Saving Presidential Face

     The Syrian situation appears to be heating up with the help of Republicants in Congress as they prepare to vote on military action in a place where there is no U.S. national security interest. The two salient points for me that have been illuminated with the passage of the last week are the inclusion of Congress in President Obama's decision on what action will be taken in Syria by the U.S. military, and the almost Pavlovian way in which the Left, in and out of the media, have condemned Bashar Al Assad for the chemical attack in a suburb outside Damascus two weeks ago that killed 1400 people.
     Last week, when United Nations inspectors were still dodging bullets on their fact-finding mission to the Damascus suburb where the deadly attack occurred, President Obama and his minions were making the case to the American people, as well as to Republicants in Congress, that he could act alone and did not need congressional approval to use military force in Syria. Now the President is seeking congressional approval like a teenage boy seeks out the approval of the teenage girls that he spent most of his early childhood teasing and pulling their pigtails. The reason is clear, i.e., the President, with his inaction for two years while tens of thousands of Syrians were dying in the uprising, and because he shot off his big mouth about a red line being crossed with chemical weapons, has painted the United States into a proverbial corner. He needs cover if things go badly in Syria, he needs his favorite whipping boys, the Republicants.
     The automatic acceptance by those on the Left, in and out of the media, that Bashar Al Assad ordered the chemical attack, when there really is no conclusive evidence to support that supposition, has played into the Obama regime's agenda to advance as truth that which they do not know to be true in order to support his decision. In the Summer of 2012, rebel forces took control of a Syrian government installation where chemical weapons were known to be stored, and then Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, said that those weapons may have fallen into the hands of the rebels. Now the Obama administration is flatly saying that the rebel forces could not have been responsible for the recent chemical attack in an effort to frame the Assad regime, because they had no access to chemical weapons of any kind. I guess the President has conveniently forgotten about last Summer's raid, where it is very likely the rebels could have acquired chemical weapons. I have no love for Assad, I am just saying that the evidence does not show conclusively who used the weapons, and the rebels did have motive and opportunity.
     So far I have heard people on the Right and on the Left support military action in Syria. Of course the action is to be limited in scope and duration, giving the target of that military action ample time to move installations and weapons and hunker down until the American storm is over. On the Right (sort of) are the usual suspects, John McCain, Lindsey Graham and the rest of the Democrat-lites in the Republicant party. I even heard Senator McCain say that Bashar Al Assad must be punished for the attack, showing once again how his years in Washington have diminished the good Senator's ability to think for himself and corrupted his moral compass. Since when is the United States military a tool to be used by politicians to "punish" leaders who may or may not have used chemical weapons on their own people? And many of those supporting military intervention seem to have only the flimsy reason of President Obama's "red line" comment several months back.
     I suppose we are to believe that our military personnel, our allies in the region and our common sense which would prevent us from actually helping our enemy which now populates the rebel movement, should all be put at risk so that our President can save face and play golf with a clear conscious.