This is basically why we worked for him to win the nomination in 2008, although we’re not out of the woods, yet.
At 7 p.m. Friday, Mr. Obama called his top aides into his office, including National Security Adviser Susan Rice, to inform them of his plans. Aides say Mr. Obama came up with the idea himself to seek an authorization.
Many insiders were stunned because of the risk Congress will say “no.” “You have to win the vote. You have to win,” one senior administration official said after the decision was disclosed. “If Congress doesn’t let him act, the consequences for him and for the country’s standing in the world are enormous.”
Later Friday night, Mr. Obama told aides the decision reflected his growing frustration with lawmakers who appeared to want to have it both ways—criticizing the president for not seeking congressional authorization, and then criticizing the decisions he makes.
The chemical attack in Syria was unconscionable. But the president can’t do anything about it unless the people, through their representatives, give him the power to do something about it. This is as it should be. The president made it so.
If this is another example of 11th Dimensional Chess – ME LIKEY!!!
The Republicans look like a party of Elmer Fudd’s, twying to kiww dat wascawwy Pwesident, Bawack Hussein Obama.
What dopes!
WHAT MAROONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Our country’s navy was, until quite recently, on round-the-clock standby to start bombing another country.
I’m glad you’re imbuing the situation with the seriousness it so obviously deserves.
Our air force is on round the clock standby to end human civilization, and much of mammalian life.
It’s all relative, isn’t it.
Look, I know it’s a serious situation, and my heart goes out to the people of Syria, but unless my reading of the US Constitution is way off, I was under the impression that it was CONGRESSES responsibility to declare military action/war – except in an emergency. And for us in the US, what’s happening in Syria, no matter how tragic for its people, is NOT – imo – an emergency.
The President is doing something very rare here – he could have used the AUMF, but be didn’t choose to. Instead, he handed that power back to Congress.
Yeah, because comments on blogs are the arbiter of seriousness.
I’m not a big fan of Obama’s, but this is a Very Good Thing. Especially if Congress votes against. (Though I think there’s no chance of that.) A few exclamation points on blogs isn’t going to change the situation all that much.
But the president can’t do anything about it unless the people, through their representatives, give him the power to do something about it.
And how often do the Senators and Representatives vote the way “the people” want them to?
True, but they’re also cowards so it’s fear of being blamed when it goes wrong warring against fear of looking weak.
“If Congress doesn’t let him act, the consequences for him and for the country’s standing in the world are enormous.”
What f–king moron said this? Another democracy-hating tool like Steve Rattner(see his tweet last night?)?
Later Friday night, Mr. Obama told aides the decision reflected his growing frustration with lawmakers who appeared to want to have it both ways–criticizing the president for not seeking congressional authorization, and then criticizing the decisions he makes.
He better damn well make sure Pelosi holds her votes then.
What is sad about all this is the anti-war people are all ginned up about being anti-war and have, apparently, zero idea what happened to those poor children. Willful ignorance?
Maybe on the part of some.
But it’s more a matter of it being part of a larger conflict that we have no solution to.
What is sad about all this is the anti-war people are all ginned up about being anti-war and have, apparently, zero idea what happened to those poor children.
Are you high?
His point is that a lot of people are trying to build their anti-war street cred, and don’t give two shits about what’s happening. I think it applies to a decent number of people. Not sure if it applies to many in The Establishment as they’re not against it, but that’s another story (not to mention a good deal of them also do not care what’s happening and just want to get their War on).
You say that like ‘anti-war street cred’ is a bad thing.
Either ‘dead children’ is a reason for bombing, or it’s not. If it is, we’ve been shirking our duty for a long time.
(And for that matter, of course I don’t give a shit about what’s happening. I don’t give a shit about what’s happening in the CAR, either. I don’t give a shit about virtually all of the death and misery around the world. You do?)
That’s not why Obama is proposing bombing. But whatever.
So you admit he doesn’t actually care about the dead children either.
Calvin, what happened to the children we bombed? Or the kids who’ve been in Guantanamo?
And then there’s the simple problem of figuring out who deployed the gas. I’d still like, you know, proof.
It’s called a knee-jerk reaction. We liberals might prefer to believe it only happens on the right, but it just isn’t so.
I wish someone had cared about the Iraqi kids who were starved to death from sanctions in the 1990s or killed during the active phase of the Iraq War in the 2000s. I wish someone had cared about the kids who were killed by drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Rushing to another “humanitarian” venture under sketchy evidence when we’re asked to accept it because the President says it’s so is hardly a basis of serving the interests of anyone, including any Syrian kids who are still alive.
It was an unusual move to be sure, but I can’t really support it due to the lack of any mention of the public option, nor of the appointment of Shirley Sherrod to head the Department of Agriculture.
Perspective, people.
My first thought was the President would not risk a Congressional vote unless his team had some assurances the required votes were already likely to be there. Looks like I was wrong about that.
This is a big risk but on the other hand since there are really no good options going forward (and that includes the option of doing nothing) going to Congress is just one more of them. Since that seems to be the case I guess you go with the guy you helped elect to make these decisions. If this President wants a Congressional vote let him have a Congressional vote.
I still say the sumsabitches should end their vacations now and head back to DC.
