Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review offer general thoughts on the Navy Yard shootings, question the wisdom of the U.S.-Russia deal on Syria and discuss the tough job facing Republicans over the budget and debt fights.
With Vladimir Putin taking center stage in the international drama over Syria, the Capitol Steps get an inside scoop at how Putin is approaching this showdown with the U.S. Our guest is Steps star and co-founder Elaina Newport.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Betsy Woodruff of National Review cheer National Review’s Eliana Johnson for exposing the truth behind Cory Booker’s supposedly amazing personal narrative. They also discuss concerns over how lawmakers are defining a journalist in media shield legislation. And they’re stunned at a truly bizarre ad by a candidate for mayor of Minneapolis.
The Obama administration and its congressional allies on Syria insist the rebels there are moderates and that any radical elements involved are a tiny fraction of the opposition who would never take power if the rebellion succeeds. Other evidence suggests rebel forces are responsible for executions of Syrian soldiers, the live dismembering of Christians and even cannibalism.
So who’s right?
“The rebel forces are now dominated by jihadists, from Al Qaeda to Hezbollah to some of the forces that are just pure Muslim mercenaries,” said Ken Blackwell, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. “All you have to do is to look at who has been brutalized by this rebellion group. The most dominant victim has been Christians. When you look at that, you have to raise the question, ‘Why would we support forces that are hellbent on creating hell on earth for Christian believers in Syria?”
When asked to answer his own question, Blackwell says lack of clarity from Washington is a big part of the problem.
“There’s no coherent Middle East policy within the Obama administration. There’s no clarity of purpose, no real set of objectives for why we should be engaged, what our interests are and who our true allies are,” said Blackwell. “This is an administration that stiff arms (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu, that turns a cold shoulder toward allies in the UK and who, over the past several years, has embraced and been a cheerleader for the Muslim Brotherhood.”
That characterization is very different than the description of the rebels by the likes of President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and Arizona Sen. John McCain. Obama and Kerry have stated that radical elements of the rebellion make up an insignificant percentage of the opposition and would not be a threat to take control over Syria should Bashar Assad be removed from power. McCain has goes even further, contending that there are no radical elements among the rebels.
“I think they’ve gone ‘Through the Looking Glass’. There are other folks who are in contact with forces on the ground and those who are being victimized. They just paint a different picture,” said Blackwell, who believes the ineptitude of Obama is on full display right now.
“This is a clear situation where Putin has played the president for a chump. Assad is being very, very slippery. There are no Boy Scouts in this battle. We have an administration that hasn’t taken the Middle East seriously, that tends to be very unsophisticated in its understanding of the jihadist movement in the Middle East and now they want us to believe that they’re in command of the situation,” said Blackwell.
Blackwell says Obama’s handling of this and other Middle East crises sends exactly the wrong message to our enemies and the rest of the world.
“The way that the game is played in the Middle East is that no one there respects weakness. They exploit weakness. I think they see us as a hapless giant at this point in the way that we are behaving. Our policy is not decisive,” said Blackwell. “As a consequence, I think that there’s a lack of confidence and therefore a lack of respect for the administration and, consequently, for America.”
The civil war in Syria is creating some strange bedfellows, pitting some elements of Hezbollah against their own benefactors in Iran and in the Assad regime. Blackwell described how these lines got drawn and why the shifting focus of the Obama administration is flawed in his judgment.
“This is a fight among cousins when you get right down to it. This is an internecine, tribal, intra-religious war. That’s a problem. This administration hasn’t looked at it with the sort of real politik sophistication of previous administrations and right now, they are wandering,” said Blackwell.
“There’s an old African proverb, ‘If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there’. That’s what this Obama administration is playing out right now. They don’t know where they’re going, so today this road will take them there. Tomorrow that road will take them there. What they’re breeding is confusion and uncertainty here on the home front and that’s really, really never a good way to proceed to protect U.S. interests,” said Blackwell.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Charlie Cooke of National Review take a closer look at the recall of two-anti-gujn lawmakers in Colorado through Charlie’s on-the-ground reporting. They also rip Vladimir Putin’s sanctimonious letter to the American people and shake their heads that President Obama has been so weak in dealing with Putin and having no idea why America is exceptional. And they discuss the Million Muslim March coming almost a million short of their goal and for making the event a 9/11 conspiracy theory forum.
President Obama tried to convince a skeptical public that Syria’s reported use of chemical weapons warranted a limited but effective military response unless diplomatic efforts to disarm the Syrians of those weapons succeeded in the next few days. According to Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn, it didn’t work.
Blackburn, who announced her opposition to the use of force earlier this week, says the Obama administration’s actions over the past week have been far more confusing than reassuring and Tuesday’s speech didn’t help.
“It was conflicting because it seemed to confuse the issue. You know you look at the past week, it was urgent. You had Secretary Kerry’s speech. Then it was, ‘Let’s go to Congress and let them decide.’ Then it was, ‘Well, I think I don’t like what I’m going to hear from Congress so let’s see what else is out there.’ Then it was, ‘Let’s see what Russia has to say about this.’ So we’ve been a little bit all over the board on it,” said Blackburn.
The vote counts in Congress are trending against the president, particularly in the House. Public opinion polls show Americans overwhelmingly against military action as well. Obama is now asking leaders to postpone any votes while the diplomatic process plays out. Blackburn isn’t holding her breath.
