Random Observations for the Post Thanksgiving Lull

Opinion | thepilot.com

A few random observations for this post-Thanksgiving, post-Black Friday day of recovery:

* Donald Trump said recently that if he were president, he would be “bombing the [bad word]” out of ISIS. Five minutes on Google or Bing or Yahoo! or whatever would have turned up U.S. military figures showing we’re already doing that.

In fact, we’re actually bombing ISIS more than we have the Taliban. The Washington Post reviewed data supplied by the U.S. military and found that “from August 2014 to August 2015, there have been 22,478 weapons released over Syria and Iraq, mostly by U.S. aircraft,” whereas only 20,237 weapons were released in the last five years over Afghanistan. Add in the contributions of our allies and of Russia, and I’m not sure how much more [bad word] we can be bombing out of ISIS.

Here’s a radical idea for our pundits and politicians: Before you make strident demands that some group of people do something, do a little research to see if they’re already doing it.

* Speaking of surprising numbers, did you know that 26 people have been killed in jihadist attacks in the U.S. since 9/11/2001, but that 48 people have been killed by right-wing anti-government, anti-immigrant and white supremacist killers during the same period? Did you know that among those 48 are nine police officers targeted, ambushed and killed by professed “anti-government” terrorists specifically because they were cops?

Seems to me that maybe we’re talking about profiling the wrong people. After all, if radical right-wing white people are responsible for so many terrorist acts, then maybe we should be compiling databases and restricting the movement of all white conservative. … No. Wait. That would be stupid. Never mind.

* Speaking of profiling, I’m not sure why some people think it’s a compelling argument to make to me (as some have in the past two weeks) that “47 Democrats voted for restricting entry of refugees from Syria” or that “Bill Maher said Muslims can’t be trusted.”

I’m enormously disappointed in the Democrats who caved in to fear and let ISIS terrorists dictate our refugee policy. As for Bill Maher, I’m certainly baffled as why wingnuts think he’s some kind of liberal spokesman. Also, before you go jumping on Maher’s bandwagon, you might want to check out his views on Christians.

It reminds me of the delicious moment when Sean Hannity invited the late British author and gadfly Christopher Hitchens on his show because Hitchens hated the Clintons, only to end up throwing him off the show because Hitchens started ripping into Hannity’s idiotic claims of a “War on Christmas” before going on to express his contempt for religion in general and Christianity in particular. Again, people, five minutes with Google can save you a lot of grief.

* Speaking of the War on Christmas, I see Fox “News” is going after a national chain because its holiday cups aren’t Jesus-y enough. “Is Starbucks acting more like Ebenezer Scrooge to bah-humbug Christmas?” asked self-described evangelist and Fox News host Kelly Wright. “Some people think so.” Their complaint? Starbucks removed “traditional holiday decorations of Christmas trees and snowflakes on its cups” in favor of a bright, cheery but blank red cup. This, according to Wright, is taking “Christ and Christmas” off the cup.

So let me get this straight. The removal of a pagan symbol of renewal and rebirth (the tree) and a naturally occurring phenomenon (the snowflake), neither of which have squat-all to do with the birth of Jesus 2,000-odd years ago, is taking “Christ and Christmas” off your morning cup of mediocre overpriced coffee. You realize, of course, this makes no sense. But, hey, who cares about logic when you’re a member of the country’s dominant religion attempting to portray yourself as part of some kind of beleaguered insurgent movement?

* Speaking of overreacting to the smallest thing: The White House recently went into lockdown and parts of Pennsylvania Avenue were closed when an unidentified person or persons threw an apple core over the fence. Donald Trump immediately called for a “big, beautiful” wall to be built around Washington State to prevent the spread of the Red Delicious Menace.

OK, I made that last part up about Trump. But the part about the apple core was true.

It certainly does seem as if, in the war against terror, terror is winning.

OMG OMG OMG WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE AAAAAAAAAH!

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

Anyone who says that President Barack Obama is not doing enough about ISIS, ISIL, whatever they call themselves, should be required to answer one simple question or forever hold their peace:

Do you or do you not advocate sending American ground combat troops into Iraq and Syria to fight ISIS? Yes or no?

Let’s make no mistake: These ISIS people are bad news. They’re so vicious and crazy even al-Qaida disowned them. They've committed horrific atrocities against American and British citizens, not to mention against thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of their fellow Muslims.

