Congressman Alfred E. Neuman (R-TX) rules our world
I give up. At some point this particular conservative obsession needs to be thought of not as political stance but a psychological disorder, and that point
would appear to be now.
Rep. Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas, claimed in an interview on the Family Research Council’s “Washington Watch” radio program this weekend, that President Obama isn’t taking the threat of the Islamic State “seriously” and is doing “nothing” to stop the extremist group because he believes that “America’s not exceptional.”
You know, American military forces have been bombing ISIS positions for six months now. How is it possible that Lamar Smith does not know this? He is in Congress. He has strong opinions on what should be done in the Middle East. He has strong opinions on why Obama isn't doing them. But he somehow missed a half-year of military operations because, I can only assume, the cable news images were not dramatic enough to hold his attention? He just got bored? We are now at the point where a half-year military operation is considered "nothing" unless it succeeds in holding Lamar Smith's wandering attention?
When Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, the host of the program, asked Smith why the president of Egypt and the king of Jordan are “responding in a more direct and authoritative way to these attacks of ISIS than our own president,” Smith responded, “That is true. Other countries seem to be doing more or taking it more seriously.”
And when other nations conduct air strikes on ISIS, they are doing so as part of a United States-led air campaign. The United States is providing those other planes cover, and coordinating their attacks; for its part the United States has conducted
over ten times as many strikes against ISIS than all other partnering nations combined. Is it possible that Lamar Smith does not know this? Did he ... forget?
Head below the fold for more on this story.
I hesitate to ask, but the king of Jordan reference—is this a flight-suit thing?
“He was going to ‘degrade and destroy,’” Smith added. “Well, I don’t see any evidence of degrading and I don’t see certainly any evidence of destroying ISIS. Other countries are moving better than we are. And we certainly ought to get other countries engaged without any doubt, but we cannot just sit around and do nothing, all it does is embolden our enemies.”
You do realize that the reversal of ISIS' fortunes can be
measured, yes? (And I'm still fascinated by this notion that "other countries are moving better," mostly because I'd love to watch the mental gymnastics Smith would have to put himself through if you asked him which ones and why.)
We have now reached the point where members of Congress are inventing their own alternate realities in order to claim that the president is doing "nothing" rather than look up from their slightly damp microphones and notice the many, many Americans putting themselves in harm's way in a war zone while they're saying it. Nope, doesn't count, because Obama doesn't love America enough, he doesn't think America is "exceptional" enough.
“He’s decided in effect that America’s not exceptional, that we don’t have a role to play in the world, and that he’s not going to be concerned about it,” he theorized.
The man has sauntered off to live in his own little fantasy world. He can yada-yada away entire military air campaigns in order to prop up his own mental notions of what Barack Obama, His Mortal Enemy thinks about the world and why it is of course wrong. He doesn't need radio time, he needs medical help. Friends and colleagues of Rep. Lamar Smith:
intervene. Help him. Get him the care he needs.
No matter what opinion you may have of our nation's ever-and-always-ongoing military actions in the Middle East, it would be nice if the people we send to risk their lives at least had a cursory acknowledgement from Congress that yes, indeed, they do actually exist. Good God, we are dangerously close to governing the nation based on grown men's ideologically induced fever dreams.
