aside. Has not their President Obama actually plunged America into one near-unilateral, unauthorized “war of choice” – and threatens now to do a second?
Today as yesterday, I’m a bit skeptical of the Obama administration’s version of events in Syria. Not because Syria has just accused Kerry of lying (and, sadly, both Assad and Kerry are known to lie about important matters). Not even because reports continue to suggest that Obama means to bypass Congress, as well as the U.N.
No, I’m still skeptical because of the slap-dash feeling to the public buildup of this crisis. Many of us have heard reports that the U.S. military has been building up to move against something/someone, for weeks if not months. I myself have a friend in the Army who was put on a rather mysterious regime of 80-hour work weeks, starting over two months ago. I thought maybe they were getting ready to deal with Iran’s nuclear program. And then suddenly, just in the last few days, Kerry is there to claim justification for some sort of military action on Syria, from a very recent chemical weapons attack which – while quite horrible and tragic – is still in active debate as to its authorship.
The Obama administration could be telling the truth, like I said yesterday, but… it still doesn’t smell right. The Iraq war build-up was relatively more ‘in the open’, the culmination of years of public debate about a long-term threat.
There is something that just doesn’t add up about this whole WMD business in Syria. Obama and other western powers promised action against WMD’s use in Syria a year ago. In that time Assad and his forces have achieved the upper hand and the rebels are losing. So why use WMD’s now? Why invite outside intervention into Syria when you are winning? Makes no sense to me.
Maybe we didn´t read our ballot information prior to the election. Without realizing it, we might have elected a king.
So how does everyone like this perpetual state of war thingy we’ve been in since 2001?
We have always been at war with EastAsia.
It helps keep the proles in line and weeds out the aggressive by finding a place to kill them.
We don’t know what the chemical weapon was. We don’t know who unleashed it. The UN caravan of eunuchs got shot by snipers who succeeded in hitting a car without coming close to doing bodily harm.
John F’n Kerry got so wound up he almost dropped the Genghis Kahn bomb and threw pictures of his medals under the bus.
Obama, the perpetual campaigner, has suddenly turned serious and will not abide any suggestion of politics being on the table. He has calculated that it is time for him to personally take out another Osama bin Ladin.
The American people have not got a clue about what our interest in Syria is or just what Assad has done to push us to the brink of war.
We have no coherent idea of who in Syria is fighting whom and for what reasons. 100,000 people have been killed in Syria without our intervention. Now we have emotionally moving photos of children who were gassed. We do not know, the U.N. does not know, Obama does not know who is responsible for the chemical attacks. Those attacks are horrible, but the resulting deaths are a small fraction of the overall carnage to date.
Hopefully, some liberal Obamanaut will come forward and explain how Obama’s fiddling this Syrian opportunity is better justified than what G. W. Bush did in preparing for the Iraq War.
The stink of hypocrisy and pure, amateur, ham-handed politically motivated image burnishing by Obama is beneath contempt.
An old Greek adage has it that “the boys throw stones at the frogs in sport, but the frogs die in earnest.”
The frogs are our military, Israel, Syrian citizens, and the American citizens who have to wear the egg this sorry President throws around in his pitiful attempt to make his bones.
Ted Cruz, being a reckless showboater, has threatened impeachment proceedings against the President if he bombs Syria without Congressional authorization. “The president has no authority to unilaterally attack Syria, and if he does, I will move to impeach.” Clearly, he is just grandstanding politically in order to thwart the president’s legitimate authority.
Just kidding. Ted Cruz didn’t say that. Joe Biden said that about President Bush bombing Iran in 2007.
We have always been at war with EurAsia.
It helps keep the proles in line and weeds out the aggressive by finding a place to kill them.
“…At this moment, for example, in 1984 (if it was 1984), Oceania was at war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia. In no public or private utterance was it ever admitted that the three powers had at any time been grouped along different lines. Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the change of partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.
[..deleted…]
The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed -if all records told the same tale — then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’ And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. ‘Reality control’, they called it: in Newspeak, ‘doublethink’. …”
Hmmm, where have I heard that before?
Ah…
If only folks on both sides of the aisle would have been as critical over the “evidence” of the Iraq WMD’s like they are with Syria’s.
The best thing that can come out of the Iraq debacle is that the American public and media will no longer trust its government when it says “we have the evidence” to choose to go to war. (Why this wasn’t learned over the Gulf of Tonkin I’ll never know.)
I am not convinced Assad used these weapons, and I sure as hell don’t want another war of choice. – How you can say Iraq was not is beyond me…but…i’m not interested in going down that road.
If you weren’t interested in it, you wouldn’t have brought it up.
