“Go Out In A Blaze Of Glory”: GOP Rep Urges US Generals ‘Behind The Scenes’ To Resign
Congressional Republican condemnations of President Obama’s foreign policy are as common as the sunrise. Congressional Republicans urging active-duty U.S. generals to resign, during a war, to protest President Obama’s foreign policy is something else entirely.
As U.S.-led airstrikes continue Friday near the Syrian border with Iraq, it’s hard to imagine what would make the situation worse than the military suddenly losing all its generals.
But that is exactly what Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) told a group of voters he wants to see happen, the Colorado Independent reported.
“A lot of us are talking to the generals behind the scenes, saying, ‘Hey, if you disagree with the policy that the White House has given you, let’s have a resignation,’” Lamborn said Tuesday, adding that if generals resigned en masse in protest of President Barack Obama’s Middle East policy, they would “go out in a blaze of glory.”
Look, I don’t expect much from Lamborn, a member of the House Armed Services Committee. After eight years in Congress, arguably his most notable legislative accomplishment is championing a House-approved measure to cut off funding for NPR.
For that matter, maybe the far-right Coloradan was just flapping his gums a bit, telling tall tales in the hopes of making himself look like a big shot in front of a group of local voters, but never actually doing what he claims to have done.
But if Lamborn was serious, and a member of the House Armed Services Committee actually met “behind the scenes” with U.S. military generals, suggesting they should resign in order to undermine U.S. foreign policy during a war, that’s … a little crazy.
It’s not exactly clear from local reports what it is about Obama’s foreign policy that Lamborn doesn’t like, but under the circumstances, it doesn’t much matter. If a member of Congress has concerns about a president’s approach to international affairs, he or she has a variety of options, including introducing legislation limiting the scope of the administration’s policy.
The options do not include – or more to the point, the options aren’t supposed to include – meeting privately with generals, during a war, to urge them to “go out in a blaze of glory.”
As it turns out, Lamborn is running for re-election against retired Air Force Gen. Irv Halter (D), who told the Colorado Independent, “Our elected officials should not be encouraging our military leaders to resign when they have a disagreement over policy. Congressman Lamborn’s statement shows his immaturity and lack of understanding of the American armed forces. Someone who serves on the House Armed Services Committee should know better.”
That’s putting it mildly.
This is one of those rare instances in which it would be good news if a congressman was lying while boasting to voters.
Update: My colleague Kate Osborn talked to Corey Hutchins, Rocky Mountain correspondent for CJR’s United States Project, who originally recorded Lamborn’s remarks. Here’s the transcript of the exchange:
VOTER: Please work with your other congressmen on both sides of the aisles and support the generals and the troops in this country despite the fact that there is no leadership from the Muslim Brotherhood in the White House. [applause] It was not necessarily a question but [unintelligible].
LAMBORN: You know what, I can’t really add anything to that, but do let me reassure you on this. A lot of us are talking to the generals behind the scenes, saying, ‘Hey, if you disagree with the policy that the White House has given you, let’s have a resignation. You know, let’s have a public resignation, and state your protest, and go out in a blaze of glory.” And I haven’t seen that very much, in fact I haven’t seen that at all in years.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, September 26, 2014
“A Weighty Decision”: Boehner Ready To Punt On ISIS Vote Until 2015
It was Aug. 8, seven weeks ago tomorrow, that President Obama launched U.S. airstrikes on Islamic State targets in Iraq. It was this week when the president expanded the mission to include strikes on ISIS targets in Syria.
And it was last week when Congress decided to give itself another 54 days off, rather than extend legal authority to the Obama administration to conduct this military offensive.
Most of us have been working under the assumption that Congress had one of two options: (1) debate the use of force during Congress’ post-election, lame-duck session; or (2) return to work before the election to do its duty and meet its constitutional obligations.
But in a new interview with Carl Hulse, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) points to Door #3 – also known as See You Next Year.
[Boehner is increasingly convinced that Congress must hold a full debate on granting President Obama the authority to use military force against terrorists…. But Mr. Boehner believes a post-election, lame-duck session is the wrong time for such a weighty decision.
“Doing this with a whole group of members who are on their way out the door, I don’t think that is the right way to handle this,” he said.
Mr. Boehner, who is open to a more expansive military campaign to destroy the Islamic State, thinks lawmakers should take up the issue after the new Congress convenes in January. At that time, he said, President Obama should come forward with a proposal for consideration.
Greg Sargent noted in response, “You have to love the idea that this is too ‘weighty’ a decision to make during the lame duck session, but not ‘weighty’ enough to vote on before the escalation actually launched, let alone before an election in which voters deserve to know where lawmakers stand on a matter of such great consequence.”
Indeed, it’s difficult to think of a defense for Boehner’s new posture.