They do not, however, pose a significant threat at this time to the U.S. homeland. Don’t just take my word for it. This is the assessment of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Pentagon, even though Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel did allow as how they may threaten our interests abroad.

That doesn’t stop the usual hysterical ranting from the usual gang of warmongers. Sen. Lindsey Graham, for example, looked as if he was about to bust a blood vessel on Fox News Sunday as he demanded ground troops, ground troops and more ground troops, while railing that President Obama “needs to rise to the occasion before we all get killed back here at home.”

Really? They’re going to kill all 314 million of us? No, Graham insists, it’s actually worse. According to him, ISIL, left unchecked, will “open the gates of hell to spill out on the world. … This is ISIL versus mankind.”

Meanwhile, you can always count on our old pal John McCain, a guy who never saw a crisis he didn’t want to carpet-bomb.

“We are now facing an existential threat to the security of the United States of America,” McCain said, possibly because he doesn’t understand what the words “existential threat” actually mean. Either that or he doesn’t care about anything other than the fact that the words sound scary.

It’s all poppycock. Also, codswallop and balderdash.

ISIS/ISIL doesn’t threaten the existence of the United States, which is what the words “existential threat” mean. They don’t hold the keys to “the gates of hell” like the Big Bad in a second-rate horror flick.

Yes, they need to be dealt with, before they get big enough to actually do some real damage to us. That’s going to take exactly the sort of broad-based plan we’re engaged in now: diplomacy with our allies who actually are on the front lines, combined with training and support for the people who rightly should be fighting the war for Iraq and Syria, namely Iraqis and Syrians.

It’s fear-mongering, pure and simple, from the party that realizes every issue it has counted on up to now to bring down the president and defeat his party has fizzled.

Obamacare is working as more and more people get access to health care. A Republican-led committee finally had to admit that its investigation of the Benghazi murders revealed no wrongdoing on the part of the administration. The economy continues to improve as the Dow rises and the jobless rate falls. And so on.

So they fall back on their tried and true tactic: scaring people into believing that Daddy McCain and Momma Lindsey and all their Republican pals will take care of us against the Scary Brown Supervillains Who Will Kill Us All. Pay no attention to how many of our own sons and daughters will be killed, maimed or broken to pay the cost of another war. After all, it won’t be their kids or grandkids bleeding and dying.

The kind of sustained freak-out the right is engaging in right now over an exaggerated threat is exactly the same sort of madness that led to this mess in the first place. Letting terrorists — well, terrorize us into committing troops to another quagmire in the Middle East is playing right into their hands.

They’d like nothing better than to have American troops in Iraq and Syria so they could go back to slowly bleeding us with IEDs and suicide bombers, while our inevitable reaction creates more and more resentment among the locals and more and more of them join the ranks of the terrorists.

Have we learned nothing?

But, hey, if the current group of Republican pols want to send division after division of Americans back into Iraq, make them say it. Don’t allow them to get away with their usual “we don’t want war, but we’ll call anything else failure” nonsense. Make them own up to it. See how the American people like them then.

Wingnuts: We Don't Want War, But Everything Else Makes Obama a Wuss

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

The Republicans and their captive media are saying a great many things about the Russian incursion into Ukraine, but there’s one thread that runs through it all: It’s not Vladimir Putin’s fault, it’s all Barack Obama’s.

For example, some commentators, such as The Washington Post’s Mark Thiessen and Commentary’s Jonathan Tobin, claim that President Obama’s “weakness” in Syria somehow “emboldened” Putin to invade Ukraine.

Oh, really? What weakness was that? The weakness where, under threat of U.S. bombing, the Assad regime caved and agreed to dismantle its chemical weapons stockpile?

Or maybe they think it was “weakness” not to defy the will of the American people and put American boots on the ground in a complicated, many-sided religious-based conflict which would have us fighting alongside elements of al-Qaida. That would have been insane recklessness and wrong-headed adventurism that would make the Iraq debacle look like the pinnacle of strategic brilliance, but it wouldn’t look weak.

According to a story in The Washington Post, Sen. John McCain called the Russian aggression “the ultimate result of a feckless foreign policy in which nobody believes in America’s strength anymore,” even as he admitted that the U.S. “does not have a realistic military option to force Russian troops to withdraw.”

In another forum, McCain suggested sanctions on Russia, which the administration is considering. How much you want to bet if they do what McCain suggests, he’ll still call them weak?

