I Apologize in Advance for Ruining Your Weekend
Glenn Reynolds on our Great Libyan Misadventure:
Libya is a “dumb war” — because it’s halfhearted, half-assed, and run by committee, and the President can’t even articulate the national interest involved. Obama the candidate said he was smarter than that. Obama the President is proving the candidate wrong.
Not quite. Candidate Obama was shrewd enough to say whatever he needed to get elected. President Obama is in over his head. “Half-assed” is his preferred method for waging war, as we’ve seen now in Afghanistan and in Libya. A surge with an end-date is not a surge. “Leading from behind” is not leadership. Especially when you prod your allies — the ones you’re “leading” into doing your dirty work — into upping the ante to “regime change,” without dedicating the necessary assets.
Can we call that “half-asser?” Half-assest? Fully-assed? I await your suggestions.
Meanwhile, the GOP has proven itself, yet again, to be the Stupid Party — and Congress has shown itself so risk-averse as to be useless.
First, Congress voted on a toothless resolution “scolding” the President for waging war on Libya in violation of the War Powers Act. That made them look even more ineffectual than usual. But given a chance to vote on a resolution with some teeth — to defund the Libya War — Congress punted.
Big surprise.
What we have here is a President with balls enough to behave with more brazen lawlessness than any president since Nixon, and a cowardly Congress unwilling to do much more than emit the occasional squawk.
From Libya to the debt ceiling negotiations to simple day-to-day governance — if there’s a way our lawfulness & leadership vacuum serves us well, please let me know.
I don’t know, but I am scared to death to see the results of his full-assed policies, if these are the half-assed ones.
I knew that the Republicans were spineless when they punted on their 100 Billion Dollar Promise!
First they play a semantic game about Pro Rated when the number came in at 61 billion – I defy anyone to find the words Pro Rated mentioned by a single candidate in September or October of 2010.
Then they whine – it’s the best we could do when the 61 billion became 38 billion – which became 348 million when you start talking about Actual Dollars.
Had they meant what they said they’d have gone into any negotiation with at least 300 billion in cuts on the table. Anyone with a room temprature I.Q. could have told you Democrats will fight tooth and nail not to cut ONE PENNY from spending.
But, alas, they are the wimps we suspected they were.
And they never miss an opportunity to prove it.
Boehner is doing all he can to avoid giving the Dems any issue to demagogue. He is trying to win the next election and run the table. However, he risks losing the support of the Tea Party, the key to success. One can be too timid, too cagey.
One can always advance the ball slowly, but you run out of ‘downs’ and turn the ball over. You need the occasional big play. Defunding the war in Libya was a big play opportunity. Yes, the Dems could try to make it an issue, but we win that fight all day long. Furthermore, it would tell us you are serious, dumbass.
Green evidently didn’t catch The Conservative ™ David Brooks on the Meet the Depressed this morning.
With crease still firmly intact, Brooks laid out the case that The Arab Spring holds such promise that no one can fault Obama for trying to take advantage of the situation by ousting Ghaddafi or the manner in which it’s being done. Hell, anyone would be a fool not to try!
Under the questionable cover of a UN humanitarian mandate where Russia, China and Brazil abstained, the US Congress was bypassed in favor of a rush to war so elastic in its justification that it could be used to intervene in any country’s civil war at any time.
Which should be coming to Darfur and Syria any day now.
I have to wait for NBC’s video podcast version of MTP — usually at around 10:45 Mountain. Can’t wait to see Brooks, in the same way that I can’t wait to take a ball-peen hammer to my little toe.