Plantagenet wrote:Why? Neither McCain nor Graham have anything to do with setting Obama administration policy.
Senators McCain & Graham: “Just supplying weapons to Syrian rebels isn’t enough!”http://thelibertarianrepublic.com/senators-mccain-graham-just-supplying-weapons-to-syrian-rebels-isnt-enough/#axzz2hnhceCiqJohn McCain: Syrian Rebels Need Our Helphttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/17/john-mccain-syrian-rebels_n_1603576.htmlHeres how the funding for Syria actually works---Congress appropriates money to the CIA. The President is then free to set US foreign policy and direct the CIA to spend the money in accordance with his priorities.
Uh, no, there is congressional oversight, by several committees.
I don't want to get out in the weeds on this but I'm tellin ya, the congressional national security republicans not only approved the rebel funding as I just linked above, they wanted Obama to go farther.
Republican John McCain has been hounding Obama for years now, pressuring him to give more aid to Syrian rebels. These are just facts, Plant, I'm sorry. You're pulling a shutdown switcheroo thing here, like Repubs shut down gov then it's Obama fault, same thing with Syria he very slowly agrees to Republican pressure to aid the rebels and now you blame him for it.
This is from 2012, Republicans pressuring Obama to do more to aid the rebels:
WASHINGTON — Sen. John McCain on Sunday characterized the lack of U.S. aid to Syrian rebels as "shameful" and said helping their cause would deal "the greatest blow to Iran in the Middle East in 25 years."
McCain's remarks sought to maintain political pressure on President Barack Obama as violence in the region escalated, forcing a 300-strong U.N. observer mission to call off its patrols.
I actually agree with John McCain and Lindsay Graham. Obama needed to be doing more sooner. It's all a complicated mess over there but we're stil responsible when all our allies are looking to us saying wtf you've got to do something shit's hitting the fan over here on our border, then we've got to lead and do something.
Either the US is in charge over there in the middle east or we're not. We've got a bunch of allies depending on us we can't just sit back and ignore it. All you totally anti-war types, you could never be satisfied unless the US abandoned Israel and Saudi Arabia and qatar and Turkey and every ally we have over there.
Just pull out, Atlas shrugs, let the Russians have it. And then some other foreign power has all that oil if push comes to shove one day, or even worse a caliphate DOES rise and take over the region all because we listened to you and SeaGypsy and we abandoned it.Let's not get into this, there's already a mideast thread. But DON'T put this on Obama, he hasn't done enough on Syria and that has been the Republican criticism (the old school Republicans anyway, who the hell knows what Rand Paul really thinks and Ted Cruz reads Dr. Seuss books on the senate floor).
And another thing..
You know what world governments respect? You want to know what really backs up the US dollar, and why our bonds are the global go-to? It's American power, world's only superpower, power to keep stability in the world and the decisiveness to do it. Some Iraq rolls into some Kuwait and we're there to do something about that, when nobody else would.
It's US power, and *political stability* that give that "full faith" to our bonds and dollar.
Plant, if you want the US to just pull back then wtf would we do with this massive military. We'd have to cut it by 3/4, there's no use for a global superpower military if you don't want to be global superpower anymore. You think Republicans would go for that, cutting all that military industrial complex? Even Rand Paul loves his army bases:
Oh, heaven forbid Rand, closing Kentucky's military bases would be libertarianism.