Tag Archives: Barack Obama

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Assad to surrender weapons he doesn’t have?

Syrian dictator Bashar as-Assad virtually denied on Charlie Rose’s show last night that he possessed chemical weapons, which President Obama says he used in August on civilians in Syria.

Now he has agreed to get rid of the weapons. Reports say he’ll surrender the weapons to international inspectors, who then will dispose of them. He’s trying to avoid being hit by the United States, which President Obama has threatened to do as punishment for using the weapons.

http://video.pbs.org/video/2365076639/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=pbsofficial&utm_campaign=charlierose

Which is it, Mr. Dictator? Do you have the weapons or don’t you? Did you gas civilians, including women and children, or didn’t you?

Assad dodged Rose’s questions fairly deftly Monday night regarding whether he used the weapons. He was even less convincing about whether his military establishment possesses them.

Take a look here at the interview.

Seems we have a strongman talking out of both sides of his mouth. Big surprise, eh?

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Waiting on Mac Thornberry to weigh in on Syria

Has anyone seen or heard from U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry lately?

I know that’s a rhetorical question. Some folks have seen and/or heard him as he travels through the vast 13th Congressional District of the Texas Panhandle, which he has represented since 1995.

But here’s the deal: The nation is roiling at this moment over whether President Obama should order missile strikes against Syrian military forces in retaliation for their use of chemical weapons, but Mac Thornberry, a senior Republican member of the House Armed Services and Permanent Select Intelligence committees, has been all but silent on the matter.

http://thornberry.house.gov/

I spent some time this morning perusing Thornberry’s website. I looked for press releases, issues statements, “white papers” on national security. Nothing in there about Syria.

I’m waiting for Thornberry to offer some wisdom on this matter, given that so many members of Congress have weighed in already.

I am acutely aware that much of the public commentary on Syria has come from the usual cadre of Democratic and Republican legislative blowhards. Thornberry isn’t one of them. He’s been a quiet and fairly studious member of Congress since winning the House seat in that landmark 1994 election.

However, he’s also had a ringside seat on some difficult national security issues. As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, Thornberry has been required to study diligently issues relating to the use of our massive military might. What’s more, as a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, he has had access to some of the most sensitive national security material imaginable. The late U.S. Rep. Charlie Wilson, D-Lufkin — who also served on that panel — once told me that committee members saw virtually everything the president saw. I’m quite certain Thornberry has access to a lot of information about Syria and its possession of deadly nerve agents.

The nation has entered the most serious national security debate since President George W. Bush sought authorization to go to war with Iraq, citing dictator Saddam Hussein’s supposed cache of chemical weapons — which we learned later did not exist.

President Obama’s national security team has presented what appears to be compelling proof that Syria has used the gas on civilians and it has more of it stashed away. He wants to hit those stockpiles in a series of air strikes. The military says it’s ready to go.

Mac Thornberry, our elected representative, has had time to digest the information.

I’m waiting to hear whether he supports striking at a seriously evil dictator.

Talk to us, Mac.

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POTUS faces key moment if Congress says ‘no’

Secretary of State John Kerry says President Obama can bomb Syria even if Congress votes against authorizing him to do so.

Not so fast, Mr. President.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/06/john-kerry-congress-syria_n_3881200.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

Kerry makes the point in an interview with the Huffington Post that the president, as commander in chief, retains the authority to authorize military strikes even if he doesn’t have the backing of the legislative branch of government. Yes he does, but …

There is a huge political calculation at home the president must consider, which the Huff Post notes. It is that the Republican-led House of Representatives seems almost certain to push ahead with impeachment proceedings against President Obama. That, in my mind, would be a grotesque overreaction. It is, however, part of today’s political reality in Washington. Those who oppose the president really detest him and his policies.

I happen to believe the United States must strike at Syria to punish the government there for using Sarin gas on civilians. Obama has threatened to strike at Syrian military targets; the military has drawn up plans; Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel says the military machine is ready to strike when it gets the order.

The strikes must be surgical, effective and must get the job done in short order. There must be a commitment that U.S. troops won’t storm into Damascus once the bombing stops.

However, the president is having a tough time selling this strike to reluctant lawmakers.

Should he act on his own, without their authorization? No. As the president himself said, in addition to being commander in chief, he also is the leader of the world’s largest representative democracy.

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Sessions ‘not being partisan’?

U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., is using an interesting tactic in criticizing President Obama’s handling of the Syria crisis.

