International, Politics, Society

Obama Aide: “We Don’t Make Decisions . . . Based on Consistency or Precedent”

For those of us who are incredulous at the changing rationales for our intervention in the Libyan civil war, Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough has come to the rescue. He told reporters that “we don’t make decisions about questions like intervention based on consistency or precedent. We make them based on how we can best advance our interests in the region.” Thus, inconsistency is the consistent policy that we are trying to advance?

The White House has sent out legions of allies to defend his decision to intervene in a civil war. We were originally told that we simply wanted to maintain a no-fly zone. We are now actively assisting the rebels in their campaign and taking out government forces. What is most striking are the liberals who are defending the President and acknowledging that the distinction between Libya and Syria is probably oil (which we refer obliquely to as “our interests”). The key is that we no longer offer a pretense of principle or consistency. We appear now to simply be saying that we are the United States and can intervene whenever it suits our purposes.

Source: USA Today

506 thoughts on “Obama Aide: “We Don’t Make Decisions . . . Based on Consistency or Precedent””

  1. “I graduated near the top of my class of over 400 students.”

    When it’s racist homophobic zealot clown college, that’s really something to be proud of, Tootles.

  2. Elaine:

    The same thing can be said about Obama (collective salvation): the corporatist, statist, fascist Obama.

    He even whines when people don’t believe he is a Christian. Gosh, could that be because there is no evidence of it? Yet he uses his Christianity and his connections with corporations to attain political power.

    This is exactly what Hucksterbee will be accused of.

    If you don’t like it in Huck you won’t like in Obama. Clinton: the same.

    Pelosi (the Word) the same.

    Pelsoi, Reid, and Obama all use Christian “charity” as a means to justify government theft.

    They are a pack of thieves. Huckster too. Be fair.

  3. Taliban Tootie,

    Samir Shabazz – I might take offense, however, you flaming idiot, I’m a woman, I’m white, and I’m an athiest … your pathetic attempt to insult me has failed … miserably. Just like everything else in your miserable life.

    Oh, poor victimized Taliban Tootie … giving pointers on decency, rationality and hypocrisy. If it weren’t so pitiful it would be laughable. I would feel sorry for you but I’m not in a charitable mood today.

    Now, my final thoughts on you, scumbag – Go fuck yourself.

  4. Stazi Stamford (aka Samir Shabazz):

    I graduated near the top of my class of over 400 students. If I “failed yourself in public school” [your stupid term] it would not be because of anything I did, but because of something the public schools did or failed to do.

    You would have to know my personal life to know if I’m a failure. But you don’t know my personal life and so you are just making up things about me like to prove you are superior. In reality you are just an ignorant bully who thinks well of himself.

    I’m not ridiculing public education, I am pointing out the hypocrisy of people who support forcing children to attend school (at gunpoint) in a country dedicated to liberty.

    I realize this is a difficult concept for you to understand as it takes a fair amount of intellect to grasp–which you lack. No matter how fine an education you think you may have received it can never overcome your inability to think rationally or be a decent human being.

  5. Swarthmore mom,

    From a November 2007 Rolling Stone article written by Matt Taibbi:

    Mike Huckabee Is Not a Sane Man
    Surging Mike Huckabee may talk about poverty and trade, but the wild-eyed Baptist goofball doesn’t believe he is evolved from primates. Does that even worry Republican voters?
    http://www.alternet.org/story/68057/

    Ever since Huckabee turned in a dominating performance at a summit of Christian voters in Washington a few weeks ago, he has been riding a surge among likely Iowa voters (he’s now second to Mitt Romney, and gaining). The media, like me, have been charmed by their initial impression: “It’s hard not to like Mike Huckabee,” gushed Newsweek. Even The Nation said he has “real charm.”

