Successful Strategy Or Biggest Blunder ?

      Whether President Obama or Republicants get blamed for the partial shutdown of the federal government remains to be seen. But one positive outcome for the President can already be attributed to the shutdown, it has distracted the American public from the embarrassment that is the Obama administration's foreign policy blunders in the Middle East in general and Syria specifically. The Obama shutdown has almost completely erased Syria as an issue from the public discourse in this country, at least as it relates to the main stream media.
     It is hard to believe that it was less than two months ago that Bashar Al Assad was accused of the most heinous and despicable crime of using poisonous gas on his own people in a suburb outside Damascus, killing over a thousand people. At the time, Mr. Assad was roundly accused by the "world community" of being a monster, even though in the two years prior to the August 21st attack he was responsible for over one hundred thousand deaths of his countrymen. But those deaths by conventional weapons did not seem to trouble the world community or our very own president. In fact, President Obama drew his "red line", not at the slaughter of innocent men, women and children in the tens of thousands, but at the use of chemical weapons. This "red line", if crossed, would necessitate U.S. military involvement in the conflict.  
     After Bashar Al Assad boldly leaped over the "red line" and landed squarely on President Obama's words, it appeared the Syrian leader's days were indeed numbered. Mr. Obama and the rest of the intellectual elites at the United Nations maintained that Bashar must be punished by being removed as Syria's ruler. Then the Russians rescued both Bashar Al Assad as the Syrian people's chief tormentor and Barack Obama's impotence as a "red line" enforcer. This Russian "help" transformed Bashar Al Assad from murderous tyrant to the world's lead diplomat in ridding it of chemical weapons. And the United States and its President have been relegated to spectator of world events instead of a major participant in shaping them.
     If Bashar Al Assad ordered the use of chemical weapons by his military on August 21st, it was a brilliant strategy to involve the Russians in negotiating the destruction of those weapons, thereby distracting the "world community" from removing him as Syria's leader. If the Al Qaeda-lead rebels used the chemical weapons to put the final "red" nail in the coffin of Bashar Al Assad, they committed one of the biggest blunders in history. For the "red line", far from being a swan song for the Assad regime has been its triumphant march to securing the leadership of Syria and a more influential hand in the Middle East. 
    

Here Is Something The Left Can Blame On Bush, But They Will Not

     During the lead-up to the Iraq invasion in March of 2003, the longest and most telegraphed lead-up ever, George W. Bush succumbed to the false sense of amour against criticism that he thought including the "international community" would bring him. If the Germans had as much notice about Normandy as Saddam Hussein had about the U.S. invasion of his country, France, along with most of Europe would have been ceded to Adolf Hitler in World War II.
     The long and slow germination of the seeds of war in 2003, done to curry favor with the "international community", allowed Saddam to move his weapons of mass destruction, presumably to Syria where they now have become a thorn in the side of both the United States and the "international community." Furthermore, President Bush failed to curry favor with the very "international community" he allowed to affect U.S. foreign policy. In fact, he was savaged for the rest of his term as president by the very people whose sensibilities he had taken great pains to mollify. But I do not blame the former President, at the time, I too thought it was a good idea to exhaust all diplomatic remedies before attacking militarily.
     I now see how flaccid and ineffectual the United Nations and the rest of the so-called "international community" are and that they can not be counted upon to make lucid decisions or engage in moral actions as they relate to human rights or the stability and security of any region of the world. This lesson was sorely lacking from my own curriculum, but should not have been from the former president's, who had the opportunity to witness the complete and utter bumbling incompetence of the United Nations up close and personal for years. First as the son of a two-term Vice President of the United States and one term President and then as a newly elected President himself.
     Had President Bush not given Saddam Hussein the time to move his chemical weapons to Syria, the current President could not have made his now infamous "red line" statement. Sans the "red line" statement by President Obama and the clown-like antics of his Secretary of State, Vladimir Putin and the Russians would not have had this opportunity to reduce American influence in a very strategic part of the world, and in the process make the United States of America look foolish and irrelevant.
     I suppose of all the things for which the Left tries to blame President Bush, I have never heard them say that because he did not invade Iraq sooner and prevent the movement of Saddam's weapons, President Obama was made to look like a fool. I am not holding my breath that I will ever hear such an admission from anyone on the Left, because to do so would destroy the fragile little fantasy world they have constructed from lies. Lies that include, but are not limited to, Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, their intellects are superior to common sense and rational thought and that Barack Obama possesses an acumen for world diplomacy that no other world leader can match. The Leftist world must be lonely and cold without the comfort and warmth of truth and reality.    
    

