“Unlike The Invasion Of Iraq”: The Syrian Government’s Use Of Chemical Weapons Matters To U. S. National Security
On Saturday President Obama said that a large-scale chemical weapons attack “presents a serious danger to our national security.”
This is a key notion in the debate about whether the U.S. should again choose to meddle in the Middle East.
The president gave three reasons:
1) “It risks making a mockery of the global prohibition on the use of chemical weapons.”
Earlier this week Ian Bremmer told Business Insider the U.S. “has to respond given international norms against the use of chemical weapons” because the “costs of not responding at this point are too high.”
The international norm argument underlies Obama’s “question for every member of Congress and every member of the global community: What message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of children to death in plain sight and pay no price?”
2) “It endangers our friends and our partners along Syria’s borders, including Israel, Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq.”
The U.S. stated, in a law signed by Obama in July 2012, that the strategic environment in the Middle East poses “great challenges to the national security of the United States and our allies in the region, particularly our most important ally in the region.”
And several of America’s other allies in the region are calling for U.S. intervention aimed at toppling Assad so that the devastating 29-month conflict ends.
“Obama never needed to go searching for a coalition of the willing for Syria; one … has been knocking, in fact, at the door of the Oval Office for quite some time,” Interpreter Magazine Editor-in-Chief Michael D. Weiss wrote in Foreign Policy. “Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates, all see Syria as a grave short-term threat to their national security.”
3) “It could lead to escalating use of chemical weapons, or their proliferation to terrorist groups who would do our people harm.”
This reason involves the fear that Assad would transfer chemical weapons to Hezbollah, the Lebanese-based terrorist group and Iranian proxy that has more than 60,000 rockets pointed at Israel.
Furthermore, Michael Gordon of The New York Times reported that effective strikes “may also send a signal to Iran that the White House is prepared to back up its words, no small consideration for an administration that has proclaimed that the use of military force remains an option if the leadership in Iran insists on fielding a nuclear weapon.”
In Obama’s words: “If we won’t enforce accountability in the face of this heinous act, what does it say about our resolve to stand up to others who flout fundamental international rules?”
So, unlike the invasion of Iraq, it appears that the Assad’s regime’s perceived large-scale use of chemical weapons — and a response to such an action — actually involves legitimate national security interests.
By: Michael Kelly, Business Insider, August 31, 2013
“For The Good Of Our Democracy”: On Syria, President Obama Had To Go To Congress
In seeking congressional authorization for military strikes against Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, President Obama is not weakening presidential power and is not looking for an out to avoid a war he doesn’t want. He is doing what is absolutely necessary in a democratic republic. He is rallying consent for a grave step and for what was always going to be a controversial decision.
True, Congress might vote no. If that happens, it is impossible to see how the president could then pursue an attack, even if he believes it necessary for national security. This is a risk, and a potential contradiction. It’s why Secretary of State John Kerry, a powerful advocate for Obama’s course, necessarily dodged questions on the Sunday talk shows about what the administration would do in the event of a negative congressional verdict. Obama simply has to assume it will win.
Congressional support is important for another reason: The policy Obama proposes is intended to do severe damage to Assad’s armed forces — from what I am gathering, no one in the administration is contemplating “pinpricks” or harmlessly tossing cruise missiles into lakes and fields – but also seeks to send a “message.” Using an act of war for “messaging” purposes is always vexed, but the message itself will be far more powerful if the President acts with Congress behind him. Were the president to act alone and then face an uproar in Congress, what would this do to American credibility and the world’s sense of our resolve?
And, yes, if the British Parliament could debate a strike, shouldn’t Congress?
Gaining democratic consent is especially important for an action that has very large long-term implications and clearly divides the country. Yes, the president did not seek congressional backing for his Libya policy. But in Libya, the United States was acting in support of allies. “Leading from behind” was a controversial phrase, but it did convey correctly that the United States was not acting alone or even as the lead power. In this instance, the United States is the main driver of the policy, and support from allies may be limited to France and a few other nations. A congressional stamp of approval would give the action the constitutional and global legitimacy it would lack if it were the decision of only one person. The delay created by seeking congressional support has the additional benefit of giving Obama more time to rally support around the world.
