Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Thursday that Obama “did the right thing” in asking Congress for the new authority, but suggested the proposal is far too limiting to win his support.“The president has tied his own hands and wants to tie his hands even further with the authorization that he's sent up here,” Boehner said in a press briefing. “The president should have the flexibility to fight this war wherever it is. As simple as that.”At a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Thursday to examine Obama's proposal, a number of Republicans echoed Boehner's concerns.Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) said he wants all military options on the table so ISIS fighters will “sleep with one eye open because they fear” U.S. special forces might sweep in and put “a round of lead between their eyes.”And Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.) called for an AUMF that “gives maximum flexibility to our generals.”“I can't imagine Franklin D. Roosevelt standing up before the American people and say, ‘Here's what I'm not going to do against the Japanese’ ” Salmon said.Many Democrats are no more pleased with Obama's proposal — but for decidedly different reasons.The liberals contend a provision to bar “enduring offensive ground combat operations” is too vague and could allow for U.S. troops to be sent into the field.“We really need much more specificity,” said Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-Calif.).The Democrats are also voicing concerns that the proposal, while repealing the 2002 AUMF that authorized military force in Iraq, leaves the 2001 AUMF intact. Many are hoping to retire the 2001 resolution on the same three-year timeline included in Obama's new ISIS proposal.“Otherwise, you're spending an awful lot of time trying to design the framework for the [ISIS] effort, sort of trying to arrange the front door while you're leaving the back door wide open,” Van Hollen said.Other Democrats are criticizing the absence of geographic restrictions, while still others are wary that the enemies targeted in the proposal — defined as ISIS militants “or associated persons or forces” — are too broadly defined.
Tells you everything you need to know about who is and is not serious about preserving Western civilization.
This preserving Western Civilization thing you tout, that's for Israel isn't it, because there is not any real threat to us here beyond what shakes us up about mass murder. If anything, it's our Western Civilization that has gone awry with so many of them here stateside for no frigging reason at all but the perpetrators are frigging nuts.
ReplyDeleteWhy do you think this "war" is going to be any different than any other US war in our lifetime? They don't solve anything, nothing.
ReplyDeleteSure they do. The Peace of Westphalia that concluded the Thirty Years' War established the model of sovereign nation-states and a balance of power between them. The American Revolution established the notion of founding a country on the principle that freedom is supreme among human values, the Ciliv War got rid of slavery, World War I re-confirmed Westphalia, by rendering empires obsolete in Europe, World War II rid the world of the fascist-style totalitarian threat. The reason wars have been different in our lifetime is that we haven't won them conclusively. Peace is only possible when the enemy is defeated.
ReplyDeleteNo less a personage than Senator Feinstein - and she's by no means alone - says that you can count on it that there are ISIS and al-Qaeda sleeper cells in the United States, ready to carry out plots. 20,000 foreign fighters, some from the US and Europe, have poured into northern Syria and Iraq to join the ISIS cause. ISIS now owns Libya. We no longer have intelligence capabilities in Yemen. ISIS now has a strong presence is Afghanistan. They crucify twelve-year-old-boys and marry twelve-year-old girls. They put people in cages and set them afire.
Democrats are utterly unserious about keeping America safe.
I said in our lifetime. If they solved anything you woulda thunk after 12 years in the Middle East we'd have made progress. God is saying get it done without a gun, dude, or else be condemned to repeat your sad history, my created angels that shit.
ReplyDeleteHow about an actual policy proposal to flesh out your broad policy of "get er done without a gun"? How does that actually look in the interactions of ISIS, al-Qaeda, the US, the UK, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, the Assad regime in Syria, Iran, what's left of Iraq's official government?
ReplyDeleteIs there some kind of lasting, enforceable agreement we can come to with ISIS?
ReplyDeleteNo, just kill 'em one after the other. It would help if the people of the region continued to do that. We don't need a war, we need a police action. A war will further alienate their enemies in the region. Against us. I wish Ike were here to assess the situation. He knew a little bit about restraint. Our perhaps our daddies, or even us, would not be here. 60 plus years ago he forestalled World War III. Why you conservatives still carp about pulling out of Nam is beyond me but that you're ravenous hawks. "Obviously all of us know that the composition that was reached in Korea is not satisfactory to America, but it is far better than to continue the bloody, dreary, sacrifice of lives with no possible strictly military victory in sight."
ReplyDeleteAddress at the Illinois State Fair at Springfield, 8/19/54
And we need to admit that we do not know squat about the region and its peoples. It's not our frigging country!!!!!
ReplyDeleteWe'd better learn and fast, because we have two mortal enemies based in that region.
ReplyDeleteIf the past is prologue, we'll never learn. But we do know there has always been a supply of gung ho young men heady for adventure to brainwash. Then they get the painwash. 22 vets off themselves daily.
ReplyDeleteWhy you think it's going to be great when all the women in this country are sold into sexual slavery and all of us infidel males are put in cages and burned is unfathomable to me.
ReplyDelete