Damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.
On August 21, a gas attack in Syria leaves 1400 people dead.The presumption is that the Syrian government, under President Al-Assad, used Sarin gas against its own people and a soon to be released UN report is expected to confirm the use of chemical weapons. President Obama announces that the U.S. is prepared to take military action to send a clear message to Syria that it will not be allowed to violate the international chemical weapons ban without there being consequences. Liberals and conservatives find common let's-trash-the-President ground, with one group declaring Obama a warmonger and the other decrying his alleged inexperience and large ego. However, a handful of Republicans support getting tough with Syria. Then the administration suggests the possibility of reconsidering taking military action if Syria will hand over its stockpile of chemical weapons. Putin volunteers to help broker this deal with his Syrian friends.
Some liberals declare Obama to be "lucky" to be "rescued" by Putin, but still insist that he has betrayed us and declare that the U.S. lacks moral superiority to chastise Syria because of our own past and present transgressions. Most of Congress says they will not authorize Obama to take military action, totally ignoring that precedent supports the President making a decision to use military force against Syria as long as it is not a pursuit of war but a police action against a perceived threat to the safety of the U.S. However, the small GOP crew that wants to get tough with Syria doesn't like the idea of a diplomatic solution and call Obama weak for even considering it.
To drop bombs or not to drop bombs, that is the question. Whether it's nobler to pursue a diplomatic solution or to blow Syria up? As of this Saturday, September 14, an agreement has been reached under which Syria will be expected to put its stockpile of chemical weapons under international control before they ultimately are destroyed. Everyone is happy! Well not quite, it seems that the folks who wanted the President to take military action against Syria are not pleased with the agreement because it does not include a provision that the U.S. gets to use military force against Syria if Syria reneges on the agreement.
The President has indicated the U.S. will support the UN Security Council resolution, (one of the next steps in the process) which doesn't threaten Assad with the use of force if his government fails to comply. Senators McCain and Graham have labeled acquiescence to the U.N. resolution as an act of "provocative weakness." They insist that the President looks weak in the eyes of the world for not insisting that it's our party and we'll bomb Syria if we want to. A segment of the liberal contingency continues to bemoan Obama's betrayal and insist that he's morphed into a warmonger. There are also those who insist that the U.S. just needs to stay out of all affairs in the Middle East or anywhere outside of the U.S., which is ironic given the insistence of a majority of Americans that ours is a nation founded on Christian principles. Evidently, those Christian principles exclude any responsibility for being your brother's keeper unless your brother lives within the U.S. The non-believers aren't concerned with biblical admonishments but are focused on denying that the President had any input in maneuvering this situation to obtain the ultimate goal of Syria agreeing to get rid of its chemical weapon stockpile; after all, he's just a mindless warmonger.
It's true that the agreement does not address the ongoing civil war in Syria and the death toll from that war continues to rise. It's not a perfect agreement but it does take chemical weapons out of the equation and demonstrates that there can be effective use of diplomatic means to curtail the use of some of the weapons of war. In addition, an agreement by Syria to join the Chemical Weapons Convention is making its way through the legal offices of the UN.
There are some of us, renegade liberals, who believe that we're moving in the right direction, investing our efforts in finding diplomatic resolutions to conflict. We view the careful, negotiations and policies, including a threat to use force if necessary, as being part of a well thought out strategic plan by the administration to achieve the end result that is now on the table--Syria's dismantling of its chemical weapons program. We see President Obama as having skillfully navigated through the coral reefs and made it to a safe port for a brief respite before continuing on in the pursuit of the ever elusive peace, unknown to us in the history of humankind.
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."--Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu, Chinese philosopher (604 BC - 531 BC)
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| A Survivor of Hiroshima |
Note: Only two nuclear weapons have been used in the course of warfare, both by the United States near the end of World War II. These two bombings resulted in the deaths of approximately 200,000 Japanese people—mostly civilians—from acute injuries sustained from the explosions. (Radiations Effects Research Foundation)
Foreign policy is the focus of the last presidential debate prior to election day. No doubt, one of the topics will be Iran's nuclear program.
