Just Do It

Just Do It

(c)2013  Ross Williams

 

 

Among the things a child learns in grade school ... in the United States ... is that when he says he's going to do something, he'd better do it.  This is apparently an optional life lesson in the Indonesian madrasas our National Savior took his primary education.

Our glorious commander in chief drew a line in Syrian sand, declared his line to be red, and told Syria not to cross it.  By all accounts and to the degree they are reliable accounts, Syria crossed that red line on August 21st.  By the next day, enough evidence was in that the line was crossed.

The red line, for those not paying attention, was the use of chemical weapons in their 28-month old civil war.

Barry Hussein promised swift retaliation if Syria used their chemical weapons against the "Syrian people" ... otherwise known, in military terms, as rebels and revolutionaries ... including many of the children, yes.  And here it is, nearly three weeks after that red line was crossed, and the swift action imposed by Barry Hussein has been, thus far, to get ooooh! ever so annoyed, and to brief Congress on the matter, hoping they will want to do something about it.

Congress is loath to take the kind of action our National Savior implied would come over a year ago when the military intelligence leaked out that - somehow, as if by unforeseeable magic - Syria had acquired chemical weapons right around the time Saddam Hussein's Iraq was frantically emptying the UN warehouses of the Iraqi chemical weapons the UN had found between 1992 and 1998. ...and driving it to the Syrian border, as depicted on the seventy-five eight by ten color glossy photos with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one ...

...not to remind certain people of the vacuity of their positions re: The War in Iraq, or anything.

Regardless, however Bashar al-Assad managed to get his hands on chemical weapons, he used "several" artillery shells - rockets - in the eastern suburbs of Damascus in mid-August.  This crossed the magic red line imposed by our Neophyte in Chief.

"Swift retaliation".

Right.  And the swift retaliation was ...?

To put his hands ever so sternly on his hips and declare, "I warned you!  Now I'll really have to consider doing something about it!"

Scattered across the Middle East, coming from pockets of Syrian allies and hangers-on, not to mention a remote, reclusive pocket in the Far East, came a puzzled sigh of relief.  If the US had attacked Syria, dozens of nations would have to think twice about making us irritated.  "Hey, the US will do what they say they'll do ... we need to behave..."

If the US would have done what Barry Hussein said the US would do, Hezbollah in Lebanon would be in deep trouble; they survive largely by the grace of donations from foreign governments ... primarily Syrian donations.  Not to mention, they survive due to the occasional foreign military intrusion to reassert Hezbollah authority ... and that foreign intrusion is always Syrian.  Without Syria, why ... a notorious terrorist group might evaporate.

Iran, waiting for the other shoe to drop since 1979, looked around the room as if they'd just been punked.  The Ayatollah Khamenei and his new lapdog president Rouhani, have been fretting over what the US might really do should Iran actually assemble their atom bomb; they shrugged their shoulders and went back to work in the reactor.

In North Korea, the newest Li'l Kim in the Man-God franchise wiped his brow, waved another weapons supply ship to Syria off into the horizon, and promptly invited Dennis Rodman back to talk basketball and dis the US government.

Two weeks after the swift retaliation of promising to think about what do next, Obama decided that what he'd do next was punt.  It's not really his Constitutional job to direct US foreign policy [yes it is, Art II, Sec 2] or command the US military forces [yes it is, Op. Cit.]; he would, instead, ask Congress to make his tough foreign policy decisions for him.  Hafez al-Assad, the 10 year-old son of the Syrian president, took this opportunity to tweet the entire world his sneering contempt of Barry Hussein, essentially double-dog daring Obama to attack ... unless he was a scaredy cat, or something.

Congress, for its part, despite a few withering saber rattles from the Usual Suspects, has promised to take up the matter when they get around to it, which, at the rate they're going, will be sometime after the 2026 elections.

With spine like Obama's, who needs jellyfish?

Here's the thing, Barry.  Despite your lack of qualifications and your refusal to surround yourself with qualified foreign policy wonks [Dubya was just as unqualified, but he had people who knew what they hell they were doing - and he usually listened to them], you are the President ... of the United States. 

Let me say that again in the interest of it sinking in: you are the PRESIDENT...  of THE UNITED STATES.  We are still, until the full weight of your psychotic economic policies is finally realized and we cease being able to pay our soldiers, the most powerful nation on the planet.  It often doesn't matter what you [and therefore we] do, as long as you do something.  The something you do, if we are to remain a credible most-powerful-nation, mustMustMUST be what you say you will do - at least Dubya mostly did what he said he would.

In that regard, if you are fine with Arabs killing Arabs under tanks treads ... great.  Tell them to proceed apace and then leave them alone while they do it.  If you are not fine with Arabs killing Arabs under tank treads ... that's also good.  But when they start running over each other with tanks, you need to immediately be on their doorstep, making them immediately stop.  Of course - as you should know, having watched [and criticized] the Dubya Wars as you did - the real issue lies in our ability to compel the people of other nations to do what we tell them to do, even under force of arms.

If you are fine with Arabs bombing other Arabs with the human equivalent of insecticide ... that, too, is fine.  Just ignore it when they do and let them slaughter each other.  But if you are not fine with Arabs bug-bombing other Arabs and you promise "swift retaliation" when it happens  ... then you'd better swiftly retaliate.

What you've done by blustering, dithering, and punting to Congress is the Most Powerful Nation equivalent of drooling onto your bib and filling your pants with poopies.  And if you don't think Syria understands this ... if you don't think Hezbollah understands this ... if you don't Iran and their nuclear engineers understand this ... if you don't think Li'l Kim and his nuclear engineers understand this ... and if you don't think the rest of the world's onlookers - to include our embarrassed friends and allies, not to mention a half a hundred nations who are looking for any excuse they can find to pluck our beard - understand this, then you are clearly overmatched by the job.  Perhaps you've heard this suggestion before.

And not only are you overmatched, but you're overmatched in a trailblazing way.  Think a Jimmuh Cahtuh overmatched, and then add several zeroes and a few commas.

Being our National Savior isn't as easy as it looks.  Is it?