At least the folks at Fox News had a more measured response. “Even if [the president] wanted to help … we simply don’t have the ground forces to do it,” said Bill O’Reilly. “And confronting the Russians in the air would lead to major hostilities that the USA cannot afford right now.”

Frequent Foxista Charles Krauthammer agreed: “Well, obviously it’s beyond our control. The Russians are advancing. There is nothing that will stop them. We are not going to go to war.”

Oh, wait, my mistake. Those quotes from Fox were from 2008, when the Russians invaded another neighbor, Georgia. You know, back when we had a president of Fox’s preferred party, a president who claimed to have “looked into Putin’s soul,” a president who still bears no blame for anything he did in the minds of the right.

Now, when “that one” is in the White House, we have Steve Doocy saying that the president “hasn’t done much” to solve the situation, and Bill O’Reilly claiming that the crisis occurred because Obama has “lost moral authority.”

Meanwhile, the Fox Nation website put up a page of video of Putin doing, as they described it, “macho things,” including the inevitable horseback riding with his shirt off. Frankly, the only thing creepier that Putin’s constantly releasing videos of his shirtless self is the right’s panting obsession with his “manliness.”

Perhaps the purest expression of the right wing’s attitude was capsulized by Mister 9/11 himself, Rudy Giuliani. Speaking to Fox’s Neil Cavuto, Rudy revealed that what he really admires and wants in an executive is ruthless dictatorial strong-arming:

“Putin decides what he wants to do and he does it in half a day, right? He decided he had to go to their parliament. He went to their parliament. He got permission in 15 minutes. He makes a decision and he executes it, quickly. Then everybody reacts. That’s what you call a leader. President Obama, he’s got to think about it. He’s got to go over it again. He’s got to talk to more people about it.”

There you have it, folks. To the right, Obama’s problem is that he’s not more like the dictator Vladimir Putin. Of course, when the president does do something, they scream that he’s worse than Hitler.

I’ve been critical in these pages of President Obama’s foreign policy, but I can tell you this, without reservation: I am so glad right now that he’s president and that John McCain and Rudy Giuliani aren’t.

John Kerry’s gone to Kiev and other capitals to show our support for the current Ukraine government and drum up more, our NATO allies are meeting to discuss how to deal with the crisis, the G7’s suspending preparations for the planned G8 summit in Sochi. And all the while, the president works with our international partners to create further steps to isolate Russia as punishment for its aggression.

Meanwhile, the saber-rattlers claim not to want military action, but criticize every option short of it as puny and weak — even options they themselves have suggested.

As Barney Frank once said, in a saying that should be the slogan of the Democratic Party, “We’re not perfect, but they’re nuts.”

Sluice Tundra, Private Eye In: The Bubble People

Latest Newspaper Column:

I stood in the window of my office, looking down on a street that was as dark as my mood and as empty as my bank account. From somewhere far off, I heard the sound of a lonely saxophone. I felt a rush of melancholy before I realized it was my ringtone.

I fumbled the cheap cellphone out of my pocket. “Sluice Tundra, private eye,” I said.

“Mr. Tundra?” a female voice said.

“That’s what my mom calls me,” I replied.

The woman sounded confused. “She calls you ‘Mr. Tundra?’”

“We’re not a close family,” I said. “What can I do for you?”

“Oh, Mr. Tundra, please come quickly,” she said.

“What seems to be the matter, Miss …”

“Winger,” she said. “And it’s ‘Mrs.’ It’s about my husband. But I can’t talk about it over the phone.” She gave me an address in a neighborhood that was so upscale that even the trash collectors wore Dolce & Gabbana.

When I got there, she was waiting at the door, dressed in a low-cut dress that was as flimsy as the rationale for restrictive voter ID laws. She led me into a luxurious living room.

The guy seated on the couch looked to be in his early 60s. He was a big man, with a disgruntled expression on a red face that looked as though it had never been gruntled. But that wasn’t the strangest thing about him.

“Mrs. Winger,” I said, “does your husband have some sort of immune disorder?” She just shook her head, so I added, “Then maybe you can explain why he’s inside a bubble.”

“I don’t know!” she cried. “It started last summer. And it’s getting worse.”

“I think you’ve got the wrong guy, sister,” I said. “I’m a private eye, not a doctor. I’m not sure what I can do to help.”

“I talked to several doctors. They don’t know what’s wrong. I just need to know who did this to him.”

