What if No One Answers the 2:00 AM 'phone call from Syria?

[Keukasmallies]

POTUS said he'd answer the telephone if the Assad regime used chemical weapons in Syria. It appears the 'phone is ringing loud and clear; nations around the world can hear it (although not at the UN). Can BHO lead; can he "answer the telephone" in a crisis; is he a world leader, or a world-class ditherer?

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23875121

 

Man up, POTUS, tell us what you're going to do, why you're going to do it, then do it. Doesn't have to be military force, just make a decision and carry it out...you know, like a leader would.

[ExiledInIllinois]

Just have Syria call 411 and ask for the Army... I will answer it. We get everybody calling here. For some reason, if you call 411 in the Chicago area, they patch you through to us! I don't know how many people I have sent to a recruiter in my career. I actually had one distraught mother w/a troublesome teen and wanted to know where a good military academy was... I said: "I pass Howe in Indiana when heading to and from New York... She sounded interested! LoL... Somewhere in this world a kid is cursing me up and down!

 

Oh... I even fielded dozens of calls on how the Army could plug up the levees in NOLA after Katrina... It is amazing how many people call...

[Koko78]

Give the man a break, he's trying to sleep after a long day of golfing, fundraising and campaigning. He'll learn all he needs to learn in order to defer his decisions to European leaders when he wakes up later in the morning and sees it on CNN.

 

Oh... I even fielded dozens of calls on how the Army could plug up the levees in NOLA after Katrina... It is amazing how many people call...

 

Duct tape and Bondo, of course.

[Azalin]

Give the man a break, he's trying to sleep after a long day of golfing, fundraising and campaigning. He'll learn all he needs to learn in order to defer his decisions to European leaders when he wakes up later in the morning and sees it on CNN.

I know, right? I mean, who the hell calls anyone at 2am anyway?

[Tiberius]

 

 

Man up, POTUS, tell us what you're going to do, why you're going to do it, then do it. Doesn't have to be military force, just make a decision and carry it out...you know, like a leader would.

Constitutional leader, remember the Constitution?

[3rdnlng]

Constitutional leader, remember the Constitution?

 

You should just go away. You offer nothing here, and are really quite boring.

[DC Tom]

Constitutional leader, remember the Constitution?

 

Why start now?

[B-Man]

 

Surrender

by Richard Hernandez

 

Obama has surrendered. NBC reports, “Obama will seek Congressional approval before any military action against Syria”. Strikes would be “effective tomorrow or next week or one month from now,” the President was quoted as saying.

 

As I wrote upon hearing that the British had pulled out of his ‘limited but decisive’ symbolic gesture: “it’s over. … Now, with Britain out of the operation, Obama faces the prospect of going into Syria almost literally alone, without the UN, NATO, Congress, or even the UK to back him up. Two courses are now open to him. He can climb down as best he can and pretend he’s changed his mind or he can go forward risking a wider war for nothing.”

 

It just took him that many more hours to realize that Steiner was not coming.

 

But the crisis has not yet ended. It’s just moved from Syria to Washington. There is now a power vacuum in Washington. For either there’s a new President Obama — one who has learned to share power not only with the other branches, but also with other points of view within America — or a new President in the manner of Gerald Ford after Nixon left. The old omnipotent President Obama, able to make the seas fall, the child of the world uniquely equipped to build bridges everywhere, answerable only to himself, is gone.

 

 

As America’s leader the old Obama handed Syria, Russia and Iran and huge victory. Gave it to them on a platter with his vaunting, invincible stupidity. In the process, not only has he shot America in the foot on the world stage but he will have emboldened the Ayatollahs to forge ahead with their nuclear ambitions. He will have encouraged Russia to make a comeback in the region. We will shortly feel these effects in Egypt, Iran and even in Europe.

 

He has also destroyed himself. It was painful to watch, even to those who had no particular fondness for him. There is always something inexpressibly sad about seeing a great thing die, whether it is a ship, a whale, an enfeebled giant, or a puffed up fantasy. And his “friends”, so obsequious in his salad days, were silently tiptoeing toward the door has he self-destructed. Nile Gardiner at the Telegraph mused over why Hillary Clinton was “remarkably silent on Syria”.

One voice in Washington that has been remarkably absent from this week’s Syria debate has been that of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The frontrunner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, Mrs. Clinton hasn’t said anything at all about President Obama’s plans for military strikes against the dictatorship in Damascus. As someone who dominated the US foreign policy landscape over the past four years, Clinton’s silence on Syria is striking. What explains this?

 

What explains it is she could see the ship going down, as Gardiner himself concluded. ” Her own handling of the Syria crisis was a spectacular failure, as has been President Obama’s. The last thing she needs in the lead-up to her inevitable White House run is a reminder to Americans of her poor track record as Secretary of State, from the Syrian debacle to the farcical Russian reset. Syria is a liability for Clinton in 2016, and with good reason she is nervous about what happens next.”

 

[KD in CA]

The problem is, Syria isn't calling. Stay the !@#$ out of other peoples' civil wars please.

 

 

 

p.s. but if we get involved, I can't wait for all the 'progressives' to show up here and scream about our warmonger President and tell us how many brown people we've killed with our bombs.

Edited September 1, 2013 by KD in CT

[B-Man]

 

 

 

Why didn’t Obama seek congressional authorization before instituting red line?

 

 

"I know you're trying to subtly rope me in to the issues of the day. I refuse to be roped in."

 

Said George W. Bush, handling questions about Syria in precisely the style that befits a former President, speaking publicly.

