Respect for Mitt Romney?

The grave question the Constitution tasks senators to answer is whether the president committed an act so extreme and egregious that it rises to the level of a high crime and misdemeanor. Yes, he did.

Mitt Romney via the New York Times
C-SPANSenator Mitt Romney votes to convict President Trump – Feb 5, 2020

…but even Mitt Romney thought it was okay for the president to stonewall the House of Representatives in their desire to investigate the president. Again I ask, who would have thought this way if Obama had stonewalled all eight (yes, eight) of the Benghazi hearings? Almost no one.

RAnt(hony)-ings

Military Intervention in Syria is the Wrong Answer

I think it says somewhere in an important federal document Congress has the power to declare war. The constitutional scholar currently occupying the White House should know this. While President Obama could pull a Bush and pretend moving into Syria is covered under the broad authorization given to President Bush for his War on Terror, I think most Americans will not accept this conclusion.

Conservative memories are even more selective than average people, when it comes to the subject of the actions of their leaders. Conservatives and their leadership have been foursquare in favor of every military adventure the US has embarked upon; with the exception of every military adventure initiated by a sitting Democratic president. At least, this is the way it has been since Jimmy Carter authorized the rescue operation in Iran that ended in disaster

Americans never were in harm’s way militarily in Libya, the military action that the world just came out of. I heard more neocon whining than I care to remember on that subject. Whining about Obama cowardly allowing the French to lead the fight in Libya, as if France didn’t have stakes in seeing the unrest in North Africa settled. As if all of Europe didn’t have higher stakes in the Arab Spring not devolving into chaos than the US did. Obama wisely refused to put Americans into harm’s way in that conflict. Conservatives wanted Obama to do more in Libya. They wanted him to do more right up until the #Benghazi attack, when they suddenly decided it was bad to have Americans in harm’s way and how did Obama allow this to happen?

I floated the question of impeachment when President Obama first announced intentions to intervene in Libya. When he then allowed France to use our facilities to intervene in Libya under UN sanction, I still wasn’t happy about it, but with American servicemen out of harm’s way, it was a moot point. we were not at war, the EU was, using NATO resources that they help pay for. I cared not one bit when Gaddafi got what was coming to him. Like Bush I’s buddy Saddam Hussein, I was unmoved by his suffering at the hands of his people. Dictators sign up for being torn limb from limb by their own people when they become dictators in the first place. I don’t shed tears for dead dictators.

IF Obama goes into Syria with our forces and doesn’t consult Congress, it’s likely an impeachable act. The vast majority of Americans have found their antiwar sentiments again; they are war weary now. Liberals put Obama into office with the understanding he was going to end the wars Bush started. Liberals and antiwar types mistakenly believed this could be done instantly after Obama was elected, and then punished him for not achieving the impossible by not going to the polls in support of a Democratic legislature in 2010.

The limited strikes they are discussing, designed to degrade the Syrian government’s ability to use chemical weapons (if it’s such a big deal, where were the voices of dissent when Bush I coordinated with Saddam to use them on Iranian forces?) will be essentially no different than the hundreds of drone strikes we’ve conducted in countries we aren’t at war with. The lines of what is or isn’t war are blurred, but even Jefferson himself did not consult Congress before sending the navy to Tripoli to deal with the pirates, and they invaded Libya. Congress should be given the chance to weigh in, but only the military and intelligence forces know whether actions in Syria can be conducted without starting a wider war on one hand, or are necessary to prevent further casualties including possible American casualties, on the other.

The blanket allowance that the President could pursue a war on terror was used to go into Afghanistan and then congress confirmed that that SAME allowance would apply to Iraq. Bush II followed the exact same course that Obama will be forced to pursue, eventually. First assert that actions are covered, and then punting to Congress for confirmation, which they will give. W was going into Iraq anyway, because he demonstrably manufactured excuses to go. The same can not be said of President Obama.

In any case, the vast majority of Americans (as polls show) would be opposed to the move to open a wider war in Syria. Most of those people are demonstrably liberal. I invite you, dear reader, to join them.

Facebook status and associated comments edited, expanded and backdated.

Postscript

The Obama Regime.

That’s what he called it. The Obama regime. He said it with so much venom that I did a double-take. Really? Regime? The Obama regime? Why so much hatred for Obama? He wasn’t a Republican, my antagonist of the moment, with all the delusions being a member of that party carries with it. No, he was one of those anarchist happy go lucky, everything is roses in the natural world kind of guys. He just made his presidential hatred list this way,

Reagan=Bush=Clinton=Bush=Obama=Trump

…although he did concede that Trump was really in a different scale of worse, even for a loathsome president. It still baffled me. No really, why is Obama so bad that you would spit at him like that? I linked Obama Best President Since Eisenhower just to show how I saw the man as president. I mean, you don’t believe the #Benghazi bullshit, you aren’t a delusional birther like the Birther-in-Chief, you don’t think that the attorney general committed any crimes. What, exactly, do you think Obama did that is so bad as to make his presidency a regime?

