Calling Out the NOBama Mommas and Company

The debate over Syria is on, and it looks like libertarian-leaning Republicans like Sen. Rand Paul and Rep. Justin Amash are leading a strong Republican charge against President Obama’s plan for airstrikes in Syria. Much to the consternation of neocon spear points John McCain and Lindsey Graham, the watered-down version of Obama’s proposal passed in the Senate (10 to 7) yesterday is headed for a big fight in the House, thanks in part to Amash and other Republicans who have expressed principled skepticism about the continued use of the U.S military as a global police force.

Sarah Palin
Sarah “let Allah sort it out” Palin

But we could not let this moment go by without noting (with great irony and perhaps a tiny shiver) that this Republican anti-interventionist movement has been enjoined if not infused with great enthusiasm and support by rightwing elements who could give two Tomahawks about the Constitution or Syrian civilians or the follies of U.S empire. They are the NoBamas — rightwing pols and mouthpieces who reject anything Obama does even if what he is doing is no different from his illustrious predecessor George W. Bush.

Shrillest and most grating among them are the mommas — Sarah Palin and Liz Cheney — both who were unnervingly candid about their bloodlust during and after Bush’s Global War on Terror. One need only to revisit (if you dare) Palin’s 2008 speech at the GOP presidential convention or her creepy sermon at old Glenn Beck Lincoln-side revival in 2010 to realize that war is her religion. Suddenly, with the prospect of a Democrat thumping his chest and reigning down bombs on Muslims, she says, “let Allah sort it out.” Indeed.

Liz Cheney at CPAC 2010
Liz Cheney at CPAC 2010

Meanwhile, Cheney, who on Tuesday compared herself to Winston Churchill facing down Adolf Hitler, told an audience of captive Wyoming voters that she wouldn’t support Obama because his plan is amateurish. Maybe so, but is this not the same woman who called for the 2010 CPAC audience to heap “thanks and praise” for the CIA torturers, who chided the president — to standing ovation — for not defending his country enough, for in essence, being a sissy?

Excuse me NoBama mommas, but your slips are showing, and your claws.

No matter, they are in great company with Ann Coulter and  Laura Ingraham, both of whom were zealous champions for war in Iraq and used their extraordinary access to the mass media to promote war for a decade. They now say it is not in our national interest to pursue it under Obama. Indeed. Maybe Ingraham hopes we forget her gushing 2006 embed diary in Iraq, where she shamelessly played military apparatchik, parroting the Bush democracy-building line and cooed things like, “(Gen. George Casey) talked of incremental steps toward victory — a slow, tough road but one that is vital to our security back home. The time frame is still so short, he said, from dictatorship to free elections. We’re making progress.”

G.I Ingraham in Iraq, 2006
G.I Ingraham in Iraq, 2006

 

Ingraham now joins (reformed?) 101st Flying Keyboard Brigade Commander Jonah Goldberg in whining over the use of the term “isolationist,” hurled lately by their own kind at other conservatives who oppose military action. Welcome to the party people, but please, don’t insult our intelligence by implying you never used that invective or at least condoned it when Ron Paul was running for president in ’08 and ’12. We have memories too.

And we cannot forget the Jabba the Hutt of  radio hosts, Rush Limbaugh, who has also found his inner anti-interventionist and (we guess Paul and Amash should thank him here) is whipping up minions of NoBamas against strikes on Syria as we speak.

“I get into arguments with people about this who still do not understand that no matter what the issue, no matter what day of the week, the either No. 1 or No. 2 objective in the world of Barack Obama is the elimination of any opposition,” Limbaugh said. “You cannot take the 2014 midterm elections out of this equation. You cannot remove from this equation just how desperate the Democrats are to win the House in 2014, anything that can be done to blame the Republicans.”

rush_limbaugh6Come On, Rush, you know as well as we do that your biggest radio paydays are when Dems win elections, so what are you up to? Never mind, he’s joined by a fleet of eager B-team jocks like Dana Loesch, who actually said Syria “will be Obama’s Iraq.” Hey now, we thought you and your friends loved Iraq, in fact, every chance you get you all wheel out your savior David Petraeus and say what a “victory” he led for us. What’s changed?

The sad truth is, even if what they are doing is right, we know they are doing it for the wrong reasons and it’s greasy. If their new-found sentiments had been applied to Iraq in 2003, and the Afghan “Surge” in 2009, tens of thousands of lives could have been saved. If they had applied their new aversion to the surveillance state to Bush in 2006 when it mattered, Obama wouldn’t have been able to blow it out in 2008. They are hypocrites and their hypocrisy has consequences. It can’t hurt to keep that in mind when the mommas roar.

 

 

Obama Is Planning to Commit A War Crime in Syria

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve written multiple times about the illegality of the Obama administration’s plan to bomb Syria. But the lack of legal legitimacy in what Obama is preparing to do should be reiterated.

Even if Congress grants Obama authorization to strike Syria, actually carrying out the act will be illegal under international law. It will be a war crime, in fact, as there has been no approval from United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

“As international support for Obama’s decision to attack Syria has collapsed, along with the credibility of government claims, the administration has fallen back on a standard pretext for war crimes when all else fails: the credibility of the threats of the self-designated policeman of the world,” Noam Chomsky told the Huffington Post.

“[T]hat aggression without UN authorization would be a war crime, a very serious one, is quite clear, despite tortured efforts to invoke other crimes as precedents,” he added.

And here is an Op-Ed in yesterday’s New York Times by Yale law professors Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro, making the case against waging war without UNSC approval:

It is no surprise that both liberal interventionists and neoconservative realists are advocating American military intervention, even if it is illegal. As President Obama said on Saturday, “If we won’t enforce accountability in the face of this heinous act, what does it say about our resolve to stand up to others who flout fundamental international rules?”

