Democrats Crossing The Line: Giving Aid And Comfort To America’s Sworn Enemies

During the 5 o’clock hour on Saturday, President Trump tweeted a thread that reads, “Iran is talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets as revenge for our ridding the world of their terrorist leader who had just killed an American, & badly wounded many others, not to mention all of the people he had killed over his lifetime, including recently, hundreds of Iranian protesters. He was already attacking our Embassy and preparing for additional hits in other locations. Iran has been nothing but problems for many years. Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!”

Shortly thereafter, three dipshit Democrats aghast that Trump would take decisive action against a barbaric killer of American troops and innocents, chimed in to denounce the President’s warning.

Pocahontas tweeted, “You are threatening to commit war crimes. We are not at war with Iran. The American people do not want a war with Iran. This is a democracy. You do not get to start a war with Iran, and your threats put our troops and diplomats at greater risk. Stop.”

The Bronx Bolshevik tweeted, “This is a war crime. Threatening to target and kill innocent families, women and children—which is what you’re doing by targeting cultural sites—does not make you a ‘tough guy.’ It does not make you ‘strategic.’ It makes you a monster.”

Ilhan Omar (D-Somalia) of “some people did something” fame tweeted, “The President of the United States is threatening to commit war crimes on Twitter. God help us all! #25thAmendment”

I do not profess to be a scholar of the law or the Constitution, but I do know when elected officials of my government are giving aid and comfort to the sworn enemies of my country.  So, what does the U.S. Constitution tell us?

Article 3, Section 3, Clause 1 declares, that adhering to the enemies of the United States, giving them aid and comfort, shall be treason. Any act that deliberately strengthens or tends to strengthen enemies of United States or that weakens or tends to weaken the power of United States to resist and attack such enemies is characterized as aid and comfort.

Aid and comfort may consist of substantial assistance or the mere attempt to provide some support. Actual help or the success of the enterprise is not relevant. [emphasis mine]

During Droney McPeacePrize Obama’s two terms in office, he authorized 542 drone strikes killing an estimated 3,797 people, including 324 civilians in non-battlefield settings in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia. He reportedly told senior aides in 2011, “Turns out I’m really good at killing people.  Didn’t know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine.”

And, who can forget the assassination of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi in 2011?

Where was the outrage back then?  No one was clutching their pearls because it was their messiah; their Lightbringer.

General David Petreaus said in an interview with Foreign Policy magazine, “It is impossible to overstate the importance of this particular action [killing Quds commander Qassem Soleimani].  It is more significant than the killing of Osama bin Laden or even the death Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.”

Just when you thought the crybaby snowflakes on the left had reached peak retard enters corpulent tub of shit Michael Moore:

He has literally turned into his Team America puppet https://t.co/DrU5xEkewB pic.twitter.com/gHs3RtSj3d

— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) January 5, 2020

Following Iran’s boast it had placed an $80 million bounty on Trump’s head and threatened to attack the White House, the President tweeted: 

These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2020

After 40 years of a secret war that has been waged in the shadows, one thing is clear:  Iran thrives on threats to harass and intimidate its enemies.  It knows the regime will collapse if all-out war comes its way. It murdered 1,500 protesters in November precisely because they fear the rising anger of average people in Iran. Where was the spontaneous outpouring of anger over Soleimani’s death? There were no million-man protests in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Iran, of people rushing to the streets. They waited for the regime or their militia commanders to tell them how to protest. This is evidence that Iran’s role in the Middle East may be weakening and that even though it will respond, it must decide wisely how to do so.

President Trump has made certain of that. 

Yeah, THIS Won't Be Used in any Jihadi Training Videos...

Backstory: US Sailors Finally Returned by Iran after Parading Them on State TV.

He Can’t Even Negotiate A Curve

Secretary of State Kerry, 71, had left Sunday morning open in case talks with the nuclear-weapons-hungry Iranians were extended. They weren’t and “Ketchup Boy” decided to dress up in his little Lycra® outfit and cycle a route that had been part of the Tour de France. 

