Last night, President Obama made an emotional appeal for…America to NOT act in Syria. Transcript here.
If you only caught his conclusion, you’d never know that Obama has spent the last few weeks loudly war-mongering on Syria, seeking unilaterally to plunge America into a new war that over 60% of Americans oppose.
Obama started out his speech with a lot of “Oh! Won’t somebody please think of the children!” But he offered only a series of assertions (no evidence) on a crucial point: whether Syria’s President Assad is responsible for the chemical weapons attacks. (The intelligence is still weak; since the rebels are some nasty people, it’s still worth considering whether they did the attacks as a ‘false flag’ operation to draw the U.S. in, or if it was perhaps a rogue Syrian general.)
Obama then offered a thin connection to U.S. security interests:
As the ban against these weapons erodes…tyrants will have no reason to think twice about acquiring poison gas and using them. Over time, our troops would again face the prospect of chemical warfare on the battlefield, and it could be easier for terrorist organizations to obtain these weapons…
This, from a president who has done basically nothing about North Korea’s and Iran’s nuclear weapons programs. He seems unaware that terrorists can already obtain or create chemical weapons, and that U.S. forces already prepare for the threat.
But it leads to his major point:
This is not a world we should accept…And that is why, after careful deliberation, I determined that it is in the national security interests of the United States to respond to the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons through a targeted military strike.
So, the strike is on, right? Nope:
That’s my judgment as commander-in-chief, but…over the last few days, we’ve seen some…constructive talks that I had with [Russia’s] President Putin…I have therefore asked the leaders of Congress to postpone…
But we still might strike, Obama indicates, so don’t you think about these things too hard, people! Go back to Youtube videos; keep yourself worked up about The Children!
To my friends on the left, I ask you to reconcile your belief in freedom and dignity for all people with those images of children writhing in pain…Indeed, I’d ask every member of Congress and those of you watching at home tonight to view those videos of the attack…
I’ll wait for the U.N. inspectors’ reports, thank you. Just as Bush/America did, with Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons on his own people in Iraq.
ILC, you missed a very funny part of the speech — his appeal to the right that went on the lines of “since you are obsessed about our military might, this is your chance to use it!”.
Apparently, belief in liberty and freedom is the bailiwick of only the left. The large number of right-leaning folks, whose principal obsession in life is about liberty for all, don’t figure in his universe.
Correction in the last sentence — should be just “liberty”, these folks they don’t see themselves are policemen for the rest of the world.
JA – One can’t comment on everything 🙂 Yes, he seemed to be talking to the stereotype of right-wingers that he carries in his head. Almost like “You militaristic Nazis love to blow things up – Why don’t you want to blow up Syria with me? I’ve declared it to be a good cause; are you chicken?”
As I noted in a post a few days ago: Conservatives opposed U.S. entry into WW1, WW2, Korea and Vietnam, at least until there was some sort of direct attack on U.S. facilities, citizens or key allies.
Conservatives dislike war as much as anybody, and need U.S. wars to have a rational connection to U.S. security. The Left, blinded by their own idiotic stereotypes, does not understand that.
Didn’t catch the speech. Did he explain why gassing children was bad, but blowing them up with drones and cruise missiles was good?
V, he basically said that blowing them up with cruise missiles will prove to the world that gassing them is unacceptable. Which makes us noble and the world safer, a cause that must not be delayed. Except he has to talk to Putin and Congress more, first.
If it is so bad for people to die from gas, why didn’t Obama have wide support from the entire world already behind him when he did draw “the red line” or quickly thereafter? Frankly, I don’t want to get involved in this damn war. The Middle East is total mess and no one has the solution to its problems.
The “Progressives” were AWOL when Saddam gassed the Kurds. They were mum on Rwanda. They seem to be OK with starving women and children in North Korea.
G.W.Bush went to extremes getting a coalition built and UN permission and Congressional approval to hit Iraq, but The Won went after Qadaffi and pulled the rug out from underneath Murbarak without and such consultation beyond Lady O, Valerie and Axelrod.
In sum, there is no precedent for going after Syria to “prove a point” and it would be 24/7 non-stop bitching if a Republican were trying it.
Obambi could not make a scintilla of a case for crapping on Syria. And, Obama has made an art form of lying, so why should anyone take his word on this?
For all intents and purposes, Russia can have the Arab world and good luck to them. But, our boy President has locked up our energy independence from OPEC.
Who, is this guy working for?
Watching the Middle East Implode by Bruce Thornton
It is just beginning.
http://www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/article/156181
Agree with Swampfox it is only now beginning Islam is meeting the modern world and finding that it is utterly unprepared to deal with it. Considering O’bama I’m not sure we are either. There is a saying that “O’bama hasn’t had a new idea in 70 years”, he’s still playing old with Leftists ideas from the past and finding they don’t work in the modern world. So taking dictation from Russia really doesn’t come as a surprise to him.
As long as Israel is safe, let em go at it
In fact if this proposal goes through and they get rid of their weapons without dropping expensive bombs, even better.
