Byron York provides 5 reasons why Republican lawmakers may vote against authorizing military force against Syria. Nowhere on his list is any healthy respect for public opinion. Since politicians do deem their reelection prospects a rather important consideration, this is a glaring failure of analysis. If you are a member of Congress, you not only need to look at the current polls, but you have to make an effort to predict how a ‘yes’ vote will look in retrospect.
One idea is that by severely limiting what is authorized, Congress can significantly diminish the risk of blowback or mission creep. Another consideration that could work along with this is that the administration is not compelled to use the authority they are given but might be able to use the authority as leverage to force some creative compromise on the Russians, the Iranians, and the Assad regime. For example, would the regime agree to a voluntary disarming of their chemical weapons stockpile in return for not getting bombed? Could the Russians facilitate that?
But this would require skeptical members of Congress on both sides of the aisle to place a high degree of trust in the administration. And trust is in short supply.
Does the Hastert Rule survive this vote?
I think the Hastern rule died in the 112th Congress with the influx of the Tea Party Mega-Neener Brigade.
No, already formally excluded for this vote.
Pelosi: “President Obama didn’t draw the red line,” she said. “Humanity drew it decades ago.”
Hear, hear. Now let’s see if the people in charge can come up with a practical plan that a) deters Assad and others from future chemical attacks b) brings along our allies c) improves our image in the middle east and elsewhere
Unfortunately, the Venn diagram may not have intersecting areas on this one.
I doubt that our bombing Syria is going to improve our image in the ME OR elsewhere. But we seem never to care about what the crucial audience will think of our actions since that’s not what Very Serious statesmen do…
Pelosi: “President Obama didn’t draw the red line,” she said. “Humanity drew it decades ago.”
So Pelosi will advocate for the U.S. to bomb itself? Or has she forgot the past 10+ years?
?? Can’t seem to recall the US killing thousands with Sarin recently.
Forget Fallujah, do you? We’re talking about chemical weapons. What about that don’t you understand?
No use of sarin gas there. Nope.
White phosphorus is not a listed chemical weapon (as are most incendiaries) but the use of any chemicals to intentionally kill people is considered a chemical weapon violation. The Fallujah example falls on trying to demonstration that it was the unit commander’s intention to use white phosphorus as a chemical weapon. One of the pieces sustaining that idea is some intemperate remarks that were made during the battle. The Wikipedia article on the Second Battle of Fallujah provides the complicated details.
And BTW, depleted uranium is dangerous because it is a heavy metal, not because its radioactivity is significant. Calling it a nuclear weapon is nuts. Call it a radiological weapon is merely inaccurate. And it is the detritus of war not an deliberately targeted weapon of war (except for its mass in artillery shells).
Sarin is a weaponized chemical. There is a huge difference. The moral equivalency argument doesn’t work here.
Pelosi offers a good reminder. Despite decades of collaboration and nearly universal condemnation of chemical weapons, the world has been backsliding on that.
Napalm and white phosphorus offer a more dignified way to die.
Bob, for the past few hundred thousand years we’ve been murdering each other in ever-more efficient, effective, and horrible ways. The few cooperative international treaties we’ve been able to cobble together, that have only quite recently (on the scale of these things) attempted to slightly allay this deadly killing spree should not be allowed to decay into irrelevance.
Sometimes, international norms have to be enforced at the point of a sword. It would be great if this were not the case here, but I doubt that can happen. (Personally I ‘m hoping that Scotty can beam Assad straight to the Hague, but I’m not holding my breath.)
I’d be surprised if anyone will know what Boner’s Boneheads will do right up until they start the vote, including Speaker Bonehead. Presumably the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body will approve military action because that seems always to be viewed as the responsible thing to do in our militarist society.
As for not having to “use” the authority, if Obama & Kerry wanted to negotiate away their bombing for liquidating the prohibited weapons with Russian help, they could have gone down that path without bringing in the dysfunctional braindead Repub Congress. It seems they want the hostile Repubs to be invested in the bombing, to the extent we can tell what anyone in DC “wants” anymore…
Now we have the spectacle of a Dem sec of state invoking “Munich”(!) against Assad junior to cow questioning Dems, so the dark comedy is reaching a high point. Whatever would we do without WWII and its model dictator?
Interestingly, Obama seems to be giving Congress and the House especially a long overdue lesson in “Grow the F Up”.
Maybe this will translate into other collaboration in actually governing.
