Tag: Syria

Bombs Away? A Reagan-Trump Comparison

  

President Trump has stirred the criticism pot with his military actions: striking an air base in Syria and using the largest bomb in the US arsenal to destroy terrorists’ caves in Afghanistan. It has led some to question exactly what authority a president has to use the military without first consulting Congress. That’s an important question because the Constitution gives Congress the authority to declare war, not any president unilaterally. Of course, Congress hasn’t passed an actual war declaration since… Read more »

Russia & the Decline of American Influence

  

Syria? Who cares about Syria? Iraq? Old story. Never should have gone there in the first place. Leave it alone. Let everyone in that whole region just fight it out amongst themselves since there’s no one to support anyway. That last paragraph summarizes what a lot of people think. That’s pretty much what Donald Trump said as well. Some of the sentiment I can understand. Trying to build nations is a complicated mess when there is no practice of self-government… Read more »

Thoughts on the Syrian Bombing

  

Just a few thoughts today, now that we’ve begun bombing ISIS targets in Syria. First, good, in the generic sense. It’s well past time to act. We should have undercut this terrorist organization a long time ago instead of allowing it to grow and fester. Second, I’m glad to see that some Arab nations are helping. The extent of that help is still unclear to me, yet, if for no other reason than self-interest and survival, they need to be… Read more »

Obama’s Missteps in the Muslim World

  

Step back for a moment and survey the upheaval in the Muslim world in the last few years and contemplate the policies of the Obama administration toward the changes that have taken place. What you will see is a consistent pattern—not a successful policy, mind you—that reveals the worldview of our president. Let’s start with Egypt. Hosni Mubarak, who had ruled that country since the early 1980s, was forcibly removed from power. Now, he certainly wasn’t a wonderful leader, in… Read more »

Our Foreign Foreign Policy

  

For most of the Obama tenure, the focus of critics has been on his domestic policies primarily, although The Great American Apology Tour was noted and decried from the start. From his abysmal attempts to jumpstart the economy to the imposition of the bureaucratic nightmare of Obamacare, this president has demonstrated his ideological blindness and his incomparable incompetence. Both of those features have now come to the forefront in his foreign policies as well. Which is worse? They appear to… Read more »

Our Presidential Embarrassment

  

Make no mistake; I’m glad President Obama pulled back from the brink on Syria. First, he didn’t have the authority to act without Congress, yet he was preparing to do so anyway. Second, support for the Syrian rebels would be a colossal blunder, since they are now dominated by enemies of the United States. I said it before and will say it again: neither side in that conflict deserves our backing. Yet the entire episode has been a disaster for… Read more »

Unbelievably Small Leaders

  

President Obama spoke to the nation last night about the Syrian crisis. It wasn’t the speech that was anticipated earlier in the week. Russia threw him a lifeline by saying Syria is open to the idea of turning over its chemical weapons to the UN. This will now lead us . . . where? Promises, delays, more promises, more delays, weapons inspections that go nowhere, etc., etc., etc. Haven’t we seen all this before? So after more than a week… Read more »