Nothing about this request will prevent Obama or future presidents from acting in an emergency and going to Congress later. But this is not an emergency. It is, however, important, and I wish Congress would call off its holiday and return to work, with the rest of the country, on Tuesday. If war isn’t a big enough deal to force Congress to shorten a recess, what is? The Senate seems to be moving in that direction. The House should, too.
Lastly — and, yes, this may seem wildly hopeful — a congressional debate of something this serious could be ennobling, whether the authorization wins or loses. Right from the start, the debate will not be purely partisan. Democrats are split, and so are Republicans.
Among progressives and liberals, there is a conflict over which historical metaphors are most informative. Those who see an attack on Syria as akin to Iraq or Vietnam have already started rallying in opposition. Those who see it as closer to our response in Bosnia and Kosovo (and our non-intervention in Rwanda) are more inclined to support the president. My hunch is that the president will rally enough Democrats to prevail, which is why I agree with the prediction of Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) Sunday on “Meet the Press” that the authorization will pass.
But this will be an even bigger test for Republicans, many of whom questioned the patriotism of Democrats who did not support President Bush during the Iraq war. There is also a genuinely anti-interventionist spirit within the libertarian wing of the party that was largely suppressed during the Iraq conflict and has come back to life under Obama. This view is represented most forcefully by Sen. Rand Paul, and it needs to be heard.
If this debate is carried out in good faith, as was the debate before the first Gulf War under President George H. W. Bush, it will strengthen the country. We often forget that the votes in the House and Senate over our response to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait were closely divided. Yet the nation was more united because Americans knew their views had been forcefully represented in Congress. If, on the other hand, this Syrian debate is used by a significant number of Republicans for the main purpose of undermining Obama, the rest of the world will know how degraded our democracy has become. Call me naive, but I honestly think that most Republicans do not want this to happen and will rise to the seriousness of the moment, whatever their views.
Reluctantly, I think the president is right to strike against Assad. It’s widely said that Obama’s own words declaring a red line have boxed him in and that he has no choice but to act. That’s true, but insufficient. Obama spoke those words precisely because the use of chemical weapons risks, as he put it on Saturday, “making a mockery of the global prohibition on the use of chemical weapons” and “could lead to escalating [their] use.” He had hoped that his words would be enough to deter Assad. Unfortunately, that wasn’t true.
I use that word “reluctantly” because, like so many who believe the Iraq war was a terrible mistake, I am wary of military intervention in the Middle East. But because of what Obama said and, more important, why he said it, I think we have to act in Syria.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, September 1, 2013
“Love For Labor Is Lost”: Politicians Today Can’t Even Bring Themselves To Fake Respect For Ordinary Workers
It wasn’t always about the hot dogs. Originally, believe it or not, Labor Day actually had something to do with showing respect for labor.
Here’s how it happened: In 1894 Pullman workers, facing wage cuts in the wake of a financial crisis, went on strike — and Grover Cleveland deployed 12,000 soldiers to break the union. He succeeded, but using armed force to protect the interests of property was so blatant that even the Gilded Age was shocked. So Congress, in a lame attempt at appeasement, unanimously passed legislation symbolically honoring the nation’s workers.
It’s all hard to imagine now. Not the bit about financial crisis and wage cuts — that’s going on all around us. Not the bit about the state serving the interests of the wealthy — look at who got bailed out, and who didn’t, after our latter-day version of the Panic of 1893. No, what’s unimaginable now is that Congress would unanimously offer even an empty gesture of support for workers’ dignity. For the fact is that many of today’s politicians can’t even bring themselves to fake respect for ordinary working Americans.
Consider, for example, how Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, marked Labor Day last year: with a Twitter post declaring “Today, we celebrate those who have taken a risk, worked hard, built a business and earned their own success.” Yep, he saw Labor Day as an occasion to honor business owners.
More broadly, consider the ever-widening definition of those whom conservatives consider parasites. Time was when their ire was directed at bums on welfare. But even at the program’s peak, the number of Americans on “welfare” — Aid to Families With Dependent Children — never exceeded about 5 percent of the population. And that program’s far less generous successor, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, reaches less than 2 percent of Americans.