The Iranian government declares that its nuclear program is for peaceful, energy producing purposes. However, in spite of Tehran's protestations that the goals of its nuclear program is to provide fuel for medical reactors and a non-oil based energy source, the U.S., Europe, and Israel are skeptical and believe that the goal is to create nuclear weapons.
A recent New York Times headline proclaimed that the White House has been in secret negotiations with Iran resulting in an agreement between the U.S. and Iran to engage in one-on-one negotiations over Iran's nuclear program. (NYT, 10/20/12) Before we all get excited that reason has prevailed, both the White House and Tehran are denying that any such agreement has been reached. (The Telegraph-UK, 10/21/12) The White House does assert that it is open to such negotiations.
In the meantime, the Israelis continue to advocate that the U.S. set "clear red lines" on Iran's nuclear program that if crossed would trigger military action by the U.S. against Iran. (NYT, 9/11/12) Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel has publicly criticized what he considers to be President Obama's soft policy towards Iran, and avers that if the U.S. won't draw a line in the sand regarding Iran's nuclear program that the U.S. "...has no 'moral right' to restrain Israel from taking military action of its own." (NYT, 9/11/12)
Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has made it clear that he feels that the President should stop Iran in its pursuit of nuclear weapons and specifically rejects the notion of using diplomatic channels to address this issue. Already, Republicans are rejecting the notion of any negotiations with Iran, asserting that even if Iran makes an offer to parlay, it is only a ploy to distract from its real goal of making a nuclear bomb. South Carolina's Senator Lindsey Graham (R), a Romney ally, offered his views on Sunday, "The time for talking is over,...we should be demanding transparency and access to the (Iranian) nuclear program." (USA Today, 10/21/12)
What is this red line that we need to draw? No one has made that perfectly clear. The Israeli government has indicated that it wants the U.S, to set a limit on the amount of enriched uranium (essential bomb making material) Iran may stockpile and enforce Iran's adherence to the limit with the threat of military force for a transgression. The Obama administration has rejected placing military action by the U.S. on the table as a possibility. Apparently, Romney doesn't share the President's views, as he has declared Obama to be soft on Iran and lacking in commitment to our ally, Israel.
The one question that I want Mr. Romney to answer tonight is what is his recommended course of action in dealing with Iran's nuclear program. I want specifics. Does he favor the red line spoken of by Netanyahu? If so, what will that line consist of? If elected, is Romney willing to take us into another war? Will he use military action if Iran crosses that red line?
I admit that I don't need an answer; I think Romney has already made it perfectly clear that his image is of America the macho, the world enforcer. I just want to hear him say it and just maybe more of my fellow Americans will hear his words and reject an ideology predicated on the belief that might makes right.
Mitt Romney as commander-in-chief is a very scary proposition. It's like putting a ten-year-old behind the wheel of a race car. There was a folk song popular in the 1960s that had the line: When will we ever learn? It became an anthem for the anti-Vietnam War movement of the 1960s. Unfortunately, we appear to be a nation of slow-learners.
So I called my BFF Hillary Clinton the other day to see how she was doing after all the negative commentary about her little verbal slip. "Girlfriend, what on earth were you thinking! Have you lost your mind up in here?"
Oh, wait a minute, I don't really know Hillary well enough to address her as girlfriend. We're not really BFFs either (that's shorthand for best friend forever). Actually, Hillary and I have never met, but I've seen her on television. Oops, I think that I misspoke.
There has been a lot of misspeaking in the Clinton campaign. A few weeks ago, Senator Clinton released a television commercial asserting that based on her 35 years of experience, she was more qualified than Senator Obama to answer the phone at 3:00 a.m. and deal with some hypothetical foreign policy crisis. Unfortunately, at least for Sen. Clinton, subsequent research revealed that her foreign policy experience was questionable at best, and possibly nonexistent. After a little personal research, I wrote a little blog entry about what appeared to be a general consensus--Sen. Clinton didn't play a significant role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland; nor did she broker the deal that resulted in Macedonia opening its borders to refugees from Kosovo (official records confirm that the Macedonia accord regarding the Kosovo refugees was signed the day before Hillary arrived in the country).
