President Barack Obama appears poised to take the country into yet another military campaign, according to the Washington Post. With critics mocking him over his repeated references to “red lines” in warning Syria, Obama seems to feel compelled to now act even if it could result in an expansion of the war. He is reportedly considering a two-day cruise missile and bomber campaign to hit targets unrelated to the chemical weapons of the country. It will cost hundreds of millions at a minimum, but we appear now to be at perpetual war even as we cancel key environmental, educational, and scientific programs (including program cuts this week).
The campaign seems to be the result of public line drawing and face saving. Obama said early on that he would not stand for the use of chemical weapons. That was apparently ignored and now the U.S. must act to fulfill the threat. The question is why the United States must remain in a perpetual war footing to enforce such demands. China continues to avoid such military action and then in countries like Iraq, China comes in after we spend hundreds of billions to seize assets and contracts.
We clearly need to act in the wake of this chemical attack. However, given the recent disclosure our tacit approval of the use of chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein against Iran, we look hypocritical in using the weapons as the reason for a further entry into the Syrian civil war. If the world is unwilling to punish Syria through the United Nations, the question is whether we should continue to enforce our demands through military action.
Even before the U.N. report, Secretary of State John F. Kerry has already announced that the use of chemical weapons is now “undeniable.” Combined with Obama’s earlier “redline” ultimatum, that announcement would seem to commit the U.S. to once again launch large-scale military operations.
I previously represented members of Congress in challenging Obama’s intervention in the Libyan civil war without a declaration from Congress. In the case, President Obama insisted that he alone determines what is a war and therefore when he needs a declaration. Since the court would not recognize standing to challenge the war, it left Obama free to engage in war operations in any country of his choosing.
We all share the outrage over the use of chemical weapons and the need to seek sanctions. However, no one seriously believes that destroying facilities for a couple days is going to materially change anything in the country. It reminds some of Clinton attacking largely empty tents in Afghanistan with 70 Tomahawk missiles. These attacks will clearly have a greater impact than Clinton’s destruction of tents at the cost of over a $100 million. However, the question is what we expect to be achieved beyond sending the message that we are not to be mocked or ignored. With the long lead into the attacks, Syria has likely taking efforts to prepare for the attack and moved around assets. The danger is that we will cause an expansion of the conflict and push Russia and China to even greater support for Syria.
What do you think?
I’m glad y’all could join in the festivities celebrating the 100th anniversary of the the Federal Reserve System Ponzi Scam & reenacting World War One/Ottoman Empire with a WW3 Einstein cliff-hanger ending.
Will Europe/German get their Oil/NG pipeline through Syria this time or it’s people just gassed again?
Has anyone seen Dick Cheney? Is he turned loose again murdering babies?
I suggest everyone stay out of Tall Buildings. 🙂
http://www.infowars.com/evidence-syria-gas-attack-work-of-u-s-allies/
Tony, Killing someone like Assad is not about technology. You need human intelligence. Someone to say, “He is @ this location NOW.” Then the technology takes over. Saddam and bin Laden showed that quite clearly.
George and Norm, this will likely be the rational: “The liberal warhawks are groping around for a pretext they can call “legal” for waging war against Syria, and have come up with the 1999 “Kosovo war”.
This is not surprising insofar as a primary purpose of that US/NATO 78-day bombing spree was always to set a precedent for more such wars. The pretext of “saving the Kosovars” from an imaginary “genocide” was as false as the “weapons of mass destruction” pretext for war against Iraq, but the fakery has been much more successful with the general public. Therefore Kosovo retains its usefulness in the propaganda arsenal.
On August 24, the New York Times reported that President Obama’s national security aides are “studying the NATO air war in Kosovo as a possible blueprint for acting without a mandate from the United Nations.” (By the way, the “air war” was not “in Kosovo”, but struck the whole of what was then Yugoslavia, mostly destroying Serbia’s civilian infrastructure and also spreading destruction in Montenegro.)
On Friday, Obama admitted that going in and attacking another country “without a U.N. mandate and without clear evidence” raised questions in terms of international law.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/08/26/us-uses-past-crimes-to-legalize-future-ones/
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-08-26/banzai7s-world-conspiracy-30
I am waiting for Syria to take the first plunge and drop some bombs on Pearl Harbour.
{music– to the tune of Hail Brittania]
HAIL Obumbo! Obumbo rules the waves!
He lives, breaths, shits, and passes gas each breathless day.
Obumbo: Just to let you know. You have already lost a vast sector of the Democratic Party in the next election. Some Romney, Gypsy or not, will win for the RepubliCons. You lost the liberals and conservative Dems with the spying by your NSA. You will lose the entire Vietnam generation with your war policy. A new Party must emerge. The existing parties are bathing in the sewer together.
You got that one right!!!!!!!!!!!
I am beyond the point of being disgusted with Obama.
So much for electing an anti-war president. Yes, it is despicable to use WMDs of any kind including chemical weaponry. Where is our national interest being threatened by their use in Syria, though?
Norm’s question (“Under what authority?”) is a good one. Where is the Clear and Present danger?
He’s living at 1600 Pennsyvania Avenue………….
Rick, I agree, this is about more money for the MIC. If you look at US “policy” it isn’t strictly about oil (although this looms large). Apparently they have found a way to make even more money on another commodity, chaos.