    But all the attention on his salesmanship skills obscures the real significance of his rise within the Republican Party. Mike Huckabee represents something that is either tremendously encouraging or deeply disturbing, depending on your point of view: a marriage of Christian fundamentalism with economic populism. Rather than employing the patented Bush-Rove tactic of using abortion and gay rights to hoodwink low-income Christians into supporting patrician, pro-corporate policies, Huckabee is a bigger-government Republican who emphasizes prison reform and poverty relief. In the world of GOP politics, he represents something entirely new — a cross between John Edwards and Jerry Falwell, an ordained Southern Baptist preacher who actually seems to give a shit about the working poor.

    But Huckabee is also something else: full-blown nuts, a Christian goofball of the highest order. He believes the Earth may be only 6,000 years old, angrily rejects the evidence that human beings evolved from “primates” and thinks America wouldn’t need so much Mexican labor if we allowed every aborted fetus to grow up and enter the workforce. To top it off, Huckabee also left behind a record of ethical missteps in the swamp of Arkansas politics that make Whitewater seem like a jaywalking ticket.

    All of which begs the question: If this religious zealot’s rise represents the end of corporate dominance of the Republican Party, is that a good thing? Or is the real thing even worse than the fraud?

    **********
    Huckabee gave an even more damning glimpse into his inner batshit self in a recent appearance at the Prestonwood Baptist Church near Dallas, where he told audiences that Christians are sitting in the pole position of the race to Armageddon. “If you’re with Jesus Christ, we know how it turns out in the final moment,” he said. “I’ve read the last chapter in the book, and we do end up winning.”

    Winning? I ask Huckabee when, exactly, he thinks victory will arrive. “When I was eighteen, I thought I had it pretty well figured out,” he says. “I thought the end of the world was coming at any moment.” But when I ask how his views have changed, he says only that he is “less adamant now.” Huckabee, with the wisdom of age, apparently believes we have at least a day or two left until the end of the world.

    The troubling thing about Huckabee’s God rhetoric is that a man who is glad that Christians will “win” at Armageddon must be happy about the rest of us losing. When I press him on whether he believes all non-Christians are eternally damned, Huckabee is evasive. “Being president isn’t about picking who goes to heaven and who goes to hell,” he says. When none other than Bill O’Reilly hammered him on the same point a day later, Huckabee conceded that “I believe Jesus is the way to heaven.”

    This God stuff isn’t just talk with Huck. One of his first acts as governor was to block Medicaid from funding an abortion for a mentally retarded teenager who had been raped by her stepfather — an act in direct violation of federal law, which requires states to pay for abortions in cases of rape. “The state didn’t fund a single such abortion while Huckabee was governor,” says Dr. William Harrison of the Fayetteville Women’s Clinic. “Zero.”

  7. Blouise-

    Rhubarb pie was invented as a result of the famous barroom bet by Arthur “Two Sheds” Jackson that “you can make a pie out of any damn vegetable if you put enough sugar in it”. Fortunately for all of us he didn’t try broccoli first.

  8. Taliban Tootie,

    Your Royal Vileness – I’m not going to click on your silly link – why? Because I really don’t give a shit.

    Stormfront is more to your liking, not mine, Taliban. They are, after all, good, paranoid Christian asshats like you so you would be amongst friends.

    You ridicule public education – well, most people are educated by the public system and have managed to succeed in school and in life. You, on the other hand, failed yourself in public school and failed yourself in life. It’s not public education’s fault you’re too stupid to get it. It’s high time you took your own advice, Taliban – take personal responsibility for your own failures in your own failing life.

    In the meantime, go to hell, failure.

  9. Blouise,

    I don’t know which is funnier.

    The joke or the zealot totally missing the joke.

  19. Stazi Stamford:

    I’m sure you don’t like it that I am free to be here. The intolerant never are. Perhaps there is Stormfront type website for leftists like you to visit and vent your violent urges against people like me?

    I’m thinking they would love to have you.

    In more ways than one.

    [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVcfymOvoUo&w=480&h=390%5D

  20. Taliban Tootie,

    It was so nice here with you being under your rock. Now you’re reared your nasty, bigotted, paranoid and empty melon and the peace is lost.

    Go to clownhall.com or redstate.com where you can commiserate with your fellow Klanners, Taliban.

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