6.29.14: Who Has Standing / the Bill Clinton Interview

You shouldn't be at all surprised that the Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner (R-OH) is intending to file to sue the President of the United States.  It's a very rare move, but  Republican National Committee Chair  and lawyer Reince Priebus said that the speaker does have standing.

The lawsuit being brought against the president contends that Mr. Obama has committed overreach of his office in executing executive orders. However, that's not really what the suit contends because as  Former White House Counsel Suing the President Kathy Ruemmler pointed out, the Speaker hasn't actually filed a specific complaint so maybe he still has standing but it's on shaky ground.

We've become accustomed to Republicans in Congress taking every opportunity and avenue available at anytime to try and derail any policy achievement by the president or Congress itself.  The Republicans are using this strictly as a campaign season tactic to weaken the president attempting to make him toxic campaigning for other Democrats, which they are free to do and it could be effective.  However, what they do not see is that once again, their image will take a definite hard hit the longer it were to go on ultimately not helping their cause.  

Republicans will make the last two years of Mr. Obama's presidency difficult without a doubt - sans lawsuit or not - but they'll will suffer for it because as well because when they take things as far as they do, they are unwise in their execution, just like they were with Ted Cruz and the government shutdown.  They basically punched themselves in the face with that.  

During the round table, Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) pointed out that the president can not just delay the employer mandate for a year by executive order for example.  And to answer to the rarity of the move, the congressman explained that historic action was needed because of this president's historic overreach.  The congressman also needed to be reminded by Andrea Mitchell that Congress' recourse against such actions is that it has the power of the purse.

With that bit of weak hyperbole, we agree with Ms. Ruemmler that the suit is frivolous.  Not because we think that the president didn't attempt to reach beyond what he is allowed to as the president - we would say that's actually part of his job description and what president Democrat or Republican hasn't done that?  It's frivolous because it's not constructive only adding to the American people's frustration with Congress.  Realistically, the speaker has no standing.


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 The Bill Clinton Interview - Excerpts

First, it's not a big deal to use the expression 'dead broke,' but it is a big deal when you're name is Hillary Clinton. However, Bill Clinton as he does so well explained her way out of it.  It's a 'momentary reaction' he explained that takes away from the real question of what to do about the economy and jobs.  That's Bill.

Reince Priebus didn't do his side any favors by saying the words 'out-of-touch' and 'Romney' in the same ten second soundbite.  And on a slightly related note as it pertains to income inequality David Gregory asked Mr. Priebus about a division in the party due to establishment vs. tea party politics, which among other things is the higher income Republican vs. lower income Republican - as serious dilemma for Republicans. In the end, we have to admit that Mr. Priebus has a point that there is no division if Republicans pick up seats in the House and also take control of the Senate.

What had already made news during the week from the interview was Mr. Clinton's comment that he found Dick Cheney's assessment of President Obama's handling of Iraq 'unseemly,' given the history.  Mr. Cheney rebutted saying that Mr. Clinton is certainly one to understand what unseemly means.

Please...

Dick Cheney certainly has no standing, as it were.  And to a large degree, but not entirely, Mr. Clinton is correct to say that if Dick Cheney hadn't pressed for the invasion of Iraq, we wouldn't be in this situation with ISIS in Iraq.  Just ask Rand Paul.

Speaking of whom, Mr. Clinton also discredited Mr. Paul's Benghazi comments by pointing out that during the Bush presidency, 10 diplomatic personnel had died.  Again, what Republicans have done, this time with Benghazi, is that they have lingered and picked at it for so long with no real results, it's easy to be cynical because it's evident that Republicans have lost sight of the tragedy that it was.

Round Table: Kathy Ruemmler Former White House Counsel, Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI), Andrea Mitchell NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent, Nia-Malika Henderson National Political Reporter, The Washington Post 

Good Point of the Program:  

Andrea Mitchell in reaction to what Mr. Gregory referred to as the Edward Snowden Effect.  On the ruling by the Supreme Court that the police can not search your cell phone without a warrant:

Supreme Court Justices have smart phones.

6.22.14: The Notion of Doing Nothing in Iraq

In considering what to do in Iraq, from an American perspective, what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) said made a lot of sense.  Mr. Netanyahu said that both the Sunnis and the Shiites are enemies of the United States so neither should be given an advantage over the other.  In essence he means that they should just be left to kill each other.  Senator Paul explained that we've armed the allies of ISIS, a group more violent than Al Qaeda, in their fight against Assad in Syria, and if you extrapolate that out it means that ISIS is using weapons/money that they got from us and are now fighting the Shiite government that we are supporting.  What both men are saying is that the United States should be engaged but not involved.  

