This independent voter who has been in both parties and on both ends of the political spectrum is always amazed to see how today’s Republicans simply can’t argue a case without making it personal and making it all boil down to hatred of Barack Obama. And we now have a quintessential example of it — and why it is highly likely that Obama’s move to seek Congressional approval for a limited strike on Syria is doomed. Not just because of polls or opposition from a large number of constituents. And most assuredly not because it would violate the way Republicans reacted to national security issues in the past, particularly under Republican Presidents. Just read GOPer Bill Kristol on that. But because it’s Obama.
Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan gives a thoughtful argument about why the strike should not take place. But then she just can’t help herself.
It gives her a chance to start a new Republican theme that you’ll likely hear a lot in the future: Obama may have gotten bin Laden, OK, but he’s no “real” war time commander (like George W. Bush perhaps?). Here’s the section:
Finally, this president showed determination and guts in getting Osama bin Laden. But a Syria strike may become full-scale war. Is Barack Obama a war president? On Syria he has done nothing to inspire confidence. Up to the moment of decision, and even past it, he has seemed ambivalent, confused, unaware of the implications of his words and stands. From the “red line” comment to the “shot across the bow,” from the White House leaks about the nature and limits of a planned strike to the president’s recent, desperate inclusion of Congress, he has seemed consistently over his head. I have been thinking of the iconic image of American military leadership, Emanuel Leutze’s painting “Washington Crossing the Delaware.” There Washington stands, sturdy and resolute, looking toward the enemy on the opposite shore. If you imagine Mr. Obama in that moment he is turned, gesturing toward those in the back. “It’s not my fault we’re in this boat!” That’s what “I didn’t set a red line” and “My credibility is not at stake” sounded like.
And looked like.
And “looked like”?
What are her central casting criteria on that?
Did Harry Truman “look like” a wartime President, like Washington, “sturdy and resolute, looking toward the enemy on the opposite shore?”
Read it all, but that section undermines her whole piece because it’s clear when you come down to it, she has simply concluded Obama could never be a President who could command the military as a wartime President.
Heck: he doesn’t even look like one.
OBAMA HATRED PART II:
Rush Limbaugh did a riff with a “speculation” on how the chemical weapons were really used by the rebels to frame Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — and that Obama could have been in on it. Would he have suggested the same if Mitt Romney had been elected President?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.