This bothers me so very, very much.
White House spinners have spent the last couple of days telling the press that Obama surprised even his most senior staff Friday night by deciding to seek congressional authorization. Before that, it is said, asking Congress’s approval was not even among the options being considered in the Syrian crisis.
It was only after it became clear to Obama that he could not win acceptance in other, preferred, circles that he chose to go to Congress. Would he have sought congressional authorization if he had won United Nations approval for a Syrian attack? Highly unlikely. Would he have sought congressional authorization if the British Parliament had voted to join Obama’s action? Also unlikely. Even approval from the Arab League might have been enough for Obama to act.
As it turned out, Obama achieved none of those goals and decided to seek congressional approval only after failing to win the international acceptance that apparently ranked higher on his list. “Mr. Obama made no secret to aides he felt uncomfortable acting without UN Security Council backing,” the Wall Street Journal reported. “Current and former officials said his decision reflected his concerns about being seen as acting unilaterally — without political cover from Congress and without the UK at his side. Arab states, for their part, have offered little public support despite their private encouragement.”
Barack Obama is President of the United States, not the president of the world. It is not his job to act when other nations feel that it is right. It is his job to act in the best interests of the U.S., even when other nations disagree.
It’s bad enough Obamacare is destroying our healthcare industry. I hope he can’t do much more in the next three years. And I really hope that Congress tells him the same think as the U.K. Parliament told David Cameron: No. Do not intervene in the Syrian civil war. As horrible as it is, we’re not going to end it, and we’re not going to make it better. The UN has peacekeepers. Have them stop raping children in Africa and go to the front lines of Syria, instead.
Yes, that was sarcasm–at least the front lines of Syria part. I know it will never happen. The UN is an organization that is good for investigating supposed Israeli war crimes, but I haven’t seen it get all up in arms over the sarin gassing of Syrian civilians. There is not the outrage from the global community the way there is when Israel goes to war with Hamas or Hezbollah. Where are UN Security Council resolutions? Blocked by China and Russia.
And just for kicks and giggles, the Palestinian Authority–the organization that receives hundreds of millions of dollars from U.S. taxpayers directly and via our financial support of the U.N.–is blaming the U.S. for the Syria uprising.
It’s a good thing we have a president who isn’t a go-it-alone, unilateralist cowboy. Boy, that Bush didn’t do anything about getting a coalition of 47 nations together for the Iraq war. Oh. Wait.