So here we go, mike. Since you and your fellow Obamabots are screaming that gassing a few hundred people is grounds for war, perhaps you ought to choke on the hundreds of THOUSANDS of people that Saddam gassed and worse.
Where are the antiwar protestors, mike?
Oh, that’s right. They, like you, were nothing more than stinking, despicable hypocrites.
And now we’re seeing you try to spin your way madly out of the LIES your Obama told and the LIES you perpetuated about Bush.
You’re a stinking worthless liar, mike. We know that. And you are going to be called on it in every thread in which you care to comment.
Mike, we are still in Iraq, still in Afghanistan, in which three times as many soldiers are dead or horrifically wounded..in O’s first term than all of Bush’s….
Obama has unilaterally stuck his nose in Libya, and Egypt. Droning in Pakistan and Yemen. And now Syria. He’s dead set on the Muslim brotherhood taking over the entire region. The only time he said we had no business getting involved in the ME
was when he turned his back on the Iranian people who don’t want to be ruled by the mullahs.
And yet congressionally approved, coalition backed Iraq, gets your manties in a bunch.
Let’s put all the partisan Team Red versus Team Blue garbage aside. The fact of the matter is thus: If you want to make war upon another sovereign nation, you have a duty both as an American in moral and ethical terms as well as a legal duty as a lawmaker that swore an oath to the Constitution to do it responsibly. Enact a congressional declaration of force.
If they don’t do that (and I mean ‘they’ in the full sense of every lawmaker in Washington), then something horrible has happened.
If the international moral precept is that the use of biological weapons is beyond the Pale, then punitive raids isn’t the effective response. Instant and immediate regime decapitation and “…you’ll be hunted to the Ends of the Earth” is the only appropriate measured-response…otherwise don’t bother.
“Use bio-weapons and you-will-die…” is a defendable standard.
“Use bio-weapons against the US, and you’ll be a glowing-hole in the ground” is also a worthwhile concept.
Since our leaders don’t have the guts for that…and refuse regime decapitation on principle…it’s just a waste of expensive ordnance, and the same problem will still be there tomorrow.
We should have nuke’d Tora Bora to gravel when OBL was still hiding there ’til it resembled a self-illuminating Bonneville Salt Flats. That and future evil-doers would get the message.
Would we be going to war in Syria if Obama’s approval ratings weren’t crashing, if the economy were in good shape, if there weren’t massive scandals that the loyal MFM can barely keep a lid in, and if Obama weren’t in a personal snit with Putin?
Time for another distraction. We would have bombed already if it weren’t for Miley Cyrus.
Nice try, mike — where do you think the Syrian weapons CAME FROM? Almost certainly Iraq — but I expect you lack both the intellectual curiosity OR the intellectual honesty to admit that.
If only you Leftists actually HAD some morals. Instead, everything that was bad under Bush is magically acceptable now that Pretty Pony Princess Obama is doing it.
Go and reread V the K’s comments about Biden and explain why it is acceptable NOW and wasn’t then to go to war. Of course, you can’t, because we don’t even have the Coalition Bush did when he acted.
Keep spinning, mikey, keep spinning that narrative!
mikey likes to pretend that the intel on WMD came from multiple sources, and was validated.
And that we found chemical weapons.
Of course, they also had pressure cookers there, so the Obama administration retroactively validated invadint Iraq.
mike,
What is the compelling state reason for the US to stick its nose into Syria?
(I won’t bother with the Gulf war treaty violations history and UN sanctions and 9/11 terrorism and the Iraq terrorism training camps. funding and shielding of terrorists and UN and Congressional approval that preceded our Iraq war.)
Why isn’t it equally compelling for the US to go into Sudan?
What was the compelling state reason for the US to overthrow Qaddafi?
Why isn’t it equally compelling for the US to topple Kim Jong il?
Obama has made a Presidency of fundamentally reducing the United States to eunuch status. What has given him a wedgie concerning Syria? Has the red line he drew boxed him in so that he has to show a little muscle to impress his roadies?
The Mr. President of the United States of America Barack Obama has piddled away the influence of the United States and he has made himself a cartoon president in the eyes of many world leaders. Ben Bernanke and the FED printing presses have more respect and instill more fear into the world leaders than anything Mr. President of the United States of America Barack Obama or Vice-President Joe Gaff Biden or Secretary of State John F’n Kerry or Secretary of Defense Chuck Mumbles Hagel or the girls on The View have to say to them.
President Obama’s sudden urge to bomb a camel or an aspirin factory or some airstrip in Syria is in the realm of analyzing either the political gains from the act or the man’s psychosis.