 

But what if President Obama were to privately consult with George Bush? This is something I've fantasized about. I imagine Obama talking about how much he understands now what Bush went through and how Bush is the one person in the world who understands what he's going through. I picture Bush supporting the younger man in a completely empathetic and patriotic way.

 

 

.

[DC Tom]

Is there any outcome to this where Obama doesn't come out looking like an inept, bumbling fool?

[Koko78]

Is there any outcome to this where Obama doesn't come out looking like an inept, bumbling fool?

 

Congress gives him the go-ahead to bomb Syria, followed by Obama delivering well-telepromptered speech about how this is what democracy is supposed to look like and that it's now Congress' war to fix the situation in Syria left by Bush, not his. The liberal lapdogs at home eat it up, while the national press focuses on something like new pandas being born at zoos or how Ted Cruz & the GOP hate poor black people rather than international reactions.

[keepthefaith]

Is there any outcome to this where Obama doesn't come out looking like an inept, bumbling fool?

 

He only looks inept and bumbling to people paying attention which is a small slice of the population.

[IDBillzFan]

Is there any outcome to this where Obama doesn't come out looking like an inept, bumbling fool?

I keep asking the same question about his second term.

 

Congress gives him the go-ahead to bomb Syria, followed by Obama delivering well-telepromptered speech about how this is what democracy is supposed to look like

 

The only way for this to come full circle is for Obama to get bi-partisan congressional approval before it all goes to hell and all the Republicans spend the next two years telling everyone how Obama lied and took us to war on his own.

 

Liberal minds everywhere would explode like they were listening to Slim Whitman music.

[B-Man]

 

AMATEUR HOUR’: Krauthammer slams Obama’s sudden decision to delay Syria strike

 

Immediately following his statement from the Rose Garden on Saturday, which President Barack Obama said he would delay a strike on Syria until seeking authorization from Congress, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer took to Fox News to slam the president.

 

Krauthammer criticized Obama for the way he has handled the unfolding of events surrounding the crisis in Syria.

 

“[T]he most astonishing thing is the lack of any urgency,” Krauthammer said. “As you say, Congress will be back in a week. He says, ‘I can strike in a day or a week or a month,’ as if he is a judge handing down a sentence and the execution can be any time in the future. There is a war going on. Do you think everybody is going to hold their breath, hold their arms, step aside until Obama decides when he wants to go to Congress?

 

“Look, I think he should go to Congress,” he continued. “I think it is absolutely necessary. But he has done no preparation. What they should have done — I mean, this is sort of amateur hour. When there were the first attacks six months ago or if you like, when we had the current attacks, he should have immediately have called in the Congress the way the prime minister of Britain had called in the parliament, had a debate and got a resolution and then went out and told the world we are going do x or we are not going to do x.”

 

He went on to say this gesture from Obama looks as if he was seeking a way out of a position he had boxed himself into.

“But the idea that you make the case, you leak the details, you tell the world that this has to be done and then you say, ‘Well, I will take my time. I’ll go to Congress and we’ll see,’” Krauthammer said. “This should be done in three days. It isn’t as if people are not aware of the arguments. You should go out there, bring them in [and] have it done by the end of the week. And the world, I think, will have higher respect. But this looks as if you are a cynic, meaning if you are sitting Syria, Iran, Moscow, it looks like a president who boxed himself into a corner and is looking for a way out.”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/08/31/amateur-hour-krauthammer-slams-obamas-sudden-decision-to-delay-syria-strike-video/#ixzz2dkJ1xX3j

[boyst]

Jackass is up now, took him 2 minutes to break Goodwins law, saying this is like Nazi Germany with poison gas.

 

He hasn't said a damn thing but recap and make those open ended statements and questions about nonsense...then tell us why it is bad.

[Koko78]

I wonder how the Russians are going to appreciate this comment from Assad:

 

Assad has acknowledged that U.S. could still attack Syria but said that staunch ally Russia has his back.

 

“We have a full Russian pledges that Russian troops will enter in any war waged against Syria,” he was quoted as saying according to The Times of Israel.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/assad-forget-chemicals-other-weapons-123152425.html

 

He also brags a bit about how he has "other" weapons that he can use to take out Israel in "the blink of an eye". I love middle eastern dictators. They're always good for a laugh.

[TakeYouToTasker]

I wonder how the Russians are going to appreciate this comment from Assad:

 

 

http://finance.yahoo...-123152425.html

 

He also brags a bit about how he has "other" weapons that he can use to take out Israel in "the blink of an eye". I love middle eastern dictators. They're always good for a laugh.

Russia is using Syria as a proxy in order to assume the role of global leader; capitalizing on a series of horrid miscalulations and vacant policy by the Obama administration. I would be completely unsurprised if this was calculated move, made at the behest of the Russians.

[4merper4mer]

Russia is using Syria as a proxy in order to assume the role of global leader; capitalizing on a series of horrid miscalulations and vacant policy by the Obama administration. I would be completely unsurprised if this was calculated move, made at the behest of the Russians.

 

I think you may be right. I believe the Los Gatos foreign policy's handbook says the response to this should be.......................nothing...............as usual.

[drinkTHEkoolaid]

The problem is, Syria isn't calling. Stay the !@#$ out of other peoples' civil wars please.

 

 

 

p.s. but if we get involved, I can't wait for all the 'progressives' to show up here and scream about our warmonger President and tell us how many brown people we've killed with our bombs.

 

Haha...

 

Seriously we have no business anything with Syria. Both sides fighting each other hate us. Why should we pick a side?

 

One side is a dictator who has gassed his own people the other side is supported by al qaida and militant Islam.

 

So again, why should we be involved here??