He climbed upon his elitist bicycle that he brings with him as he globetrots the world.  According to Agence France-Presse, he was riding at a low speed at the start of a challenging climb up the Col de la Colombière and, just like that, he fall-down-go-boom.

He managed to sustain a broken femur on the same leg he had hip replacement surgery on in 2009.  It could take up to six months for him to heal.  Conspiratorially speaking, just enough time for the Iranians to get their nukes.  Wait, I just remembered…Marie Harf, State Department Valley Girl was recently promoted to Senior Advisor for Strategic Communications.  The negotiations will continue apace.

I would love to see anyone at the hospital try to stop @JohnKerry from negotiating and working while recovering from breaking his leg.

— Jen Psaki (@Psaki44) May 31, 2015

Streif at Red State saliently opined, “Like Kerry, Obama’s foreign policy hit a curb, the Middle East, while going at a very slow speed for no particular purpose; it got dumped on its ass, and is now on the way to the hospital.”

“Regardless of how one feels about the politics and performance of the unmanly, bloviating, seemingly inbred Secretary of State, people of good faith can probably agree to wish him a speedy recovery. Just as we can all hope Obama’s foreign policy is euthanized before it kills more people and does more harm.” 

Is Your Valley Girl, Marie Harf, Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?

Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader is a quiz show that features adult contestants and questions directly from the textbooks of first through fifth graders.

Word came yesterday that Acting State Department spokesimbecile Marie Harf is being promoted to Senior Advisor for Strategic Communications to Secretary of State John “Why-The-Long-Face” Kerry.  Initially, I thought the story emanated from the satirists at The Onion, but no, the story is befuddlingly true.  She will assist the equally cretinous propagandist Kerry in the Obama Administration’s catastrophic foreign policy between the U.S. and the hostile nation of Iran on…wait for it…nuclear weapons.

Ian Tuttle once opined that Marie Harf must be under the impression that the film Legally Blonde was a documentary.  I doubt anyone would disagree with that assessment.  Suffice to say Ms. Harf does not have a rich intellectual life.  She’s intellectually incurious and dumber than a box of rocks, but that’s being wickedly unfair to the rocks.  God help us all.

State Dept Spox Marie Harf gets promoted; here's a look back at her time speaking on behalf of the U.S. goverment https://t.co/K5JHHx6jPJ

— FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) May 27, 2015

To: all ISIS team members From: Achmed Re: LOL check out this hilarious infidel Onion story https://t.co/MDtv0Kjk6L

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) May 27, 2015

Imagine There's No Substance

Original art by John Cox. More at John Cox Art

Farsi Farce-y

John Podhoretz’s piece at Commentary Magazine entitled “The Tricks Obama Is Trying To Play With The Iran Announcement” maintains that Obama’s tone of triumph in his Rose Garden statement Thursday afternoon “was mixed with sharp reminders that the deal is actually not yet done—and that is entirely the point of this exercise from a domestic standpoint.  The triumph signals his troops and apologists that the time has come for them to stand with him, praise the deal sheet and pretend it’s a deal, declare it historic and generally act as though the world has been delivered from a dreadful confrontation by Obama and Kerry.”

While Javad Zarif, Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs was speaking from the dais in Lausanne, Switzerland the State Department issued a “fact sheet”.  Afterwards he tweeted this:

The solutions are good for all, as they stand. There is no need to spin using "fact sheets" so early on.
— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) April 2, 2015

There is no evidence of a meeting of the minds on the fundamental elements of a deal the “fact sheet” purported to describe. Two days before, Zarif rejected the White House version of the deal alleging it misleads the American public.  According to the Washington Free Beacon, “Just hours after the announcement of what the United States characterized as a historic agreement with Iran over its nuclear program, the country’s leading negotiator lashed out at the Obama administration for lying about the details of a tentative framework.”

