Opinion: How not to run a foreign policy - Elliott Abrams - POLITICO.com:
Watching BO is often like watching Barney Fife on the old Andy Griffith show. Downright painful. BO finally makes Carter look good, and he is the actual embodiment of what the left fantasized W to be. (except their imagination wasn't as bad as BO turned out to be),
He attacked Libya without so much as a whisper of "I need Congressional approval". So what the heck happened now? Andy take the bullet out of his gun?
Thinking people that care about America, a declining minority as evidenced by the last two presidential elections, are left in a real dilemma.
This article argues that Syria has to be struck for their use of chemical weapons. Is that a principle? Saddam used them multiple times, taking out whole villages of Kurds and also against Iranian soldiers. Do we value Syrian lives more than Iraqi or Iranian?
The assumption that Saddam had chemical weapons since he had used them was enough to get Kerry, Hillary, Joe B and many others to vote for boots on the ground military action with W in the WH. Do we need to find chem weapons this time to validate a strike? Would it be "a lie" if we didn't find them?
My guess is that what we MAY do with a strike is inhibit Assad's ability to deliver further chem weapons against his own people. Will it inhibit Assad's ability to deliver chem weapons to Hezbollah, which has 5K troops fighting with Assad? Seems very doubtful.
What happened to the theory that "attacking Iraq makes us LESS safe"? Does attacking Syria have any effect on our security? Good, bad, indifferent? The evidence would seem to be that attacking Iraq did not make us at least MEASURABLY "less safe", but that was a real removal action, not cruise missiles at a few select targets.
Is the BO encouraged attack on Syria intended to simply "police the world"? Use chem weapons NOW (post Saddam) and the US will unilaterally attack you? Does that work as an inhibitor?
Does that make us safer, less safe, or don't we care since our newfound "chemical morality" trumps issues of national interest?
But all these considerations are largely moot. BO certainly has the right to attack Syria as commander in chief. He himself affirmed the right in Libya. So what REALLY is a vote against his request? Or for it for that matter? It is some sort of Mime or Kabuki dance with potentially grave foreign policy repercussions.
It breaks new ground on amatuer, incompetent, incoherent foreign policy. It proves that the BO is the baddest example we have for a "president" to date. Not that I actually believe he cares. My belief is that he told us in "Dreams from my Father" that he is there to destroy the US as we know it, and again, he is doing one hell of a job!
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