I actually think a delay like this is beneficial. No one likes it when Congress rushes back to enact hasty decisions. Remember the Patriot act? At least this way, Congress will own a piece of the action we take. I still am rooting for Congress to say no, since I question the assertion that Obama will attack regardless of what they vote. That just strikes me as implausible. If the American public is solidly against it, and Congress votes it down, I’d say that will put an end to it, damn John McWar and Lyndsey Graham.
If Congress does approve this, then at least we’ll have two weeks of delay to see what the UN inspectors have to say, and two weeks of delay for the Assad regime to make a concession in order to stave off an attack.
As Booman says, there are no good options here. Only bad options better than other bad options.
I am not saying Congress has to rush back only to slam a fist down on the voting button before they take off their coats. I am saying in a matter this important, hey, maybe the 4 or 5 weeks they’ve already spent on vacation is enough? How about treating this like a serious matter and going back to work?
As Booman says and as I said in the post you replied to, there are no good options. Among those no good options is the option you are rooting for, doing nothing.
I don’t know that I’m necessarily rooting for doing nothing. I’m just not convinced that an air strike will accomplish anything at all. And if not, it’s a foolish waste of both real and political capital. I don’t know if the alternative is preferable, but I don’t like being “forced” into action without a clear goal in mind. If the case could be made that a specific strike would achieve a specific goal, then I might be more inclined to agree. But I’d like to see the President assert what steps Syria could take to avoid an attack, at the very least. I’d like to see the President explain what such an attack would be trying to accomplish, aside from smacking the dog on its nose with a newspaper (horrible analogy, I know). So far, I’m not convinced.
So far as I can tell, the smack the nose option is the one he is going for. The US blows up some of Assad’s most beloved and expensive military toys. The stuff Syria has to buy from other nations and which cost considerable money.
The thinking is to affect the decision-making process of Assad and of future strongmen who might consider using chem weapons. “If I use these it will probably cost me X, Y, and maybe Z”.
If these sort of strongmen see chem weapons can be used with no more cost than some loss of diplomatic status the genii is out of the bottle. Or so goes the thinking.
With other nations it might be a much more sure proposition. But with Syria there’s no sure proposition.
The precedent is bad and there is no need to consult congress for action short of war.
But as a political move this is great since if the Congress says no way, as it likely will, then he has all the cover he could need to refuse to intervene and the GOP interventionists will have a hard time pinning the blame on him.
Unless they start to insist that, after all, the president does need a congressional OK for action short of war.
Given their whining about Libya and their urgent desire to wrong-foot Obama, the right will be all over the map on this question, stepping on their own feet and unable to get a coherent message going.
Much like the Democrats, with their pro-and anti-interventionist factions split on the substantive and constitutional issues, just like the GOP.
The precedent is bad?
Because the pro-war factions on the left and the right are Red-Queening things, as usual: “First the verdict , then the trial!”
Children have been getting killed all along in Syria, it’s kind of in the nature of civil wars that innocents get killed.
But apparently it’s the manner of how the children get killed that is more important…a child killed by sarin is inherently more precious than a child killed by ordinary artillery.
The question that we as a people have to ask ourselves is:
“Will what we do increase or decrease human suffering?”
Blowing up some military installations will not accomplish that. At this point, with Syria becoming a proxy war for all the factions in the Middle East, I’m not sure that anything we do would accomplish that, short of decapitating the leadership.
And that failed in Iraq.
SO, pro “Do Something!!!” crowd, the ones who want obama to order the bombs and missiles to fly, what do YOU suggest we do?
Oh, the pres doesn’t get to revise the constitution at will.
Obama has seen the writing on the wall, and knows that despite a compelling case for a need to send a message about chemical weapons, Americans just don’t want it. He also knows that the Syria situation is likely to explode into something far worse in the near future one way or the other.
So why not lay it at the feet of the GOP house? He probably believes they’ll say no, at which point they have publicly bought into the consequences of inaction.
If the GOP says yes, that gets more complicated. But they haven’t been able to say yes to anything else, so I’d be surprised if they did.
I think this may be Starsky and Hutch diplomacy in the era of US as global cop. Obama gets to portray the bad cop, Congress the good cop. The bad guys in the gang are all the dictators and militants holding CW or thinking of acquiring them. Assad is just the low level punk who got caught.
The plan is to prolong the time Assad has to sweat this out while attempting to put a squeeze on the whole gang to get them to step down on their CW ambitions.
I don’t know who gets to slide over the hood of the car.
Especially when the House Republicans are getting really tired of waiting for a plausible excuse to impeach him. Benghazi was a dud, but shoot a bunch of missiles at Syria without their approval?
And it’s also part of this larger thing where he’s just trying to get them to do their fucking jobs. If their dereliction of duty forces his to act autocratically, that is an extremely bad precedent. But for instance, if they don’t get their heads out of their asses and raise the debt ceiling, what choice is he going to have?
In this case all I can really say is that I don’t want to shoot missiles at Syria, so I approve.
Why would a no vote from Congress negatively affect the US’s standing in the world? Does the US’s current standing in the world hinge on the president having unilateral authority to take military action? That’s just a strange thing to say.
If anything, it might reassure people that we still have checks and balances of some sort.