I tapped on the bubble. It was hard, like plastic. I leaned over. “Can you hear me in there?” I shouted. It was then I spotted the “Romney 2012” pin on his lapel. I had a feeling I knew what this was about. “Mr. Winger,” I yelled. “You know that Romney lost, right?”

“Yeah,” he replied, his face getting even redder. “But only because the takers outnumber the makers! Obama voters just want people to give them stuff!”

“How do you feel about the liberals opposing the president’s proposed intervention in Syria?”

“What opposition? The left are a bunch of hypocrites for being silent about it! Those dirty leftists won’t say anything bad about Obama! Ever!”

“Hmmm,” I said. I turned to his wife. “What does your husband watch on TV?”

“Why, Fox News, of course,” she replied. “Like everyone else. We have it on all the time.”

“And does he listen to the radio?”

“Only conservative talk radio,” she said proudly, adding, “like everyone else.”

I straightened up. “Mrs. Winger, your husband is trapped in the Conservative Bubble. He only watches or listens to things that confirm what he already believes, even if those beliefs have squat-all to do with reality. Like this idea that leftists aren’t speaking up against war in Syria. A lot of them are. Michael Moore, Juan Cole, Markos Moulitsas …”

“Who?”

“See, that’s a sign of being a Bubble Person,” I said. “You complain a lot about what ‘leftists’ say or do, but you really don’t know of any. If you did, you’d know that there’s a lot of arguing on the left about Syria, and a lot of the people arguing oppose intervention.”

“Well, why aren’t the liberal media reporting that, then?” she demanded. “And why are Barack Obama and John Kerry for war in Syria?”

“Maybe because the media aren’t really liberal,” I said. “They never saw a Middle East war they didn’t cheerlead. At least until it goes bad, which it usually does. As for Secretary Kerry and President Obama? On their most ‘leftist’ day, they’re moderates. But you won’t hear that inside the Fox News/talk radio bubble.”

“Well,” she said, her own face beginning to take on the same red shade as her husband’s. “I can see you’re just another one of those people who’ve drunk the Obama Kool-Aid.” As she spoke, the air around her began to shimmer. She was developing a bubble of her own.

“Sorry, lady,” I said. “You asked who did this to him? He did. And now you’re doing it to yourself. There’s nothing I can do for you. I’ll send you a bill for my time.”

I left, headed back to the mean streets, knowing I had as much chance of getting paid as a North Carolina teacher has of getting a pay raise. Some people you just can’t reach.

Attacking Syria: Moral, Maybe. But Not All That Legal

I want to start off making one thing clear: there are excellent moral reasons for attacking the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria. Assad, like his father before him, is a brutal dictator. He tortures. He viciously represses dissent. And now, it appears, he has crossed the line and used chemical weapons against his own people—against civilians, which is a savage and barbaric act. Assad could drop dead today, and I would not shed a single tear.

So President Obama has compelling moral reasons for a strike on Syria to stop the killing and even to knock out the Assad regime. What he does not have is any legal justification for doing so.

Now, I know it’s fashionable among the ignoramii to mock the idea of a lawyer like me demanding that things be done according to “technicalities”—unless, of course, those “technicalities” can be used against someone they don’t like. Then, it’s all about “the Rule of Law.” But when you’re talking committing American sons and daughters to a conflict, the law’s kind of important.

First off, attacking Syria would be, by definition, an act of war. Now, it’s true that over the years, Presidents both Republican and Democrat, have taken more and more of the war-making power to themselves, and Congresses, both Republican and Democratic controlled, have ceded it to them. (This, by the way, is the subject of Rachel Maddow’s well-researched and thoughtful book Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power,  which I recommend wholeheartedly).

But even given that fact,  the War Powers Resolution only allows the President to commit American forces in the event of “(1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.” None of that has happened here. It’s true that multiple Presidents have violated the Resolution and that the Congress has fussed, fumed, and deplored, while failing  to take any legal steps to stop those actions, calculating no doubt that the political costs would be too great. That doesn’t make it any less the law. President Obama himself acknowledged this in his 2007 candidate Q & A to the Boston Globe: “The President,” he wrote, “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…. In instances of self-defense, the President would be within his constitutional authority to act before advising Congress or seeking its consent.” Self-defense does not in any way include “preserving the credibility” of the United States or of the Obama Administration’s “red line” statement of a few weeks ago.

