Conservatives have been playing "what if that crook was in the
other party?" for a long time, and to no good effect. It
might be amusing to imagine the media firestorm that would incinerate
any Republican politician caught sending pictures of his weiner as was
Anthony Weiner (D,
NY), or serially abusing women in his employ, his
constituency, or within the length of his arm as was San Diego Mayor
Filner (D,
of course). That doesn't even touch
out-and-out thieves and tax-frauds like Charlie Rangel (D, NY - must be
something in the water there).
Those are low crimes and misdemeanors. What about
"high"
crimes that result in actual deaths - like, say, going to war in a
foreign country that hasn't attacked us?
You might think we were talking about Iraq, which earned George W. Bush
the sobriquet "Worst President Ever." But no - America is
about to do almost exactly the same thing, except in Syria.
Our President has decided that Syria deserves a few of the
best, and so it shall be.
Barack Lied, Thousands Died?
Actually, comparing Iraq and Syria is not entirely fair.
Let's consider a few of the differences:
- Iraq had oil. We've done a pretty
incompetent job of stealing it; the old slogan of "No Blood for Oil"
ought to be replaced by "No Oil for Blood." The fact
remains, however, Iraq did
have oil, we did need
it, and providing a steady supply of cheap energy is a legitimate
goal for any world power whether you like it or not. What's
Syria got that makes it worth even one single American life - or for
that matter, one single American cent borrowed from the Chinese?
Nuttin'.
- Iraq had, technically, engaged in acts of war against us
and our allies. They weren't particularly successful - Saddam
Hussein's intelligence service tried and failed to assassinate George
Bush senior in Kuwait, and he fired Scud missiles at Israel
with whom we have a defense treaty but didn't hit anything in
particular. Assassination attempts and missile
attacks are acts of war under international law and have been for a
long time. What's Syria done to us? Nuttin'.
- Bashir
Assad, it is reported, has used chemical weapons against his own
people. Saddam Hussein had done the same. Except -
why
would Assad use gas, when he was already winning the war, albeit
slowly, and we'd already said that might cause us to get involved?
Given that the rebels fighting against him are mostly Islamic
terrorists even more evil than he, it certainly seems possible that
they gassed their own people themselves to make Assad look worse than
he
actually is, and to con our air force into fighting on al-Qaeda's side.
Saddam never tried anything that sneaky.
- Despite the constant false description of him as a lone
wolf, George W. Bush invaded Iraq with the support of forty-nine countries,
which he called the "coalition of the willing." Yes, they
didn't all send troops (maybe a half-dozen did, and a few more sent
non-combat support teams). Yes, he didn't have a UN
resolution authorizing force, but he certainly wasn't by
himself.
Obama has, what, two allies, England and France?
And last reports are that they're both starting to go wobbly, as Margaret Thatcher
would say. So, what we have is Bush going to war alone with
49 other countries, and Obama acting with the global support of... his
august self. That's a bit rich even for the terminally biased
media.
- When Bush invaded Iraq, he had an easily explained and
rational goal: get rid of Saddam Hussein. Our troops
proceeded to accomplish their assigned mission in double-quick time.
Anyone can argue about
whether that was an objective worth the price we paid, but nobody can
claim it was a bad or impossible goal: Saddam Hussein was one evil dude
and the world is a better place without him in it.
Bashar Assad is clearly a pretty nasty piece of work also, and if Mr.
Obama had set getting rid of him as a goal we'd have at least a bit of
sympathy -
though we'd still think the game isn't worth the candle. But
no - Mr. Obama has explicitly said that he's not trying to rid the world of
Assad! What, therefore, is the point?
- From the early days of his presidency, George W. Bush
proclaimed that it was time for democracy to come to the Middle East.
We weren't sure about this at the time, and as the
years
have passed, it's become increasingly clear that democracy makes things worse in
countries whose cultures aren't ready for it.
"Spreading democracy" was at least a noble goal even if it
failed
miserably.
Mr. Obama has no such excuse: George W. Bush already tried that and,
thanks
to our Democrat media, everyone in the whole world right down to the
unreached tribes in the Amazon knows it to have been a miserable failure. Why
on earth is Mr. Obama trying the same thing when we know perfectly well
that any new "freely elected" leader will be yet another murderous
Islamic terrorist who hates us even more than Assad and his goons?
- Before George W. Bush's army set foot across the Iraq
border, the President was careful to get authorization from Congress.
You can argue that Congress was fooled or lied to, but
the fact remains that the vote was overwhelmingly in favor of war,
including large numbers of Democrat luminaries such as Hillary Clinton.
Mr. Obama
has made it plain he doesn't think it's necessary to ask for
Congressional support. That's
probably just as well: polls say a mere 9% of Americans support us going to war in
Syria, which is one-third the support of the Vietnam War at its lowest.
Last week, he was all for starting the war over the Labor Day
weekend. Maybe he read the articles by lefty publications saying that's an impeachable offense;
he seems to have decided that getting permission from Congress isn't a
bad idea after all, while not promising to abide by a "no" vote anyway.
So let's review: In every way that matters, Mr. Obama's war in
Syria has
less authorization than Mr. Bush's Iraq war, less justification, less
relevance to American interests, and a lower probability of success -
indeed, Mr. Obama hasn't even attempted to describe what "success"
would
look like.
At the very best, after Mr. Obama chucks a few bombs
at the place, Syria will end up being ruled by an evil, bloodthirsty
tyrant just like most of the Middle East has always been, except not quite so evil as to
kill his people with chemical weapons. He'll machine-gun them
instead. Victory is ours!
Tell
me again why the far-lefties, Code Pinkos, mainstream media, and every
politician from dogcatcher on up isn't howling for his impeachment for
even floating the idea of starting yet another lone-wolf war?
Oh, that's right: He's got a "D" after his name.
That makes it all OK.
Great breakdown between the two. I had not considered some of those.
So the question is how will the media come to obama's defense? It's a foregone conclusion that they will rally around the first golfer because if they don't, what are the consequences? Would they admit that they were wrong? Highly unlikely. And besides that it might pave the way for a republican landslide in '14 and Joker Joe would be an after thought in '16. It should be interesting to see what they say about this latest debacle.