Conjuring images of "the kind of incrementalism that defined much of the Vietnam conflict," John McCain came out swinging today exposing the frustration top military officers have with President Obama's policies [11]. "There’s a total lack of confidence in the president's leadership," the warmonger raged, adding - as perhaps a veiled threat - "there’s a level of dissatisfaction among the uniformed military that I’ve never seen in my time here."
Interestingly, as The Washington Times reports, [11] Rep. Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, echoed McCain's comments, demanding that, The White House be "more inclusive in the decision-making process," rather than 'icing' The Pentagon out
"People who have spoken truth to power get retired," ranted McCain, "all you have to do is look at a map of the Middle East in 2009 and then compare it to a map of today," to see an utterly failed strategy.
Mr. McCain argued that the frustration on Capitol Hill and at the Pentagon stems from the administration’s “complete lack of any kind of coherent strategy, much less a strategy that would have any success on the battlefield” against Islamic State and the Assad regime.
“We’re sending 50 — count them, 50 — special operations soldiers to Syria, and they will have ‘no combat role,’ the president says,” said Mr. McCain. “Well, what are they being sent there for? To be recreation officers? You’re in a combat zone, and to say they’re not in combat is absurd.”
But the White House, he argued, has effectively blinded itself to such absurdities by promoting a system over the past seven years that suppresses dissenting voices.
"Compliant and easily led military leaders get promoted,” he said.
When it comes to actual policy, Mr. McCain lamented, the administration pursues half-measures and decisions, “when they are made, consistently disregard recommendations from the uniformed military.”
The failure to break Islamic State’s hold on Syria and Iraq, and its spread into North Africa, have resulted in “very poisoned relations that now exist between many in both houses of Congress and the president,” said Mr. McCain.
“There’s a total lack of confidence in the president’s leadership,” he said.
read more here... [12]
Mr. McCain said Mr. Obama’s past claims that things were improving in the region have undercut his credibility today.
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It sounds like the neocons are upset at the progress Putin has made... and are stirring the pot for moar war. It appears to be working to get the general public on their side...
More than 6 in 10 now disapprove of President Obama’s handling of the threat posed by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll published Thursday, an 8-point jump compared to a similar poll last January.
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Of course, this is a theoretical question since Obama, the former Constitutional Law Professor, did not seek Congressional approval before sending American troops to Syria.
Here is Dr. Paul's column from 2013:
President Obama announced this weekend that he has decided to use military force against Syria and would seek authorization from Congress when it returned from its August break. Every Member ought to vote against this reckless and immoral use of the US military. But even if every single Member and Senator votes for another war, it will not make this terrible idea any better because some sort of nod is given to the Constitution along the way
Besides, the president made it clear that Congressional authorization is superfluous, asserting falsely that he has the authority to act on his own with or without Congress. That Congress allows itself to be treated as window dressing by the imperial president is just astonishing.
The President on Saturday claimed that the alleged chemical attack in Syria on August 21 presented "a serious danger to our national security." I disagree with the idea that every conflict, every dictator, and every insurgency everywhere in the world is somehow critical to our national security. That is the thinking of an empire, not a republic. It is the kind of thinking that this president shares with his predecessor and it is bankrupting us and destroying our liberties here at home.
According to recent media reports, the military does not have enough money to attack Syria and would have to go to Congress for a supplemental appropriation to carry out the strikes. It seems our empire is at the end of its financial rope. The limited strikes that the president has called for in Syria would cost the US in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey wrote to Congress last month that just the training of Syrian rebels and "limited" missile and air strikes would cost "in the billions" of dollars. We should clearly understand what another war will do to the US economy, not to mention the effects of additional unknown costs such as a spike in fuel costs as oil skyrockets.
I agree that any chemical attack, particularly one that kills civilians, is horrible and horrendous. All deaths in war and violence are terrible and should be condemned. But why are a few hundred killed by chemical attack any worse or more deserving of US bombs than the 100,000 already killed in the conflict? Why do these few hundred allegedly killed by Assad count any more than the estimated 1,000 Christians in Syria killed by US allies on the other side? Why is it any worse to be killed by poison gas than to have your head chopped off by the US allied radical Islamists, as has happened to a number of Christian priests and bishops in Syria?
For that matter, why are the few hundred civilians killed in Syria by a chemical weapon any worse than the 2000-3000 who have been killed by Obama's drone strikes in Pakistan? Does it really make a difference whether a civilian is killed by poison gas or by drone missile or dull knife?
In "The Sociology of Imperialism," Joseph Schumpeter wrote of the Roman Empire's suicidal interventionism:
"There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Rome's allies; and if Rome had no allies, then allies would be invented. When it was utterly impossible to contrive an interest - why, then it was the national honour that had been insulted."
Sadly, this sounds like a summary of Obama's speech over the weekend. We are rapidly headed for the same collapse as the Roman Empire if we continue down the president's war path. What we desperately need is an overwhelming Congressional rejection of the president's war authorization. Even a favorable vote, however, cannot change the fact that this is a self-destructive and immoral policy.