Can we all agree that if Mr. President of the United States of America Barack Obama carries through on this theater of the absurd act that is was motivated entirely by his white half?
Sorry that would be “Mikey likes to pretend that the intel [b]didn’t[/b] come from…”
Don’t post w/o caffiene Matt.
Do you guys read or whats the deal?
I clearly stated “its not clear Assad used these weapons and I don’t want another war of choice” The only thing I disagreed with in the post was the conclusion that we had no choice but to invade Iraq.
Yet folks here attack me and demand that I justify a war that I clearly stated I was against.
….
You guys are what are wrong with the conservative movement. You are so damned dogmatic. Even when I agree with the majority of the post, because I am a moderate I get attacked for your projected ideals of what you think I might say/think.
I wait for your apologies
Does mikey read, or what’s the deal?
I was addressing his lies on Iraq.
Oh mikey boy, the facts the facts are calling.
If the retaliatory targeting against Syria isn’t “regime decapitation”, I just don’t see what the point of the exercise is.
“Making it expensive” is hardly a deterrent if International norms are to be that bio-weapons are verboten, full-stop.
Yes, mikey, you were clear. You continue to lie about Iraq in a desperate attempt to handwave and equate Obama’s blunders in Syria to Bush’s legitimate actions in Iraq.
Did Bush gather a Coalition? Yes.
Did he seek (and receive) Congressional Approval? Yes.
Did he have intelligence stating there were WMDs in Iraq? Yes. And this seems to be vindicated with the weapons in Syria — and their likely origin.
So it wouldn’t be ANOTHER war of choice, but the first. But don’t let facts get in the way of more of your blatant lies.
And calling others dogmatic? Hypocrite, heal thyself.
OK, mike, here is your parsing. At #9 you state this:
Iraq:
Saddam Hussein had gassed his Kurdish people in 1988 in which three to five thousand mostly civilian people were killed and seven to ten thousand more were injured by the gas.
One of Saddam Hussein’s infamous Tikrit cousins was Ali Hassan Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti who was better known “affectionately” as “Chemical Ali” by the Ba’athist Party advisors who surrounded Saddam Hussein.
The UN, the US and every sentient person on the globe had reason to fear Iraq’s use of chemical weapons of mass destruction. There was no scintilla of doubt of what had happened to the Kurds and no evidence that Saddam had been overwhelmed by an epiphany and used his force and power to wipe Iraq clean of every chemical weapon.
Syria:
We now have evidence of gas being used on civilians. That makes a certain parallel between Iraq and Syria.
Several hundred civilians have been gassed. We saw the films. What was the gas? Who did it? Who ordered it?
In Iraq, we knew who ordered it, the scope of the killing and the gas that was used. We sent our troops into the Gulf War fully fearful that Iran would gas them. Israel has outfitted its population with gas masks out of an abundance of caution for what the world knows Saddam Hussein did in Iraq.
Your statement that the United States was not critical concerning the “evidence” of the Iraq WMD’s is pure fantasy. Perhaps you were absent from the news and proceedings of the long “run-up” on the war in Iraq. Perhaps your ideological imperatives require you to rewrite the history of the facts on the “run-up” on the war on Iraq and the ground work that was laid in getting the UN and Congress in agreement.
The very slender and inaccurate parallel you posit between then and now is what tore apart anything that followed in your comment @ #9.
You come back @ #19 with:
You stated a false premise and you jump on commenters here for the obvious conclusion that comes from the false premise?
What difference does it make if we are in agreement on staying out of Syria. You predicated your conclusion on insisting that there were no WMD’s in Iraq. We destroyed a lot of Saddam’s WMD stockpile in the Gulf War. All through the Clinton Administration and into the Bush Administration the intelligence community believed Saddam was stockpiling new WMD’s and building nukes. The Scott Ritter-Hans Blix follies as a UN Punch and Judy show was even less helpful when Ritter was caught cooking the reports.
In short, your charge of “conservative dogma” is curious in that your “moderate” ignoring of the facts and the resultant false premise is so blatant.
We will argue forever over whether the Iraq war was a good judgement call. That is a legitimate role for historians and crystal ball gazers. But revisionism based on stacking the evidence to support a pre-determined conclusion is dishonest, even if it is a “moderate” doing it.
For being a dumb cowboy, G. W. Bush sure did chucklehead and goofball a whole lot of Democrats, world leaders and the UN into being patsies and supporting his chuckleheaded, goofball fantasy about WMD’s in Iraq. Why, even Bill Clintoon and the smartest woman in the world were on board. So was John F’n Kerry who voted against it before voting for it.