While claiming that he just needs a “limited” war against Syria to back up his “red line” threat, President Barack Obama is actually seeking a far broader mandate from Congress. The authorization would allow Obama to take any action that he “determines to be necessary and appropriate in connection with the use of chemical weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in the conflict in Syria” as well as acting to “prevent or deter the use or proliferation” of the weapons or to “protect the United States and its allies and partners” from the weapons.”
Indeed, it reminds one of the authorization leading into Iraq with only the 9-11 angle replaced by a chemical weapons rationale. The Iraq Resolution or the Iraq War Resolution (formally the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002), stated “That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”
Now replace the terrorist attacks with the chemical attacks and you have our latest blank check demanded by a President. The language accomplishes two things. It allows members to claim that they merely wanted to protect the nation while making it unnecessary for the President to ask them again (and expose them to difficult votes). This is how politicians like Hillary Clinton and John Kerry voted to allow the Iraq War. While they later claimed that they had no idea and were misled, they ignored critics at the time questioning the evidence and objecting to the blank check language of the authorization. They also took no action later as the war killed thousands of U.S. personnel and spent hundreds of billions.
Nevertheless, democrats like Nancy Pelosi are demanding action and once again absolute (and blind) loyalty to Obama. The speech for Obama in the final vote has already been written (with a few modest edits):
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our [] dead.
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it
. . .
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call’d fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. . . .
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry ‘God for [Barry], [America], and Saint George!’
randyjet,
There may be a time when a country has to “go it alone” in fighting a war for genuine national interests. Those countries just don’t include the United States after the end of World War II. If the U.N. authorizes Saudi Arabia and the Apartheid Zionist Entity to invade Syria and bring peace to its people by killing them (nothing more peaceful than a graveyard), then the U.S. might want to vote yes for that in the Security Council and wish all concerned the best of luck. We have laws and treaties governing this sort of thing and might even try abiding by them for a change. Same thing for France if that country wants to “go it alone.” I just don’t want my country getting involved in another war when we haven’t even disentangled ourselves from the last two disasters we started.
And as for President Obama’s record of veracity, he explicitly said that he did not intend to overthrow the regime in Libya but only to “protect” some armed gangs — including elements of Al Qaeda — from getting bombed by the government they wished to overthrow. No sooner had he gotten permission to do some “protecting than he switched his line of argument and used the American military to overthrow the government of Libya. Now that country has no government and chaos rules. The reason why the U.S. cannot get anyone to agree with us at the U.N. owes precisely to that mendacity by President Obama. Other countries do not trust his word and no one cares what he says he means to do regarding Syria. They have learned that he will just say something else about what he claims he wants to do once he has started killing Syrians so that other Syrians can’t do that quite so much.
The United States has the opportunity to avoid committing a war crime because of another alleged war crime. The current situation speaks for itself and abiding by our laws and treaties can adequately guide us in what we “must” do.
I have to laugh at davidblue since I am sure that Hitler and Tojo would have folded if confronted by Ghandi like resistance. The European Jews thought the same thing, that the Germans would not kill all of them.
I am struck by the regards shown by some people here who like the UN and its power to authorize war. Most people do not know what the UN is. To educate folks, the UN was OUR side in WWII and it was formally established before WWII ended. It is first and foremost a MILITARY ALLIANCE. It is designed to provide collective security so that if one nation is attacked by another, the UN can authorize military action. So I hope that all who are opposed to this current military program that Obama is proposing were all in favor of the First Gulf war since the UN authorized that with only Iraq voting against it. Cuba voted to abstain, but Castro had NO problem cheering the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. It was even worse for Castro since Dubchek had been voted into office by the Czech Communist Party. The US was authorized to attack Afghanistan by the UN as well, so you cannot complain about that one either.
Of course, I do not expect these folks to be consistent and they will use any hook to denounce ANY US military action. The US is bad, the US military is bad, and all others are good and victims. That is simply brainwashing at its highest form. There is NO need to look at the facts or think.