But here's the rub?  The United States has a sense of responsibility to make it work in Iraq because 1) we set all these events in motion thinking that we could set up Iraq as a democracy, and 2) in these same interviews today, both men unequivocally stated that they do not want Iran to have a dominant influence over Iraq.  The Powell doctrine is seemingly our moral obligation that if we broke it, we bought, and we have to fix it.  Erika Harold put it very well during the round table discussion in saying that Americans are 'not proud of the notion of doing nothing.'  How true.

Given all these contradictory circumstances and motivations, you're seeing a myriad of opinions on what should be done along with a huge helping of criticism for Presideent Obama. The centerpiece of that criticism came in the form of an op-ed written by former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz in the Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/articles/dick-cheney-and-liz-cheney-the-collapsing-obama-doctrine-1403046522).  Highlighted by the following quote that starts the second paragraph (discussed on MTP):

Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.

With all due respect to Mr. Cheney, we fear that his transplanted heart is not pumping enough blood and oxygen to his brain because to say that about President Obama without applying that to yourself or former President Bush, absolving yourself of responsibility is delusional and not of sound mind, plain and simple.  And at the very least, it reassuring to hear Senator Rand Paul say that the same questions of competence being asked of President Obama could be asked of the original supporters of the Iraq war, namely Mr. Cheney.  He went as far as to say that the Iraq War emboldened Iran, which flies directly in the face of Mr. Cheney's assessment.  And to use Mr. Paul's term, we shouldn't be nick-picking the president's decisions right now.  The one page that everyone seems to be in agreement with is that we're not going to send troops back into Iraq.  

As in Cheney op-ed, they stated the following:

Despite clear evidence of the dire need for American leadership around the world, the desperation of our allies and the glee of our enemies, President Obama seems determined to leave office ensuring he has taken America down a notch.

Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne described this as practically accusing the President of treason.  In fact, that's exactly what that statement implies - treason against the Cheney neo-con philosophy.  And when 'leadership' is mentioned in this context what is really meant is a military intervention.  Mr. Cheney, hawks and other neo-cons believe that we should go back in or should have left a large force in country.  Senator John McCain has suggested that a military presence similar to that of Japan in longevity would be the right move.  But the American people wanted our troops out of Iraq because the reasons why we went in were proven to be false, and they also don't have the appetite to occupy another country for 70 years.  

Really Mr. Obama is trying to save face for Dick Cheney.  Mr. Obama ran on getting our troops out of Iraq and that's what the American people overwhelming wanted, but in doing so, he also had to maintain the 'wisdom' of what the administration before his had started.  However, having it both ways is an impossibility.

As we've said in our previous column, air strikes against ISIS are tricky because as soon as collateral damage happens, it will seem like the U.S. is not just fighting extremists but Sunnis in general.  And as Katty Kay, Anchor of BBC World News America, smartly questioned - where does that leave us in 8 months time?  It leaves us mired in Iraq all over again. The solution is diplomatic of course, hence Secretary John Kerry being in the region, but unless moderate Sunnis can be brought to the table all you're going to see is the escalation of a religious civil war.

Round Table: E.J. Dionne Columnist, The Washington Post; David Brooks Columnist, The New York Times; Katty Kay Anchor, BBC World News America; and Erika Harold Former Congressional Candidate (R-IL)

 

6.15.14: Redrawing Iraq

The eighty-percent majority had thought that the father-in-law, Abu Bakr, should be the successor and leader, and some thought the cousin/son-in-law, Ali, is the rightful heir.  Sectarian violence blowing up the country of Iraq right now is an argument started back in 632 AD when the prophet Muhammad died.  This is the epic struggle and everlasting source of animosity between the majority Sunni Muslims and minority Shiite Muslims - 632 was the year this line was drawn.

America's goal was to have a democratic Iraq and Shiite Nori al-Maliki would be the first president to lead this pluralistic society, but what Mr. Maliki proceeded to do was  alienate and oppress minorities - Sunnis and Kurds - through the power of central government and resentment reached a boiling point.

And an opportunity presented itself.

