Category Archives: morality

Obama’s Syrian Timidity

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From The Wall Street Journal:

President Barack Obama said the White House needed further proof that Syria’s security forces gassed civilians and rebels to change his “calculus….”

And

[T]he president walked a fine line by defending his insistence that he would not tolerate the use of chemical weapons, but also by saying he would not be pressured into quick military action in Syria.

Of course, it’s not possible to help the 70,000 Syrians already butchered by al Assad.  I’m sure, though, the surviving Syrians, including those who will be killed by al Assad’s repudiated government in the coming days and weeks will by heartened by Obama’s…studiousness.

Bill Murray, ex of the CIA and experienced in the area had this (I’m at a loss to know whether he offered this as an excuse or a description):

Lebanon was like a tar baby.  It sticks to your fingers, and you can’t get away from it.  Syria is the same way.  There’s not going to be a happy outcome no matter what you do.

Granted.  Stop worrying, then, about consequences, and do the right thing.  No more stalling, no more looking for excuses not to act.

Benghazi and Clinton

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From the House GOP Interim Progress Report…on the Terrorist Attacks in Benghazi Libya:

During 2012, in numerous communications with the State Department, officials from the U.S. Mission in Libya stress both the inadequacy of security as well as the need for additional personnel. Two critical cables warrant specific mention:

March 28, 2012, Ambassador Cretz sends a cable to Secretary Clinton requesting additional security assets.

April 19, 2012, the response cable from the Department of State to Embassy Tripoli, bearing Secretary Clinton’s signature, acknowledges Ambassador Cretz’s request for additional security but instead articulates a plan to scale back security assets for the U.S. Mission in Libya, including the Benghazi Mission.

In her testimony before Congress in January, Clinton said,

With specific security requests they didn’t come to me.  I had no knowledge of them.

It’s true enough that the boss’ signature is routinely added to correspondence that has been prepared by subordinates and then sent out.  This, of course, does not absolve the boss of responsibility for the content or outcome of that correspondence.  The addition of the boss’ signature is solely at the discretion of that boss.  Secretary of State Clinton had, to coin a phrase, constructive knowledge of her cable acknowledging the deteriorating security conditions at her Benghazi Consulate, and she ordered the continued withdrawal of security from that Consulate, anyway.  Furthermore, by her position and her decision to delegate the application of her signature to her correspondence, she had imputed knowledge of the situation and of her decision to proceed with her security drawdown.  She simply lied in her testimony before Congress.

The Interim Report can be seen here and here.

Remember this in 2016.

The President’s Powers of Persuasion

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Peter Nicholas and Kristina Peterson have an article on this in The Wall Street Journal.

Democratic strategists, lobbyists and some Capitol Hill aides see last week’s defeat of the gun-bill amendments as a worrisome sign that Mr Obama hasn’t found a way to bridge the partisan divide in Congress….

Except for the part about he hasn’t tried.  Instead, he’s worked hard to exacerbate a natural difference between the two parties.  He routinely insults and denigrates those who disagree with him: those bitter clingers to guns and religion, for instance.  His DHS, at the start of Obama’s administration characterizing returning veterans as right wing extremists.  During his sequester “negotiations” he said

[Republicans] will not collect a ransom in exchange for not crashing the American economy.

That they were not arguing for any such thing is beside the point.  And in response to his gun control legislation being defeated in his Democrat-controlled Senate,

The gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill[.]

Nicholas and Peterson also write, rather naively in my opinion,

While the White House is renewing its outreach to lawmakers, including Republicans, some believe the overtures feel thin—driven by pressing legislative deadlines.

And they quote a carefully unnamed “White House official” as saying that Obama

has used every tool in his toolbox to try to advance his agenda. And that includes meeting with, talking with, dining with and negotiating with lawmakers of both parties[]

while carefully ignoring two things: this “outreach” has only begun in the last few months of his now five-year-old administration.  Up to now—and continuing coincident with this…outreach—he’s only been willing to talk about how evil Republicans are.

The other thing being ignored is Obama’s fundamental dishonesty: on “balanced” spending and tax reform, Obama got from the fiscal cliff negotiations $600 billion in tax increases and $60 billion in spending cuts.  Some balance.  His budget proposal extends this: he demands another trillion in tax increases in the name of “balance.”  The sequester, which he proposed and now denies proposing, would bring economic Armageddon according to the campaign he ran in lieu of actual negotiation—it didn’t.  This is coupled with Republican legislative proposals to give him the authority to spread the cuts according to his priorities and so lessen his predicted pain, but which he threatened to veto.  And there’s that dishonesty of calling those who disagree with him liars.

It’s no wonder his overtures “feel thin.”  They are; they’re for show only.  If Obama has used every tool in his toolbox, it’s because respect for the views of others, a willingness to negotiate or to compromise, are not tools in that box.

Some Remarks on Terrorism

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Congressman Tom Cotton (R, AR) had some on the House floor earlier this week.

I rise today to express grave doubts about the Obama Administration’s counterterrorism policies and programs.  Counterterrorism is often shrouded in secrecy, as it should be, so let us judge by the results.  In barely four years in office, five jihadists have reached their targets in the United States under Barack Obama: the Boston Marathon bomber, the underwear bomber, the Times Square Bomber, the Fort Hood shooter, and in my own state—the Little Rock recruiting office shooter.  In the over seven years after 9/11 under George W Bush, how many terrorists reached their target in the United States?  Zero!  We need to ask, “Why is the Obama Administration failing in its mission to stop terrorism before it reaches its targets in the United States?”

Indeed.

Now couple this with Obama’s decision on Thursday, through his Attorney General, Eric Holder, to intervene in an FBI terrorist investigation by marching a Federal Magistrate into the surviving Boston Marathon terrorist’s hospital room, mid-questioning by the FBI, to Mirandize that terrorist.  Which terminated the FBI’s questioning of the terrorist.

More Obama Sequester Games

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As The Wall Street Journal reports,

This week the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) began furloughing each of its air-traffic controllers for one day out of every 10 to achieve roughly $600 million in savings this fiscal year.  The White House dubiously claims that the furloughs are required by the sequester spending cuts enacted in 2011.

President Barack Obama’s hoped for result is

to force airline flight delays until enough travelers stuck on tarmacs browbeat enough Republicans to raise taxes again.

Once again, Obama is blowing smoke.  Leaving aside the fact that furloughing ATC Controllers is not the only way in which the FAA could have found the sequester-mandated pocket change savings (FAA Administer Michael Huerta’s “difficult choices” don’t include crossing his boss and making those savings elsewhere), the threatenedhoped forpredicted widespread delays don’t seem to be developing, as the FAA’s own Web site indicates, four days into the furlough program.