Or not.
Nope. This is the same congress that was unable to pass a farm bill. Now you think they will pass legislation to allow Obama to bomb Syria and then they will vote to default their own government.
Unfortunately, for both Republicans and Democrats it is coming down to partisan strategy. That means that the Republicans, minus the usual warmongering showboats, will vote No and force the Democrats to whip their caucus to vote Yes in order for the measure to pass. There are going to be some reluctant Democrats walking the plank again—for the sake of the Party. And the measure will squeak by.
None of this will have anything to do with the merits of the vote, in part because the White House did not frame the vote on the merits. It reluctantly agreed that it had to go through Congress but asserted the President’s Article II powers as commander-in-chief to do as he sees fit.
It’s a missed opportunity to actually force responsibility on Congress.
Nope. No POTUS would seek to do that. It would only give Congress an opportunity to read the bloody Constitution.
How could the president force it but calling for a vote? News reports say Pelosi isn’t even whipping votes, although who knows what’s really happening.
It does not look like it will come down to a partisan divide.
SotH Boehner has already spoke of personal support and urged other Republicans to follow his lead. But he did say his members are free to cast a vote of personal conscience. Thus reinforcing his reputation for limp celery leadership.
Ironically, if they were really working for the sake of the democratic party, they’d vote no.
Nowhere on his list is any healthy respect for public opinion. Since politicians do deem their reelection prospects a rather important consideration, this is a glaring failure of analysis.
Do you honestly think that a Syrian vote in September 2013 is going to influence any votes in November 2014?
I can’t see it. It’s not an occupation like Iraq and Afghanistan or as partially occurred in Kosovo. Purely air strikes. Unless this triggers some major unforeseen event this issue will have been completely forgotten about by swing voters come the next election – and frankly I don’t think it would do much to influence their votes now.
I’m not talking about the positions the voters should take, I’m talking about the reality of their behavior.
Before “shock and awe,” Iraq wasn’t an occupation either. It was to be a two week war, would only cost $20 billion that would be paid for out of Iraqi oil revenues, freedom and democracy would immediately flourish out of the depleted uranium wasteland, and American soldiers would come home to parades, good jobs, and wealth.
If the Assad regime falls w/in the next couple weeks, the DEMs running for office in 2014 might well point to these days to remind voters how savvy was their President in the face of so much early opposition. America likes it some successful muscular foreign policy.
OTOH if the Syria situation is still bogged up to or close to election day the GOPpers will make hay pointing out how the DEMs dropped the FP ball.
OTOOH if it is a cruise missile strike w/little effect and Assad does not fall for several months afterward, then it might well be forgotten by then. Just like the voters have forgotten… Libido? No that’s not right. Starts with an “L” though. Llama?
If Assad falls within the next two weeks, the rebels will be lobbing their newly captured poison gas artillery shells into Shite neighborhoods within two months.
And the republicans will hang that around Obama’s and the Democrat’s necks like a big rotting seagul.
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Because everyone in Syria is as stupid as Team Assad?
This sounds as credible as the early claims that the rebels gassed their own mothers, grandparents, and children just to embarrass Assad. But you know those blood-thirsty ferinners…
Are you claiming the rebels have NOT been committing atrocities of their own?
.
He’s just claiming they’d be a little brighter than to shoot themselves in the face that fast and instead use conventional means to shoot their enemies in the face.
Plus I am saying the rebels did not gas their own families in the event which sparked the current international crisis. The Assad side did the gassing.
On a side note I found it rather amazing how eager many people were to believe the rebels gassed themselves. These rebel groups originated in their home neighborhoods. The rebel groups defending the gassed areas are largely made up of the sons and husbands of the very people slaughtered by the sarin gas.
The rebels tend to fight where they live. Hence so many small uncoordinated rebel groups with so mnay different goals. But one goal all these groups share: protecing their own families from death and destruction.
Yet these same rebels would intentionally gas their own neighborhoods? If people thought of matters in those terms I think there would have been fewer claims that this was all a hoax designed to discredit Assad.
Correction: The rebels were gassing other Syrians’ grandmothers and children. Remember, lots of these rebels aren’t Syrians at all.
The many rebel fighting groups are so many and are so splintered because most every one of them arouse out of neighborhood teams motivated to protect their families from Assad’s rampages. These groups fight where they live. Some other group trying to enter their area would be known as outsiders to the people fighting in their own home neighborhoods.