Maybe Obama should be told he needs to wait for at least 12 years and 17 UN Resolutions before he can even think about doing anything about Syria.
Needless to say, Andrew Sullivan loved his boyfriend’s speech:
If you ever wondered what it would look like if a hyper-emotive meth-head had a schoolgirl crush…. now you know.
Speaking of immature little girls, President Hissy-Fit throws a tantrum because Congress won’t authorize his “unbelievably small” war.
To any thinking person, this president is as embarrassing as a toddler throwing a tantrum in the toy aisle at WalMart.
Perhaps Sullivan is the Helen Lovejoy here – and Obama just knows how to exploit him.
Iowahawk: “Breaking: now Obama brilliantly fools Putin into giving him a wedgie.”
Iowahawk: “Putin now just basically doing donuts in Obama’s front yard.”
Andrea Tantaros coins a great phrase: “Brain fart foreign policy.”
Sorry folks, but The Won is unimpeachable and we have him to kick around for three and half years. He will continue to royally muck up the infrastructure and the MSM will be there at his side praising his genius and winsome ways and ignore the Californication of the country.
Five counties in Western Maryland are considering forming a new state. They have looked at the Baltimore-Washington, D.C. population and determined that representative democracy for Western Maryland is dead. The same thing is happening in Colorado.
The point is the that all over the United States, the city socialists have crapped on the country people. There are plenty of people who are fed up with high taxes going to build roads and services for the urban areas while they get little more than sneered at.
The Connecticut Compromise at the Constitutional Convention was the essential genius of balancing the power of representation in Congress between the densely packed people and the states with less dense population. The low population state has the same power as the highly populated state holds in the Senate. The populous states get more representation in the House, but the members stand for election every two years so that the seething masses can get their current message to Congress fairly quickly.
Even the Electoral College system reflects this formula.
We may be suffering from a need to have more states. Perhaps, many more states. I wonder if Massachusetts, for instance, might not be gorging on the taxes of citizens who would rather be more rural.
One can look at migration and see that people who need people flock together. Eventually, they make an urban sprawl of things. Some folks cut out and head for the open spaces in exchange for a much longer commute or picking out a new style of life and income.
However, we have become a stale, stagnant nation in which the core of the city is no longer vital or even vibrant without a lot of glitz and manipulation.
Obama is pure Chicago. What, pray tell, is Chicago to the rest of the huge state of Illinois but a carbuncle on its posterior. What does Chicago manufacture today? When the people come together in Chicago salons, do they celebrate a diversity of opinion or are they rigidly ideological?
Obama could never get up to bat at being a community organizer in rural America. The concept of community organization is the antithesis of rural America. Ask the unions. Neighbors being pitted agains neighbors is a non-starter.
Our great clueless boy President was going to bring us together by gluing us to government with unicorn silly putty. Instead, he has been a masterful divider who can not get his focus off of blaming everybody else for his serial failures.
Putin is the first Western leader of a powerful state to look The Won in the eye and laugh in his face. Putin knows that there is no coalition of even the drooling who will join Obama.
Obama has been told by the IMF that the United States must keep printing funny money in order to prop up international economies.
We are riding the flywheel of runaway inflation and the IMF is ordering us to keep on printing.
We are in the midst of a deep depression. If the 47% were to have their welfare payment cut in half by midnight, what would happen by this time next month?
My investments are not even beginning to keep us with inflation as low as 10%. When prices rise and purchasing power falls, what will the 47% do? They will demand mo’ money, mo’ money, mo’ money from Obama’s stash. Obama phones. Free health care. More unemployment $$$. Tax the rich.
The boy President is riding the canoe to the edge of the falls. He is counting on trading places with the next President before the current sweeps the man in the Oval Office over the edge.
Like Clintoon, Obama has his stash and can go off to Davos and hobnob with Oprah and strut his stuff and make poses.
It is the little chumps out in the country that will have to foot the bill.
I’ve been watching all this for the last couple of days and it looks like everything is about to fall apart. Syrian and Russian sincerity are laughable. They are buying time. The red line was set by Obama, with no thought as to what this country would do if the red line had been crossed. No allies. No coalition. I truly can’t find anyone in the conflict that I would like to support. We headed for a greater rift with Russia. There is nothing intelligent about Obama’s diplomacy. Obama is looking for a way of this conflict, but his actions are drawing us even closer.
The first cracks in our national dissolution.
“Five counties in Western Maryland are considering forming a new state. … The same thing is happening in Colorado.”
It would be amazingly interesting if they did. Could they be successful without the urban centers? Would their citizens start demanding services? I would be interested in watching that experiment play out.
You have to wonder, how would that effect their medicare? They could be flush with money from their agricultural/natural resources. Would they have to pay back the state for the money it invested in those areas? Who would pay for their roads? Who would help subsidize their public school systems? Who would pay for their welfare? What would they do when their local colleges close?
