If Congress declines to support what even proponents of a Syria strike must agree is a massively screwed up policy, then the President will face another choice. He can do a “Clinton” (President Clinton bombed Serbia in the teeth of congressional disapproval), or he can fold like a cheap suit. If he chooses the latter course, Clint Eastwood’s “empty chair” stunt at the 2012 GOP convention will look eerily prophetic. For purposes of foreign policy, the United States will endure something like a presidential vacancy until Mr. Obama is replaced in 2017 or until he finds a way to restore his authority and prestige.Essentially, this is the same argument that Hugh Hewitt is making -- you have to support the office of the president, no matter how much you might think the officeholder is a moron, because the world is watching and what would be the equivalent of a no-confidence vote would be disastrous to the country's interests, especially with 3 1/2 years left to go in Obama's term.
Considered in the abstract, the planned attacks on Syria may or may not be smart. But thanks to this latest round of “smart diplomacy,” if bombs don’t fall on Syria, President Obama will have bombed his own credibility into oblivion.
Obama didn't help himself much yesterday when he tried to weasel out of the implications of his earlier pronouncements:
“I didn’t set a red line; the world set a red line,” Mr. Obama said at a news conference in Stockholm on the first day of a three-day visit to Sweden and Russia, where he will take part in a summit meeting that is likely to be dominated by the war in Syria.Unfortunately for the president, the internet is forever:
“My credibility’s not on the line,” he said, appealing to lawmakers and foreign leaders to back his plan to retaliate against President Bashar al-Assad. “The international community’s credibility is on the line. And America and Congress’s credibility is on the line.”
Use of chemical weapons would change his calculus, he told us a year ago. And he doubled down on this threat later on:
You can't just bottle up the bellicosity and pretend it didn't happen. Barack Obama made it clear, twice, that if chemical weapons were used in Syria, there would be consequences. After a while, it starts to play out like this:
The problem for the president, and for all of us, is that the other players on the world stage aren't cartoon characters. The president wrote a check with his mouth that he might not be able to cash. We*cosigned his loan by putting him back in office last November. The bill collectors are at the door now.
*Okay, maybe not you, and certainly not me. But you know what I mean.
8 comments:
During the first term I might have been inclined to agree with Hugh. But Americans re-elected him. The lights were on, he had a track record. We chose incompetence, corruption, class/race strife, hard times. Maybe we just have to live through it.
Mr D, you've failed to see the point you made: if the outcome you're looking to achieve is getting a gun-toting blowhard outta town then maybe drawing a series of leading lines in the sand down main street and over a cliff is exactly the right thing to do. Also you played your two clips outta order, I guess trying to show how the government caved on its previous stance, but imo the president played the game like you should and threatened retribution before actions were taken therefore putting fear in their mind for the consequences of those future actions. If you think that the best way to carry out foreign policy is the Teddy Roosevelt Big Stick way, well then you should blame the last administration's utter and complete failure at both diplomacy and militarism for diminishing our influence in the world. Our options in the Middle East have narrowed considerably because of Iraq. The Bush presidency's malodorous legacy will linger for a long time on this Earth.
That said, since we can't "go it alone" and other nations don't seem to want to get on another American adventure ride to slaughterland, then we may just be forced to sit back and play defense on this one, and drop back into the prevent and pray to Allah that they don't score late in the game.
"We'll always have Paris Bush."
Ah dang, the strike through Paris didn't work. You get the point. The anti-romance will linger forever. Obama will always be dreamy because it's always Bush who screwed it up.
I ran across this the other day in a novel. The young lady fell for the cad. Everyone else was unfair to the poor lad, but she saw his true, beautiful character. Even him fleeing the country didn't break the spell. Finally she went mad when some other woman sent her her old love letters to him.
Moral of the story? It's worth entertaining the possibility that Obama is just a lousy president and that Bush doesn't have anything to do with it.
WB Pickle: no, we voters chose free contraception. you werent paying much attention.
This will not end well.
I think I've made it pretty clear I am not in Obama's corner on this, but any counterfactual that posits a McCain or Romney administration would have us sitting prettier at the moment is wanting for evidence. I'm reasonably certain McCain would have had us in Syria ages ago, mostly because he's said so himself, repeatedly.
But that's all rather beside the point. I'm more interested to know what Obama does when (hopefully) congress tells him "no". That decision point (to borrow a term) could be the difference between a profile in courage and a (substantive, for once) argument in favor of impeachment.
This is all bigger than Obama. The U.S. is going to have to learn how to live in a multilateral world, eventually. There's an easier way now, or a much harder way later.
First anon says,
If you think that the best way to carry out foreign policy is the Teddy Roosevelt Big Stick way, well then you should blame the last administration's utter and complete failure at both diplomacy and militarism for diminishing our influence in the world.
I don't. But thanks for playing.
Second (or is it third?) anon says:
Ah dang, the strike through Paris didn't work. You get the point. The anti-romance will linger forever. Obama will always be dreamy because it's always Bush who screwed it up.
See, I'm old school. I blame Herbert Hoover.
Brian says:
I think I've made it pretty clear I am not in Obama's corner on this, but any counterfactual that posits a McCain or Romney administration would have us sitting prettier at the moment is wanting for evidence. I'm reasonably certain McCain would have had us in Syria ages ago, mostly because he's said so himself, repeatedly.
I don't know about Romney, but I'm almost certain you're right about McCain. But we can't unring either bell.
This is all bigger than Obama. The U.S. is going to have to learn how to live in a multilateral world, eventually. There's an easier way now, or a much harder way later.
I suspect that's true. The problem I have with this situation isn't Obama's original statement per se; while it might not have made sense in the long term, it wasn't indefensible -- there's a long history of intellectual and political thought surrounding the matter of these sorts of weapons. What's not defensible is the notion that he can walk it back. He said what he said. Now he, and the rest of us by extension, have to work our way through the implications of what he said.
Post a Comment