Abe Greenwald enlightens us with these tidbits:

Iran would be allowed to continue operating 6,100 uranium-enriching centrifuges for ten years. Experts agree that’s enough to fuel one nuclear bomb per year. Before the Obama administration began talks with Iran, United Nations resolutions had prohibited Iran from enriching uranium, period.

Iran is permitted to keep its underground enrichment facility at Fordow. The administration claims it will be transformed into a “nuclear, physics, technology, research center” that won’t enrich uranium for 15 years. But as Barack Obama has previously said, “We know they [Iran] don’t need to have an underground, fortified facility like Fordow in order to have a peaceful program.” 

Any nuclear deal would not be indefinite, but time-limited. John Kerry assured the American people that a deal would not include “sunsets,” but that’s precisely what these 10-year and 15-year limits are. Extending a deal would require that the Iranians choose to extend it. 

All American and European nuclear-related sanctions on Iran will terminate at the start of a deal, not in response to Iranian compliance. If this is true, it is a dangerous American capitulation: What incentive would Iran have for keeping up its side of the bargain? If Zarif is lying, it goes to show just how far from a good-faith deal we are.The framework includes only the vaguest of language about Iran’s responsibility to detail the possible military dimensions (PMD) of its nuclear program to date. This is important because without a baseline understanding of Iran’s nuclear weaponization efforts, the United States cannot accurately confirm any progress on this front.

The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer continues to demonstrate his naïveté and blindness to Tehran’s basic nature.  So desperate is he for a deal that he believes Supreme Leader Khamenei will amend his cry of “Death to America” to “Death to America for research purposes only.”

He reminds me of the model on The Price Is Right who accidentally gave away a car just hours before the Farsi Farce-y in the Rose Garden. 

Video: Statement by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Lausanne Talks https://t.co/njqobOdx75 #IranTalks
— PM of Israel (@IsraeliPM) April 1, 2015

BREAKING: PM Netanuahu demands that every final deal with Iran will include Iranian recognition of Israel's right to exist

— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) April 3, 2015

"Traitors" of the Lost Snark

In keeping with our Harrison Ford themed headlines...I give you Moooove On dot Org!

Dear MoveOn member,

What's the word for American citizens who undermine the diplomatic efforts of the American president by communicating directly with a foreign government? 

"Traitors," according to the New York Daily News—referring to the 47 Republican senators who signed a letter to the Iranian government with the goal of derailing sensitive and potentially historic nuclear negotiations.

I've been hearing this "47 traitors" horse hockey being tossed about for too long now. What's the word for American citizens who undermine the diplomatic efforts of the American president by communicating directly with a foreign government? Traitors?? Let me take you on a little trip down memory lane, and then you tell me!

According to wikipedia:

In the fall of 2002, (Baghdad Jim) McDermott and fellow Representatives David Bonior of Michigan, Nick Rahall of West Virginia and Mike Thompson of California visited Iraq; in Baghdad they met with members of parliament and the Iraqi Foreign Minister...

Wow! George Bush is president in 2002. (He was a Republican in case that small detail slipped anyone's mind.) Jim McDermott, Democrat, David E. Bonior, Democrat, who served as Democratic whip in the House from 1991 to 2002. Mike Thompson, Democrat. Nick Joe Rahall II, Democrat:

Rahall and another Congressman of Arab descent traveled to Syria and ignored State Department policy by meeting with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat...

Great! Nicky Joe is a twofer! He was not only trying to "undermine the diplomatic efforts of the American president by communicating directly" with the foreign government of Iraq, but tried to "undermine the diplomatic efforts" of the American State Department by communicating directly with a foreign leader (and part time terrorist), Yasser Arafat.

So these four...traitors(??) didn't just send a letter to Saddam Hussein. What's that they say? When you care enough to send the very best? They traveled to Iraq and met with the Iraqi foreign minister and members of their parliament.