 But hasn’t Assad violated international law by using chemical weapons? You betcha. But Article One, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution states that “The Congress shall have Power to ...define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations.” Now, you and I know this Congress is about as useful as teats on a bull, but it is what it is. The President can do a lot of things by executive Order, but “punishing offences against the Law of Nations” is, by black-letter law, given to the Congress.

Then there’s the problem that the United Nations has also failed to provide us even the flimsy cover a resolution authorizing an attack would provide. Given the support that Russia and China have provided Syria (one of their biggest arms customers), they’re unlikely to do so. See “teats on a bull,” above.

So why be picky about the law when there’s evil like Assad’s to be addressed? Because when the President, any President, takes military action with no legal justification because “this dictator is bad and it’s the right thing to do,” then he has untethered his power from the law. It makes the use of power an extension of what the President feels in his “gut,” to use the phrase applied to George W. Bush’s criteria for action. And power untethered by anything but one man’s “gut” is despotism. It may be benevolent, well-meaning despotism from one who, for the moment, is a Good King, trying to Do Good. But if there’s one thing that history teaches us, it’s that Good Kings are often followed by Bad Ones, and once power is untethered, it’s hard to get it back on the leash.  

Having drawn the "red line" at the use of chemical weapons (which I said at the time was a bad idea), President Obama may very well feel that he has to follow through with a military strike or else be thought weak. But the credibility of neither the President nor the United States is enhanced by unilateral action that flies in the face of not only the law, but the President’s own statements on the law. 

Syria: Here Comes The Creep Again

Latest Newspaper Column

There’s a quote I heard somewhere — I can’t remember exactly where — that says, “Men tempt you with your vices; the devil tempts you with your virtues.” I think of that quote a lot when I think about the recent decision by President Obama to send military aid to Syria in addition to the humanitarian aid we’re already providing.

I know I said a couple of weeks ago that the Democrats were just doing their usual act, trying to prove they were all for another overseas military intervention just to keep the Republicans from calling them wimps.

After thinking about it, I’m willing to allow as how maybe, just maybe, both Republicans and Democrats really do think that some sort of intervention in Syria is the right thing to do because what’s going on there is horrible, Bashar el-Assad’s a brutal dictator, and helping the people of Syria out is a good and right and American act because we love to help the oppressed.

I still don’t think we should do it.

The Syrian conflict is as much a sectarian war as a political one. Syria is about 10-14 percent Christian, 10-14 percent Shiite Muslim, with most of the remainder being Sunni Muslims. Except that Assad and most of the elite (including about 70 percent of the career military) are Alawites, which is a branch of the Shiites. Sort of. Even some Shiites are suspicious of the Alawites for some of their more unorthodox beliefs. (This sort of thing is the reason I routinely mock people who talk about “Muslims” as if they were some huge monolithic organization. These people make the Baptists look unified.)

The Alawites were oppressed by the majority Sunnis until Bashar’s father, Hafiz al-Assad, rose to the power that he held with an iron fist for nearly 30 years. One of the reasons the government is fighting so hard, according to some observers, is the fear that the Alawites will be massacred by resentful Sunnis if the regime falls.

It would be a grim and bitter irony if the “oppressed” we spend the time arming turn around and become the oppressors again. It would not, however, be a huge surprise. In 2011, the uprising in the city of Homs left dozens dead, mostly Allawites, after which pro-government forces engaged in a series of drive-by shootings of civilians in Sunni neighborhoods. I hope you’re beginning to see why we should avoid this whole mess.

Saudi Arabia (ruled by Sunnis) is backing the rebels, while Iran (ruled by Shiites) backs the government. Meanwhile, one of the most powerful and best-equipped rebel groups is an al-Qaida affiliate called the al-Nusra Front. On the government side, we’ve got fighters trained by and loyal to the Shiite terrorist group Hezbollah.

So we have militias, some of whom are associated with or loyal to al-Qaida, killing and being killed by troops of a government supported by Hezbollah. I’m tempted to say, “Where’s the downside?” — and would if it weren’t for all those poor civilians caught in the middle. Still, putting ourselves on one side or the other of a fight between Muslim sects is a recipe for disaster.