“I’m beginning to think he will probably not come to Congress at all for a vote,” she said, noting that she and other members were even more skeptical about backing the president after receiving a classified briefing.
“I had remained a ‘Lean No’ until I was able to get those classified briefings and I came out of the briefing without certainty on the issues of who actually instigated and carried out the attacks, who was in possession of the chemical weapons, uncertainty as to our having a definable plan and a way to define the mission for our men and women in uniform,” said Blackburn. “I left with more questions than answers.”
The congresswoman attracted quite a bit of attention in the past few days for suggesting she might be willing to back military action in Syria if the sequestration cuts impacting the military were reversed. Critics accused her of playing politics on a grave matter of national security, but Blackburn stands behind the idea.
“You cannot send men and women into battle without the training, the tools and the resources to do the job. I think it is immoral to send those individuals into battle and not be able to give them what they need to carry out that mission,” said Blackburn.
“The military has had two complete rounds of cuts. Prior to sequestration, they had a $400 billion cut. Then sequestration brought them a $500 billion cut. So basically it boils down to this. We did the drawdown in Iraq, the military got cut. We did the surge in Afghanistan, the military got cut. We had issues with Egypt, with Libya, with Pakistan, the military got cut. The president goes in and signs an order to reduce their pay increase. They were to get a 1.6 percent pay increase this year. The president chose to give them only one percent and then the next day he goes out and says we need to carry out these strikes on Syria. That type of action by the commander-in-chief is completely inappropriate,” said Blackburn.
Blackburn isn’t nearly as hopeful as Obama about Russia and Syria agreeing that Syria will surrender it’s chemical weapons stockpiles to the international community and eventually have them destroyed.
“Look at what has transpired with Russia in the recent past. You have the issues with Snowden. You have the way they came in and said, ‘Lets do this with Syria,’ then they’re going to be there to protect Syria. I just don’t have a high degree of confidence that Russia is going to be there to serve us well or be on our side in this Syrian situation,” said Blackburn.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review celebrate the recall of two anti-gun lawmakers in Colorado. They struggle with the contradictions in Obama’s Syria speech and they shake their heads as he now ignores Congress and claims credit for Russia diplomatic overture.
The Obama administration is sending a consistent stream of mixed messages that leaves members of the U.S. military scratching their heads over what a possible mission in Syria would entail according to retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney.
“Well, I’m thinking confusion,” said McInerney, when asked to describe the mindset of the military as administration statements evolve. “No sound objectives, no clear guidance to the military. I’m thinking large force deployment to ‘unbelievably small.’ So it is very conflicting with no objectives. If you don’t have an objective then what are you trying to accomplish.”
And the general says the message is confusing because the administration is constantly shifting in what any action is designed to accomplish.
“I don’t think they know what they want to do. I think they got swept into this because the president made that off-hand remark about a red line and then all of a sudden he had to justify it. When he lost the British parliament support, he really lost all the international support. Without international support, he really saw his case crumbling,” said McInerney, who says Obama’s red line comment was not only ill-advised but not even grounded in any weapons treaties.
“A red line, even with the international agreement against chemical warfare, there were never any red lines in these proclamations and so now all of a sudden the president made one and that’s what has gotten him in trouble. Yet, even after he made it, they didn’t even go out and come up with a plan with the allies – NATO, UN, Russia, Chinese, etc. to get them out of it. So now they’re bailing water very, very fast,” he said.
On Tuesday, Obama said he wanted to delay any congressional votes authorizing force in Syria to allow a diplomatic approach to play out, now that Russia has suggested Syria give up its chemical weapons to avoid a strike. The development could be welcome news for the administration, but Russian President Vladimir Putin says the U.S. must take military action off the table before and formal agreement on Syrian weapons is begun.
“Putin threw in that counter-proposal that we renounce the military option, which makes the president delighted. He probably asked him to put that in there because he knows he’s not going to get that kind of support on Capitol Hill,” said McInerney, who sees a bigger problem developing in all this.
“Now we given the entire control of this operation to the Russians. Are we going to have blue helmets in there securing these chemical weapon storage sites? What will that do in a civil war that has been going on two-and-a-half years. It really puts Bashar Assad in the driver’s seat as far as Syria goes because now the UN will be supporting him,” said McInerney. “The French want to make it a UN Security Council issue. Then you have the auspices of the UN overarching this particular agreement. So it takes away all of the U.S. flexibility.”
McInerney says the lack of defined objectives prevents him from backing any military action in Syria. He says the best path would be to covertly fund the rebels we know to be moderate to the exclusion of the more radical elements, including groups affiliated with Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are glad there’s less likelihood for military action in Syria since the vast majority of Americans don’t want it. They also cringe as Vladimir Putin out-maneuvers Obama at every turn of this debate. And they laugh as the Obama administration tries to take credit for a possible diplomatic settlement that Russia and Syria concocted based on a John Kerry gaffe.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleased to see at least one of the recall efforts against state senators who backed gun control legislation has a good chance to succeed. They also shake their heads as Secretary of State John Kerry promises a strike in Syria would be “unbelievably small” and another official compares Syria’s chemical weapons to eating Cheerios. And they wonder why NBC is giving so much attention to Anthony Weiner in the final days of his pathetic campaign.