Yet even as the number of Americans on what we used to consider welfare has declined, the number of citizens the right considers “takers” rather than “makers” — people of whom Mitt Romney complained, “I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives” — has exploded, to encompass almost half the population. And the great majority of this newly defined army of moochers consists of working families that don’t pay income taxes but do pay payroll taxes (most of the rest are elderly).
How can someone who works for a living be considered the moral equivalent of a bum on welfare? Well, part of the answer is that many people on the right engage in word games: they talk about how someone doesn’t pay income taxes, and hope that their listeners fail to notice the word “income” and forget about all the other taxes lower-income working Americans pay.
But it is also true that modern America, while it has pretty much eliminated traditional welfare, does have other programs designed to help the less well-off — notably the earned-income tax credit, food stamps and Medicaid. The majority of these programs’ beneficiaries are either children, the elderly or working adults — this is true by definition for the tax credit, which only supplements earned income, and turns out in practice to be true of the other programs. So if you consider someone who works hard trying to make ends meet, but also gets some help from the government, a “taker,” you’re going to have contempt for a very large number of American workers and their families.
Oh, and just wait until Obamacare kicks in, and millions more working Americans start receiving subsidies to help them purchase health insurance.
You might ask why we should provide any aid to working Americans — after all, they aren’t completely destitute. But the fact is that economic inequality has soared over the past few decades, and while a handful of people have stratospheric incomes, a far larger number of Americans find that no matter how hard they work, they can’t afford the basics of a middle-class existence — health insurance in particular, but even putting food on the table can be a problem. Saying that they can use some help shouldn’t make us think any less of them, and it certainly shouldn’t reduce the respect we grant to anyone who works hard and plays by the rules.
But obviously that’s not the way everyone sees it. In particular, there are evidently a lot of wealthy people in America who consider anyone who isn’t wealthy a loser — an attitude that has clearly gotten stronger as the gap between the 1 percent and everyone else has widened. And such people have a lot of friends in Washington.
So, this time around will we be hearing anything from Mr. Cantor and his colleagues suggesting that they actually do respect people who work for a living? Maybe. But the one thing we’ll know for sure is that they don’t mean it.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, September 1, 2013
“The Gambler And The Loan Sharks”: John Boehner’s Carefully Planned Escape Hatch Is Closing
Yesterday afternoon, the Treasury Department warned congressional leaders that we’ll hit the debt ceiling earlier than expected, probably in mid-October. Jonathan already has some smart analysis previewing the fights to raise the debt ceiling and fund the government, but this new timeline will also effect the other big issue awaiting Congress when it returns from the August recess: The effort to defund Obamacare.
GOP leaders know the scheme put forward by Ted Cruz and others to shut down the government unless Obamacare is defunded is hopeless, but they risk mutiny in their ranks if they don’t at least pay lip service to it.
So, as Jon Chait, Greg and others have pointed out, House Speaker John Boehner has been playing a familiar game of bait and switch with his base by promising to let House Republicans do something crazy in the future in order to get them to stop threatening to do something crazy now. He ”treats his members the same way a gambler treats his loan shark. ‘C’mon, spot me again, I swear I’ll pay up next time!’” Brian Beutler quipped, noting that we’ve seen this same strategy play out again and again in numerous congressional fights.
In the case of Obamacare, House leaders have been trying to talk their members into claiming victory on sequestration cuts and abandoning the effort to defund the health care law. But assuming that won’t appease them (and it won’t), GOP aides have floated using the debt ceiling, instead of the government shutdown, as the bargaining chip. An aide to Eric Cantor told Reuters yesterday that the debt limit provides a good “leverage point” to try to force action on Obamacare.
Swapping the debt ceiling hostage for the government shutdown hostage, while even more dangerous, had the benefit of buying GOP leaders some time — or at least it did until the debt limit deadline got moved up.
Congress comes back into session on Sept. 9. It will have just three weeks to pass a continuing resolution to fund the government before the fiscal year ends on Oct. 1. Most people had expected Treasury to hit the debt limit in mid-November or even December, so Boehner could have played his standard game of kicking the apocalypse can down the road. He’d get the House to pass a continuing resolution by promising to use the debt ceiling to attack Obamacare later, and then he’d get a month or two to figure out how to defuse this newest crisis.
