Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

One of the early, successful examples, of drawing a line in the sand, from before President Obama got into the act.

The Light Bringer can’t pull this off because his words carry no authority.  When the Roman Consul threatened you, it wasn’t with a strike “just muscular enough to not get mocked” or one that would be “unbelievably small.”  When Barak Obama threatens you, it’s an international joke.

Joe Doakes

You don’t risk American lives and spend American money to “send a message”.

Say what you will about both of Dubya’s wars – Afghanistan went bad, and the unintended consequences in Iraq were worse than the war itself for all concerned, we get that – but when Dubya went to war, he didn’t “send a message” to the Taliban, or “punish” Hussein. He went to war to unconditionally defeat them.

Not to send a message.

“Messages” are why we have a State Department.  “Punishment” is why we have trade sanctions, Stuxnet and spooks .

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Thursday, September 12th, 2013 at 4:28 am and is filed under President Obama, War And Peace, War On Terror. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.