Author’s Note: President Obama is scheduled to make his case for war (um, er, a “shot across the bow”) against Syria in an address to the nation tonight. He’s hoping the art of persuasion that got a record number of Americans to support his re-election less than a year ago will get at least one half of them … to persuade their congressional representatives to support his antic military mission.
In light of tonight’s address, I have decided to reprise this self-explanatory commentary, which was originally published on Saturday, September 7.
ALH
_______________________
And their congressional representatives are pandering, pusillanimous pussies.
This is why I am so irritated and dismayed that so many congressmen are citing the ranting of people who ring their offices or attend town hall meetings as the basis for deciding whether or not to support President Obama’s resolution to launch military strikes against Syria.
Specifically, it takes an unprecedented and unparalleled form of ass-backwardness for congressmen to:
- interrupt their summer vacations to return to Washington;
- receive classified briefings on the reasons why the Obama Administration believes military action against Syria is necessary (to punish Assad for using chemical weapons and “degrade” his capacity to use them again); then
- return home, not to inform constituents about how and why they are voting based on those briefings, but to have those constituents (who couldn’t even find Syria on a friggin’ map) tell them how to vote – complete with their passionately ignorant reasons why.
Clearly, politicians have become little more than ‘perfectly lubricated weathervanes.’ In fact, they have made a mockery of representative government by abdicating decisions on complicated issues in favor of referendums.
For the record, the American people elect (and pay) congressional representatives to make “informed” decisions on issues of national importance. We have representative government instead of literal democracy (aka mob rule) precisely to avoid the spectacle we had this week – with idiots showing up at a town hall meeting and lecturing/haranguing Sen. John McCain about the contents of the congressional resolution on Syria … which he helped draft; and McCain trying in vain to disabuse them of their ignorance.
This is why I respectfully submit that only city councilors (or town elders) should hold town hall meetings to give local people a forum to vent, as idiotically as they care to, about local issues that affect them … directly. That’s it!
Anyway, whether you support military action or (like me) oppose it, you too should be irritated and dismayed by this political state of affairs: conducting foreign policy based on public outrage and opinion polls. The Founding Fathers must be rolling over in their graves.
Meanwhile, there’s this:
I fully appreciate why the use of chemical weapons incites such visceral condemnation. When all of the guilt-assuaging moralizing is done, however, even President Obama will be hard-pressed to explain why the Egyptian military killing 1000 people with guns does not cross a ‘red line,’ but the Syrian military doing so with gas does.
Not to mention him trying to explain why Assad has been allowed to preside over the slaughtering of 120,000 in the two-plus years since he commanded this Syrian leader ‘to go.’ For surely the triggering mechanism for international intervention should be the fact that a military dictatorship is killing an unconscionable number of innocent people, not how that military is doing so, no?
(“Actually, Isn’t Killing with Gas (Syria) more Humane than Killing with Guns (Egypt)?” The iPINIONS Journal, August 23, 2013)
The White House announced late yesterday that the president will be addressing the American people on Tuesday to tell them (again) why he thinks military action against Syria is necessary. No doubt he’ll reiterate that Assad’s use of chemical weapons was “a game changer for us … [the thing] that changed my calculus.”
But, in addition to the two inconsistencies I mentioned above, perhaps Obama can also try to explain during this address why he launched military strikes against Gaddafi in Libya – if it’s truly the use of chemical weapons and not the “conventional” slaughter of hundreds of thousands that triggers military action. After all, Gaddafi might have slaughtered tens of thousands, but nobody ever even accused him of using chemical weapons on any of them.
Whatever he says, I just hope Obama does not ape myopic congressmen by proffering the oxymoronic argument about the country being tired of war. Instead, his case would be far more persuasive if he declared without equivocation that the lesson of WWII is that America can never be too tired to defend the world against tyrants hell-bent on using chemical weapons. Period!
Related commentaries:
Obama takes finger off trigger…
Putin blinks…
gas vs guns…
Legacy Note: With over 5,600 posts spanning 20 years, I am easily the most prolific blogger on the most eclectic array of topics on the web. That makes The iPINIONS Journal an unparalleled archive of informed political and cultural commentary. Visit the ARCHIVES section in the sidebar or search by topic. You won’t find a more consistent, independent voice on world affairs.