Now, typically foreign policy isn't the purview of the House of Representatives, there probably isn't a lot in the budget for treason (according to good liberals), so where did they get the funding to pay their way to Iraq? Funny you should ask!

Muthanna Al-Hanooti was an official with a Michigan "charity" that offered to pay their way. But, in reality, Saddam Hussein offered Al-Hanooti some 2 million barrels of Iraqi oil in exchange for the charity funding the treasonous (according to liberals) quartet.  Saddam apparently used Iraqi intelligence agents (read: "spooks") to fund the intermediary.

And, as they say in the infomercials, But wait! There's more!!

Remember the Sandinistas? Ronald Reagan was president. (He was a Republican, in case that has slipped anyone's mind). Remember how many Democrats tried to thwart Reagan?

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger hammered John Kerry in 1985 for interfering in diplomatic negotiations with Nicaragua’s Marxist government as a (Democrat) Massachusetts senator. 

... Kerry and then-Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin (Democrat) visited Nicaragua in 1985 to cut a deal with the Sandinista government, which was close to the former Soviet Union. President Ronald Reagan, however, was already set on overthrowing the Marxist government in Nicaragua by sending aid to a group of Nicaraguan rebels — the contras.

So, Kerry and Harkin were  "trying to "undermine the diplomatic efforts of the American president by communicating directly" with a foreign government".  Which makes them (say it with me, America!)

Traitors.

(By the way, if you really wanted to call Kerry a traitor, there's more than enough material, but that's a story for another day!)

In 1984, Speaker of the House Jim Wright, Democrat (Are you starting to see a pattern here?) sent a letter - SENT A LETTER! - signed by ten Democrats, to  "undermine the diplomatic efforts of the American president by communicating directly" with a foreign government"!

Looking for this reference, I ran across the following from Breitbart News:

Senators John Sparkman (D-AL) and George McGovern (D-SD). The two Senators visited Cuba and met with government actors there in 1975. They said that they did not act on behalf of the United States, so the State Department ignored their activity. 

Senator Teddy Kennedy (D-MA). In 1983, Teddy Kennedy sent emissaries to the Soviets to undermine Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy. According to a memo finally released in 1991 from head of the KGB Victor Chebrikov to then-Soviet leader Yuri Andropov...

...Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV). In 2002, Rockefeller told Fox News’ Chris Wallace, “I took a trip by myself in January of 2002 to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, and I told each of the heads of state that it was my view that George Bush had already made up his mind to go to war against Iraq...

...House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). In April 2007, as the Bush administration pursued pressure against Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went to visit him.

Traitors, traitors, traitors, traitors, TRAITORS!!!!

Can you say "hypocrisy"? I will bet you a large lunch at a drive in of your choice, that you will not be able to find a liberal, Democrat, no good lying weasel (but I repeat myself) who called any of these Democrats "traitors".

Democrats have been trying to criminalize differences of opinion for years. (Remember the Boland amendment?)  Aside from the Jonathan "I know the entire Democrat base is stupid" Gruber crowd,  this is demagoguery of the worst kind. Well, maybe not the worst kind. Nancy Pelosi bleating that Republicans wanted to defund Homeland Security and leave America defenseless, because they wanted to defund the part of Homeland Security that funded Obama's illegal illegal alien program is petty demagoguery.

Of course, you can find examples at least as far back as Newt Gingrich's speakership, when Newt proposed giving MORE money to school lunches, but funding it through the states, demagogues and their accomplices in the MSM spread the lie that the Republicans wanted to "starve kids", because they wanted to eliminate federal funding for school lunches. More money for school lunches = starving kids, if the feds aren't in charge of the funds.

So, I guess you could say that dishonest, lying Democrats (but, I repeat myself!) accusing Republicans of being traitors for doing no more or no less than the things they themselves do is just more of the same when it comes to demagoguery.

