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Tell the Imperial President: No More Wars!
Townhall.com ^ | July 1, 2014 | Pat Buchanan

Posted on 07/01/2014 1:44:31 PM PDT by Kaslin

Barack Obama has asked Congress for $500 million to train and arm rebels of the Free Syrian Army who seek to overthrow the government.

Before Congress takes up his proposal, both houses should demand that Obama explain exactly where he gets the constitutional authority to plunge us into what the president himself calls "somebody else's civil war."

Syria has not attacked us. Syria does not threaten us.

Why are we joining a jihad to overthrow the Syrian government?

President Bashar Assad is fighting against the al Qaida-linked al-Nusra Front and the even more extreme and vicious Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

In training and arming the FSA, we are enlisting in a cause where our foremost fighting allies are Islamists, like those who brought down the twin towers, and a Sunni terrorist army that seeks to bring down the government we left behind in Baghdad.

What are we doing?

Assad is no angel. But before this uprising, which has taken 150,000 lives and created millions of refugees, Congressmen and secretaries of state regularly visited him in Damascus.

"There's a different leader in Syria now," cooed Hillary in 2011, "Many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he's a reformer."

If we bring down Assad, what assurance to do have that the Free Syrian Army will prevail against the Islamists who have proved far more effective in the field?

Will we not be compelled to plunge into the subsequent civil war to keep ISIS and al-Qaida from taking power?

If Assad falls there is also a high probability Syria's Christians will face beheadings and butchery at the hands of the fanatics.

And should martyrdoms and massacres begin with the fall of Assad because of our intervention, the blood of Christians will be on the hands of Barack Hussein Obama and the Congress of the United States.

Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin says he wants no part of Obama's new wars. Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine rightly asserts that President Obama has no authority to take us into war in Syria or Iraq.

But where are the Republicans?

Absent an attack on U.S. citizens or vital interests, or an imminent threat of attack, Obama has no authority to initiate war. The Constitution places the power to authorize wars of choice exclusively with Congress.

James Madison and his colleagues were seeking to ensure against a rogue presidency of the kind that Obama has lately begun to conduct.

It is astonishing that Republicans who threaten to impeach Obama for usurping authority at home remain silent as he prepares to usurp their war powers -- to march us into Syria and back into Iraq.

Last August, Americans rose as one to tell Congress to deny Obama any authority to attack Syria. Are Republicans now prepared to sit mute as Obama takes us into two new Middle East wars, on his own authority?

A congressional debate on war is essential not only from a legal and constitutional standpoint but also a strategic one. For there is a question as to whether we are even on the right side in Syria.

Assad, no matter his sins, is the defender of the Christian and Shia minorities in Syria. He has been the most successful Arab ruler in waging war against the terrorist brigades of ISIS and al-Qaida.

Why, then, are we training Syrians to attack his army and arming people to topple his government? Have we not before us, in Libya, an example of what happens when we bring down an autocrat like Gadhafi, and even worse devils are unleashed?

While Assad has battled al-Qaida and ISIS for three years, our NATO ally Turkey has looked the other way as jihadists crossed over into Syria. Our Gulf allies have provided jihadists battling Assad with arms and money.

Query: Why are our putative allies aiding our worst enemies?

This weekend ISIS declared a caliphate, the Islamic State, over all lands in Syria and Iraq it now controls. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ISIS war chief, has been declared the new caliph.

"The Caliphate Rises," wails the Wall Street Journal.

But who midwifed and breast-fed the ISIS movement that has now proclaimed the new caliphate? Was it not our Turkish and Arab friends?

And whose army is the major obstacle to consolidation of a caliphate from Aleppo to Anbar? Is it not the army of the autocrat Assad whom we seek to bring down? Does this make sense?

We are told that ISIS represents a security threat to the United States.

But ISIS-controlled Syria and Iraq are on the border of Turkey, whose army could make short work of them. If the caliphate is not such a threat to the Turks as to warrant their intervention in Syria, how can it be a greater threat to us? It cannot.

Congress should block the $500 million for Obama's wars and tell him his days as imperial president are over.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Syria
KEYWORDS: buchanan; iraq; isis; middleeast; notaneocon; war
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1 posted on 07/01/2014 1:44:31 PM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

You mean The Crazy , Socialist Imperial President


2 posted on 07/01/2014 1:46:49 PM PDT by molson209 (Blank)
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To: Kaslin

The reason we could never vote for Pat here was/is his consistent isolationism (which we believe is unrealistic...and indeed very, very dangerous... in this modern world of ICBM/s and IslamoNazi and other aggression). However, nobody in their right mind could support Obama launching yet another war on behalf of his IslamoNazi comrades and pals (no matter what false flag he chose to run it under — everyone can see he would be using the resources to further strenghten and expand the Islamic Caliphate).