The US is arming every side of every conflict. These corporations are making trillions of dollars and there is a revolving door between them and our nominal civilian “govt.”
Meanwhile, the boys over at General Dynamics, Lockheed-Martin, and Raytheon are rubbing their hands with great delight and lighting up cigars with $100 bills. “Happy days are here again! You might have got us out of Iraq, but you sure won’t get us out of Syria.”
A”two-day cruise missile and bomber campaign” my arse.
rafflaw, why does the US get to regime change other nations? You know I don’t like Obama, that I believe he is a war criminal, but I don’t think some other nation has the right to regime change him.
I don’t know if I’m properly understanding what you wrote, so sorry if I got your meaning incorrectly, but it has been one disaster after antoher as the US runs around regime changing in nations which have our oil under their sand.
Once it becomes legal for the US to run around regime changing (which in effect it has) why can’t another nation regime change our war criminals?
And of course the real reason other than the MIC.
Kerry says Syrian use of chemical weapons ‘undeniable;’ U.N. investigates
Hagel: US military stands ready to strike Syria
BY PABLO GORONDI
Associated Press
BANGKOK — The price of oil jumped more than $2 on Tuesday, to above $108 a barrel, after the U.S. defense secretary said American forces were ready to act on any order by President Barack Obama to strike Syria.
By early afternoon in Europe, U.S. benchmark crude for October delivery was up $2.12 to $108.04 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 50 cents, or 0.5 percent, to close at $105.92 on Monday.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel also predicted on BBC television Tuesday that U.S. intelligence agencies would soon conclude that last week’s deadly attack on civilians in a Damascus suburb was a chemical attack by the government.
The U.S. Navy has four destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean Sea within range of targets inside Syria. The U.S. also has warplanes in the region.
The price of oil has risen about 15 percent in the past three months on concern that unrest in Egypt and civil war in Syria could disrupt production and exports, especially from Libya and Iraq. It has also raised the specter of spreading violence that could block important supply routes.
“The political uncertainty across Middle East has dominated the oil market in the last few months, providing upside momentum as the political and economic conditions remain very tentative,” said a report from Sucden Financial Research in London.
On Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry appeared to be making a case for an aggressive response to the Syrian conflict when he said there “undeniable” evidence of the Damascus gas attack which killed hundreds of people.
Analysts at Commerzbank in Frankfurt said oil prices were “in a kind of ‘comfort zone’ at between $100 and $120 per barrel.”
“In the event of a military strike, the risk of the situation escalating in the Middle East would increase, however, which should see oil prices climb to the top of this trading corridor,” Commerzbank said in a note to clients.
Brent crude, which sets prices for imported oil used by many U.S. refineries, was up $1.91 to $112.64 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange in London.
In other energy futures trading on Nymex:
— Heating oil added 4.01 cents to $3.1236 per gallon.
— Natural gas shed 4.7 cents to $3.466 per 1,000 cubic feet.
— Wholesale gasoline rose 3.96 cents to $2.8741 per gallon.
Pamela Sampson in Bangkok and Robert Burns in Brunei contributed to this report.
Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2013/08/26/5109750/oil-edges-below-106-a-barrel.html#storylink=cpy
I don’t think our military has any business in Syria. The threat Syria poses to the rest of the world is not that great. They are basically having a civil war, and our intrusion into that conflict would be like England fighting the Union on behalf of our Southern States efforts to secede from the nation in our own civil war of the early 1860’s.
I want to remind people here that Ike knew that the Russians had a number of our POW’s from Korea and even acknowledged it, but did nothing to return these men to their families. All in the name of avoiding a confrontation with the then USSR. In this case, if we are not bombing or striking targets for the purpose of uprooting the current regime, why are we bothering?
I saw Rep congressman Corker this am on a morning newsshow. He did not say with whom he spoke that someone who was appropriate (my word) spoke with him and he was on board with this.
It is not just the president.
It was said too they will not go after the chemical weapons, depository because it is too dangerous. Seems to me, go after the “regular” military weapons and you leave the chemicals as the go to weapons.
How too can you prove it was Assad and not the rebels who did this?
(And China has a point, Bush’s lying us into the Iraq war is the guft that keeps on giving, China saying no WMD’s so why should we believe chemical weapons were used (A little different given the video but was it Assad? may be their point)
O-Bummer….. should light up a ”Fatty”, sit back, and relax. Where’s the latest ‘War Monger’ get get the money to pay for this one??? Can someone confiscate his Nobel Prize??? Let him send Michele & his kids to Syria……….
Jill,
That’s the essential difference between neocons and neolibs international policy. The former uses the stick to simply take what they want and the later uses the stick to punish dissent. Hard fascism versus soft fascism. It’s still all fascism.
Eisenhower – the exemplar of what American conservatism could and should be.
I’m a non-partisan social liberal and democratic socialist and I’d vote for Eisenhower in a heartbeat over any of the Presidents or candidates we’ve had in my lifetime (Carter excluded).
His traditional conservatism only highlights how far the neoconservatives and others on the far right have strayed from what can be a very utilitarian counterbalancing political ideology and into madness.
For sure Gene. That’s why USGinc. gets all the “agreement” it needs for 1. Assad did it and 2. we have to use military strikes to punish him. If one crony steps out of line, it could get very embarrassing!