This Is What Happens When You Get In The Way

At 3:09 PM today, CNN broke the news that the Justice Department is preparing to bring criminal corruption charges against Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), alleging he used his Senate office to push the business interests of Miami-based ophthalmologist Salomon Melgen, a Democratic donor and friend in exchange for gifts.

The FBI and prosecutors from the Justice Department's public integrity section have pursued a variety of allegations against Menendez, who has called the probe part of "smear campaign" against him.

At a 7:45 PM presser, Menendez said "I have always conducted myself appropriately and in accordance with the law.  I am not going anywhere."

I have never liked Menendez.  I doubt I am alone in my expression of distrust of him but Menendez appears to be the victim of the shenanigans of a vindictive Administration.

Michael Warren of The Weekly Standard notes, “While the federal investigation has been ongoing, the timing of the charges is curious. Menendez has been one of the top Democratic critics in Congress of the Obama administration's negotiations and forthcoming deal with Iran over the Islamic Republic's nuclear ambitions. Earlier this year, the New Jersey Democrat said the White House's talking points on the Iran deal were "straight out of Tehran."

Last week, Menendez and Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) introduced legislation requiring President Obama to submit any nuclear agreement with Iran to Congress for a 60-day review. Back in January, Menendez also directly challenged The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer at a Democratic Senate retreat when he claimed he understood the pressure Senators were under from "donors".  Menendez rose and told him he took "personal offense" at his remarks.

This president plays for keeps and when a top Democratic Party member is critical of him you can expect ruination to be your fate.

Amazing timing, that DOJ nails Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., right after he becomes the loudest critic of Obama's Iran deal.
— jimgeraghty (@jimgeraghty) March 6, 2015

Curmudgeonly Cartoon: Ketchup Boy Needs A Hug

Via The Boston Herald

GENEVA—U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met Monday with this Russian counterpart in what appeared to be less than amicable talks amid continuing tensions over Ukraine and American calls for a full probe into the murder of a prominent opposition figure [Boris Nemtsov] in Moscow.

Neither Kerry nor Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov smiled or spoke substantively as they shook hands before photographers at a Geneva hotel on Monday, less than a week after Kerry told Congress that Russian officials have lied to his face about Moscow's role in Ukraine.

That comment drew a rebuke from the Russian foreign ministry. U.S. officials have pointed out that Kerry did not specifically accuse Lavrov of lying to him. They say he was referring to public statements and media reports, although Lavrov is the only Russian official Kerry is known to have met face-to-face in recent months. The pair last met in February on the sidelines of an international security conference in Munich shortly before a new Ukraine ceasefire agreement was reached.

Curmudgeonly Cartoon: The 98-Lb. Weakling

Curmudgeonly Cartoon: Putty In The Hands Of Iran’s Assaholla

Teetering On The Edge (Warning: Graphic Image)

The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer was handed a mostly peaceful Iraq.

A few days ago two reporters with the Associated Press, Hamza Hendawi and Bassen Mroue, filed a report about the fear and sectarianism behind the utter collapse of the Iraqi army.

The Western press is far too squeamish to publish reports about the savagery of the animals that inhabit the Middle and Near East.  We are a merciful and peace-loving people and as such find it difficult to understand the barbarous dogma of Islam. 

Hendawi and Mroue’s accounting describes a chilling video set to what they described as “lilting religious hymns” in which Islamic barbarians knock on the door of a Sunni police major in the dead of night.  The moment he opens the door he is blindfolded and cuffed.  Then they carve off his head with a knife in his own bedroom.

In an effort to show the world they will stop at nothing to achieve their end game, the blood-thirsty Neanderthals tweeted an image of the officer’s decapitated head with the revolting message, “This is our ball.  It is made of skin #World Cup.”

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) propaganda video includes footage of “drive-by shootings of off-duty security personnel and the killings of captured army soldiers.  In one scene, fighters masquerading as soldiers set up a checkpoint on a main highway, stopped cars and killed Shiites and security personnel by the side of the road.”