We support Pat on this one.


3 posted on 07/01/2014 1:50:09 PM PDT by faithhopecharity ((Brilliant, Profound Tag Line Goes Here, just as soon as I can think of one..))
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To: Kaslin
Image and video hosting by TinyPic
4 posted on 07/01/2014 1:50:11 PM PDT by cripplecreek (Remember the River Raisin.)
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To: Kaslin

Pat Buchanan is a national treasure.


5 posted on 07/01/2014 1:52:18 PM PDT by Romulus
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To: molson209

The new American strategy is to destabilize, isolate and eliminate secular governments in Muslim countries (e.g. Libya, Egypt, Iraq, Syria...) and keep the whole region in chaos. There can be no stability, for out of stability might arise an alternative to the Petrodollar as the new standard of payment for oil. America has been a force for much good in the world, but hopeless debt has perverted our influence, pegging our survival to everyone else’s misery.


6 posted on 07/01/2014 1:56:32 PM PDT by Always A Marine
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To: Kaslin
President Bashar Assad is fighting against the al Qaida-linked al-Nusra Front and the even more extreme and vicious Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
(snip)
If Assad falls there is also a high probability Syria's Christians will face beheadings and butchery at the hands of the fanatics.

Kinda makes ya wonder if we're pickin' the right side.

7 posted on 07/01/2014 2:00:05 PM PDT by chud
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To: chud
Kinda makes ya wonder if we're pickin' the right side.

Bam-Bam can be relied upon to side with the most murderous and violent elements within the murderous and violent mohammedan ideology.

8 posted on 07/01/2014 2:01:30 PM PDT by NorthMountain
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To: chud
Kinda makes ya wonder if we're pickin' the right side.

If it's 0bama or his State Department clown car, they haven't picked the right side yet, including ours.

9 posted on 07/01/2014 2:04:45 PM PDT by Billthedrill
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To: Kaslin

Why do you hate America? /s


10 posted on 07/01/2014 2:06:07 PM PDT by Wolfie
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To: Romulus
Pat Buchanan is a national treasure.

Quoted for truth.

11 posted on 07/01/2014 2:06:39 PM PDT by chud
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To: chud

Wait a year.

Or a week.

We’ll be on the other side’s side then.


12 posted on 07/01/2014 2:07:57 PM PDT by TurboZamboni (Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.-JFK)
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To: Romulus
Pat Buchanan is a national treasure.

Whatever...

Jesus Christ: You can’t impeach Him and He ain’t going to resign.




13 posted on 07/01/2014 2:08:12 PM PDT by rdb3 (Get out the putter, this one's on the green.)
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To: faithhopecharity

Pat’s a squirrel and a blind one at that.

Even he’s gonna get a nut now and then.

It’s more like Pat sides with America, not America stands with Pat.

We got it right before he did....


14 posted on 07/01/2014 2:26:58 PM PDT by Vendome (Don't take life so seriously-you won't live through it anyway-Enjoy Yourself ala Louis Prima)
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To: Romulus

Yeah he is.

“He’s just precious”....


15 posted on 07/01/2014 2:27:34 PM PDT by Vendome (Don't take life so seriously-you won't live through it anyway-Enjoy Yourself ala Louis Prima)
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To: Kaslin
"Only the dead have seen the end of war." -- George Santayana (often incorrectly attributed to Plato and made famous by Douglas MacArthur)

But if he means not this or that war here or there and now, he may have a point.

16 posted on 07/01/2014 2:36:17 PM PDT by x
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To: Kaslin

The Enemy of our Enemy are still TERRORIST and a threat to the free world!


17 posted on 07/01/2014 2:37:14 PM PDT by TexasCajun
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To: Kaslin

Sorry Pat you can try to roll up the sidewalks and turn the lights out but far too many Country’s and groups around the world hate us and want us out of this place or that place or just plain dead.
The global pandemic of islam will not allow a time of no war. Death and destruction is why it exists.
The problem is the next time we go to war we had better go to war. No more of this limited engagementbullhit and ROE’s that just get our troops killed and accomplish nothing.....


18 posted on 07/01/2014 2:37:37 PM PDT by SECURE AMERICA (I am an American Not a Republican or a Democrat.)
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To: Romulus

Believe you are right Romulus


19 posted on 07/01/2014 3:39:13 PM PDT by aumrl (let's keep it real Conservatives)
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To: Kaslin

forget about it .....

WIN THE WAR !

win the global war on radical Islam once and for all

plow the ground , no quarter


20 posted on 07/01/2014 3:44:07 PM PDT by LeoWindhorse
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