But Treasury Secretary Jack Lew’s letter yesterday blows up this whole strategy. As Kevin Drum writes:
Politically, this means that Republicans don’t really have the option of quickly passing a 2014 budget (or a short-term continuing resolution) and then taking some time off to plan for their latest round of debt ceiling hostage-taking at the end of the year. If mid-October really is the drop-dead date, it means that budget negotiations in late September and debt ceiling negotiations in early October pretty much run right into each other.
Now, Boehner can’t keep bluffing to his members. Two weeks is not enough time for them to forget that they just caved on Obamacare, so they’re probably not going to be in the mood to do it again. This was John Boehner’s escape hatch, and now it’s closing
Besides, as Steve Benen notes, all the talk of hostage taking may be moot as the White House is holding the line against negotiations over the debt ceiling. “Let me reiterate what our position is, and it is unequivocal. We will not negotiate with Republicans in Congress over Congress’ responsibility to pay the bills that Congress has racked up, period,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said yesterday. “We have never defaulted, and we must never default. That is our position, 100 percent, full stop.”
By: Alex Seitz-Wald, The Plum Line, The Washington Post, August 27, 2013
“Just Don’t Say It Out Loud”: Every Member Of Congress Who Gets Coverage Through An Exchange Will Be Participating In Obamacare
In the very near future, congressional Republicans have some important decisions to make when it comes to health care policy. Will they threaten a government shutdown over funding for the Affordable Care Act? Will they use the issue as the basis for a debt-ceiling crisis?
And perhaps more directly, will they personally sign up for subsidized insurance through an exchange created by the health care law?
As we discussed a couple of weeks ago, the right is heavily invested in the idea that members of Congress are “exempt” from “Obamacare.” The claim is plainly untrue — thanks to a scheme Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) stumbled into, lawmakers will give up their current health care coverage and get coverage through a marketplace where insurers compete for their business.
There are, however, some complications — these exchanges were designed for the uninsured and small-business owners looking to cover their employees, not wealthy federal lawmakers who already have perfectly good coverage. It’s why the Obama administration had to work out a fix for members of Congress and their aides a few weeks ago.
But for Republicans this creates yet another problem: if they sign up for coverage, doesn’t that mean they’re necessarily participating in the health care system they claim to hate? As far-right groups urge the uninsured to stay that way on purpose by staying out of the exchange, won’t those same lobbying efforts apply to lawmakers themselves?
If conservatives genuinely believe that Obamacare is a threat to the country they will extend their campaigns to convince people to skip Obamacare from nameless powerless young people to elected officials and their aides. And if those members and aides have the courage of their convictions they’ll follow suit.
To the extent that none of this happens — that conservative groups keep quiet, and conservative members and aides enroll in the exchanges — it’ll expose the right’s anti-Obamacare activism as a shallow enterprise undertaken by people who are happy to see millions go without insurance, so long as it’s not themselves or their families.
So, what are far-right lawmakers going to do? I’m glad you asked.
As Igor Volsky reported, so far, two current members are prepared to bypass the system on purpose.
[North Carolina Republican Robert Pittenger has] voluntarily withdrawn from health coverage altogether. [North Carolina Republican Mark Meadows] added that his staff has also voluntarily declined the subsidies. And while most members of Congress may be able to afford to forfeit the government contribution — Meadows has a net worth between $1,674,034 to $12,017,998 [and] Pittenger is worth between $18,615,005 to $48,551,997.
Two GOP members out of 233 in the House obviously isn’t a large number, but don’t be surprised if this number grows as right-wing lobbying becomes more intense.
Also note, a lot of these folks have convenient outs — if they have spouses with employer-based coverage of their own, members and staffers can get insurance anyway. For that matter, if you’re a multi-millionaire lawmaker, you can afford to get coverage without a subsidy anyway.
But the underlying point remains the same: every member of Congress, in both parties, who gets coverage in the coming months through an insurance exchange will be participating in “Obamacare,” even conservatives who will be reluctant to say so out loud.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 26, 2013
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