Category Archives: Barack Obama

UPDATE II: On Syria (And All Else), It’s ‘Us’ Against ‘Them’ (The Sleeping Giant Has Awakened)

Barack Obama, Constitution, Democracy, Foreign Policy, Founding Fathers, Military, War

“On Syria (And All Else), It’s ‘Us’ Against ‘Them'” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

The “Us” of this column’s title needs no explaining. The “Them,” however, does. We the American people are up against an entity far more sinister than the traditional, inchoate enemy—terrorism—around which we are instructed to unite in purpose.

The debate over whether to strafe Syria or to stay out of that country pits us against the military-congressional-industrial complex, whose interests run counter to ours. …

… Prominent among a new breed of military man turned lawmaker to stalk the people’s House is Illinois Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger. A “veteran of the military,” who still serves as a military pilot in the National Guard, is how Kinzinger bills himself. War weary though he purports to be Kinzinger is not. The verbally flatulent representative from Illinois loved it when his ilk flew sorties over the Old Stable Iraq, and seeks a repeat performance over Syria. He appears to see no limits to the role the U.S. should play in rolling back evil around the world, out of “the goodness of our heart.” Yes, the constitutional principle Rep. Adam Kinzinger invokes to justify war against the wishes and interests of the American people is “The Goodness of Our Heart” Clause.

But then, a “Global Force for Good” is how the Navy promises to fulfill “The Goodness of Our Heart” Clause of the U.S. Constitution, on its frightful, promotional website. You see, members of the U.S. military do not regard themselves as defenders of the realm—unless by “realm” one means empire. They’ve been brainwashed to be foot soldiers for the federal government, whenever, wherever.

Imagine what America’s Founding Fathers would think of a military that straddles the planet, having assumed the unauthorized role of a “global force for good.” Those sages opposed the idea of a standing army. They understood that “a standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.”

The magnificent Robert E. Lee, on the other hand, had it right. To this American hero, local was beautiful. Gen. Lee saw himself as a Virginian first. Rep. Kinzinger is a Syrian first.

Baseless too is the idea that someone who’s seen war will be especially judicious in sending others to war. John McCain had suffered in war and has not stopped advocating for it ever since. John Kerry voted to go into Iraq. Ditto Chuck Hagel. …

Read the complete column. “On Syria (And All Else), It’s ‘Us’ Against ‘Them'” is now on WND.

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UPDATE I: “Most lawmakers undecided on Syria.”

“By CNN’s count, 59 senators and more than 280 representatives aren’t sure how they’ll vote on President Obama’s request for a military strike on Syria.” FULL STORY

UPDATE II (9/8): The Sleeping Giant Has Awakened.

… phones are bouncing off the hook, and almost unanimously people are saying do not get involved in a bloody and chaotic civil war in Syria

UPDATED: Bravo Britain (Neocons For Total War)

Barack Obama, Britain, Foreign Policy, Middle East, Neoconservatism, War

BBC News fails to lead its Internet page with the magnificent news that Parliament, for once, has executed the will of the people, and that the UK will be staying out of Syria.

Instead, the left-liberal interventionist at BBC News (people of Samantha Power’s ilk) have buried the item in an article about “I, Obama” (America’s imperial president), and his administration’s various ahistoric, idiotic pronouncements.

The lead in question reads: “US led by ‘best interests’ on Syria.”

BBC News makes only veiled allusions to the “unexpected outcome in the parliament,” to “British MPs [ruling] out London’s involvement in any US-led strikes against Syria,” and to “British members of [parliament’s rejection] of the principle of military action against Damascus in a 285-272 vote.”

UPDATE (8/30): TOTAL WAR.

“The BBC footage is grisly; the British media have been far more invested in the Syrian civil war than their U.S. colleagues,” confirms Mark Steyn.