But this question ignores the obvious: If the United States begins an attack without Security Council authorization, it will flout the most fundamental international rule of all — the prohibition on the use of military force, for anything but self-defense, in the absence of Security Council approval. This rule may be even more important to the world’s security — and America’s — than the ban on the use of chemical weapons.

One can quibble with the effectiveness of the UN in general, or with the comparative moral implications of Assad’s act versus Obama’s, but it remains an undeniable fact that Obama is planning to commit a war crime.

Quibbling still, one might say “who cares?” War crimes are committed all the time by the U.S. and other governments around the world, right? Indeed they are: in similar cases, both Clinton (Kosovo) and Bush (Iraq) committed clear cut war crimes with total impunity. But while U.S. foreign policy is rotten and hypocritical to its core, the fact that Washington repeatedly claims to enforce international law by violating it should be wholly unacceptable to Americans and to the world.

Obama Went to Congress to Gain Political Cover for a War He Knows Is Reckless

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William G. Howell at Foreign Policy explains that Obama’s decision to go to Congress was not out of respect for the Constitution but to gain political cover for an action he knows is reckless. Or, as Howell puts it, “to force members of Congress to go on the record today in order to mute their criticisms tomorrow.”

No one is under the illusion that a short, targeted strike is going to overturn the Assad regime and promptly restore some semblance of peace in the region. In the short term, the strike might actually exacerbate and prolong the conflict, making the eventual outcome even more uncertain. And even the best-planned, most-considered military action won’t go exactly according to plan. Mishaps can occur, innocent lives may be lost, terrorists may be emboldened, and anti-American protests in the region will likely flare even hotter than they currently are.

The core argument for a military strike, however, centers on the importance of strengthening international norms and laws on chemical and biological weapons, with the hope of deterring their future deployment. The Assad regime must be punished for having used chemical weapons, the argument goes, lest the next autocrat in power considering a similar course of action think he can do so with impunity.

But herein lies the quandary. The most significant reasons for military action are abstract, largely hidden, and temporally distant. The potential downsides, though, are tangible, visible, and immediate. And in a domestic political world driven by visual imagery and the shortest of time horizons, it is reckless to pursue this sort of military action without some kind of political cover.

Instead of having the recklessness, and pointlessness, of a Syria attack change his mind about the wisdom of such attacking at all, Obama seems to have vied for political cover. The cynicism of a man who spoke of hope and change is astounding.

Should We Fall Again for ‘Trust Me’?

In a dazzling display of chutzpah, the White House is demanding that Congress demonstrate blind trust in a U.S. intelligence establishment headed by James Clapper, a self-confessed perjurer.

That’s a lot to ask in seeking approval for a military attack on Syria, a country posing no credible threat to the United States. But with the help of the same corporate media that cheer-led us into war with Iraq, the administration has already largely succeeded in turning public discussion into one that assumes the accuracy of both the intelligence on the apparent Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack in Syria and President Barack Obama’s far-fetched claim that Syria is somehow a threat to the United States.

Here we go again with the old political gamesmanship over ”facts” as a prelude to war, a replay of intelligence trickery from Vietnam’s Gulf of Tonkin to Iraq’s nonexistent WMD. Once more, White House officials are mounting a full-court press in Congress, hoping there will be enough ball turnovers to enable the administration to pull out a victory, with the corporate media acting as hometown referees.

And in the weekend talk shows, Secretary of State John Kerry, team co-captain in this transparent effort to tilt the playing field, certainly had his game face on. Kerry left little doubt that he KNOWS that the Syrian government is guilty of launching a chemical weapons attack on suburbs of Damascus on Aug. 21. How do we know he knows? Simple: It’s “Trust me” once again.

Did you not watch Kerry’s bravura performance before the TV cameras on Friday when he hawked the dubious evidence against the Syrian government? Someone should tell Kerry that using the word “know” 35 times does not suffice to dispel well-founded doubts and continuing ambiguities about the “intelligence,” such as it is. The administration’s white paper, issued to support Kerry’s “knowledge,” didn’t provide a single verifiable fact that established Syrian government guilt. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “A Dodgy Dossier on Syrian War.”]

But with his bravado, Kerry’s ploy was obvious – to sweep aside serious questions about the evidence and move the discussion simply to one of how much punishment should be inflicted on Syria. “So now that we know what we know, the question … is: What will we do?” Kerry said Friday.

Continue reading “Should We Fall Again for ‘Trust Me’?”

Pew: Public Still Opposes Syria Intervention, Expects Dangerous Backlash in the Region

Late last month, only 9 percent of Americans supported a U.S. intervention in Syria even if chemical weapons attacks were confirmed, according to a Reuters/IPSOS poll. Just over a week later, after the gauntlet of pro-war 9-3-13-1propaganda from the Obama administration, Congressional leaders, and the media, that number is up to 29 percent, according to Pew. Still a minority, but nowhere near as small.

That is a testament to the power of propaganda and the sway of political partisans. It’s worth noting that the process is still ongoing, as we await the Congress’s vote on the authorization of the use of force.

Up to 74 percent of Americans expect a backlash against the U.S. and its allies if the Obama administration intervenes; 61 percent believe it will lead to a long-term military commitment 9-3-13-2in Syria, despite administration denials on that score; and only 33 percent believe the bombings will actually be effective in discouraging the use of chemical weapons.

Those are extraordinary numbers, especially in the sense that they pretty accurately reflect expert opinion. Earlier today, I wrote that the RAND Corp. published a study concluding that bombings are unlikely to effectively protect civilians and run the risk of instigating a regional war and greater U.S. involvement.