Neocon Michael Gerson, the guy who is credited with penning the “smoking gun/mushroom cloud” lie line that helped enable the Iraq war, is afraid that Congress might strike down Obama’s despicable rush to war in Syria:
A limited military strike may be symbolic. But for Congress to block that strike would be more than symbolic. It would undermine a tangible element of American influence: the perception that the commander in chief is fully in command.
Separation of powers? Gerson either never heard of it, or more likely could care less about it. An iron-fisted commander in chief must “fully” run the show.
Prime Minister David Cameron’s recent loss of the vote authorizing military action “the first such repudiation since 1782” has weakened Britain as an actor in the world. America should refuse to follow it down.
The British government, for the first time in a very long time, has actually done the right thing. As The Mises Institute’s, Ryan W. McMaken, correctly points out: “For once, the British have done something other than be pathetic lapdogs of the American regime.”
Britain’s abstention from the destruction of even more innocent lives equals ‘weakness’ to the neocon mindset.
Gerson wants destruction. He may not agree with Obama’s convoluted zig-zagging, but even that would be better than Congress stopping an attack:
I would prefer to defend a form of internationalism less conflicted and hesitant than President Obama’s. But even so, it is better than the alternative of seriously compromising the credibility of the presidency itself. And those who claim that this credibility has already reached bottom are lacking in imagination.
Gerson was part of the White House Iraq Group, which propagandized and “sold” the 2003 Iraq invasion to the American public.
He most certainly misses those good old days.
