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Opinion
Reece Terry, publisher
Mark Boehler, editor
4A • Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Corinth, Miss.
The Sap President Barack Obama’s most telling act on the international stage may have come in a meeting in early 2012 in Seoul, South Korea, with Russia’s seat-warming president, Dmitry Medvedev. Before the two got up to leave, President Obama asked — in an exchange caught on an open mic — that Moscow cut him some slack. “This is my last election,” Obama explained. “After my election I have more flexibility.” Medvedev promised to “transmit this information to Vladimir,” referring, of course, to the power Rich behind the throne, Vladimir Lowry Putin. When he received the mesNational Review sage, Putin must have chortled at the heartbreaking naivete of it. Here was the leader of the free world pleading for more time to get along with his Russian friends on the basis of an utterly risible assumption of good will. Here was a believer in the policy of “reset” who still didn’t get that the reset was going nowhere. Here was weakness compounded by delusion. Putin didn’t care about Obama’s flexibility or inflexibility so much as any opportunity to thwart the United States. Obama said that Syria President Bashar al-Assad had to go; Putin worked to make sure he stayed. Obama said that National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden had to return to the United States; Putin granted him asylum. When a few weeks ago Putin related to a group of Russian students that he had told Snowden to stop doing damage to the United States, the students did the only thing appropriate upon hearing such a patently insincere claim — they laughed out loud. Vladimir Putin surely isn’t the only one in the world who regards the president of the United States with barely disguised contempt. As the Syria crisis burns hotter, President Obama has never looked so feckless. He has perfected the art of speaking reproachfully and carrying little or no stick. The grand theory of his foreign policy coming into office, that more national self-abasement would win us greater international good will and respect, has done the opposite. Adversaries don’t fear us, and allies don’t trust us. The administration has a knack for believing in the wrong people. “There is a different leader in Syria now,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said of Assad in 2011, touting his reformist credentials. This was just before Assad launched the slaughter of his opponents in good earnest. In response, the administration put its faith in an international peace initiative, led by the redoubtable former U.N. honcho Kofi Annan, that had zero chance of resolving the conflict. When Assad prepared to use chemical weapons last year, President Obama warned of a fearsome “red line,” with no intention of following up on it. When Assad called his bluff, the president announced that he would provide small arms to the rebels in retaliation, but he hasn’t actually done it yet. Is it any wonder that Bashar al-Assad would, like Vladimir Putin, think he had taken the measure of the man? Last week, he killed hundreds in another chemical-weapons attack. The sharply worded warning ignored by everyone has become the Obama administration’s characteristic rhetorical trope. It warned the military junta in Egypt not to crack down on the Muslim Brotherhood, which was taken with all the seriousness of its admonitions to Assad to step aside. The Obama administration has responded to the resulting crackdown by suspending some aid to Egypt in secret, at the same time that the Saudis — one of our closest allies — say it doesn’t matter what we do because they will replace whatever aid we cut. Elsewhere in the region, Iran progresses toward a nuclear weapon, Iraq reverts to civil war, and al-Qaida gains in Yemen and Somalia. In an essay in Commentary magazine, analyst Elliott Abrams argues that the guiding principle of Obama foreign policy is, as he put in an early speech as a presidential candidate, to end the old “habits” of American international activism and leadership. The new habit, evidently, will be tolerating irrelevance and humiliation. (Daily Corinthian columnist and National Review editor Rich Lowry can be reached via e-mail: comments.lowry@sign)nationalreview.com.)
Prayer for today Because we know that all things work together for good and to accomplish Your intended goal for our lives, we can remain joyful in hope even in the difficult things we are experiencing today. Amen.
A verse to share Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee. — Isaiah 26:3
Congress should veto Barack Obama’s war “Congress doesn’t have a whole lot of core responsibilities,” said Barack Obama last week in an astonishing remark. For in the Constitution, Congress appears as the first branch of government. And among its enumerated powers are the power to tax, coin money, create courts, provide for the common defense, raise and support an army, maintain a navy and declare war. But, then, perhaps Obama’s contempt is justified. For consider Congress’ broad assent to news that Obama has decided to attack Syria, a nation that has not attacked us and against which Congress has never authorized a war. Why is Obama making plans to launch cruise missiles on Syria? According to a “senior administration official ... who insisted on anonymity,” President Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons on his own people last week in the two-year-old Syrian civil war. But who deputized the United States to walk the streets of the world pistolwhipping bad actors. Where does our imperial president come off drawing “red lines” and ordering nations not to cross them? Neither the Security Council nor Congress nor NATO nor the Arab League has authorized war on Syria. Who made Barack Obama the Wyatt Earp of the Global Village?
