Month: August 2013

Leftists, Code Pink, and a smattering of conservatives and libertarians staged a vociferous protest outside the White House while President Obama made his Syria speech this afternoon. The police forcibly cleared the street (though not the sidewalk) shortly before Obama began talking. Some folks suggested that Obama might have delayed his speech because of the noisy chants behind heard inside. (I have no confirmation on that.) I disagree vigorously with the Answer folks on numerous issues but they raised a ruckus on the right side of the issue today.

Code Pink brought this great cutout today.

 

The Secret Service (or maybe Park Police) rode in to disrupt a peaceful protest.

 

This Park Service dude made a point to slowly scan everyone in the audience with his camera.

 

A group of Syrians who vociferously favored U.S. bombing Syria.  Go figure.

 

Some conservative and libertarian protestors:

 

On Twitter @jimbovard

Other antiwar writing at  http://www.jimbovard.com/blog/

“Mr. President, in the case of military operations in Libya you stated that authorization from Congress was not required because our military was not engaged in “hostilities.” In addition, an April 1, 2011, memorandum to you from your Office of Legal Counsel concluded:…”President Obama could rely on his constitutional power to safeguard the national interest by directing the anticipated military operations in Libya—which were limited in their nature, scope, and duration—without prior congressional authorization.’”
“We view the precedent this opinion sets, where “national interest” is enough to engage in hostilities without congressional authorization, as unconstitutional.”
Text from letter of Rep. Scott Rigell (R, VA) to Pres. Obama
Signed by 140 Reps, including 21 Democrats

The letter of Scott Rigell (1) to Barak Obama has exploded on the scene with its opening words:
“We strongly urge you to consult and receive authorization from Congress before ordering the use of U.S. military force in Syria. Your responsibility to do so is prescribed in the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution of 1973.
“While the Founders wisely gave the Office of the President the authority to act in emergencies, they foresaw the need to ensure public debate – and the active engagement of Congress – prior to committing U.S. military assets. Engaging our military in Syria when no direct threat to the United States exists and without prior congressional authorization would violate the separation of powers that is clearly delineated in the Constitution.”
With these perhaps historic words the Congress has begun to claw back its Constitutional right to decide issues of war and peace. Significantly the letter comes from a Republican lawmaker, and it is clearly a tribute to the leadership of the libertarians in the Republican Party, most notably Ron Paul, Justin Amash and Rand Paul.

But the situation is grave enough, possibly leading on to a World War, that 21 Democrats have challenged the President and their Party bosses to sign the statement. They are moving beyond partisanship as Ron Paul did in challenging George W. Bush on the war on Iraq.

Continue reading “Impeachment: Congress Fires Opening Shot Across Obama’s Bow.”

Though the world dodged a bullet with the British parliamentary vote Thursday against going to war, it also brought with it great dangers, notably that of complacency, today being registered in various places. Though the tactical victory in England over the parliamentary vote is important, it arguably makes the very short term dangers possibly greater, not less. The screaming front page massive headlines in the New York Times, "Obama Set for Limited Strike on Syria as British Vote No: Seeking Allies – Another Ship Moves In," the Wall Street Journal, "U.S. Prepares for Solo Strikes on Syria After Britain Balks," and Washington Post, "Obama Can Go it Alone on Syria: Lawmakers Clamor for a vote," in today’s morning papers say it all. One hopes against hope that one is wrong on this, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. US Secretary of State John Kerry invoked the catastrophe of World War I but seemed to understand none of its lessons about the dangers of using military force in a region already boiling over from ethnic and religious conflict, tension and violence, including by outside powers. The danger is that an already brutal internationalized Syrian civil war will become the flashpoint for even larger regional and global conflict. The stakes are enormous for as former US National Security Advisor and Dean of the American Foreign Policy Establishment Zbigniew Brzezinski states in a Wednesday, August 28, 2013 Financial Times op-ed, "The Steps That Obama Must Now Take On Syria,"

"In a worst-case scenario, this crisis could become reminiscent of the initially trivial violence in the Balkans a century ago."

What is being referred to here is of course the regional sectarian and ethnic conflict that led to one of the seminal catastrophes of the 20^th century, from which many others, including World War II flowed, namely World War I.

Continue reading “The Syrian Catastrophe, the British Parliamentary Vote and the Growing Risks of Regional and Global War*”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on CNN’s Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer today:

In response to Bashir Assad’s crossing of a "red line" by allegedly using chemical weapons against his own people, Secretary of State John Kerry cites his own fatherly feelings as justification for the all-but-inevitable looming US military intervention in Syria. "As a father, I can’t get the image out of my head, of a father who held up his dead child, wailing …"

Hopefully CNN will try extra hard to sanitize the war footage from Syria once the bombing starts, now that we know how badly dead Syrian kids upset Kerry. Because you can be sure there are a lot more dead Syrian kids on the way.

Of course, Kerry’s sensitivity to dead children is a bit like Carter having a problem with liver pills. This is the same John Kerry who served in Vietnam, and who backed two attacks on Iraq and one on Afghanistan, is it not? One of the most iconic images in the history of journalism is a little girl, naked and burning, running down a Vietnamese road after a chemical weapons attack by the United States. And the US all but condemned Al-Jazeera as a terrorist organization for airing images of Iraqi children incinerated in the American attack in 2003.

For that matter, US "redlining" of a country for using chemical weapons is also a bit odd. In the same press conference, Kerry spoke of holding Iraq accountable for violating international, historically established norms. But the US itself has quite a history of violating such norms. In WWII, for instance, the U.S. holds pride of place not only for the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo, but for being the first and only military power in history to burn hundreds of thousands of civilians alive with atomic weapons in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

As for chemical weapons, aren’t Agent Orange and napalm – the liquid fire used on that screaming little girl mentioned above – supposed to count? The cumulative effect of US chemical weapons use in Indochina is millions dead during the war in South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia – and millions more dead of cancer and genetic defects in the decades since.

Continue reading “John Kerry’s Tender Sensibilities”