Fighters abducted a Sahwa commander and his two sons and forced them to dig their own graves in the desert before they slit their throats.

The rest of the world is not as naïve as Westerners are.  Our press mollifies the masses by pixelating the videos and photographs of beheadings and the lopping off of hands and feet or hangings and stonings so that there is merely a gulp in reaction to them.  We should be exposed to the raw images so that outrage in its fullest form can be felt, not fear.  These filthy animals should fear the prospect of being vaporized and rotting in Jahannam.

Instead, we are subjected to a presidency that has consistently and deliberately weakened our nation and cleared the way for the American homeland to be threatened again.

Don’t agree with me?  Then consider carefully this fact:   The Wall Street Journal and the Times of London reported on June 12th that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has deployed units of its elite Quds Force to help Iraqi troops halt the advances of ISIL and ISIS forces.  Iranian security forces have said that two battalions of the Quds Force have come to the aid of Maliki’s government.  The ISIS assault may be just what Iran needs to turn Iraq into a puppet.

I did not get an arm blown off in Baghdad so you could sit on your ass and watch Iraq fall, @BarackObama. I did my job. DO YOUR JOB.

— J.R. Salzman (@jrsalzman) June 13, 2014

The Devastating Effects Of The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer’s Foreign Policy Failures

Former US Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, believes that "[The White House's foreign policy] initiatives truly reflect Obama's view of America's international role.  His is a world of rhetoric and talk, not power." 

In an Op-Ed at The Los Angeles Times, Bolton mournfully opines:

The coming crash of U.S. diplomacy is not idle speculation about a remote future. Our declining prestige is already apparent globally; when all three Middle East negotiations fail conclusively, America's influence will fall further. Friends and adversaries alike are recalibrating their policies accordingly, particularly because the underlying causes of the three impending failures will spell trouble and misfortune elsewhere. 

Obama's ongoing failures could have been avoided. A less ideological, more realistic and clear-eyed leader would comprehend American power and interests, knowing how to use the former to protect the latter, rather than making Obama's basic mistakes. 

Obama's first error: misreading your adversary. There was never any chance Iran could be negotiated out of a nuclear weapons capability it has pursued for nearly 30 years. Efforts during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations demonstrated how Iran deftly uses negotiations to gain political legitimacy, buy time to continue work on its nuclear program and evade international punishment. Hassan Rouhani followed precisely this playbook as Iran's chief nuclear negotiator 10 years ago. He is doing so again today as Iran's president. 

The second error: not knowing who your adversaries are. Obama argued for three years that Russia shared his objective of a peaceful transition from the Assad regime in Syria to something else. This was never true. Moscow's support for Assad (as well as Iran's, directly and through Hezbollah) guaranteed he would only depart feet first. The U.S. could either have aided Syria's opposition or tackled the problem's root cause: the mullahs' regime in Tehran. Obama chose to do neither. His equivocation regarding Syria's chemical weapons program has provoked giggles or dismay at White House weakness. 

The third error: not knowing who your friends are. The Palestinians lack legitimate governing institutions capable of hard decisions, including making perilous concessions and compromises, and overcoming resistance by Hamas and other terrorists. Without such institutions, no long-term solution is possible. Negotiating with the Palestinian Authority has less substance than negotiating with a hologram. Perversely, however, Obama treats Israel as the problem.

At the center of this inept president’s foreign policy is the misguided belief that the reason America has adversaries is because it has allies.

With red lines painted here, there and everywhere backed up only by bluster and no balls whatsoever, it won’t be long before we have only adversaries and no allies anywhere in the world.  With this man sitting behind the Resolute Desk, our very existence grows ever more perilous.

Tilting At Windmills

Since last Saturday when The Insufferable Airhorn spoke in the Rose Garden about the “crisis” in Syria, we have seen the political role reversals of hawks and doves.