So these same people who have fought for months and years to protect their neighborhoods are one day OK with gassing their life-long friends and family members?
What a strange argument!
As the rebels made advances in the Ghouta suburbs they managed to never leave their own neighborhoods and loved ones. How does one do that? Do they drag their houses behind them like artillery?
This idea that everyone fighting in and around Damascus is doing so from their front porch is ridiculous.
He’s basically right. Some areas of Syria are predominantly one or another of Alawite, Christian, Kurdish, Sunni and so forth. Have a look.
You are aware that Damascus is a sprawling metropolis with mixed neighborhood, no?
You are also aware that pre-sarin open source intelligence reports talked about rebel advances throughout the southeastern suburbs, no?
You don’t make advances by staying at home, and this argument that they wouldn’t attack their own families is ridiculous. If it happened, it was probably Saudis who were in charge of the operation. If it was done right, the people who did it would have thought they were attacking the enemy.
I went over this already.
But, our government and press have decided what happened, and we must hope that they are either right or that no one ever finds out that they are wrong.
“Damascus is a sprawling metropolis with mixed neighborhood.” Of course. That’s rather the whole point, don’t you think? As mixed neighbourhoods how could causing casualties among their own “grandmothers and children” be avoided?
You are aware that, although there are predominant splits on sectarian lines, for various other reasons not everybody in every neighborhood reflects the dominant political alignment of the neighborhood. It is a civil war, with all of the confusion that that includes.
That’s my point. See above. In response to the credibility of “lobbing their newly captured poison gas artillery shells into Shite neighborhoods within two months.”
The people who were gassed presumably would like to see the people who gassed them be identified at minimum and punished if possible.
And we can agree (you and I at least) that the rebels who came from gassed areas would not act to gas their own families and friends.
So that leaves conspiring rebels from other areas to sneak into the gassed areas and release the poison.
So why has not a single witness from the gassed areas come forth with sightings of unknown people acting suspiciously? This wasn’t a Boston bombing scale. This was huge and widespread. But not a single eyewitness.
Oh well that’s easy. The conspirators built rockets using the same parts Assad’s side uses, filled them with poison gas supplied from the Saudi chem weapons program which does never existed, mounted rocket motors obtained from Soviet/Russian 122mm munitions the Assad regime has, to create the same jury-rigged system Assad’s side uses, then launched them at the same exact time Assad’s 4th Armored division began a normal bombardment of the same exact 12 areas. Because they knew during the several weeks of preparation needed to pull off this stunt that Assad’s forces would begin a conventional artillery bombardment at certain exact time. Then the rebels without any experience or training in using artillery rockets launched their poison attack against the same 12 areas the 4th Armored was shelling, scoring hits on all of them, while fooling American spy birds that the launch flashes came from Assad-controlled territory. All because the conspirators KNEW this would bring about a US attack which would destroy Assad completely. (How’s that regime-changing attack from the US looking by the way?)
And not a single witness has come forth to back that either. Nor a single iota of info from a non-US source to back it.
But it MUST have happened, because otherwise the side with the gas the artillery and the history of doing such things – did it.
You know, I have been wasting far to much time typing on the internet and what I type makes not one bit of difference. So let people believe what they desperately need to cling to.
The rebels were not gassing anyone. The Assad side gassed rebel neighborhoods. Stop desperately clutching to slander and move on the the debate about what shuold or should not be done in the wake of Assad’s use of sarin gas.
Since the Russians have not caved in so far, it is unlikely they will cave in after the vote. Especially so unless the vote is a both a runaway blowout in support of military action, and one that allows the POTUS great flexibility in what that action might look like.
If this Syrian defection is true, that too might influence Russia to give up the charade.
under Adda’s brother are the likely culprit.
http://www.israeldefense.com/?CategoryID=483&ArticleID=2422
Ignore the last line in the parent post that was a screwed up link paste.
My guess is the whole pivot towards Congress is stalling for more time; one thing Congress does expertly is delay action.
My guess is that everyone want to get out from under this. I’m surprised nobody has commented on Booman’s thought:
I’m guessing that might be worth pursuing. For once the Russians and Iran might want those weapons out of Assad’s reach too. You can’t tell me the Russians seriously believe their own denials of his regime’s culpability; but they seem to have no choice. To admit it would knock over their Middle East apple cart. Ditto Iran. Watch this space, I reckon.