There are times when a country must go it alone to keep humanity in better condition because of horrific atrocities that some regime is committing. The case that I use is what Vietnam did in invading Cambodia. Though it was illegal under international law, I think it was entirely justified. I hope that most of you will agree with me on that. I know that the Cambodians are very glad Vietnam acted. While I am not a big Clinton fan, I DO agree with him when he apologized for not using US military power to intervene In Rwanda. I guess that most of you would disagree with that too.
I heard so much BS said with straight faces I had to walk away.
Crimes against humanity should be rectified by humanity with humanity.
I saw tortured logic, hollow hyperbole, fractured fairy tales.
Syria is close to destabilized now. Any US intervention will increase it. Then there will be new horrors there. We are not going into the breach again, we are widening and deepening the quagmire.
We will lose our breeches again.
Once more we lose our breeches, dear friends, once more;
President Obama’s duplicitous behavior in Libya provides the salutary warning example here.
I see that MM hates facts. I would hope that you will tell us how many troops the US sent into Libya under Obama. He also said during his campaign that he would expand the war in Afghanistan, so you cannot claim he lied on that one either. It is YOU who is lying and you have more in common with Bush and Cheney on that score.
Michael, liked your McCain haiku. That man never met a war he didn’t want in on.
I googled Hypocrisy today, when I pressed enter the C-span senate hearings came on.
Credibility Deficit
To keep in practice
Just so he won’t forget how
Our President lies
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller”
Obama’s War Salesman
Mad Dog John McCain
Once bombed some Vietnamese
They jailed him for it
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller”
Lexmanifesta,
Good point about filling in for Osama bin Laden. But Al Qaeda (via the Saudis and Apartheid Zionists) recruited President Free-Fire-Zone/Body-Count and not the other way around. Judging by his near brain-dead bungling of America’s real interests in the Middle East, it seems unlikely that President Obama understands or has any control over the “terrorist” forces that have made a fellow-traveling terrorist out of him — and through him, America. Hell, he still considers Mad Dog John McCain a foreign policy force with whom he must reckon. And that makes him McCain’s poodle. So much for President Obama. I smell desperation.
With Osama Bin Laden sleeping with the fishes, Someone was going to fill the leadership vacuum in Al Qaeda. I just never thought it would be Obomba.
Go figure.
http://front.moveon.org/moveon-syria-town-hall/#.UiZrSDakqYA
interesting town hall meeting put on by move on.
lottakatz,
Thank you for watching and reporting on yet another question-begging extravaganza put on by yet another U.S. administration that lies just to keep in practice; just so it won’t forget how. Secretary of State John Kerry apparently thinks he can do a Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld impersonation by simply asserting a conclusion based on no evidence and then proceeding as if the unproven question (alleged crime) proves the next asserted conclusion (punishment by another crime). I wish that at least one marginally educated person would have reminded
secretary Kerry:
“The question being about a matter of fact, ’tis begging it, to bring, as proof for it, an hypothesis, which is the very thing in dispute: by which one may prove any thing. … but men in love with their opinions, may not only suppose what is in question, but allege wrong matter of fact.” — John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)
and:
“Begging the Question: This fallacy consists in discussing an issue by means of language that assumes a position on the very question at issue, in such a way as to direct the listener to that same conclusion.” — T. Edward Damer, Attacking Faulty Reasoning: a practical guide to fallacy-free arguments (2001)
Trying not to lose my mind watching a reprise of Lyndon Johnson’s Gulf of Tonkin fraud — perpetrated by another stud hamster from Texas, no less — I started composing verse as DIY psychotherapy. Regarding this particular method of marketing messianic militarism, I came up with two terza-rima sonnets:
A Disassembled Dialectic
(From The Triumph of Strife: an homage to Dante Alighieri and Percy Shelley)
The mawkish milquetoast mavens mildly moan
And mumble mealy mouthfuls of their mush
Mellifluously masking grammar’s groan
As if our very words they wish to crush.
Beneath a fog dispensed to hide the stink
Of language that would make Rasputin blush,
They make it near impossible to think,
But praise with faint damnation published loud.
