I'm going to support the president's call for action. I believe my colleagues should support this call for action.
John Boehner, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives
Normally when the Speaker of the House and his majority leader throw their support behind something it becomes a done deal in the lower chamber of congress. Unfortunately in this day and age there isn't one thing normal about that august body. Indeed, it is rife with crude and demented tea party hacks who don't give a rat's ass what the speaker says, thinks, or believes. Their only goal in life is to make sure Barak Obama doesn't get anything he wants.
Boehner knows this full well and he has left himself a back door out of yet another situation which might show everyone his house leadership is the weakest and most ineffective in recent memory. After he declared his support for a military response to the alleged use of chemical weapons by Bashar al-Assad's forces, one of his spokespersons made it clear, Barak Obama was going to have to be the one to convince the house membership to go along with it. In other words, while Mr. Boehner may vote for a resolution approving military action, he is going to do absolutely nothing to try to influence the people he has no influence over anyway. If the vote fails in the house it won't be because members of his own party don't pay any attention to him, it will be because the president didn't make an effective sales pitch.
Some might call this a rank attempt at face saving, while others, who are more cynical, would probably use the word cowardly. But hey, you say tomato, I say tomahto.
Paul Ryan, who ran for vice president and still sits in the house claimed, "The president has some work to do to recover from his grave missteps in Syria." Mr. Ryan didn't say what those missteps might be, probably because Mr. Obama hasn't done anything in Syria yet. However the statement probably sounded insightful to a few of the dimmer bulbs in his district and across the nation, while doing his ego some good.
Over on the senate side, John McCain said, "A vote against that resolution by congress, I think, would be catastrophic because it would undermine the credibility of the United States and the president." Of course, McCain has never seen a war he didn't want a part of. In fact he is threatening to vote against any resolution that puts too many limits on what Obama can do.
On the other side of the coin Senator Rand Paul, who has a bit of the old isolationist in him, says he won't vote for any resolution that allows the president to use force in Syria. Ted Cruz says he's also leaning toward no, but is open to hearing a debate about the subject. Marco Rubio said something, but everyone is still trying to figure out what he meant and where he stands on the issue. The problem is somewhere down the line this triumvirate of GOP presidential hopefuls could find themselves teetering on the edge of a large crevice with their reluctance to support the president. Right now they can claim they are voting against Obama, but by 2016 Hillary could well be screeching they were voting for Assad--especially if the Syrian leader decides he has a free hand to use whatever weapons he wants against his own population and repeatedly does so.
NBC is reporting a vote on a resolution could come as early as next week. We arrived at this point because the British balked, at least temporarily, the French refuse to, "go it alone," and about 80% of everyone in the country wants the president to get congressional approval before he unleashes the dogs of war once again.
In the final analysis there are very few people on the street right now who want a new fight. The Iraq scam has large chunks of the population convinced there will be more to this than a few bombs and cruise missiles. For many it has all the trappings of another deadly quagmire which offers no quick, or satisfactory end.
They could well be right.
Unfortunately it looks like we're going to find out one way, or the other.
9-3-13
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