. . . to support the protests in 2009 . . . and is missing an opportunity to support the Syrian rebels now . . . Yet all I’ve heard from the RW since the Arab Spring started is about how Obama abused power by intervening in Libya, and supported Islamic extremists in Egypt and brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power . . . I are confused.
American support would have done the Iranian protesters nothing but harm politically anyway. You have to tailor your response to the circumstances.
And what is the GOP line on Syria, anyway? I have yet to hear a consistent one.
I’ve skimmed some Sryia-related threads on Free Republic (which only speaks for the hardest-RW fringe, I know), and while everybody seems to agree Obama is handling it wrong, nobody seems to agree on anything else. The dissonance is fascinating, actually. Support the rebels? But that might get a lot of Syrian Christians killed, if the aftermath of the fall of Hussein in Iraq is any indicator. Support Assad? But we can’t do that, the Russians support Assad!
I chuckle at the idea that there’s an Iranian on the face of the earth saying to himself “I sure wish America would come in and fuck with our politics!”
The same goes for Syria. Who would make this civil war even better? The running dog lackeys of the Zionist Imperialist regime! We’ll welcome them with open arms! After all, the friend of my enemy is my… umm…
Maybe not exactly the same thing, but as I understand it, there is a huge population of young, educated Iranians who positively loathe their current oppressive, fundamentalist political leaders and long for the freedoms that Americans too often take for granted.
That said, I don’t know what Obama could have done to assist in the attempted uprising that wouldn’t have been possibly catastrophic, with all kinds of possible serious repercussions had things gone wrong for the reform-minded opposition.
What exactly are you confused about? Did McCain oppose involvement in Syria? Because you seem to be acting as though there is some hypocrisy simply because something McCain spoke about might contradict something other Republicans said. Unless you have some evidence McCain was personally against involvement in Libya your point in that regard is without merit.
I think we should have at least tried something in regard to the Iranian protesters; but I do agree we probably could have achieved little there. Unfortunately that was akin to a flicker of smoke and flame that just wasn’t powerful enough to really start a fire, and trying to mess with it would have just blown it out even faster.
With Syria we could probably have taken steps to knock Assad out of power, but he’s mostly out of power now. The problem with Syria is no one has enough power to rule it, Assad probably has control of 30% of the country and can probably defend some slice of the country indefinitely. And once Assad is gone unfortunately it doesn’t appear whoever replaces him is going to be any better, just murderers of a different sect.
BTW, a quick search on google shows that McCain was actually advocating military involvement with Libya throughout, and before Obama came out in support of it. So whatever claims that the GOP were complaining that it was an abuse of power has nothing to do with McCain from what I can see.
Meh, if the Republicans want to invade Iran and Syria, let 'em say so.
Oh, well, I guess I should be glad at least there was some recogntion that there are other countries in the world besides the US. I was beginning to think they had completely forgotten this fact.
Quite true. However, there is also a significant plurality who still believe in and support the Islamic Republic enough to kill or to die for it. This is not a regime on its way out.
:rolleyes: :dubious: MCain is a former presidential nominee and a keynote speaker at the Republican National Convention; it is not unfair to take him as speaking for the party. Especially when the crowd cheers his every remark. And no, the party does not oppose involvement in Syria . . . nor support it, so far as I can figure . . . But it the party, or at least the RW voices on the Intertubes, do seem pretty consistently to bash Obama WRT to Libya and Syria; and pointing out the dissonance between that and the remarks McCain got cheers for just now is not unfair either.
The consistent Republican line on Syria is that Obama is doing it all wrong. For that matter, that’s their line on everything else, too. Their positions aren’t based on policies; they’re based on whatever Obama is doing.
I meant to say Libya and Egypt there (the right seems to think we should’ve backed Mubarak all the way, or something); but, I can’t recall a kind word from the right WRT to the Admin’s Syria policy, either. (But, as stated above, no clarity, either, on what policy would be preferable.)
Regarding Libya, John Boehner felt like sticking a finger in Obama’s eye with the '73 War Powers Act and wanted our current involvement in supporting the rebels to be up fro congressional approval. I actually agreed with Boehner on this. Whereby McCain and John Kerry acted together to get approval passed congress and the GOP gave up.
Right or wrong there is no hypocrisy about what McCain feels American involvement should look like.
I think it’s pretty simple. There are two major group within the GOP in regards to war. The libertarian group is familiar with the broken window parable and rejects militarism generally, though some of them may be sold to its merits (such as Paul Ryan). When a Democrat supports a venture overseas, the libertarians are rolled out. It makes sense for the media, since they want to see dissent rather than consensus and it makes sense for the party, sine they want defining difference. The other group in the GOP are the hawks or neocons (one could cynically say that said group cares more about factional gain rather than prosperity). When a Democrat opposes a venture overseas, the libertarian wing recedes, allowing the party to continue in its big tent phase.
No hypocrisy, just no ideological consistency throughout the party. Though I remain open to correction: perhaps there are a few Republicans in favour of war only when propounded by Republicans.
For me, I just want a decision made. Decide to do something then do it. Letting a civil war drag on for months then intervening after tens of thousands are dead is not decisive, it’s dithering.
Obama should not intervene in Syria for the simple reason that he didn’t do so when it would have done the most good. If he was going to do it, it should have been a long time ago. So I’m going to assume that the President made a decisive choice months ago not to intervene in Syria because it wasn’t in our interests to do so. I’m not going to assume that he just hasn’t decided yet.