Obama rolling the dice on Syri

 

It doesn’t take long to get tired of dangerous games.

President Obama’s credibility and legacy is in tatters today because of his indecision and penchant for playing politics rather than executing the duties of the presidency in a forthright manner.

His on-again, off-again Syrian stances have him jitterbugging more than a dance line of Zoot Suiters at the Bellicose Ballroom in New York City back in the 1930s. His so-called “red-line” associated with the use of chemical weapons in that country is a pastel shade of pink with ragged edges; there is little definition and absolutely no strength in his statements.

Obama has the executive power to order limited military strikes into that country, whose dictator undeniably used sarin gas to kill more than 1,000 of its citizens, including more than 400 children. Assad used something akin to napalm to blast another “rebel stronghold,” resulting in horrific burns on citizens. But, in a crass political move calculated to force members of Congress to vote on military intervention, Obama is in a situation of ‘be careful of what you wish for, because …”

The American people do not WANT another military engagement; that’s a pure and simple fact.  The latest polls show that more than half of the people want the U.S. to disengage from military fronts – which Obama has done for the most part in Iraq and is doing in Afghanistan – and bring our soldiers home. The American people also WANT the country to protect innocent civilians who are the targets of demagogues and dictators.

One can only surmise that Obama is betting that the members of the Republican Party in Congress will look beyond its ideological and mean-spirited pettiness and personalized hatred of Obama, and do what it is right in this case: Vote to give their permission for strategic, surgical strikes at the military infrastructure of Syria.

The intricacies of the Syrian situation are mind-boggling; which group fighting is in the best interests (long-term interests) for the Middle East and rest of the world? The present dictator is a “known” factor; the rebel forces are led by various individuals and directed by myriad factions, including al Qaeda, Who wants to climb into bed with that bunch?

Obama is taking a calculated political gamble that if Congress votes next week to allow intervention (which, in the case, the President does not need), the vote will be ….what?

The president has painted himself into a corner and regardless of the outcome, he’s going to get dirty. The chances today are that Congress will vote against the president’s plans to attack Syria. Who wants to vote to expand the war in the Middle East, even from the air or from rockets heaved from warships?

He is also counting that the Republicans – led by the strident voices of newbies Ted Cruz and Rand Paul – will put their proverbial “necks in nooses” by denouncing intervention even on a surgical strike scale, leaving the American people aghast that America is not protecting Syrian children from the big, bad dictator and his bombs, bullets and poisonous gas.

This is a damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don’t ploy by the president. And, the way things are stacking up right now, the divided Congress is going to hand him his hat and tell him to “fill it up.”