It Is Deja Vu All Over Again

     This past weekend, the United States and Russia reached an agreement on the Syrian chemical weapons stash. The details of the deal are a far cry from the administration's position just a week ago on "punishing" Assad for using chemical weapons on his own people. And it certainly is nowhere close to the administration's previous insistence that Bashar Al Assad must be removed as the leader of Syria. Secretary of State John Kerry said the deal would "verify, verify, verify" that Bashar Al Assad's chemical weapons stash was destroyed, but he did not say how that was to be accomplished.
     There was some mention of United Nations inspectors, sanctions and empty threats of "further action" if Assad violated the terms of the sketchy agreement. At this point the "deal" sounds much like the "deal" made with Saddam Hussein after the first gulf war which lead to a decade of obfuscation and downright deceit from the Iraqi leader. It also lead to the Russians selling United Nations contraband items to Iraq against the sanctions that were supposedly in place.
     The "deal" does provide Bashar Al Assad with a week to formulate a list of what weapons he has, quantities of such weapons and locations. I am completely confident that old Bashar will be totally forthright and honest when compiling this list (he says with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek). This list is eerily similar to a list that was required of Saddam Hussein about his weapons of mass destruction. Remember the thousand pages of gibberish Saddam handed over to the UN and the international community? The data dump included everything from popular Iraqi recipes to the shoe sizes of every person in the Hussein government. Unfortunately it was a little light on information about his WMDs. I would not expect Assad's list to be so blatantly disrespectful of the process, however I am not naïve enough to believe that he will reveal everything about everything as it relates to his chemical weapons.
     This "deal", hatched by the Russians and Assad to lure the United States into the trap of allowing the "international community" to orchestrate our foreign policy, makes our president and his administration look like a bunch of rubes in a high stakes poker game with professional card players. It is exemplary of the mistaken view that the Left has about our adversaries like Russia. Barack Obama, and the rest of the Left intelligentsia, see diplomacy as conflict resolution, while Vladimir Putin and the Russians see it as part of their asymmetric warfare strategy.
     I learned this lesson my freshman year of high school from one of my teachers. At the time, President Carter was giving away the farm in the now infamous SALT talks with the Russians. My wise teacher told the class that the Soviets (for you younger readers, that was what Russia was known as back in the days before they "got religion") had different definitions of words and that the United States must understand that going into any negotiations with them. He also said that their ultimate goal was domination and the spread of Communism, and deception was a perfectly legitimate vehicle for achieving that objective.
     Putting aside the tremendous boost this "deal" gives the Russian's prestige and influence in the Middle East and the deflation of American influence, it will have the effect of giving new life to the Assad regime and bolster his status as a legitimate player in the high stakes contest of world diplomacy. A contest in which President Obama and his buffoonish Secretary of State were just bluffed out of the biggest pot in recent history by a former KGB colonel holding a pair of deuces.   

What Is The Deal With The Russian Deal ?