Bill Kristol, whom I abandoned some time ago, suggested in his op-ed at The Weekly Standard that “using this resolution to cast a vote of no confidence against Obama would empower those abroad making the case against placing confidence in the United States. That would be damaging. And in the real world, a vote against Obama will be seen as a vote for Bashar al-Assad, and for Vladimir Putin, and for the regime in Iran.”

Kristol insists “the right vote” by Republicans, a party that for at least two generations has held the banner of American leadership and strength, should not cast a vote that obviously risks a damaging erosion of this country’s stature and credibility abroad.”

Kristol continues, “A Yes vote is in fact the easy vote. It’s actually close to risk-free. After all, it’s President Obama who is seeking the authorization to use force and who will order and preside over the use of force. It’s fundamentally his policy. Lots of Democrats voted in 2002 to authorize the Iraq war. When that war ran into trouble, it was President Bush and Republicans who paid the price. If the Syria effort goes badly, the public will blame President Obama, who dithered for two years, and who seems inclined to a halfhearted execution of any military campaign. If it goes well, Republicans can take credit for pushing him to act decisively, and for casting a tough vote supporting him when he asked for authorization to act.”

Kristol, to my way of thinking, is correct on one point:  President Bush and the Republicans did pay the price when the Iraq war effort went badly and if Syria goes badly the current Oval Office occupant will be evisorated.  Kristol’s only concern is about Republican senators and congressmen re-establishing their “anti-Obama credentials.”  Good grief, man.  Sending our men and women to another pesthole is all kinds of wrong.

Caught between Iraq and a hard place are two of our betters—Hollywood actors Ed Asner and Mike Farrell.  In a stunning revelation about the silence of Tinseltown and their disappointment in their idol’s penchant for military action Farrell said, "I'm frankly deeply disappointed in the president's foreign policy, war-making, his reliance on military rather than diplomatic responses, his use of drones, continued allowance of the Guantanamo prison. He's a disappointment to me and other people I know."

"I voted for him, but I'm not proud. He hasn't thrown himself on the funeral pyre. I wanted him to sacrifice himself. Instead, he has proved himself to be a corporatist, and as long as he's a corporatist, he's not my president," Asner said. "A lot of people have lost hope—with the betrayals, the NSA spying…People aren't getting active because 'Who gives a shit?' is essentially the bottom line."

Another reason some Hollywood progressives have been reticent to speak out against war in Syria, according to Asner, is fear of being called racist.  "A lot of people don't want to feel anti-black by being opposed to Obama," he said.

What a magnificent example of cowardice.

Then there’s this.  District of Columbia delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) who has been a member of Congress since January 1991 confessed recently that if President McBombypants actually gets the votes he needs for the resolution “it’ll be because of loyalty of Democrats. They just don’t want to see him shamed and humiliated on the national stage."

On Thursday, September 5^th, Chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus issued what is, in effect, a gag order asking members to “limit public comment”.  The request was designed to quiet dissent while “shoring up support for President Obama’s Syria strategy.”

That “red line” The Insufferable Airhorn has now disowned has gotten all over him, Hollywood and progressive activists.  It’s one big clusterfuck..

It reminds me of Don Quixote de la Mancha.  Quixote, as we all remember from our high school or college lit classes, was a victim of his delusions.  In Miguel de Cervantes’ novel, knight-errant Quixote tilts at windmills that he imagines to be giants:

“Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that rise from that plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, ‘Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils we shall begin to be rich for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless.’" 

"What giants?" asked Sancho Panza. 

"Those you see over there," replied his master, "with their long arms. Some of them have arms well nigh two leagues in length." 

"Take care, sir," cried Sancho. "Those over there are not giants but windmills. Those things that seem to be their arms are sails which, when they are whirled around by the wind, turn the millstone."

It is obvious to this observer that we have Don Quixote in the White House begging for lawmakers to unleash the dogs of war in a vicious snake pit of cannibalistic rebels and savage Islamic extremists.