He said that President George W. Bush would have frightened Syrian dictator Bashar as-Assad enough to prevent the Syrians from using chemical weapons on innocent civilians.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/09/06/sen_sessions_if_bush_threatened_assad_he_wouldnt_have_used_chemical_weapons.html

Sessions assured a town hall audience, mind you, that he isn’t being partisan. “We have only one president at a time,” he said. But by golly, if the 43rd president had said the same thing the 44th president said in warning Assad, the dictator would be scared.

I think the senator, who’s as partisan as they come in his view of policy and politics, has thrown out the Mother of All Hypotheticals.

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Follow John Kerry’s lead, Mr. President

I’m beginning to think President Obama needs to change the way he views his administration.

Instead of referring to everything and everyone who works within the administration in the first person singular — as in “my national security team” or “my administration” — the president needs to start using the first person plural.

Bill McKenzie, a columnist and blogger for the Dallas Morning News, is on point with his view that Secretary of State John Kerry has been more “out front” on the Syria crisis than the president.

http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2013/09/obama-needs-the-moral-clarity-of-john-kerry-but-what-are-conservative-isolationists-thinking.html/

Obama needs to follow Kerry’s lead.

To do that, though, he’ll need to start adapting to the view that the administration and its policies don’t belong to the man at the top. It’s a shared responsibility. “Our administration,” or “our national security team” would be the more appropriate way to define the team that occupies the White House, the Pentagon, Foggy Bottom and all the other institutions that comprise the massive federal government.

It’s all been a part of one element of Barack Obama’s tenure in the White House that has bothered me. The president tends to treat the government he administers a tad too personally — as if it all belongs to him. He took ownership of the presidency the moment he took the oath of office. The reality, though, is that the office actually belongs to us, the people.

I’m sure y’all have heard him use the first person singular perhaps a bit too liberally during his more than four years in office. Well, he’s now facing arguably the worst crisis of his time in the White House since the very beginning, when he walked into a financial firestorm.

The Syria crisis is testing the president’s resolve. His secretary of state, however, seems to be speaking with tremendous moral authority, not to mention outrage over the Syrians’ use of chemical weapons.

The man in charge of things in D.C., Barack Obama, ought to adopt John Kerry’s outlook — while understanding that everyone on duty at this moment has a shared responsibility to find a solution to this crisis.

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Iran awaits word on U.S. resolve

I’m beginning to think the fundamental question of whether the United States should attack Syria over its use of chemical weapons is this: If the United States pulls back on a direct challenge to make Syria pay for its actions, will it embolden Iran to commit even more mischief in the Middle East?

President Obama has pledged to strike Syria if it crossed a “red line” by using chemical weapons on civilians. The Syrians did the deed and the United States is now poised to launch air strikes. Obama has formally asked Congress for authorization and it appears that while the Senate might approve the request, the House of Representatives will pull back.

Without full approval by both houses of Congress, the president is left with two terrible options: walking away from his threat to strike the Syrians or acting on his own as commander in chief by issuing the order to strike.

If he goes it alone, he faces the wrath of a Republican-led House of Reps that detests virtually every policy he proposes. If the president walks away and gives Syria a pass on the hideous act of gassing civilians, he risks looking feckless in the face of imminent threats to a critical region.

Waiting in the wings is the Islamic Republic of Iran, one of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s primary allies, an exporter of terrorism and a known hater of the United States, aks “The Great Satan.”

The Iranians can bring a lot of misery to the region in a huge hurry if we fail to act.

The world awaits to learn how Congress will respond.

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Boehner, Cantor sign on with POTUS on Syria

U.S. House Speaker John Boehner has been persuaded: Striking Syria is the right thing to do, given the Syrians’ horrifying act of gassing civilians.

So will House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

The question? Will these two leaders be able to bring the rest of their Republican caucus behind them, giving the president an important foreign-policy victory? My guess is that most of the GOP caucus will join them.

http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/09/03/20308438-boehner-says-hell-back-obama-on-syria-strikes?lite&ocid=msnhp&pos=2

President Obama sought and received the backing of the House GOP leadership in advance of Congress’s planned vote on whether to authorize a military strike. What the president has done is put the burning ember in the Republicans’ pocket. Now it’s their call, along with congressional Democrats, on whether Syrian military authorities should be punished for using the chemical weapons on innocent victims.

I still believe a strike must occur. Barack Obama drew that “red line” when he said using the chemicals would violate all “international norms.” The president reportedly is considering a limited strike aimed solely at military targets. Whether our forces can pull this off without inflicting civilian casualties remains to be seen.

