Rand Paul: How do you ask a man to be the first man to die for a mistake?
I’m not a big fan of Rand Paul, mostly because he was a Kokesh-hugger when Kokesh ran for Congress a few years back, but, Paul has been making more sense lately. Yesterday, he wrote an op/ed in the Washington Times in which he turned John Kerry’s 1971 question to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee back on Kerry and asked, “How do you ask a man to be the first man to die for a mistake?”. Then Paul finally addresses the questions that I’ve been asking here for the last few weeks;
To the extent that Mr. Kerry made a case at all — along with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel — the secretary was not very convincing. Even as the committee predictably approved authorization of the use of military force, the administration still failed to demonstrate any clear national security connection the United States has in Syria. The supposed justification for intervention to stop the use of chemical weapons still does not tell us how military action would actually deter their use. We’re still not absolutely sure about the origins of their use.
Meanwhile in another Washington Times article, Democrats discuss how they’ll hold their noses and vote with the President;
“There were people who said, I love the president; I trust the president; he’s like my son. But we just — as one lady said — she said, I disagree with my husband, but I love him to life. And so, you know, you’re going to have those disagreements,” said Maryland Democrat Rep. Elijah Cummings. “We all have to, I think, look at this not just in a vacuum of what’s happening today, but what’s going to happen with regard to future generations.”
[…]
Another Democrat who attended the briefing, Sen. Al Franken from Minnesota, said that while there are “no good options,” he is leaning towards voting yes, pending the language of the final resolution.
“To me, there is enough evidence that there has been a chemical weapons attack, that it was authorized by the regime and I believe that we have to demonstrate that you can’t do that,” he said. “I want to make sure that it’s narrow enough that people in Minnesota and people in this country and people around the world understand that it’s about these chemical weapons.”
There are no good options, they’ll just vote for war-like actions in Syria. I wonder how they’d vote if the President wasn’t a member of their own party. No, I don’t really wonder. Does anyone admit to supporting George W. Bush’s adventures just because they liked him as the president. Wouldn’t we be called vacuous lacking in any intellectual depth if we said that publicly? So how do these cretins think they can get away with making these comments?
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, John Kerry, Politics, Terror War
It’s not like this is the first time chemicals have been used against groups of peoples. The only thing different about this one is that red line thingy.
you didnt hear? that red line was drawn by congress. so its not the president’s fault if we dont enforce it.
ive always liked rand paul, he has done a few things i didnt like, but not many. the best thing about him, is that he isnt a total nut job like his dad, but keeps the good parts of ron pauls ideals
Well, we certainly don’t need Paul to understand what happened and what is going on here. In fact, many of us could have written a more effective and pointed editorial. Word choice is important and Paul’s editorial was penned while he was wearing kid gloves. There is no national consensus that we ought to kill Syrians and destroy their property. There is no international call for such action either. And if none of that is enough, Assad’s domestic enemies are OUR enemies, in the main. This is all about obamaman. It’s too bad for John “Kleenex” Boehner and John “What! I’m a Senator?” McCain that they snuggled up to Baracka on this so quickly. Yeah, too bad.
Ya gotta love Al Franken. Granted, the guy went to Haaaahhh-vaaaaddddd, so he’s not a total idiot, but the, “They all suck but we gotta do something” mentality is how we get caught up in shitstorms in the first place.
Psst…Al? Doing nothing is also an option, and in this case, it’s the best one.
@3, but there is proof that the “rebels” are no better than Assad and his regime. Videos of a priest being beheaded, video of prisoners being executed. And, still, Baracka wants to align the U.S. with those people?
Syria’s ‘problem’ is highly localized now.
If we stay out of it, it will pass.
If we meddle in it, I think it will be the biggest mistake anyone could possibly make. It can, and may, spill over into the rest of the world. And all because someone needs to feed his useless ego.
It’s not going well for him, either. He has to work SO hard to get people to understand how desperate the (his) need is to do this. http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/09/07/20373022-kerry-courts-europe-for-support-on-syria-strike-as-obama-preps-for-uphill-battle-in-congress?lite>1=43001
To paraphrase a long-dead but exceptionally competent German statesman: “All of Syria is not worth the bones of a single US soldier.”
Then again, neither was Bosnia. And we still send soldiers there nearly 20 years ago.
Obama tossed this turd to congress hopping they would turn him down. He has seen the errors of this intervention and really wants to avoid it. His decision to involve the legislative branch was a stalling tactic so he do nothing and have a scapegoat for his inaction. He screwed up with the Red Line statement and he knows it. His ego will not let him admit that he should never say anything not printed on his teleprompter. He will shit himself if he gets his resolution, his bluff will have been called and he does not have the cards.
“Does anyone admit to supporting George W. Bush’s adventures just because they liked him as the president?”
No. They don’t ADMIT it.
But I’d lay a paycheck that, if it were the Mittster calling for intervention in Syria, many of the Republican legislators who are balking at BHO would be right there with him.
Mitt would dot ask for it unless he could offer a cogent reason for the request. And if he did ask my answer would still be NO.
NHSparky, did I just hear some Howie Carr come out on that one???
Come on, we all should have learned by now that the dems would do any asinine thing BHO asks them to do. There isn’t too many thinkers in that group!
[…] Washington Times reports that Code Pink has a morale problem – and its the Democrats. Earlier today, we read about Senator Al Franken who said that there were no good options in Syria, so he’ll […]
Rob, I plead innocent in that I don’t get to listen to Howie much if at all, but damned if he doesn’t hit the liberal intelligentsia right where it hurts, which is tough to hurt a liberal cause they don’t have many higher brain functions anyway…
Well, okay, if the vote is midweek (Sept. 11), and it’s a ‘no’ by more than well over half, what’s he gonna do? Sit in a corner and cry?
Or is he going to ovrride Congress and just do whatever he wants to?
I’m betting the second one.
If this doesn’t prove Obama’s a muslim terrorist then I don’t know what will…
Nah, Obumbles is gonna take to the airwaves on Tuesday night and invoke images of 9/11 and how they’re gonna be different than the Bush administration and prevent such a horrible tragedy, etc., etc…
Mark my words, he’ll say something very close to it, provided we’re not all passed out drunk after doing shots every time he says, “Me, I, my…”
i figured that was well established when he backed the muslim brotherhood in egypt and lybia
Ya know, NHSparky – I think I just figured out what the POTUS’s favorite Beatles song must be:
I can’t think of obamaman’s present situation as anything other than a monkey trap. He has his hand in the box, clutching the banana, and he cannot understand his predicament. He is trapped and he doesn’t get it. People are yelling, “Hey, stupid! Just let go of the damn banana!” But he won’t listen to them. Instead, he has some fellow monkeys telling him he can do it. One is called Kerry, another Rice, then there’s McCain, Boehner, and, of course, Hagel and Dempsey. All monkeys. All stupid monkeys.