Moreover, where is the evidence that WMDs were used and that it had to be Assad Pat who ordered Buchanan them? Such an attack Columnist makes no sense. Firing a few shells of gas at Syrian civilians was not going to advance Assad’s cause but, rather, was certain to bring universal condemnation on his regime and deal cards to the War Party which wants a U.S. war on Syria as the back door to war on Iran. Why did the United States so swiftly dismiss Assad’s offer to have U.N. inspectors — already in Damascus investigating old charges he or the rebels used poison gas — go to the site of the latest incident? Do we not want to know the truth? Are we fearful the facts may turn out, as did the facts on the ground in Iraq, to contradict our latest claims about WMDs? Are we afraid that it was rebel elements or rogue Syrian soldiers who fired the gas shells to stampede us into fighting this war? With U.S. ships moving toward Syria’s coast and the McCainiacs assuring us we can smash Syria from offshore without serious injury to ourselves, why has Congress not come back to debate war? Lest we forget, Ronald
Reagan was sold the same bill of goods the War Party is selling today -- that we can intervene decisively in a Mideast civil war at little or no cost to ourselves. Reagan listened and ordered our Marines into the middle of Lebanon’s civil war. And he was there when they brought home the 241 dead from the Beirut barracks and our dead diplomats from the Beirut embassy. The only thing we learn from history is that we do not learn from history. Congress should cut short its five-week vacation, come back, debate and decide by recorded vote whether Obama can take us into yet another Middle East war. The questions to which Congress needs answers: ■ Do we have incontrovertible proof that Bashar Assad ordered chemical weapons be used on his own people? And if he did not, who did? ■ What kind of reprisals might we expect if we launch cruise missiles at Syria, which is allied with Hezbollah and Iran? ■ If we attack, and Syria or its allies attack U.S. military or diplomatic missions in the Middle East or here in the United States, are we prepared for the wider war we will have started? ■ Assuming Syria responds with a counterstrike, how far are we prepared to go up the escalator to regional war? If we intervene, are we prepared for the possible defeat of
the side we have chosen, which would then be seen as a strategic defeat for the United States? ■ If stung and bleeding from retaliation, are we prepared to go all the way, boots on the ground, to bring down Assad? Are we prepared to occupy Syria to prevent its falling to the AlNusra Front, which it may if Assad falls and we do not intervene? The basic question that needs to be asked about this horrific attack on civilians, which appears to be gas related, is: Cui bono? To whose benefit would the use of nerve gas on Syrian women and children redound? Certainly not Assad’s, as we can see from the furor and threats against him that the use of gas has produced. The sole beneficiary of this apparent use of poison gas against civilians in rebel-held territory appears to be the rebels, who have long sought to have us come in and fight their war. Perhaps Congress cannot defund Obamacare. But at least they can come back to Washington and tell Obama, sinking poll numbers aside, he has no authority to drag us into another war. His Libyan adventure, which gave us the Benghazi massacre and cover-up, was his last hurrah as war president. (Daily Corinthian columnist Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?”)
Tishomingo woman could be next Van Gogh IUKA — Louise Bonds discovered a sweet spot on the Tennessee River where she’d often go with her husband to look for rocks. She didn’t find ordinary rocks, but smooth stones that evolved into sleeping tigers, Siamese cats, schoolhouses — all manner of meticulously detailed, painted critters and structures. Rocks are not her only canvas. Louise paints on paper, tiles and gourds with water colors, acrylics and oils. She paints lilacs and Indians and trains and whatever moves her or doesn’t move, almost anything but portraits. “I’ve wanted to paint since I was a child, but we didn’t have the money to pursue something like that,” she says. As an adult, about 25 years ago, she took half a dozen art lessons and wet a brush. She hasn’t stopped painting since. My Mississippi Hill Country county of Tishomingo
Reece Terry
Mark Boehler
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has many dedicated people like Louise, working away at their respective art or Rheta craft, the end Johnson result never seen by othColumnist ers. We are not known here for our fancy galleries and guilds, symphony orchestras or fine bookstores. That doesn’t mean there’s not talent. Not so long ago, Joyce Park, an Iuka salon owner, took a trip to the Gulf Coast, the opposite end of the state, polar opposite in many ways. She spent her holiday wandering through the small galleries and creative shops that line the streets of Ocean Springs, Bay St. Louis, Pass Christian. She brought home a painting, a pot and an idea. Unlike most of us, Joyce doesn’t go off and get in-
spired, then get over it. She doesn’t talk an idea to death. She plunges heartfirst into whatever idea motivates her. Joyce took out an ad in the local newspaper. She invited area artists, writers, musicians and crafts people to bring their goods to a small space in her Hairport salon that once was a children’s party room, Maggie Doodle’s, named for her granddaughter Maggie. Then she waited. First came the crocheted baby blankets and bonnets, smartly stitched aprons and bibs. Then the floodgates opened. Peggy Roach brought in intricate German scissor art called “scherenschnitte.” Who could have expected that? Stan Plaxico arrived with beautiful wooden toys that he guarantees for a lifetime. Chuck Clark brought his gospel CDs. Now there are birdhouses and dog soap and whimsical wooden cabin art and local photo-
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graphs. There are prints of Tishomingo County landmarks by the late artist Chris Hoover. There are books and hotpink doll furniture. There are lots of paintings by Louise Bonds. Nothing made in China here. Nothing mass-produced. People like to buy locally produced fruits and vegetables. Why not birthday and wedding gifts? Maggie Doodle’s now has a higher calling. Joyce Park has a kaleidoscopic gallery that changes daily and already is bursting at the seams. Local artisans have a place to display and sell their wares. And Louise Bonds finally has paintings hanging in a real, if diminutive, gallery. “That makes me feel so good after all this work.” (Rheta Grimsley Johnson is a resident of Tishomingo County. To find out more about her and her books, visit www.rhetagrimsleyjohnsonbooks.com.)
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