     A couple of days ago, President Obama was deep into the bribery, arm-twisting and intimidation of trying to get the votes in Congress to give him cover to do some wrist-slapping in Syria with a couple of United States' missiles. Many experts were pontificating at how fragile and unstable the situation in Syria had become, and no matter what the U.S. did, it could bubble over into a regional conflict that would involve Israel and the United States in a full-fledged, boots-on-the-ground war. And then like magic, Vladimir Putin stepped out from behind the Iron Curtain to broker a deal that would save the day, and more importantly, Barack Obama's need to be a leader.
     There are several questions I have about the so-called Russian deal. First, who comprises the "International Community" to whom Assad is supposedly handing over his chemical weapons for safe keeping? Secondly, how does this yet-to-be-named group, called "The International Community" verify that any weapons Bashar places in their custody are all the chemical weapons he has and that he is not holding any back for future use? Third, are the chemical weapons in the hands of the Al Qaeda-lead rebels to be handed over to "The International Community" as well, or proof be shown that they do not have chemical weapons?
     The motivation for the Russians' deal-making is two-fold, one is to keep their debtor, Syria, from becoming a parking lot and therefore being even less likely to repay the Russian debt. And two, this "deal" is the perfect opportunity to drain even more power from the United States with respects to its influence in the Middle East. The cost of the Russians forcing Bashar Al Assad (the proxy of the Russian's proxy Iran) to "part" with his chemical weapons is most likely the fulfillment of Barack Obama's promise made before last year's election. Remember when he told Russian President, Medvedev, that he should transmit a message to Putin that after the U.S. election, Mr. Obama would have more flexibility in reducing the United States nuclear arsenal? One does not have to be a genius to figure out that Barack Obama's newly found flexibility will be the vehicle with which he will repay Putin for saving him the messiness of military intervention in Syria.
     The solace and downright exuberance over the Russian deal is exemplary of the willful blindness on the Left to believe that everyone, especially Communists, have only good and pure intentions. Russia is not brokering this deal to be magnanimous humanitarians, but because of their ulterior motives. People, especially on the Left, forget that ever since Ronald Reagan defeated the Soviet Union in the cold war in the 1980s, they have been working hard to be a fly in our ointment. Their non-support of the Iraq invasion, not on any moral or diplomatic basis, but because Russia had continued to trade with Saddam Hussein in violation of United Nations' sanctions, is just one recent example. Does anyone on the Left or the Right really think Bashar Al Assad would have jumped so quickly at this deal had it come from anyone else? Our leaders would do well to look this Russian gift horse right in the mouth and say, "No thank you."

The Incredible Credibility Argument

     One of the main reasons given by its supporters on both the Left and the Right for missile strikes in Syria, is to save the credibility of the United States and President Obama. The theory goes that since President Obama spoke about chemical weapons being used in Syria as a red line that would change his "calculus" for intervention, the U.S. is on this runaway freight train and can not get off. Even though last week, President Obama un-spoke the "red line" comment. It is fascinating to watch a media, that five years ago was anti-military intervention anywhere, now salivating to "punish" the Assad regime with missiles that are etched with the name of the great avenger, Barack Hussein Obama. Oddly enough, President Obama has said that his credibility is not at risk, taking away the core reason that has been given by the media and other pro-intervention types.
     President Obama's statement that claimed everyone in the world has their credibility at risk , even America, and his remains unchallenged, shows not only how disconnected the President is from any semblance of a coherent foreign policy, but from his own country as well. He is somehow outside America and above the human frailty of having one's credibility called into question. The President, as well as the supporters of military intervention in Syria, forget that credibility is not won or loss by a single event or decision, it is developed over time, with the aggregation of many decisions and actions. Barack Obama can not risk his own credibility because he has none, and he can not risk America's credibility because she has an almost 240 year history from which her coffers of credibility have been supplied.
     Some of the very same people that said our nation's credibility was at risk of being destroyed with military intervention in Iraq, are now saying that that same credibility is in peril if we do not militarily intercede in Syria. In Iraq, we faced a dictator who had already invaded his neighbor and threatened the free flow of oil that is vital to the world's economy. Bashar Al Assad, as brutal a dictator as he is, has never engaged in either of the previously mentioned behaviors. And now the President, who was elected to "end wars, not start them," has not only allowed U.S. foreign policy to be determined by statements he made and then unmade, but has looked like a petulant child with his exclusion of his own credibility from the massive risk pool he has helped create.
     Not only has the President's credibility been shattered with the American people, but around the world with our allies and enemies alike. The mantel of leadership waits to be lifted and employed, but Barack Obama does not possess the credible strength to take it upon himself, this is to the great peril of the United States and the world.