Some interesting studies have been done on state tax dollars:
http://www.insideindianabusiness.com/newsitem.asp?ID=39560
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=2783
One more interesting article on the rural/urban practicalities:
http://reason.com/archives/2011/07/14/the-redblue-paradox
mike’s point seems to be that the schlong is already far too deep to be withdrawn without killing it’s host
lower case mikey’s point is that poor, dumb country bumpkins would be lost without condescending urban liberal pricks like him. Without constant interference from liberal bureaucrats in Baltimore and Denver, the rural residents of Colorado and Maryland would be too busy clinging to guns and religion, playing banjo music, eating paint chips, and raping our sister-cousins to figure out how to pay for roads and schools.
All of Maryland’s political power is concentrated in Baltimore, Prince Georges, and Montgomery counties… which are left-wing lunatic asylums. The western areas of the state are relatively sane and conservative. The sixth congressional district, which used to comprise these areas, at least assured residents of these counties of some level of representation. But after the 2010 census the Maryland Democrats… in a vulgar display of power… gerrymandered the sixth district, cut it in two pieces, and put 300,000 Democrat voters from DC suburbs almost 100 miles away into it. Now, the people who live in western Maryland have no representation at the state or national level.
And some liberals will says, “Oh, I don’t agree with that.” But then they shrug and go back to cheering for gay marriage and Obamaphones.
Nothing new there. When I was in college in the late 70s there was an actual ballot-vote in the southern counties of New Jersey about succession…which actually was successful. The primary issues were;
1. The northern counties were hogging the vast bulk of the tax revenues generated by the casinos in AC, and the three nuclear power-stations in southern NJ.
2. The southern counties were out-voted in the statehouse 6-to-1 due to the population imbalance on social issues and infrastructure investments. Billions for mass-transit and the ports of NYC and Newark…and nothing for transit, roads or the Delaware River ports and bridges.
3. The agricultural and suburban interests of the southern counties were being ignored by the metropolitan urban politicians of the northern counties.
4. The high-handedness of northern politicians arbitrarily master-planning and restricting development the southern woodlands and farms in the Pine Barrens forestlands without input from the local residents.
5. The South Jersey suburban towns of Philly were being politically-ignored.
It passed, but squabbling over Mercer County and the existing state capital and the prestigious Princeton University research corridor stalled further-progress. But the threat still hangs over certain state political calculations and there’s more of an attempt to accommodate southern interests and sensibilities since.
Historically, New Jersey was originally TWO separate colonies in the 17th-century, and development has reflected that split to this day. Two zip-code prefixes, two telephone area codes, two TV and sports markets…and you can actually see that dividing line of a map to this day.
And look to Texas to see how the Dems react when someoen tries to fix the Gerrymandering.
Yes – we conservatives WON, and changed the voting districts to accurately reflect the population.
Then we also insisted on proper ID so you can vote – just as if you were stepping onto a plane, or applying for a marriage license.
And then we tell Holder, et al to pound sand.
Don’t mess with Texas, boys.
Regards,
Peter H.
My point was Peter, they go crying to the courts when the exact same laws they love are used against them. 🙂
Ohio could learn from the state.
Democrats got some nerve whining about voter suppression.
#26 – No problem, LW – my rant was directed to the libtards, not to you. 😉
Regards,
Peter H.
Actually, V, it’s because Dhimmicrats have reality suppression.
(H/T Rep. Steve Stockman, R-TX)
Regards,
Peter H.
As a Kansan, I point to history to show that my state does not appreciate voter fraud.
On 9/11, Islam not only met the modern world, it turned the modern world’s technology against itself, and it did so only with boxcutters and half-assed pilot training.
Because the modern world was too busy being politically correct and not asking why all these students didn’t care to learn how to land, all these people were overstaying their visas, and from where all this money and these odd communications were coming.
Islam is perfectly capable of dealing with the modern world. A weak man can easily overpower a strong man if the weak man acts with strength and the strong man acts with weakness. Islam is ruthless and relentless in its goals, and moreover it knows that the modern world is not.
That’s because, mike, liberal Obama puppets like yourself cannot conceptualize life without a welfare check.
Perhaps if you were to actually go out into these areas instead of hiding in your urban centers, you might rediscover the concept of “work”, instead of simply flashing your EBT card.
But that would be too much for you, wouldn’t it? You, mike, are one of the 47% that Mitt Romney correctly pointed out is a worthless welfare parasite, lazy and unwilling to work, dependent on the government teat for everything, likely a second generation of dependency that has never seen adults actually work for a living.
Actually, V the K, it’s more an acknowledgement that mike, like the vast and overwhelming majority of Obama voters, has no concept of life without a welfare check.
The condescension of liberal bigots like mike is hilarious once you realize that they literally would starve to death if their EBT cards stopped working, they would be homeless if they didn’t get their Section 8 voucher, and they would be begging for spare change if they didn’t have a welfare check. They don’t know how to do anything else.
This is why they make such ludicrous statements. They literally can’t envision doing anything without the government because they have never done anything without the government. They’ve never worked, they’ve never built, they’ve never educated themselves — it’s all been government.
mike voted for Obama because Obama promised to give mike more goodies and punish those people out in the boonies who mike hates and loathes. That’s really the only thing mike has.