Rest assured, even if the attacks are executed as planned, someone within the Syrian government is going to accuse us of harming civilians. Hey, that’s politics — even in international affairs.

The political battle back home, though, has cleared an important hurdle with the House’s two leading Republicans signing on.

Let the debate continue.

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Did POTUS pull rug out from Kerry’s feet?

U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., poses an interesting theory that might open up some questions about the relationship between the president of the United States and his top diplomat.

Secretary of State John Kerry delivered an impassioned, emotional speech about the need to make Syria pay dearly for its use of chemical weapons on civilians — and then President Obama decided to ask the Congress for authorization before taking any action.

Rangel thinks Kerry should be “embarrassed” by the sudden switch.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/319883-rangel-of-course-its-embarassing

I have to agree with Rangel.

The timing of the two events does seem odd and more than a little clumsy. Kerry’s speech has been labeled one of the finest of his public career. Obama, meanwhile, had been talking tough and appeared to have been ready to strike at Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad’s forces. Then he stopped. Did the president flinch? Has he left the secretary of state, to borrow a phrase from the Watergate era, “twisting slowly in the wind”?

We’ll know in short order whether the juxtaposition of these events has damaged one of the Obama administration’s most critical relationships.

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Now it’s Congress’s turn to weigh in on Syria

President Obama’s abrupt about-face on Syria has a lot of American scratching their heads.

He’s talked about punishing the Syrian government for gassing civilians and has sounded for all the world as if he was ready to pull the trigger on a missile strike against Syrian military targets. Then he said: Not so fast; I want to ask Congress for authorization.

Now the debate has begun.

http://news.msn.com/us/lawmakers-begin-to-grapple-with-syria-question

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, is beginning to sound reasonable. He says Syria should be punished, but the Senate will need to know precisely the scope of the attack and what the overall strategy will be. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., says an attack on Syria must be with “regime change” in mind, that it must lead toward a change of leadership in the Syrian government.

I believe the president is playing this issue smartly. Congress has asked for authority within the War Powers Act. Barack Obama now has given lawmakers the chance to exercise that authority.

Several ships of the U.S. Sixth Fleet are standing by in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. The hammer is pulled back and the missiles will fly when they get the order. The president has gathered compelling evidence that the Syrians used the gas on civilians. They must be punished, as Cornyn has said.

This debate should be full and complete. As the president said, he is both convinced that the Syrians did something that requires a response and that he also is leader of the world’s oldest constitutional democracy. The Constitution gives both houses of Congress co-equal authority to run the government, right along with the president.

It’s good that he’s asking for their authorization. I’m hopeful he can make the case, that we can act quickly and decisively — and then apply intense diplomatic pressure all sides in this bloody conflict to call a halt to the killing.

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Obama to seek congressional permission on Syria

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz recently called President Obama “imperial” and “lawless.”

The junior U.S. senator from Texas, of course, is fond of tossing out pejorative terms, often recklessly.

I’m curious now whether he feels that way about the Obama administration as it seeks congressional approval to strike at Syria in response to the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons on civilians, including women and children.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/08/31/obama_seeks_congress_ok_to_strike_syria_119792.html

I’m quite certain Cruz would vote “no” on a congressional resolution. But in the grand scheme, seeking congressional approval for a strike is both wise politically and from a policy standpoint.

Politically, a “no” vote from the House and Senate puts the monkey on lawmakers’ backs for failing to punish Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad for gassing innocent victims. The president has made a compelling case that Assad’s military machine needs to be punished severely for this horrifying action. Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, two former senators with extensive foreign policy experience — not to mention actual military combat experience — have declared their outrage over the chemical weapons attack.

Obama now seems willing to ask Congress for is approval. He is willing to wait for House members and senators to return from their month-long recess before taking the issue up with them. He’s consulted heavily with congressional leaders along with our allies to line them up in support of whatever action might occur.

Is there a lesson to be learned from the British Parliament’s rejection of a use-of-force resolution? That remains to be seen. For now, any U.S. action likely will be done solely with our military might.

The Navy is standing by, as are all available forces that would be deployed against the Syrians.

All the president needs — and it’s no small task — is an approval by the rest of the country’s elected representatives.

I’ll weigh in with this: Congress should approve a limited, but decisive, strike against the Syrian military. However, if it says “no” to such an action, the president would be wise to heed Congress’s “advice and consent” on this critical matter.

As for some of the loudmouths who serve on Capitol Hill, they ought to put a lid on the nasty name-calling and give the president credit for asking their permission to act.