The slaughter in Syria continues unabated and president Obama has done essentially nothing at all to make clear American displeasure at the conduct of the Assad regime. Obama is spending all his time on his re-election campaign even though there is still a year until election day. Apparently, it is too much to ask the president to deal with a major foreign policy problem. Word comes today, however, that Turkey has suspended all, that's right ALL, financial dealings with Syria. Turkey has also cut off all sales of military equipment and has even said that military action against the Assad regime may become necessary. The Turkish govenment does not have the luxury of hiding its head in the sand like Obama since Turkey borders directly on Syria. Refugees from Syria have been escaping into Turkey for months and the pressure on the Turkish government has been building and building. In addition to Turkey, the United Arab Emirates has today cut off all air travel by its airlines to Syria.
The big point here is that Turkey and the UAE are Islamic countries, and they both are imposing severe sanctions against the monstrous killers in Damascus. The Arab League has also taken actions against Syria. But Obama's course of action has been to just ignore the whole situation. It is a disgrace. Maybe the example of Turkey will show Obama what needs to be done.
2 comments:
Nothing needs to be done by the U.S. To say we have either the right or obligation to "do something is B.S.! A reasonable analogy is that France and Britain had the right and obligation to step into the American Civil War to stop what was surely slaughter under the standards of the tim.
Just because you don't like Obama, doesn't mean you should blame him for things which are not in his purview - and Syria is certainly not in his purview (or any other President of the U.S. for that matter.)
To be candid, I am not a total Obama fan - I think he allowed the left wing of the Democratic party to rampage early in his first term, and it now comes back to haunt him.
Any impartial reader of recent history, however, just cannot put all the current ills on his shoulders. They started with Bush and that is where history will keep them.
As for Romney: he would arguably be far worse. His foreign affairs advisors are very hawkish on a world wide basis. Thanks to Bush, we have poured billions of US treasur down a rathole in the Middle East. (anyone who denies this is just not accepting facts, folks).
We are just now coming out of the Bush recession. my worry is that if Obama is re-elected, he will try to raise taxes and repeat Roosevelt's mistake of '36 - '37.
He needs to put the squeeze on some of the public service labor unions to cover their fair share of their pension and medical costs. If Romney is elected, he would need to do the same.
Message to "Unknown"
You are commenting on a post from November of 2011, and even then, you are not accurately portraying what I had to say.
First, at that time, Obama was totally ignoring the Syrian slaughter. In fact, Obama was still calling Assad a "reformer" with whom the USA could work. Since then, (and many thousands of dead Syrians later) Obama cut ties to Assad and condemned the slaughter. That was something that ought to have been done many months earlier.
I have never advocated American military intervention in Syria. Neither has Romney for that matter.
Hope this clears things up a bit.
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