Here is Pelosi’s story on how you convince a five year old that war is a good thing:
REP. NANCY PELOSI: I’ll tell you this story and then I really do have to go. My five-year-old grandson, as I was leaving San Francisco yesterday, he said to me, Mimi, my name, Mimi, war with Syria, are you yes war with Syria, no, war with Syria. And he’s five years old. We’re not talking about war; we’re talking about action. Yes war with Syria, no with war in Syria. I said, ‘Well, what do you think?’ He said, ‘I think no war.’ I said, ‘Well, I generally agree with that but you know, they have killed hundreds of children, they’ve killed hundreds of children there. ‘ And he said, five years old, ‘Were these children in the United States?’ And I said, ‘No, but they’re children wherever they are.’
So I don’t know what news he’s listening to or — but even a five year old child has to — you know, with the wisdom of our interest has affected our interests or it affects our interests because, again, it was outside of the circle of civilized behavior. It was humanity drew a line decades ago that i think if we ignore, we do so to the peril of many other people who can suffer.
I love how she qualifies her remarks to the five year old that “we’re talking about action.” It is a point that would only be recognized by constitutional experts — and Pelosi grandchildren — as an excuse to relieve the President of securing an actual declaration from Congress. Pelosi wants to preserve the Imperial Presidency around Obama (and future presidents) by reminding her grandson that attacking another sovereign nation is no longer viewed as an act of war but just something relabeled as an “action” to maximize the unilateral authority of the President.
Of course, in her wartime story for toddlers, Pelosi does not mention the recent disclosure that it was the United States that gave Saddam Hussein intelligence used his widespread chemical attacks and then lied about knowledge and evidence of the attacks. She does not mention how the Syrian rebels include Al Qaeda allies and extremists who do such things as eat the hearts of the fallen and abuse their corpses in violation of international law. She does not mention how she has supported the continuation of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan where hundreds of thousands, including thousands of children, have died. She does not mention the thousands of children who have lost their mothers or fathers in the service in Iraq where we started a war based on a false allegation of WMDs and then continued to wage the war even after acknowledging that our original claims were false.
Yet, the most interesting aspect of Pelosi’s story is that this is precisely the level of discussion seen on Capitol Hill — just slightly above that of a five year old children . . . except of course that five year olds do not play poker during the briefings.
Nevertheless, I still prefer bedtime stories like “Princess Bride” but in Pelosi’s version President Humperdinck gets his war with Guilder, which is then obliterated in a rain of tomahawk missiles.
Source: RCP