Congress May Be Tricked Into Endorsing New, Dangerous U.S. Global Role - Investors.com

Congress May Be Tricked Into Endorsing New, Dangerous U.S. Global Role - Investors.com

Change: In authorizing limited strikes on Syria, Congress may inadvertently give its stamp of approval to an ideological revolution in the use of U.S. power. Our military can't and shouldn't be a global genocide watchdog.

It struck many observers as strange that Barack Obama would suddenly act totally out of character and ask permission for something from a Congress with one house controlled by Republicans.
After all, he's been imperially presidential on ObamaCare, gun ownership, recess appointments, immigration, Egypt, Libya and plenty of other issues.

On Wednesday, Obama was, oddly, trying to put big pressure on Congress from that geopolitical epicenter, Scandinavia. He claimed, "the international community's credibility is on the line" and that "the world set a red line" on Syria, not him.

In fact, of course, the president's credibility on the world stage isn't "on the line"; it's already shot. The most recent proofs: the unprecedented British Parliament vote against joining him on Syria; the demise of Morsi in Egypt after Obama embraced him; the Snowden defection and consequent collapse of his Moscow summit — and all that in just the last few weeks.

This president is going all out for a congressional endorsement of his strike on Syria to resurrect his dead credibility.

But is there another motivation? "Change" is what this president is all about. Is he engineering a fundamental change in America's role in the world? And will he soon have bipartisan license for it?
Obama's pointless intervention in Syria could be a blueprint for a new leftist foreign policy, long championed by his new U.N. ambassador, Samantha Power, in which America intervenes not to defend its strategic interests but to avenge victims of bloodthirsty thugs.

This comic-book internationalism would keep the world's lone superpower busier than Superman.

Where do America's armed forces go first to "change the course of mighty rivers and bend steel with their bare hands"? Zimbabwe, where Mugabe has tortured thousands? Nuclear-armed North Korea, the slave state where, under Kim Jong-un, over 40% of young children are seriously malnourished?

Or how about the mass murderers you've never heard of? Under Isaias Afewerki, in power for over two decades in Eritrea in northeast coastal Africa, thousands of young refugees have fled slavery-like indefinite national service — enforced by a shoot-to-kill policy — and government-tolerated human trafficking for sex and even organ extraction.

Over his quarter century in power, Sudan's Omar Bashir has killed hundreds of thousands; thousands are being tortured today in Islam Karimov's Uzbekistan, as tens of millions starve in Thein Sein's Burma.

Where to first, Ambassador Lois Lane?

Power complains of "America's toleration of unspeakable atrocities, often committed in clear view," of

Hutus slaughtering Tutsis, for instance. But America can no more save each of the world's billions than it can give each of them green cards. And if we try, we will find ourselves neglecting what we can and should do.

That places American credibility on the line.


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