Yesterday, I scratched the surface on the lead-up to the new war against ISIS (despite Obama never using the word "war" in his speech to the American public, it’s a war) by pointing out how progressives get wrong the hypocrisy argument and the military/humanitarian argument, but mostly, they get things right, because (like some of our libertarian friends) they are naturally suspicious of proclamations about the security of the homeland, and of any kind of rush to war.
Now, not all progressives. There are some self-identified progressives that just go along with the party line, all the time. They tend to share images of Obama on Facebook with captions like “I Got This” or “Get the President’s Back.” I’m not terribly interested in appealing to their reason, because it doesn’t seem like they have any.
Nor am I interested in appealing to conservatives that naturally and instinctively hate everything about Obama. They must get majorly confused when Obama does something like this new war, and people like John Boehner are agreeing with him. Although, to them, John Boehner is also a liberal, so whatever.
These divisions in our politics are so wild that, the other day, I saw someone pointing out to the Obamabots that we don’t need to attack another Muslim country, when we’ve already struck Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Of course the Obamabots accused this reasonable person of watching too much Fox News, and they said we’ve never attacked Somalia or Yemen, which is false.
It’s a real problem when we are so divided (even within the same ideology) that we cannot agree on basic facts. I’m reminded of Florida’s own Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was famously ignorant about Obama’s entire kill-list program. This is explained fairly easily: as party-line Democrats, Obamabots look to the party to frame their world-thinking. The split in partisan news (Fox News for the right, MSNBC for the left) has everyone embracing their own “facts,” and anybody that challenges these facts are just shills for the other side.
When John Oliver started his new comedy program, he found he couldn’t use the cable news channels anymore (like The Daily Show does) for actual news, and he had to look beyond them to find the material he needs. I encourage everyone else to do the same. Maybe then, with a more educated public, we could start having meaningful discussions about actual facts, and the country could begin to heal. Hell, maybe we could even prevent the next war.
… Yeah, I’m not crossing my fingers, either.
So, here are some more facts about the West’s coalition against ISIS:
There is no legal rationale for this. It’s like the making of this was done by a Mad Libs fan. Obama describes having the executive authority. His team cites the 2001 AUMF that went after al Qaeda-tied groups. Since al Qaeda denounced ISIS, it’s obviously a stretch to use that (flawed) document for legal precedence. And even though they have had ties over the past several years, well, they certainly didn’t in 2001!
So, if that doesn’t fly with you, they argue we should use the 2002 AUMF for action in Iraq. Yes, the president whose candidacy was all about the opposition he had for war in Iraq is now using that war’s authorizing legal document for a new war.
There is no legal authorization for this. Instead, we have what Obama calls the “buy-in” of having Congress on board with a power he says he already has as commander-in-chief. All this does is give plausible deniability to both branches. The president can say, “Congress is on my side with this,” and members of Congress can say, “Well, we never authorized this war.” In fact, none of the wars this country has started since World War II have been authorized. Each one is supposed to be up to a vote in Congress, creating an official declaration for war. Although this law is on the books, it’s been routinely ignored. That means every war has been illegal since 1942. It is a shame that the American people put up with this.
Funding the “moderate” rebels (which don’t exist) will mean we fund ISIS. I mentioned this yesterday, but here’s some more information. ISIS will steal the weapons. See this report from The New York Times and this quote from The Huffington Post:
“It may be too late to provide effective support, at least quickly,” Austin Long, a professor of security policy at Columbia University, told The WorldPost. “The worst situation would be to dump a lot of weapons on the rebels when they are weak. This would be a golden opportunity for the Islamic State to concentrate attacks on them in order to seize the weapons (as happened with the Iraqi Army).”
The mission has already crept. Ever heard of the Khorasan Group? I hadn’t. Hardly anybody had. Yet, on Monday, the US started bombing them, claiming they have been plotting attacks in the United States. So despite not having any true war power, we are now not even going after the enemy described, and are supposed to take the government at its word that the people bombed deserved it because they were going to attack over here. Anybody else alarmed over this?
Whose boots on the ground? Obama is adamant that it won’t be ours. But the US is leading this effort. If not us, who will volunteer? As stated above, it can’t be left up the rebels. And with ISIS being able to adapt to airstrikes (holding ground based on when to expect them, or hiding among the people), “boots on the ground” is a necessary component if this plan is to work. (I am not advocating for this or any other part of this plan, though.)
And, finally (for this blog entry, at least): There isn’t even a credible threat against the United States, made by ISIS, except for the beheadings. Nothing within our borders. It’s because ISIS is very busy trying to maintain and expand control of their stated goal: creating a caliphate. That hasn’t stopped numerous members of Congress trying to scare the public into conformity for this new war.
That’s all, this time. Tomorrow, a new topic.
I encourage responses, debate, corrections, feedback, questions, criticism, and all that in the comments section below or on my Twitter. Relevant, substantive comments could make their way into future columns. Thanks for reading.
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