I believe that America should stay out of Syria.  Let neighboring nations deal with the barbarians at their gate.  I am quite certain that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has the spine of steel needed to protect his people.

"Once we take action, we should be prepared for what comes next," wrote General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, only one month ago. "Deeper involvement is hard to avoid."

We have learned in this decade via the Iranian Green Revolution in 2009 that barbarian elements in social revolutions cannot be harnessed.  Neda Agha-Soltan died of a single gunshot wound to the chest. Her last moments—captured on a cell phone camera and shown around the world—catapulted her into the symbol of the postelection reform movement in Iran.

No one will say how many have died in Egypt’s coup against the Muslim Brotherhood.

Two years after the Arab Spring revolution that toppled longtime dictator Moammar Gaddafi, and one year after the assault on the U.S. compound in Benghazi that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three others, Libya’s fragile government has little control over the nation’s security.

The whole of the Middle East is a powder keg and the blast wave that we invite by interfering in Syria may well involve America in a conflagration of tectonic proportions.

One final thought, the errand boy sent by grocery clerks is slated to speak to the nation this Tuesday on taking military action against Syria’s Bashar al-Assad.  For the whole of his second term, this president and his apparatchiks have deflected and distracted through sleight-of-hand and carefully coordinated propaganda, not the least of which has been on the issue of Benghazi.  The lies are damnable. 

I think it’s important to note that Obama will use the eve of 9/11 (the World Trade Center attack and the Benghazi murders) to create an imagery and recount emotions meant to sway Congress.

 

As he feigns outrage, his argument for intervention is weak and this nation does not need to be thrown into the crucible he created.

While battling for reelection in August of 2012, he drew a “red line”.  Saying now, “I didn’t set a red line. The world set a red line,” is his desperate attempt to rescue his personal credibility from his hubristic foolishness.

See also:  A Nation Commits Suicide

Wargames

It has been confirmed that a few days remain before a massive air/land/sea exercise gets underway in the Eastern Mediterranean off the Coast of Syria, led by Russia and including Iran, Syria and China.

Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice president of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, reporting from Jerusalem says that the Russians are backing the Assad regime entirely, and that the Russia maneuver means that the P5+1 talks in Moscow will go nowhere.  Iran has no reason to bend with Russia's support so massive and aggressive.

Iran and China have received permission to pass warships through the Suez Canal to participate in the games.  The exercise is to rehearse the repelling of an invasion of Syria from the West or the North.

  

These “wargames” demonstrate that the NATO card played in Libya will not be played again.  Russia believes that the U.S. betrayed the agreement reached with Gadhafi, and Russia will not be fooled again.  Putin plays a strong card.  It’s “game on” for the Obama administration.

Anne Gearan, AP National Security Writer, pens this at Boston.com:

“Pressure increased on Russia over the weekend, when the United Nations suspended its unarmed monitoring mission in Syria out of concern for the monitors’ safety. The move was widely interpreted as a challenge to Russia to intervene with Assad to preserve a U.N. role Moscow sees as a brake on any armed foreign intervention.”

“Meanwhile, Obama’s leverage and options are limited.”

“The United States has refused to arm anti-Assad rebels, in part to avoid confrontation with Russia, which has armed the Syrian regime for years. Although Moscow fears one, there is little chance of a military campaign like the one that led to the ouster of Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi last year.”

“Russia has angrily charged that the U.S. and other nations went beyond the bounds of the United Nations Security Council humanitarian mandate in Libya, and have blocked U.S. efforts to win an arms embargo or other tougher Security Council measures on Syria now.” 

“In the days leading up to the G-20, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton angered Russia by charging that it was equipping the Syrian government with attack helicopters that could be used against civilians. She later acknowledged they were helicopters already owned by Syria that were being repaired in Russia, but the U.S. has let the charge of possible use against civilians stand.”