Congress, Constitutional Law, International, Military, Politics, Society

English Parliament Balks At Obama’s Latest Demand For Military Intervention

220px-Houses.of.parliament.overall.arpPresident_Barack_ObamaWhile President Obama continues to maintain that only he decides what constitutes a war and requires consultation (let alone a declaration) from Congress, there remains a modicum of democratic process in England. The Obama Administration was surprised to learn that British Prime Minister David Cameron could not simply plunge his nation into another military conflict and that Parliament did not want to blindly follow the United States into attacking Syria. They would like to wait for all of the facts to be established by the United Nations before deciding how to act. It is of course a ridiculous notion that was long ago discarded in this country. If that was the approach in the United States, we would never have been able to invade Iraq on false pretenses and spend hundreds of billions in a war that has cost us tens of thousands of dead and wounded service members. Indeed, such knowledge is steadfastly avoided by our own politicians. By simply giving Bush a blank approval, politicians like Hillary Clinton and John Kerry could later deny that they really approved of the Iraq war and insist that they were misled by Bush.


What the English fail to understand is that our President stated publicly that he had a “red line” in Syria. Some say it was an off-the-cuff comment but he still said it. Now, either we go to war or Obama looks bad. For some reason, the Parliament does not see that choice as clearly as the White House. Of course, we have to go to war and spend a billion or so dollars to show that Obama means what he says. The White House has even promised to make the attack “limited and brief” — further conveying that this is just a face saving measure. For my part, I would rather keep the billion dollars for environmental and scientific programs being cut and have us all affirm that Obama is a leader not to be trifled with.

In the meantime, while insisting that we are only defending international law, the Obama administration has insisted that it would not allow Syria to “hide behind a U.N. investigation into the use of chemical weapons to prevent any response from the United States.” In other words, we need to support the United Nations and international law by ignoring the United Nations and international law. I fail to see what those English parliamentarians find so confusing.

97 thoughts on “English Parliament Balks At Obama’s Latest Demand For Military Intervention”

  2. Any person with any knowledge of US history knows that the founders who wrote our Constitution, allowed US military attacks on foreign countries with no declaration of war by Congress.

    Any person with any knowledge of US history knows that the War Powers Resolution didn’t exist until 1973.

    “The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” — Candidate Obama in 2007

  3. Dare I hope that we’ve just seen the quintessential trial balloon going down in flames? Rather that than our country’s tattered and debased “honor,” to the extent that we have any left.

  5. They’re indeed robbin’, but I think the original erstwhile boy hostage spelled his name with one “b”.

  6. You think Alan Grayson thinks the MIC thinks its batmans side kick…. Dick Grayson…..

  8. It’s perfectly obvious that Assad has attacked the President’s ego. Ergo thousands of people must die and billions of dollars wasted. Clinical narcissism is a job requirement for pols under our electoral systems. There is no harm greater to a narcissist than a bruised ego. Personal profit, saving face, whatever – you people need to get with the program that the military is the toy of the President and he can play with it any way he want so long as he buys more crap from Military-Industrial Complex. Obama ran across the memo The Chimp and The Penguin left in their desks on the way out the door.

  9. “With the NSA spying on us @ least there is clarity as to whom the DC establishment sees as the enemy.”

    You got it. “We the People” through our representatives at the Constitutional Convention enacted restrictions on government power. So the state (the government) looks on us as the enemy. Government, any government, always tends to expand it power, size and jurisdiction.
    For example, under the guise of discouraging US citizens from committing certain evils abroad (sextouring – who could argue with that?) that would be crimes if committed in the USA, the US has extended its jurisdiction to the entire planet, and, I suppose, to the Moon.

  10. We’d better think long and hard about this “intervention”. Among other things, “unintended consequences” come to mind.

  11. Linda Harbertson 1, August 29, 2013 at 12:37 pm

    Bush got approval from congress didn’t he? And the UN?
    ========================
    Not the UN.

  12. Bush got approval from congress didn’t he? And the UN?

    Sent from my iPad

  13. The Donald “Rummy known knowns, unknown knowns, and known unknowns” Rumsfeld says intervention in Syria is not appropriate for good people:

    Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who served under former President George W. Bush and was a key player in the decisions to go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, said Wednesday that President Barack Obama has so far failed to justify U.S. intervention in Syria, telling Fox News’ Neil Cavuto that the administration’s strategy is “mindless.”

    “One thing that’s very interesting, it seems to me, is that there really hasn’t been any indication from the administration as to what our national interest is with respect to this particular situation,” Rumsfeld said in an interview with Fox Business Network.

    (HuffPo). There must be some kind of holy hate eh?

    “My hate is better than your hate, my war crimes are better than yours.”

  17. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ignatius

    “Ignatius’s coverage of the CIA has been criticized as being defensive and overly positive. Melvin A. Goodman, a 42-year CIA veteran, Johns Hopkins professor, and senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, has called Ignatius “the mainstream media’s apologist for the Central Intelligence Agency,” citing as examples Ignatius’s criticism of the Obama administration for investigating the CIA’s role in the use of torture in interrogations during the Iraq War, and his charitable defense of the agency’s motivations for outsourcing such activities to private contractors. Columnist Glenn Greenwald has levied similar criticism against Ignatius and has dubbed him “the CIA’s spokesman at The Washington Post”.”

    (Go to Wikipedia for the more positive spin.)

  18. “Leading experts in international law have attacked the government’s legal case for military strikes against Syria, warning it “does not set out a sound or persuasive legal argument” and fails to prove that all other avenues to avoid further chemical weapons attacks have been exhausted.

    Philippe Sands QC, professor of international law at University College London, said the argument set out on Thursday by the attorney general, Dominic Grieve, “is premised on factual assumptions – principally that the weapons were used by the Syrian government, that the use of force by the UK would deter or disrupt the further use of chemical weapons – that are not established on the basis of information publicly available”.

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/29/syria-legal-doubt-british-intervention

  19. AY,

    As you and I have discussed many times over the last 7 or 8 years, if the hired gladiators don’t have an enemy to fight, they turn on each other.

    Our military and intelligence gladiators find themselves in the unenviable position of having way too much money in their budgets and no giganda threats so, as is the nature of the beast, they have turned on us.

    This is nothing new in history and the framers of our Constitution knew it and did a magnificent job of inserting protections for us into the document. But all the government has to do is ignore the document … something at which they have been very successful since September 11, 2001.

  20. I just heard part of the debate in Parliament via BBC. PM kept repeating that Assad had done it even though his own “intelligence” agency has said it was “highly likely”. Some opposition MPs seemed to be caving but there was real push back as well.

    I agree with BFM that we are dealing with playground bullies armed with rods from gods. It is absolutely shameful that any person would advocate war 1. without full proof evidence and 2. when there are clear alternatives that would actually work.

    The govt. certainly has many well paid lackeys who support atrocity. What enables people to take money for advocating atrocity against others?

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