Not to put too fine a point on this, but Americans elect members to specific terms, during which they’re expected to meet their obligations. The key word in “lame-duck session” is “session” – these elected federal lawmakers have jobs to do, and the fact that they’re nearing the end of their term doesn’t negate the fact that there’s important work to do.
Boehner makes it sound as if Congress is high school, and everyone can just coast for the last couple of weeks after final exams. That’s crazy – the United States is engaged in combat operations and the people’s elected representatives aren’t supposed to just take a pass on the crisis for the sake of convenience.
As for the notion that the White House “should come forward with a proposal,” I’d remind the Speaker that Congress is a co-equal branch of government. Waiting for the executive branch to write a draft resolution for the legislative branch isn’t a requirement – but Congress approving wars is.
As we talked about yesterday, Americans can take every Republican anti-Obama argument of late – about separation of powers, about co-equal branches of government, about the importance of institutional checks and balances – and throw them right out the window, confident in the knowledge that the GOP didn’t mean a word of it. For all the chatter about the president being an out-of-control, lawless tyrant, here’s an instance in which Obama really is acting without any congressional authority, only to find congressional leaders saying, “No big deal. We’ll think about doing something in a few months, maybe.”
Fair-minded observers can debate the propriety of the president’s actions, but for over two centuries, presidents have gone as far as Congress will let them. Especially in times of war, every Commander in Chief has sought as much power and authority as he can muster.
It’s up to Congress – filled with members who spent the summer complaining about Obama golfing instead of working – to meet its responsibilities. This Congress isn’t even going through the motions. Lawmakers aren’t even keeping up appearances. They’re not even trying.
I thought this Congress couldn’t get any worse. I stand corrected.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, September 25, 2014
“There’s No Terrorist Shaolin Temple”: Why Are We Afraid Of The Returning Expat Terrorist?
One of the common refrains we hear in the reporting on ISIL is that officials are worried that Americans will go to Syria or Iraq, fight with ISIL, and then return here to launch terrorist attacks on the United States. As a discrete category of terrorist threat, this is something very odd to be afraid of.
It isn’t that such people might not have the motivation to carry out a terrorist attack. But if they went to fight with ISIL, they probably already had the motivation. Ah, but what about the things they learned there? This morning, I heard a reporter on NPR refer to such returnees employing their “newfound terrorist skills” against the United States. But what skills are we talking about? If you want to learn how to make a bomb, you don’t have to go to Syria to acquire the knowledge. There’s this thing called “the internet” where it can be found much easier.
The way these potential attackers are talked about, you might think that launching a terrorist attack is something you can only achieve after years of intensive training in an arcane discipline, the secrets of which are closely held by wise old masters who deign to impart them only to carefully chosen initiates. But there’s no terrorist Shaolin temple. If all you want to do is kill some Americans and sow chaos, it’s actually not that hard. A couple of knuckleheads like the Tsarnaev brothers could do it.
This is an entirely separate question from whether ISIL as an organization wants to carry out an attack within the United States, because if they do, they don’t need someone with an American passport to execute it. Anyone here on a tourist visa could do it (in 2013, just under 70 million international visitors came to the U.S.).
The point is that there are any number of reasons a person might decide to launch a terrorist attack against the United States. While it’s entirely possible that an American could fight with ISIL and then get sent back to plant a bomb somewhere, that eventuality is no more likely than an American who has never left his home town becoming angry over U.S. foreign policy and deciding to lash out in the same manner. There are no “terrorist skills” you can’t get here at home. So as a matter of policy, the returning expat terrorist is pretty far down the list of things we need to worry about.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, September 24, 2014
“Cruz Channels The Base on IS”: Unfocused Rage Confused With Patriotism
To the casual reader of headlines, what most distinctively characterizes Sen. Ted Cruz’s typically loud rhetoric on the IS challenge and what to do about it is his bizarre focus–which NH Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown has also picked up on–on the Mexican border rather than Syria or Iraq as the most important theater of operations against IS.
But in a perceptive piece last Friday, Peter Beinart looked a little more carefully at how Cruz talks about the IS threat and discovers he represents a POV–which he calls “militaristic pessimism”–that favors military strikes without any real political strategy for–or even interest in–dealing with the situation in Syria and Iraq:
Like George W. Bush before them, McCain and Graham are militaristic optimists. They want America to bomb and arm its way toward a free, pro-American Middle East. Cruz is a militaristic pessimist. He mocks the Obama administration’s effort to foster reconciliation “between Sunnis and Shiites in Baghdad” because “the Sunnis and Shiites have been engaged in a sectarian civil war since 632.” Notably absent from his rhetoric is the Bush-like claim that Muslims harbor the same desire for liberty as everyone else. Instead of mentioning that most of ISIS’s victims have been fellow Muslims, Cruz frames America’s conflict in the language of religious war. “ISIS right now is the face of evil. They’re crucifying Christians, they’re persecuting Christians,” he told Hannity.