The media enjoyed the circus constructed around Sen. Clinton's exaggerated foreign policy experience claims and next became entranced with sermons from Sen. Obama's ex-minister. Just when I thought that perhaps the campaign was finally getting back on track, dealing with the issues--the recession, unemployment, access to health care, 47 million people without health insurance, the war in Iraq, global warming, etc., etc., Sen. Clinton dropped another example of her qualifications to be commander-in-chief, citing her March 1996 landing at Tuzla Air Base in Bosnia in the midst of sniper fire. Her words, spoken at George Washington University on March 17, 2008, have been published in newspapers around the world, and played repeatedly on radio and television news stations.
“I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.”--Senator Hillary Clinton
Based on the photo, before ducking and running for cover, Sen. Clinton and daughter Chelsea took time to accept greetings from the eight-year-old girl who was a part of the official greeting committee in March 1996, a group that also included Bosnia's acting president. Not wanting to frighten the child, Hillary also decided that she and Chelsea should abandon the flak jackets that she asserts that they wore to protect them from sniper fire while they were running with their heads down. Suffering from some memory loss, no doubt due to post traumatic stress disorder after being subjected to sniper fire, comedian Sinbad, who was a part of the group visiting US troops in Bosnia with the then First Lady back in 1996, has responded that he does not recall there being any sniper fire when the travel group landed.
Normally, I would agree with Sen. Clinton's protestations that she made many speeches and many journeys while First Lady, and that it is only human to confuse the details from a trip that she made 12 years ago. However, generally, most of us confuse the details as to when something happened, but remain clear as to whether or not something happened. For example, I'm not certain when I first became obsessed with Denzel Washington, however, I'm certain that he has never promised to leave his wife and marry me.
Sen. Clinton, girlfriend, you have not been under sniper fire during any your travels as First Lady. You made it up! You didn't misspeak; you lied.
You lied because you are desperately trying to distinguish yourself in the minds of the voters as having 35 years of critical experience, including foreign policy experience that makes you a superior choice for the Democratic Party nomination. You have invented your own pet campaign issue that makes about as much sense as the pet rock phenomenon of the 1970s. What really frightens me is that some of the public, just like the folks that spent good money for a pet rock, are succumbing to the nonsense of this non-issue. Let's have a simplified civics lesson.
Under the U.S. Constitution, both the Congress of the United States and the president have the responsibility for setting U.S. foreign policy. In general, the president shapes foreign policy with advice from the state department, the secretary of state, and a bunch of other national security officials in the executive branch . Congress approves the funding needed to carry out the foreign policy. The United States Senate has to approve by a two-thirds vote, any treaties with foreign governments that are negotiated by the president. Congress and the president don't always see eye to eye on foreign policy, but the president has the principal authority to create foreign policy. Both the Congress and the Courts defer to the president on matters of foreign policy.
If you stayed with me through Civics 101, then you are probably recognizing that unless Clinton, McCain, or Obama have previously served as president of the United States, none of them have any substantive foreign policy experience. Neither congressmen/women, nor the First Lady gets to make foreign policy decisions in our governmental structure. Condoleeza Rice has experience in the ins and outs of foreign policy, as do members of the Cabinet and the executive branch of government, but hey, Hillary, you don't. Drop the empty rhetoric about foreign policy experience and focus on the significant domestic and international issues that should be the focus of this campaign, not your imagined turn as Rambo.
The beauty of the structure of our government is that no one enters the office of president as a solo act. All those cabinet members, all those secretaries of this and that, are there for a purpose--to advise the president, to present him/her with the information to make reasoned, well-thought out foreign policy decisions, if he or she chooses. Or he can declare himself to be the Decider and make the dumbest decisions ever, but that's another post.
Footnote: What exactly is foreign policy? The generally accepted definition identifies foreign policy as a course of action or set of principles adopted by a nation's government to define its relationships with other countries or groups of countries.
