Wehrwolfen
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Peter Wehner
09.02.2013
It’s reported that President Obama was ready to order a military strike against Syria, with or without Congress’s blessing, but “on Friday night, he suddenly changed his mind.” According to the Huffington Post:
Senior administration officials describing Obama’s about-face Saturday offered a portrait of a president who began to wrestle with his own decision – at first internally, then confiding his views to his chief of staff, and finally summoning his aides for an evening session in the Oval Office to say he’d had a change of heart.
In light of all this, it’s worth posing a few questions:
[Excerpt]
Read more:
Barack Obama
Of course had a Republican President done the same I'm sure Progressives would react the same and call for unity to back the President.
09.02.2013
It’s reported that President Obama was ready to order a military strike against Syria, with or without Congress’s blessing, but “on Friday night, he suddenly changed his mind.” According to the Huffington Post:
Senior administration officials describing Obama’s about-face Saturday offered a portrait of a president who began to wrestle with his own decision – at first internally, then confiding his views to his chief of staff, and finally summoning his aides for an evening session in the Oval Office to say he’d had a change of heart.
In light of all this, it’s worth posing a few questions:
1. Why didn’t the president seek congressional authority before the administration began to beat the war drums this past week? Did the idea not occur to him? It’s not as if this is an obscure issue. When you’re in the White House and preparing to launch military force against a sovereign nation, whether or not to seek the approval of Congress is usually somewhere near the top of the to-do list.
And why has the urgency to act that we saw from the administration during the last week–when Assad’s use of chemical weapons was referred to by the secretary of state as a “moral obscenity”–given way to an air of casualness, with Obama not even calling Congress back into session to debate his military strike against Syria?
2. The president didn’t seek congressional approval for his military strike in Libya. Why does he believe he needs it in Syria?
3. Mr. Obama, in his Rose Garden statement on Saturday, still insisted he has the authority to strike Syria without congressional approval. So what happens if Congress votes down a use-of-force resolution? Does the president strike Syria anyway? If so, will it be an evanescent bombing, intended to be limited in scope and duration, while doing nothing to change the war’s balance of power? Or does the president completely back down? Does he even know? Has he thought through in advance anything related to Syria? Or is this a case of Obama simply making it up as he goes along?
And why has the urgency to act that we saw from the administration during the last week–when Assad’s use of chemical weapons was referred to by the secretary of state as a “moral obscenity”–given way to an air of casualness, with Obama not even calling Congress back into session to debate his military strike against Syria?
2. The president didn’t seek congressional approval for his military strike in Libya. Why does he believe he needs it in Syria?
3. Mr. Obama, in his Rose Garden statement on Saturday, still insisted he has the authority to strike Syria without congressional approval. So what happens if Congress votes down a use-of-force resolution? Does the president strike Syria anyway? If so, will it be an evanescent bombing, intended to be limited in scope and duration, while doing nothing to change the war’s balance of power? Or does the president completely back down? Does he even know? Has he thought through in advance anything related to Syria? Or is this a case of Obama simply making it up as he goes along?
[Excerpt]
Read more:
Barack Obama
Of course had a Republican President done the same I'm sure Progressives would react the same and call for unity to back the President.