Libya. Libya was his reason. Libya? I asked him. That French run ouster of Muammar Gaddafi? Obama’s war, he said. Frankly, the hatred for Obama blew my mind. I started to write a separate article on the subject, but then I stumbled across the above reply to Robert Reich that I had written in reflection on the potential war in Syria with the Libyan experience fresh in memory. So I am appending this note to those reflections. Perhaps this will morph into another article eventually.

The three articles that he produced to prove his point are as follows, with my comments. The Guardian article Libyan bombing ‘unconstitutional’, Republicans warn Obama is based on a single related quote from legislative Republicans that mischaracterizes what occurred in Libya. I would point to everything that Republicans did before or since and ask them to characterize their behavior as substantially different in any way from Obama’s. It wasn’t. In fact, compared to Trump’s betrayal of the Kurds in Syria, Obama’s allowing NATO to conduct the EU’s war was perhaps the epitome of discretion. The Republicans seem to have little problem with Trump’s behavior, so I’m sticking with hypocrisy as the definition of their behavior.

The second was this New York Times op-ed penned by Bruce Ackerman Legal Acrobatics, Illegal War. Well, it’s an opinion piece, for starters. Not a report of facts. Which is the main problem with the op-ed. It’s an opinion about an interpretation of facts on the ground that isn’t necessarily true. Obama allowed NATO forces to be used against Libya, absent US leadership. He did not conduct a war in Libya without authorization. If you clarify what the objection is, the objection vanishes. If there was a problem present, the problem was the existence of NATO. I’m pretty sure NATO won’t survive the current president’s tenure. If so, the problem is solved. It isn’t, however, Obama’s fault that the gray area existed to be taken advantage of.

The third article was another Guardian piece 41 men targeted but 1,147 people killed: US drone strikes – the facts on the ground. I’ve said several times over the years, we will rue the day we ever put ordinance on drones and used them as weapons of war. Shades of the Terminator aside, we are simply waiting now for drones to be used against Americans, probably civilians, and then we’ll have another Geneva Convention where we will pretend we didn’t start this problem but we’ll help stop it now. This is the one point of legitimate criticism that could be leveled against Obama. But even that point has be leavened with the knowledge that if we hadn’t used drones we would have had to send in strike teams to do the dirty work. There would have been fewer deaths of innocent civilians, but we would have lost a lot more of our own soldiers.

The third article, just for the sake of observation, isn’t about Libya. But since Obama followed the exact same rules as Bush II did in that instance, it also isn’t something that he can be singled out as doing all by himself. The continuing drone war is an aftereffect of allowing the war criminals from the Bush II administration to fly free. Not pressing for prosecutions of the war criminals? Something else Obama could be blamed for. I mentioned that in the Obama Best President Since Eisenhower article.

I don’t consider myself knowledgeable enough to have a valid opinion about whether drones were worth the cost in human lives, or will be judged as the correct thing to do by future historians. I can only go by what we have experienced in our brief lives, and the injustice that war itself represents, even though war is the last, desperate act to find justice. Ask the Kurds if the US not putting boots on the ground in Syria, in front line combat, was the right thing to do. Knowing what we know now in 2019. If there are any of them left to ask, that is.

The tragic end of the Syrian civil war may well be the last thing that Obama can be blamed for, in the long run. Could any of us have known how this would turn out five short years ago? Could we really?

#Benghazi, The Original Dumpster Fire

I said I really have nothing else to add to this when I posted this image on Facebook, but then I got pushback from a friend on it. Not just any friend, but someone I’ve shared dinner and drinks with, a real life (RL) friend. Yes, I actually have a life that isn’t on the ‘net. He didn’t like that I put up a meme that he didn’t agree with, and then didn’t add my two cents worth to top it off. I didn’t make him feel better for my having posted an image that he disagreed with.

There’s no point in embroidering on a concise thought, which is what the pictured meme image represents. Concise thinking on a specific subject. Either the snippet or image speaks for itself (and if I pass it on, it does for me) or it fails to pass the ‘concise’ test. If I’m expected to write a ten page essay on every subject that comes across my wall that I agree with, I would wear my fingers down typing and would very shortly following have no friends.

