Chasing Evil . . .

. . . around the globe is not America’s job.

This Administration’s ballooning involvement in prewar preparations against Syria was about to become a tipping point which – if it already hasn’t been reached – could have embroiled the U.S. in another international conflict lasting well beyond the second term of President Barack Obama, the man who has become irrevocably tied to the phrase “crossing the red line.”

But who is it, exactly, that was about to cross that red line into the abyss of unintended consequences?

Warfare is a hazardous undertaking.  There are times which require it.  And there are times when it is wiser to seek a more practical solution.

What if They Started a War . . .

. . .  and other countries showed up, but the U.S. declined to participate?  Unfortunately, that is not what our leaders in Washington have chosen to do. 

Instead, the Obama administration has agreed to involve us in another Middle East conflict, this time with Syria.

Street fighting rages in the cities and towns of Syria
as rebel groups including anti-American factions
such as Hezbollah strive to topple President Bashar
al Assad.  (TV Screen Shot/Credit Fox News)

It began with Syrian demonstrations in 2011 – those have since morphed into another of the area’s sectarian-driven Islamist civil wars, this one against President Bashar al Assad.  Estimates of total casualties stand at 93,000, and additional thousands of refugees have fled across Syria’s northern border to Turkey.

The Obama administration recently announced that it will supply military assistance to Syrian rebels, and that it will funnel that assistance through General Salim Idriss, a Syrian exile.  As leader of the Supreme Military Council, Idriss holds together a fragile coalition of anti-Assad rebel fighters, the Free Syrian Army.

The Executive who refused to Execute

President Obama addresses the press corps

 yesterday on sequestration.

(Fox News TV Screenshot by Dick Bergeron)

After a cursory gathering with leaders of Congress yesterday, President Barack Obama held a little publicized, yet dour press conference to report on the results of that meeting. 

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and their lieutenants were invited to that get-together.

As anyone who is following this latest of beltway originated crises knows, that get-together yielded no progress on the now politically ubiquitous topic of sequestration.

It’s not even clear why the President called this meeting at the 11^th hour, on the last day possible to negotiate a solution.  Not he, his staff, nor anyone else in the leadership of Congress had the appetite to effect a compromise.

Washington Stare-Down Intensifies

President Barack Obama as he appeared on
"60 Minutes," January 27, 2013.

This afternoon, President Obama concluded his comments to shipyard workers in Virginia, spouting words of doom about what will happen beginning Friday, if the GOP does not come to terms about resolving the latest self-imposed budget crisis. 

The trigger for this presumed disaster is the ‘sequester,’ a failed political strategy which, at the 11^th hour, has become the straightjacket into which Obama and both branches of the Congress bound themselves in 2011.
Now they are in a cat fight over how to cut the binding.

His Swagger Radiates no Sweetness.

Observers have seen it dozens of times:  Our slim President’s athletic, waist-level fist-pumping jog down the steps of Air Force One – alone, confidently smiling, immaculately dressed in a dark business suit,  complementing shirt and silk necktie – jauntily disembarking from the boarding ramp.

It’s the vision of a U.S. chief executive completely in control of the ship-of-state, a position from which he has not been reluctant to use the full power conferred on him by the electorate. 

After the 2012 national election, the President invoked his assertion that the entirety of Americans had indisputably endorsed him to fix culpability on anyone in the Congress who doesn’t concur with his re-election ‘mandate:'

Which American Soldier Will be Asked to Take the Last Bullet in Afghanistan?

President Obama meets with Afghan President Hamid
Karzai earlier this month, when Mr. Obama visited
U.S. Troops at Bagram Airfield.
(TV Screenshot, Dick Bergeron)

The answer is coming more clearly into focus:  Not one more. 

The Afghan war represents a conflict that was begun with justification.  But it has morphed into a struggle that is being prosecuted under a strategy that our leaders in Washington can no longer adequately explain.  Furthermore, it is being conducted under restrictive rules of engagement which unnecessarily place American lives in danger.

When American troops invaded Afghanistan in 2001, most of us supported the initial objective.  It was clear at the time:  Capture or terminate Osama bin Ladin and permanently neuter the threat of the Taliban. 

Thanks to the protective umbrella cast over bin Ladin by Afghan’s neighbor and our other untrustworthy ally Pakistan, it took over 10 years to accomplish the first objective.  Achievement of the second is nowhere in sight.