Obama & His French Poodle Back Off

Dear Mr. President,
What it all boils down to is the argument that, unless you do something to punish Assad, Western credibility is threatened, i.e., the emperor has no clothes! But as the lead editorial in today’s NYT (“Absent on Syria”) puts it, “As President Obama moves toward unilateral military action in response to a chemical weapons attack in Syria…he is doing so without legal justification and without the backing of …Congress and the United Nations Security Council.” A front page story, “Experts Fear U.S. Plan to Strike Syria Overlooks Risks” lays out a number of things that could go wrong including the possibility that it might broaden the regional conflict or even “open the door to a takeover by rebels linked to Al Qaeda.” Whoops! You got no legitimacy for doing anything. You got no backing except for your French poodle Hollande, and you got no chance of changing anything in the Syrian civil war except to cause more misery. Unleashing 216 cruise missiles (a 6th destroyer is now on station in the eastern Mediterranean) is not going to punish Assad. It’ll kill a lot of people, blow up a lot of stuff, but it won’t do a thing to Assad or his military. What would do a whole lot more good is to stop arming both sides. Why not try diplomacy for a change instead of cruise missiles? Put pressure on Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf states to stop arming the rebels and on Iran and Russia to stop arming Assad. That’s the way to gain credibility, not blowing shit up and killing people. You showed you could pressure the world in your misguided effort to snag Snowden, why not give it a shot in an effort at peace? That’s what a real Nobel Peace Prize winner would do. And here’s something else to ponder: “The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” Your words to the Boston Globe in 2007 before you were elected president and before you were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
    Stop the presses! This just in. You decided to launch military strikes against Syria but want Congress to authorize them. You suddenly realized that when you yelled Charge! nobody was following you? And in response to your turnaround, House leaders say, “We’re on vacation. We’ll be back September 9.” Sort of like a cooling off period, right? So what happens if Congress says, No? I know, it’s unlikely these bozos will do the right thing, but what if?