Obama is bringing all the heat on himself with his usual lack of transparency.

my RL friend

When I repost an image or a quote, it is not passing on “talking points” in my estimation; unless you are going to chalk up all political action to being transparent efforts to control the conversation on any given subject, from some central office somewhere that sets an agenda. If anything, using the phrase lack of transparency marks someone as a FOX news watcher, someone absorbing talking points. I’ve never heard that phrase uttered in relation to Obama in any real sense outside of Republicans claiming that amongst the various other crazy characterizations like socialist.

Obama is as transparent as any other president has been. He is as centrist as every president who served before him has been. His centrist nature is why liberals don’t like him very much.

I’m loathe to accept the accusation that I am taking a side (especially on the subject at hand) It’s pretty cut and dried what is or isn’t legal, in a general sense. I will say Obama has committed crimes. It’s a near impossibility for a modern sitting President to not do so, considering just how far outside the Constitutional parameters our current government is. The fact is, and I’ve said this since Obama took office, that his performance as President has been exceptional in comparison to the last three Presidents; better than all of them combined, in my estimation.

Which is why the bullshit thrown up over Benghazi rings even more false than most of the accusations thrown at the man. It was trumped up from the beginning, and the likeliest reason for his silence is because Benghazi was a secret CIA location and he cannot speak about it. Something that the leadership in the House and Senate would know he has to be silent about, so they know they can whale away on him over it, and not fear retaliation. A CIA rendition site, something that the Republican leadership would actually be in favor of were he a Republican president, thereby making it hypocrisy.

If anything Obama is too passive, too willing to compromise, domestically. He’s too close to being right of center as is to be able to make anything other than a step to the left a betrayal of his own base. And yet he steps to the right time and time again, and is rewarded for that with even more vitriol from his political opponents on the right.

Lack of transparency? How about the three times Bush was warned that attacks were planned using domestic airliners, but got left out of the 911 report? The WMD that they never admitted was a complete shell game? The torture that they still won’t admit was torture? There was never an accounting that matches what the President has been put through over the one embassy attack he had to deal with. How many hearings were held dealing with the multiple embassy attacks on Bushes watch? Why aren’t they all serving long jail sentences, as they should be?

…Well I guess we can blame that last one on Obama. I’d put him in jail right next to the others, but they get to go first. I resent the casting of #Benghazi as if there are multiple truths, as if there are two versions of fact. As if the deaths of thousands of people amounts to nothing more than another sports event with a contested outcome. As if the Iraq war (not 9/11) W’s real crime, in any way, shape or form resembles a single embassy attack on Obama’s watch.

Specifically I resent the insinuation that I am so lax in my thinking as to use Fahrenheit 9/11 as a reference for news and fact. There is a detailed timeline before and after the events of 9-11 in Deadly Decisions: How False Knowledge Sank the Titanic, Blew Up the Shuttle, and Led America into War, a book I’ve recommended countless times already, outlining the number of times that the President, his staff, and congress were advised that there were credible threats to the US, including attacks from the air using our own aircraft. They ignored all of them, and it was stated at the time that it would take an event similar to what happened on 9-11 to wake them up to the threat.

What I am suggesting by sharing the image is that this outpouring of rage at Obama over #Benghazi is nothing more than another FOX-lead, conservative-backed hatchet job on the President. That if suspicions are born out, what we will discover was that there was a secret CIA black site there, and that CIA bungled the security. That the pretense that one man can juggle all the information concerning the running of a beast the size of the federal government is itself a fantasy.

The outrage is false, because the motivation is false. It started with the conservatives hypocritically opposing the President first on doing nothing while the Libyan revolution (and the Arab spring) started, then opposing his move to protect the civilians there, then opposing the move to let NATO handle it and remove ourselves from control of the situation (as if we could control it) and when the embassy attack occurred, the conservatives pounced on that horse and rode it to town, convinced they finally had the vehicle to take Obama down. False, from beginning to end.

My willingness to see Obama imprisoned (mentioned above) relates directly to his negligence of duty to the laws of the US which he pledged to uphold and defend; his failure to prosecute the Bush administration for war crimes, his failure to prosecute Wall Street for their frauds and money laundering, his failure to end the Bush era war crimes and in fact increase the level of criminality by using the military under the guidance of the CIA to attack citizens within nations that we are not at war with.

Real crimes, in other words, not make believe incidents fabricated in the minds of Conservative/Republican leaders who simply want their power back so that they can continue to do what Obama is doing now. Do what he’s doing and do more of it to boot. That is the falsity and hypocrisy at the heart of #Benghazi. And I’m almost ashamed to call someone who falls for this kind of crap a friend.

An argument I had on Facebook during the #Benghazi dumpster fire reposted to the blog.
BTW, GOP House Intel Committee Report – No Obama Benghazi Wrongdoing
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Featured image is a screenshot of Salon.com – Benghazi, Joe McCarthy and the Witch Trials