Nathan Moore's Thoughts
Indeed, He Would Rather Win a Campaign Than a War
Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari discloses Barack Obama’s attempts to delay any agreement on American troop withdrawal until, apparently, he is sworn in (a presumptuous cuss, isn’t he?)
According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.
“He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington,” Zebari said in an interview.
Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of US troops - and that it was in the interests of both sides not to have an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in its “state of weakness and political confusion.”
Shouldn’t this bother everybody? We have an inexperienced and overly ambitious United States senator roving into the middle of a theater of war, attempting to undermine the ongoing negotiations of a presently sitting presidential administration, going so far as representing to a foreign government that the current American government is “weak”.
Obama has no desire for a speedy withdrawal of United States’ troops from Iraq. Unless an agreement is entered into now, under the Bush administration, it would be impossible to responsibly withdraw American forces by Barack Obama’s self-created 2010 deadline without sending the Iraqi government into disarray. He is trying to keep the withdrawal issue a political one for his own ambitions. Truly, he is indeed putting his own political ambitions above what even he represents to be the right course of action.
For all of you nuts out there who think George W. Bush should be impeached, I hope you just as adamantly call for prosecution of Barack Obama under the Logan Act.
September 15th, 2008 at 8:06 am
Shouldn’t this bother everybody?
It absolutely should bother everybody that the President is trying to back-door a treaty without the consent of the Senate.
September 15th, 2008 at 8:09 am
That was an amazingly weak retort.
September 15th, 2008 at 8:18 am
Whats the name of that other guy that likes to do this kind of thing? Oh yea…Jimmy Carter.
September 15th, 2008 at 10:43 am
That was an amazingly weak retort.
Which you couldn’t respond to because you know I’m right.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:19 am
If I must, it is also easily explained.
George W. Bush is the commander-in-chief. It is within his power in that role to determine the conditions and terms of deployment of American forces, especially deployments that Congress has already authorized.
You can make the treaty distinction if you want, flimsy though it is, but the treaty confirmation power had long since been eroded before the Bush administration. In the spirit of the judicial chiding of Congress in the Youngstown case, it can be said this is primarily because the Senate has refused to stand up for itself.
Now that we have that out of the way, please proceed to defend Obama’s foreign policy philandering with the Iraqi foreign minister.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Well, supposing that this right wing columnist and the Iraq foreign minister are to be taken at their word (a prospect I’m not willing to concede), Obama standing up for the constitution is exactly what I want in a President or a Presidential candidate.
George W. Bush is not simply allocating resources as he sees fit, he is attempting to lock the US in a military and financial commitment with another foreign Government past his exit from office. That, my friend, is a treaty, and that pesky constitution which Dick Cheney had made into toilet paper, calls on the Senate to approve of any foreign entanglements that should arise.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:44 am
A senator interfering with the nation’s foreign policy by directly lobbying a foreign minister is protecting the Constitution? And calling the sitting president weak? Wouldn’t it be better if he was protecting the Constitution in the body in which he allegedly serves?
If you believe it would be a treaty, and God help us if that uber liberal of yours is elected, and he does too, then he can certainly refuse to recognize the arrangement, which would comport well with his otherwise irresponsible views on Iraq. There are many levels of “entanglement” that do not rise to the level of a “treaty”.
Recall, it is your party that controls the Congress. If this is truly such a crisis of the Constitution, I do wonder why the Democratic leadership has not proposed any legislation pertaining to it.
September 15th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Well, the Democrats don’t control the Senate thanks to the Republican’s unprecedented use of the cloture rule to hinder progress. But there was significant debate over the legality of the Status of Forces agreement, and Sen. Clinton introduced a bill to block the President from signing it.
September 16th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
“Unprecedented use of the cloture rule”… dude… Bush has suffered this problem with almost all his his judicial nominations.
Remember all of the calls for an ‘up or down vote’?
September 16th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Democrats tend to dislike the rules when they work against them.It’s that whole power over process mentality.
September 16th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Senators or Reps jacking around with foreign policy is a very bad precedent. It just proves to me that they are stupid enough to believe their own political rhetoric. It’s as bad as rouge entrenched bureaucrats who work undermine the policy of our elected president. It’s Machiavellian madness and neither party or persuasion should involve in it.
And Carter, Clinton and Gore running around the world like Natalie Maines taking pot-shots on foreign soil at our elected president to score political points at home… it’s f*cking treasonous.
September 17th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Jimmy,
BS, In 2003 there were only 22 cloture votes rejected. 18 of which were for Presidential appointments, and seven of those (32% of all cloture votes) were for Miguel Estrada alone.
The overwhelming vast majority of Bush’s appointments have gone through with little or no objection, and of those originally filibustered judicial nominations, only 2 didn’t make it to the federal bench.
September 23rd, 2008 at 11:03 am
Perhaps a better retort would have been to remind the Republicans that Reagan and his pal William Casey were in contact with the Iranian government during the 1980 campaign, and that Reagan cheated during the one debate by getting a copy of Carter’s debate briefing book.
September 28th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
“…Reagan cheated during the one debate by getting a copy of Carter’s debate briefing book.”
COOL!!! And who said cheaters never win? …Oh yeah, that was Pee Wee Herman, I think.