In weakly written, waffling wretch-stained ink,
They preach their penchant for pedantry proud.
Their panchromatic paradigm of gray
Describes in blended black and white the cloud.
The metaphysics of the middle they
Debate with dialectical dismay.
They start assuming what they wish to know
These salesmen of the syllogism flawed
Then postulate the hope it may be so
Whatever frozen fact they have unthawed
They legislate a logic lunatic
Inductive inference they have outlawed
Whatever both implausible and thick
They fantasize as fabric for their fraud
And then segué to sell the simply sick:
Suggestions subtle as a cattle prod
Designed to stir stampede instead of thought
They bask in their own bombast overawed
With what their obloquy has sold and bought
They premised nothing and concluded naught
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright 2006-2010
Nobel Peace Laureate Barack Hussein Obama II is yet another in a long line of US chicken hawk war mongers that are all too keen on sending other peoples loved ones off to kill and die in foreign lands in support of his bankrupt ideology of Pax Americana.
The Congress is such a grotesque disappointment. I’m watching some of the Congressional hearing on TV. Apparently there is going to be a classified, private briefing for Congress tomorrow. Kerry is testifying. Congresspersons ask a question and increasingly it is stated that ‘that is appropriate for tomorrow’s meeting’; ‘I think we all agree that that’s appropriate for tomorrows meeting”. One question so far has been prefaced with ‘This question may be more appropriate for tomorrow’s meeting but….’ and of course Kerry agrees.
No. No it isn’t appropriate for a secret meeting. The Congresspeople are just taking that as the norm as that kind of arrangement with everything associated to military action and the security state. Congress should be impeached for failure to perform it’s job. These people have totally lost the connectivity between their position as representatives of the citizens and the citizens right to know what our government is doing, and why, and how, and what comes next, in our name and on our dime.
Rand Paul is the only one actually giving him hell about the possibility of proceeding without a Congressional mandate and debating the merits of the case. Kerry playing the Israel-safety card.
I grow weary of this theater, I’m going to try to catch the last 15 minutes of Judge Judy.
Liberty and Justice
Some can break the law
Most others cannot do that
Money will decide
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller”
The War on Terror has won. Al Qaeda has now recruited America — through the helpful, treasonous auspices of Obama, McCain, Graham, Pelosi, and Boehner — into its service in Syria (if not Libya and elsewhere).
Fighting for them “over there” so we can fight ourselves for the Corporate Oligarchy “here.”
Max-1,
Since we have few freedoms left, the “evildoers” must not have any more reason to hate us. So we can stop fighting them now that we have become them, right?
Max-1,
I once had to attend a Saturday Traffic School to expunge a ticket from my driving record. One of our fellow attendees complained to the lecturing police officer: “How come I got a ticket for speeding when so many other people speed and don’t get tickets?” Replied the lecturer: “Ever gone fishing? Ever catch all of them?”
Just because we haven’t caught and punished every U.S. President who has violated international and U.S. law doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t catch and punish all those that we can. Richard Nixon — the motherless cretin who sent me to Vietnam — comes to mind here. We would have driven Lyndon Johnson from office, too, except that he simply bailed out and saved us the trouble. No reason we can’t drive Obama from office, too. If he launches another illegal war for any purpose — I mean, convenient, shifting rationale — then he needs to go. This has nothing to do with the fact that some people have committed vast crimes and managed to escape justice. The “tortured invocation of prior crimes as precedent” (in Chomsky’s peerless phrase) doesn’t hold an ounce of water, so to speak. That we never “catch all of them,” unfortunately, happens. But we don’t cast aside our Constitution or ratified treaties just because we haven’t punished every single violator of them.
But as President Obama piously and mercilessly said of Private Bradley Manning for simply telling the truth: “He broke the law.” So, apparently, will President Obama, if we may take him at his word (and I don’t claim that we can). If he breaks the law, then we should break him. He will have it coming. Simple justice. It does occasionally happen.
Jill
What’s an “Enabling Act” if not an open ended permission slip for the President, from the elected body, do be the tyrant he already has become?