This week, David Cameron recalled Parliament from its summer recess to permit the people’s representatives to express their support for the impending attack. Instead, for the first time since the British defeat at Yorktown in 1782, the House of Commons voted to deny Her Majesty’s Government the use of force. Under the Obama “reset,” even the Coalition of the Willing is unwilling. “It’s clear to me that the British Parliament and the British people do not wish to see military action,” said the prime minister. So the Brits are out, and, if he goes at all, Obama will be waging war without even Austin Powers’s Union Jack fig leaf.

Steyn here advances the staid neoconservative tack (in dazzling style, as always). When neocons lose an argument for war, they just regroup and renew their efforts.

“What the British people are sick of, quite reasonably enough,” claims Steyn, “is ineffectual warmongering.”

Yeah, give us total, all-out war and we’ll march in goose step with Chuck Krauthammer.

Actually, re-reading “An Accidental War,” I can’t quite tell what Steyn advocates (all in dazzling style, of course).

Dreaming Of The Dreams Of Our Founding Fathers

Barack Obama, Celebrity, Founding Fathers, History, Nationhood, Race

Who thronged to hear black America’s president speak today, at the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall? See for yourself. A sea of people from which the majority is almost entirely absent. At least as evinced from this picture:

As to MLK, he has a day; our founding father don’t. Even MLK’s speeches have their own dedicated commemorative days in the nation’s calender.

I’ve heard just about enough about MLK. And at least one lady would have agreed with me wholeheartedly: “the nation’s most engaging first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy.”

On the day “marking the exact time that Martin Luther King spoke on 28 August 1963,” I too “have a dream.” It is that the dreams of our Founding Fathers be restored—and certainly not stigmatized and criminalized, as they have been by the traitors and haters that festoon our governments (Dem and Republican).

So I’ll excuse myself from the charade to dream of the dreams of America’s Founding Fathers.

UPDATE II: So Said Ban Ki- Moon (Saving Presidential Face)

Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, Middle East, Neoconservatism, UN, War

Secretary of State John Kerry has “watched the videos — the videos that anybody can watch in the social media,” and based on “the videos,” he will likely invade Syria. Kerry admitted, in his address today, that his sources are not quite sure who’s doing what to whom in Syria, but meddle he and Obama must.

Ban Ki- moon said last week, the U.N. investigation will not determine who used these chemical weapons, only whether such weapons were used, a judgement that is already clear to the world.

The US government has no constitutional authority to police the world. The castrates in Congress ought to have a say, for what that’s worth, in the decisions of the imperial president. And as Patrick J. Buchanan put it,:

… who deputized the United States to walk the streets of the world pistol-whipping bad actors? Where does our imperial president come off drawing “red lines” and ordering nations not to cross them?

Neither the Security Council nor Congress nor NATO nor the Arab League has authorized war on Syria.

Who made Barack Obama the Wyatt Earp of the Global Village?

Moreover, where is the evidence that WMDs were used and that it had to be Assad who ordered them? Such an attack makes no sense.

Firing a few shells of gas at Syrian civilians was not going to advance Assad’s cause but, rather, was certain to bring universal condemnation on his regime and deal cards to the War Party, which wants a U.S. war on Syria as the back door to war on Iran.

Why did the United States so swiftly dismiss Assad’s offer to have U.N. inspectors – already in Damascus investigating old charges he or the rebels used poison gas – go to the site of the latest incident?

Do we not want to know the truth?

Are we fearful the facts may turn out, as did the facts on the ground in Iraq, to contradict our latest claims about WMDs? Are we afraid that it was rebel elements or rogue Syrian soldiers who fired the gas shells to stampede us into fighting this war?

UPDATE (B/27): Saving Presidential Face. The ponce-in-chief drew a red line in the sand; he ran his mouth off, as an anti-interventionist on CNN suggested. So now the US must make even more of a mess of Syria, if that’s possible, so as to save presidential face.

UPDATE II: “In an amazing and unsettling coincidence,” quips my former colleague Vox Day, “it seems the recent massacre in Syria, which we are supposed to believe was committed by the Assad regime just as it had taken control of the civil war …” (The rest of the sentence is not clear to me.)

What’s interesting is that Assad might have been winning, which means a heavy-handed calm might have been restored to that country soon.