Friday, June 14, 2013

THE OFF-KILTER DOMESTIC POLITICS OF INTERVENTION IN SYRIA

We see President Obama's decision to arm Syrian rebels as a concession to the conservative War Party, led by John McCain and Lindsey Graham, and joined by the perpetually triangulation-minded Bill Clinton.

But the right-wing base hates this intervention. Sample titles of right-wing blog posts:

* MORE PROOF HE IS EVIL: OBAMA HAS DECIDED TO GIVE MILITARY SUPPORT TO AL QAEDA'S AFFILIATES
* Obama Decides to Supply Syria’s 'Rebels' — i.e. al Qaeda and Assorted Islamists
* State Department Listed Supporters of Terror Used Chemical Weapons on Different State Department Listed Terrorists

Drudge is calling them the "Syrian 'rebels,'" with "rebels" in quotes, and is greeting the decision with booga-booga scare headlines and visuals:





The reviews in this Free Republic thread are all negative:
John N Lindsey proving their loyalty to the progressive caucus.

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So, what is it with Graham ~ the gay thing ~ he doesn't like Christians because of their stand on homosexuality?
Remember, none of these pukes have any answer to how we keep Obamugabe's rebel buddies from killing all the Christians ~ and they know it, and that's why it's fair to impute intent to their actions.

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Bambi finally got the excuse he wanted to back Al Qaeda in Syria

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Don’t pay any attention to that IRS scandal behind the curtain, look at the shiny new support for the Syrian rebel movement! Bang the drums. Make noise with those cymbals.
So this upsets the right as well as the left. But it makes the Sunday chat show panels happy, so it's the mainstream, sensible thing to do.

5 comments:

Buford said...

We need to reassure our President he doesn't have to do anything the War Hawks want. McCain is acting like HE is commander-in-chief...War is surpassing heroin as the most addictive drug we have...

trnc said...

Did Obama commit to providing weapons? I see this in the WH statement:
"...the President has augmented the provision of non-lethal assistance to the civilian opposition."

The first paragraph in the NYT story ends with " according to American Officials." Are those WH officials? If not, who are they and how do they explain the contradiction with the WH statement?

Monty said...

I'm willing to bet most of the right's distaste for injecting ourselves into the Syrian mess results from Obama being commander in chief: this is his decision and they (the wingnut base) reject his authoritah.

If President Romney had made this same call, I'm fairly certain we'd be seeing a lot less disagreement from the right.

BH said...

I know it's simple-minded of me, but as a general proposition I'm in favor of most anything that annoys the misplaced Southern Baptists who run Iran, which this will.

redscott said...

The Sunday chat shows ARE pretty much the only constituency that Obama actually listens to and delivers for.