Friday, August 30, 2013

Master of Indecision

The British people, through their parliamentary representation, have said “fuck you” to America’s Nobel Peace Prize recipient in his drive to start another war, something that our Congress as a whole would almost certainly not do. Congress will be critical of him after he starts the war and make ineffectual gestures trying to get him to stop said war, but Congress never actually stops a president from doing anything.

That suggests that America, which claims to have invented democracy, has given up on it, while Britain, which fought a war with America to prevent the invention of democracy, is still operating in a democratic manner. Who could have predicted that?

Part of it may have to do with the fact that we directly elect our President, while they do not directly elect their Prime Minister. So if they get an idiot in Downing Street they are perfectly free to turn on him in a heartbeat, while if we get an idiot in the White House, which we usually do Well, you get the point. Democrats are still required to continue their adoring support of a Democratic president, and must even deny that he’s an idiot.

This particular saga of idiocy started with “Assad must go.” Nobody has ever explained the reason for that masterpiece of illogic. It was not based, certainly, on America’s interests because Assad was actually serving our interests rather well and had even made overtures of peace towards us and toward Israel. He was not coping very will with the flood of refugees from Iraq, admittedly, but who caused that mess?

The administration tried to explain it based on Assad being a “brutal dictator,” but that explanation has always struggled since we support equally brutal dictators in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Qatar, to name just a few, and have supported far worse dictators in the past. Perhaps Mr. Obama personally hasn’t, but we’re talking about national policy here, not presidential personal whim.

He accelerated the idiocy with the “chemical weapons would be a red line” thing, which is what we call in sports lingo an “unforced error.” That means the opponent did not knock the ball out of your hands, you just got butter fingers and dropped the damned thing without contact. An answer along the lines of “I don’t discuss hypotheticals” would have made perfect sense, but no, he decides he needs to look all manly and tough. Oops, somebody fall on that ball.

And so the big moment arrives, the “red line is crossed” and Keystone Kops ensues. Obama gets all “we know who done it, we have no doubt, and we are kicking ass big time,” followed by Wait for it Crickets.

“We don’t need Congress, or the United Nations,” he says, “because we have a large coalition of nations beside us on this issue.” Not Russia or China, of course. And, oops, not Britain either. Nor Germany. The “Coalition Of The Willing” suddenly doesn’t believe us and our “definite proof” which we will not reveal because it would “compromise our sources,” and has become the “Coalition Of The Unwilling”

The word “compromise” has two meanings, you realize; one is to reveal who they are, the other is to reveal that they don’t exist. The longer we refuse to reveal them, the more it appears that we fear the second meaning. At this point, even our own intelligence services do not believe what our own president is claiming.

The military opposed the use of military force until the executive said he is definitely going to do it, at which point they began saying, "We are ready any time he gives the word." Sec’y of Defense, CJOS, and several Admirals are champing at the bit. “The ships are on station right now,” they say, ”and we can fire missiles within minutes of the President giving the word.”

Days later Prez is still silent, carrying fecklessness to new heights.

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