Inspired by Al Qaeda, Sunnis fighting Assad in Syria joined with Sunnis in Iraq joined forces and formed ISIS - The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria - with the aspiration of creating their own fundamentalist state.  As Richard Engel noted at the beginning of the program, the map is being redrawn to what it looked like 100 years ago before the French and English created the state that is now the crumbling Iraq.


source: Washington Post


Make no mistake, it is a sectarian conflict and Sunni extremists are threatening to overtake Baghdad, but what's stopping them is the mildly surprising organization of Shiite Militias, not the Iraqi central government.

In political discourse, it's become the lazy American norm to lay blame without providing any real alternatives or solutions.  Who's to blame for this latest warring in terms of how it relates to the United States and its actions - President Obama or President Bush?  The Washington Post's David Ignatius explained that we left Iraq as carelessly as we entered so the answer is at this point doesn't matter whose to blame.

Mitt Romney, who has been critical of the President's foreign policy explained that timing was essential and that Mr. Obama didn't take advantage of that.  For example, Mr. Romney said, when Assad was on his heels in Syria, the Mr. Obama didn't 'act appropriately,' and should have armed the opposition to topple the dictator.  He didn't mention that the opposition to Mr. Assad is in fact ISIS.  Where Paul Wolfowitz and the New Yorker's Dexter Filkins cleaned that up somewhat by saying that the United States needs to find the more moderate forces in Syria who are fighting both the Assad regime and ISIS and cooperate with them. Good luck finding enough of those forces.

Meanwhile, the Kurds have taken the opportunity to control the northern city of Kirkuk and fifty-six percent of Iraq's oil revenue in the hopes of creating an autonomous Kurdish homeland.  If the U.S. was smart, that's where they should put their clandestine dollars because the Kurds have set up one of the most moderate states in the region.

Mr. Gregory asked Mr. Romney what the U.S. should be fighting for in the region and he asked saying that the United States should be fighting to preserve freedom and to guard against the region becoming an active hotbed for planning terrorist attacks against the United States.  Well, the 'preserving freedom' part is a rhetorically empty statement if actually assess what's happening on the ground, but the second part of making it a launching site for terrorist attacks against the U.S. does require attention.  If you are to believe David Ignatius, it's only a matter of time, if ISIS establishes real control of land in the region, before they start directing their attacks externally.  Obviously, that is the main concern for all involved in the discussion - particularly Congressman Peter King (R-NY) and Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) who carelessly used biblical language when he said that the United States would bring a 'ring of fire' upon anyone who attacked Americans.

It's this later part that requires the U.S. to act, but after losing 4,477 U.S. soldiers, spending $1,7 trillion and finding out that the reason we went their in the first place was all false, the actions that the U.S. can take are very limited.  Boots on the ground isn't, and shouldn't, even be on the table.  However, there is no doubt that ISIS can not be allowed to annex more territory.

Senator Manchin said that he was open to the possibility of using air strikes against the Sunni extremists to stop them.  It's something to be considered, but know that it sets up the U.S. as a more immediate target for retaliation, even if the airstrikes are under the guise of a coalition.  However, it is a coalition that needs to be built - an overwhelming one because moderates have to prevail, and that requires the U.S., Russia, China, Turkey, England, France, et al. have to come together to make a decision.  How far are we going to let this go?

What we noticing is that there are a growing number of hot spots where a group of people want their own little purified states - Eastern Ukraine, the Congo, Syria and Iraq.  We're not seeing a coming together of people in the world, but a survival of the most violent coming about. Isolation and extremism is devolution.

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One Last Note:

We didn't discuss the big domestic political happening of the week - House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) losing in the primary, but to give further illustration to the theme of exclusion in this column, we'll say this.  (And by no means are these two things on the same level of comparison.)  The Tea Party victory in Virginia was stride forward in advancing their principles, and Mr. Cantor was far too caught up in his own ambition, but to dismiss someone whose general view is the same, but now doesn't match a more narrower view is very troublesome and basically heads in the same direction as oppression, no matter how passive.  We think you get the rest of the point.

More about the politics of it all later in the week.


Round Table: David Ignatius, Washington Post Columnist, Rep. Peter King (R-NY), Dexter Filkins, New Yorker Staff Writer and fmr. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz

Round Table 2: Ruth Marcus, Washington Post Columnist, Fmr. Rep. Harold Ford, Jr. (D-TN),

Ken Cuccinelli, President, Senate Conservatives Fund & former Virginia Attorney General and 

Steve Schmidt, GOP Strategist & Senior Adviser to John McCain’s 2008 Presidential Campaign