I’m somewhat comforted — but only somewhat — by President Obama’s statement in a televised interview with Charlie Rose that he’s not looking at sending in troops or Special Forces or even setting up the “no-fly” zones that people like Honorable John McCain are clamoring for. “If you set up a no-fly zone,” Obama noted, “you may not be actually solving the problem on the ground.” We’re “just” giving weapons to them, and apparently hoping that they don’t end up in the hands of people who’ll be happy to use them on us once the fighting in Syria is over (if indeed it ever is). And it’s nice to see that no one is (as yet) proposing to give man-portable anti-aircraft weapons to the rebels, since there’s a good chance that one or more of them could end up in the hands of some guy skulking at the end of an American runway, just waiting to bring down a 767 or an Airbus.

But limited assistance has a way of becoming less and less limited as time goes on and the demands of those we’re trying to help become greater. It’s called “mission creep,” and historical examples abound, from Vietnam to Somalia to Afghanistan.

“We know what it’s like to rush into a war in the Middle East without having thought it through,” Obama told Rose. But I’m not completely sure I like the idea of slowly creeping our way into another Middle Eastern war any better, even if we do it with the best of intentions.

The Thin Red Line

Latest Newspaper Column

These days, it seems like the only thing more incoherent than President Obama’s policy on Syria is the response of congressional Republicans to it.

Last year, as you may remember, the president announced that the use of chemical weapons by the Bashar al-Assad regime against the Syrian rebel forces would cross a “red line.”

Strong words, those, and, like most such tough talk about “red lines,” ill-advised. Because once it appears that there was evidence of rebels being killed or injured by sarin gas, suddenly they’re all, “Well, wait, let’s not be too hasty.” According to the president, “we don’t know what happened, or who did what to who.”


Not that I think haste is a good thing, mind you, especially when we’re talking about possible U.S. military intervention. But in drawing a “red line” and talking about “game changers,” Obama fell into one of the traps that always make me shake my head at the way some Democrats act whenever foreign or military policy comes up: They feel like they need to look tough so the Republicans don’t call them “weak on security,” so they forget to think before they speak.

The mistake is not being cautious now; the mistake was talking about “red lines” in the first place in any situation where our direct national security is not involved. Because here’s the thing: Trying to talk tough because you’re afraid the GOP is going to call you weak is a sucker’s game. They’re going to call a Democratic president weak whatever he does — unless it’s a strong military response, in which case they’ll call him reckless. I mean, have they learned nothing from the Clinton years?

I remember 1991, when there was a military coup in which Gen. Raoul Cédras ousted the elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The U.S. tried to get Cédras to step aside. He didn’t. The Clinton administration tried various scenarios, every one of which was slammed by congressional Republicans.

We tried economic sanctions. Republican response: “You can’t use sanctions! Those only hurt the Haitian people!”

We tried diplomatic pressure. Republican response: “Diplomatic pressure’s not going to work! This president is weak!”

When the idea of invasion came up, the Republican response was: “Invade?! You can’t invade! This isn’t worth losing American lives!”

So what did they want the president to do? “He should … uh … show leadership! Yeah, that sounds good. Leadership!”

This went on until 1994, when President Clinton did put the 82nd Airborne on planes and send them Haiti-wards while simultaneously sending Jimmy Carter, Colin Powell and Sen. Sam Nunn to let Cédras know it was his last chance. Cédras caved and left — after which Rush Limbaugh declared that Clinton had sent the troops into combat with only 14 rounds of ammo apiece. (That report was beautifully smacked down, on air, by a spokesman for the 82nd, who tore Rush a new one. Best 15 minutes of radio I ever heard.)

Depressingly, then as now, the only principle that the congressional Republicans seem to embrace is, “Everything the Democratic president does, proposes, or might possibly consider is wrong.”

We shouldn’t arm the rebels, insists Sen. Lindsey Graham, unless we can make sure the arms go to the “right people.” Yeah. That’ll work. We did so well with that in Afghanistan.

Well, how about putting in American troops? Both Graham and John McCain are “completely opposed to putting boots on the ground.” McCain and Graham have both expressed some support of a “no-fly zone” over Syria to keep the Syrian air force off the rebels’ backs, but let the first plane get shot down by a Syrian missile, with an American pilot killed or captured, and see how quickly they sing a different tune.
It must be powerfully tempting for the president, as chief executive of the last superpower, to draw “red lines” for other countries. It’s practically a conditioned reflex for the opposition party to, well, oppose. But neither one seems to have thought beyond that.

President Obama apparently had no idea what to do when his “red line” was crossed. But, apparently, neither does the GOP.