Obama’s assumption on Saddam was that the problem would just go away on its own and resolve itself – easy peasy, la la la – if we just maintain the easy and sustainable pre-9/11 status quo and don’t think about it further.

One, that Saddam would just fade away, moreover with his 2 energetically psychopathic sons in waiting (nk Kims, anyone?), was a jaw-dropping assumption for someone with realistic aspiration to the top executive authority of the United States. There’s being hopeful, but that was borderline sociopathic thinking that if reality doesn’t fit my narrative, then it (reality, not the narrative) simply doesn’t count.

Two, it utterly ignored the costs, harms, and risks of our pre-9/11 status quo with Iraq. He actually framed it as a solution, when the essential problem of the pre-9/11 status quo was that it was harmful, unstable, and indefinite with no solution even in its concept, let alone effect.

Obama actually assigned the pre-9/11 status quo with Iraq the *opposite* value of what it actually was.

It was based upon calculations that had nothing to do with anything other that BHO’s own future campaign. He was and remains in 24/7 campaign mode simply because teleprompter campaign speeches making tingles up legs is the end all and be all of the messiah. There is an empty loset of “presnt”. Truth is whatever he says is truth, and all who disagree are racists. Those who oppose are monsters feeding homeless children to grannies living inside a cardboard box under an overpas. And the overpasses are in a dangerous state of disrepair caused by Bush/

Clinton, Dec 1998:

The hard fact is that so long as Saddam remains in power, he threatens the well-being of his people, the peace of his region, the security of the world. The best way to end that threat once and for all is with the new Iraqi government, a government ready to live in peace with its neighbors, a government that respects the rights of its people.
. . .
Heavy as they are, the costs of action must be weighed against the price of inaction. If Saddam defies the world and we fail to respond, we will face a far greater threat in the future. Saddam will strike again at his neighbors; he will make war on his own people. And mark my words, he will develop weapons of mass destruction. He will deploy them, and he will use them.

So what reduced Iraq’s threat between Clinton’s dire assessment in 1998 and Obama’s optimistic assessment in 2002? Nothing we did, or at least nothing we did that was verified.

Clinton, Jul 2003:

Let me tell you what I know. When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for. That is, at the end of the first Gulf War, we knew what he had. We knew what was destroyed in all the inspection processes and that was a lot. And then we bombed with the British for four days in 1998. We might have gotten it all; we might have gotten half of it; we might have gotten none of it. But we didn’t know.

In fact, the reporting on Iraq after Op Desert Fox, which was the last substantial action the US took against Iraq before Bush’s 2002-2003 action, was Iraqi capability was recovering or had recovered – and rapidly so – after Op Desert FOx.

NY Times, Aug 1999:

They concede, however, that the Iraqis have proved more resilient than expected. They have quickly repaired damage done to air-defense weapons, forcing the Americans to bomb some targets over and over. They have even rebuilt some of the factories, barracks and other sites destroyed in December’s raids, including buildings at the Al Taji missile complex, one of the critical targets, according to Defense officials.

Of greater concern is Iraq’s ability to rebuild its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, programs that Saddam pledged to halt as part of the cease-fire that ended the Persian Gulf war in 1991. In their letter, the lawmakers said there was “considerable evidence” that Iraq continued to pursue those weapons, though neither they nor their aides elaborated.

The administration and Pentagon officials maintain there is no evidence of that, but without international inspections, some acknowledged, there is little to stop Saddam’s government from doing so.

“I’ve very concerned,” Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, who served as the chief American representative at the United Nations during last year’s confrontation, told reporters on Wednesday. “My experience with the Iraqis is if you give them an inch, they take a mile.”

So, what the heck was Obama basing his assessment of Iraq on in 2002? Certainly not on the same intelligence analysis that Clinton officials like, well, Clinton and Bill Richardson were basing their assessment of Iraq on.

As Don pointed out, Obama didn’t go to Congress for Libya.

And with this Syria intervention proposal, Obama didn’t go to Congress first. I hope that fact is raised. His PR is painting it as Obama’s 1st choice, a principled appeal to Congress, rather than he was pushed into doing it after his Plan A cratered.

It’s like when he bungled the SOFA negotiation with Iraq, perhaps passive aggressively on purpose, and he presented it as a principled decision.

Obama is going to Congress because he wants a collective body outside the Office of the President to give the Syria action a legitimizing imprimatur – cover.

Again, resting on sovereign authority through the US Congress was not Obama’s 1st choice. His 1st impulse was to look to a collective body with an international character. Obama’s order of authority to commit US forces that prefers international authority over American authority is an issue that ought to be raised by Congress.

We should seek other nations’ assistance as a practical matter.

As a matter of sovereignty, though, I would rather a US President go it alone based only on the authority of the Office of the President, and rest on US sovereign authority, than for the President to prefer an outside body when seeking a collective legitimacy, apart from practical assistance.

Congress will do nicely – Republicans won’t complain due to the fear of being labelled racist and Dems will not turn on their Great One.

take away quote:
Rarely has an American president joined so much cynicism with so much ineptitude. – Peter Wehner

The West is learning why the Turks were so glad to be rid of their Arab subjects after the Ottoman Empire collapsed a century ago. Then there is the corruption and intense hatreds found among the Arabs. It’s a very volatile and unpredictable part of the world, and always has been. For centuries, the West was shielded from this reality because the Ottoman Turks ruled most of the Arabs. Western diplomats often heard the Turks complain about their Arab subjects. A favorite quip among the Turks was, “One should not involve oneself with the affairs of the Arabs.” Then, when World War I, and the Ottoman Empire, ended in 1918 Western nations found themselves temporarily in charge of these former Turkish Arab provinces. Before World War II broke out in 1939, most of these Arab provinces were cut loose as independent states. These new countries were not stable.