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.
      

Barack Obama's Syrian Corner

     Well, the hapless United Nations inspection team, just slightly less so hapless than Hans Blix and his gang (remember they were the U.N. team that "inspected" Iraq before the invasion) have come away from their bullet-ridden Syrian trip with their conclusions. In the report soon to follow, one may find the assertion that chemical weapons were used in an attack located in the suburbs of Damascus. The report may also conclude that it was the Assad regime who was responsible for the attack, and not as some have speculated, the rebel forces that have been hi-jacked by Al Qaeda-style groups, trying to frame the regime.
     What the United Nations report will not state, and of this I am certain, is that George W. Bush is owed an apology by all those on the Left who mercilessly called him a liar for the better part of a decade. This confirmation that chemical weapons were used in Syria is proof that President Bush, along with many of the top intelligence agencies in the world, were correct about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. If you remember, just before the United States-lead invasion of Iraq, early in 2003, satellite imaging showed convoys en route between Iraq and Syria. With the current U.N. inspectors' confirmation of chemical weapons having been used in Syria, we now know what many of us suspected at the time, i.e., that those convoy trucks were not delivering falafels but chemical weapons. The fact, confirmed by intelligence, that Syria had no chemical weapons prior to 2003 and that they have them now, confirms that those weapons were from Saddam Hussein's private stockpile.
     The corner that the Obama administration has painted themselves into with regards to Syria is that they refused to take a stand early on in the conflict when they could have made the most difference (remember then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calling Bashar Al Assad a reformer as he was murdering thousands of his own people in the streets at the start of the uprising against him). Now that the uprising has been hi-jacked by Al Qaeda-style groups, President Obama finds himself in the position of helping the terrorist Assad if he does nothing or helping the terrorists who have commandeered the rebel uprising if he intervenes against the Assad regime. Secretary of State John Kerry's statement that the chemical attack that killed hundreds was a "moral obscenity", completely ignores the moral obscenity of the hundred thousand that have died in the turmoil since it began more than two years ago as a result of conventional weapons.
     To add even more macabre comedy to a bad situation, Vice President, Joe "the laughing hyena" Biden alluded to the Bashar Assad regime being "punished" for his alleged use of chemical weapons against his own people. This is further proof that the Obama regime specifically, and the Left in general, have no clue what the function of the military is. The military is not used to "punish" people but to achieve a strategic goal that has some significance to U.S. interests. The fact that those on the Left were so vociferous in their opposition to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, when U.S. strategic interests were clearly present, and are now silent on the possible intervention in Syria by the Obama administration, where there is an obvious lack of U.S. interests, is illustrative of the hypocrisy of the Left. I guess the corner in which Barack Obama has painted himself is large enough for the entire Leftist community to stew in their own hypocrisy while the rest of us must suffer the risks of their extreme ignorance.