Notice the difference. When Sunnis kills Shiites, Cruz shrugs because there’s been a sectarian divide within Islam since 632. But when Muslims kills Christians—another conflict with a long history—Cruz readies the F-16s.
In this respect, says Beinart persuasively, Cruz probably best represents the views of the GOP “base:”
With his combination of military interventionism and diplomatic isolationism, Cruz probably better reflects the views of GOP voters than any of his potential 2016 rivals. According to polls, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to see ISIS as a threat to the U.S. and to back airstrikes against it, but less likely to support arming Syria’s non-jihadist rebels. As Republican strategist Ford O’Connell recently told The Hill, “Ted Cruz is probably most in line with the Republican base in the sense he doesn’t want to have a discussion of Syria versus Iraq. He wants to dismantle and destroy ISIS. Period.”
More than a decade after the invasion of Iraq, this is where the GOP has ended up. Ted Cruz wants to kill people in the Middle East who he believes might threaten the United States. And he wants to defend Christianity there. Other than that, he really couldn’t care less.
There’s an old military saying (variously attributed to Marines or special forces troops, and dating back to the Catholic Church’s 13th-century campaign of extermination against the Albigensians) that probably describes this POV even better than “militaristic pessimism:” It’s “Kill em’ all and let God sort ’em out!” It’s a monstrous but ever-popular sentiment that’s highly appropriate for a political party where unfocused rage is often confused with “patriotism.”
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, September 23, 2014
“Busted!”: McCain And Graham Were Dead Set Against Boots On Ground Before Insisting On U.S. Ground Troops To Fight ISIL
Some excellent recall and reporting from both Steve Benen and Amanda Terkel who remind us that it was just a few short months ago that “The Boobsey Twins”—John McCain and his BFF Linsey Graham—insisted that neither would be in favor of sending American ground troops to the fight against ISIL.
That, of course, was before the two decided to do a 180 on their positions, arguing that President Obama has, yet again, given away the store and endangered the very existence of his countrymen by embarking on a policy of no American boots in the war against the Islamic State.
Yesterday, Senator McCain rose to speak on the floor of the United States Senate where, in his now trademarked brand of righteous indignation, the Senator asked, “Why does the president insist on continuing to tell the enemy what he will not do? Why does the president keep telling the people that are slaughtering thousands, ‘Don’t worry, we will not commit ground troops’?”
I don’t know, Senator McCain—but it might just have something to do with your advice, given just three months ago, wherein you argued that boots on the ground was not an appropriate strategy for the President to pursue.
On June 13th, during an appearance on “Andrea Mitchell Reports”, Senator McCain said,
“I think you have to explain to the American people what kind of a threat that an ISIS takeover of Iraq would pose to the United States of America. Can you imagine a caliphate or a center of violent Muslim extremism dedicated to attacking the United States, the consequences of that? That has to be explained to the American people.”
The Senator continued, “I do not envision a scenario where ground combat troops are on the ground…. I would not commit to putting Americans boots on the ground.” (Watch the video.)
Not one to let down his side of the partnership, recall Senator Lindsey Graham’s meltdown on Fox News this past Sunday, as discussed in my article, “How Lindsey Graham Succumbed To The Tactics Of Terror And Embarrassed His Nation” where Graham argued that it would require a United States fielded army to defeat the ISIL army. Senator Graham’s problem, in addition to his concern that we are all going to die here at home if we don’t take the war on the ground to ISIL, is his belief that the President is “outsourcing” our security to regional ground troops when we should be doing it ourselves.
And yet, on June 10th of this year—just three days before McCain’s appearance with Andrea Mitchell—Senator Graham informed a Fox audience that, “I don’t think we need boots on the ground. I don’t think that is an option worth consideration.”
So, what has happened between the Boobsey Twins position in June and their conversion as set out this week?
Could it be the gruesome beheadings performed by the brutal and sadistic ISIL troops?
Not likely. While these actions may have mobilized and strengthened the American public’s desire to take military action against ISIL, these horrible events have absolutely no impact on the military strategy to be employed in the battle.
There is but one thing that has changed in the months that brought about the conversion of McCain and Graham—Barack Obama agreed with their strategy put forth by McCain and Graham.
Oops.
Apparently, when The Boobsey Twins formulated their initial approach/attack, they failed to consider the possibility that Obama might just see it their way, take their advice, and make it clear that American ground troops were not to be a part of the plan.
While it would be disingenuous on my part to suggest that I am shocked and awed by yet another stark turnaround by McCain and Graham, one cannot help but wonder exactly what it takes for the public to realize that these two are playing us for suckers and have little concern for anything beyond their own standing and political influence—even if it is to the detriment of their country.
Shameful…really, really shameful.
By: Rick Ungar, Op-Ed Contributor, The Policy Page, Forbes, September 19, 2014
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