The Syrian Dilema

     Senator John McCain went over to Syria and bought the Brooklyn Bridge for a song from the Syrian "rebels." Well, he may as well have, he bought their sales pitch that they were dedicated to bringing a form of democracy to Syria once the United States armed them against Bashar al-Assad. The part-time Republicant Senator and full-time tool of the Lefts "non-partisanship", has joined opinions, if not forces, with Secretary of State John "I served in Vietnam" Kerry, in being desirous of arming the Syrian rebels against their brutal dictatorial government.
     The only problem with the analysis of the foolish like John Kerry, John McCain and others is that the rebels are not in any way, shape, manner or form freedom fighters or supporters of liberty for the Syrian people. According to Friends of mine, who left Syria several years ago, and are still well-connected to their former homeland by family and friends, the rebels are terrorists who have used the Syrian people's dissatisfaction with their government to impose Sharia law and replace the Assad regime with an extreme Islamist theocracy. Both the regime of Assad and the terrorist rebels engage in, among other acts of atrocity, persecution of Christians.
     Many middle-east experts, such as Colonel Ralph Peters and Andrew McCarthy, have wisely pointed out that the time for U.S. intervention in Syria has long since passed. The "lead-from-behind" President Obama squandered the opportunity to save lives and change the face of the middle-east as it relates to Bashar al-Assad's influence over it, when he refused to support intervention a year ago, before the rebellion was high-jacked by Al Qaeda-style terrorists. President Obama's Syrian blunder is reminiscent of his refusal to support reform in Iran during their election of 2009 when the aftermath produced the green party's demonstrations for change. This President has so little regard for the cause of liberty that he refused to even give moral support through his words.  
     I remember hearing Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, author and favorite target for persecution by the Soviet government, saying that it gave the victims of Soviet oppression in the gulags and elsewhere hope and strength when President Reagan called the Soviet Union an "Evil Empire." For the first time, says Solzhenitsyn, a powerful world leader publically recognized what those in the Soviet gulags had known for their entire lives but never heard expressed on the world stage by any of its leaders, i.e., the brutal oppression practiced by their government against its people. Sadly, our current President has no such courage or ability to discern truth. The lack of leadership on the part of President Obama has not only been deadly for the eighty thousand plus Syrians who have been slaughtered in recent months, but for the entire stability of the region and the ripples that instability causes around the world. 
 

Obama's "Warning" To Assad

     The Obama administration has sent a stern warning to the embattled leader of Syria, Bashar Al Assad, letting him know in no uncertain terms that he will face dire consequences if he uses chemical weapons on the rebels that are trying to oust him. I seem to remember similar messages being sent to Assad after his forces had slaughtered a thousand of their own countrymen, and each time after that that the death toll increased on its march to the fifty thousand plus it is today. So now with the equivalent of a football stadium packed to capacity, dead in Syria and another 1.2 million people displaced, the Obama administration is going to get tough on Bashar Al Assad.
     Remember the good old days of the Syrian revolution when there were only a few thousand Syrians that had been slaughtered by their own government and Secretary of State Clinton called Bashar Al Assad a "reformer." In fact, no matter where you looked,  you could not find a disparaging word about Dr. Assad anywhere on the left. Even now, there is not the outrage coming from the left over the slaughter of 50,000 freedom fighters as there is over the possibility that tax rates may not be increased on the wealthy.
     Remember the visits made to President Assad by the feckless former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan? If the situation weren't so tragic for the Syrian people, it would have been comical. Good old Kofi would meet with Bashar and leave Syria with the tyrant's assurances that there would be no more bloodshed. The death toll escalated more after each visit from Annan.  I remember the smile on the former Secretary General's face, like Chamberlain after his meeting with Hitler, waving an agreement signed by the evil dictator, and stating emphatically that peace had been secured. This silly and dangerous notion on the left that they can negotiate with evil men, seems to span distance and time. I guess it is their inability to admit that there is evil in the world, because to do so would shatter their idea of  a global Utopia being attainable. Tyrants and other evil men know this fact and use it to give the leftists of the world slivers of hope that they will change their ways, while they use the time to become even stronger and expand their influence.
     The other interesting thing about the Obama administration's warning to Bashar Al Assad about using his chemical weapons, is that it is a circuitous admission that George W. Bush was right about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction. Since there is no evidence that Bashar Al Assad had chemical weapons prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March of 2003, and Saddam Hussein did, it can be assumed that the missing weapons in Iraq were shipped to Syria for safe-keeping. When Saddam did not triumph over the U.S. led invasion of his country, Bashar Al Assad was an unintended beneficiary. But no one, especially on the left, seems interested in finding out how Assad acquired his chemical weapons, they only want to send empty warnings and hope that the situation will fade from the attention of the world community. It is typical problem avoidance by the left when the problem involves real evil, which they are unable or unwilling to comprehend or confront.

Click here to watch my latest political song parody. Posted December 2, 2012.