September 10th should henceforth be known as Obama’s Groundhog day. A year ago he thought he saw his polling shadow and decided to give a speech on the immediate need to use military force against President Assad and Syria. A year later, on September 10th, another polling shadow, and another speech, this time about how we (basically) need to use military force to attack the people Assad was attacking.
Jeanne Shaheen, always turning quickly to face the winds of progressive change, fired up a press release on both occasions, the most recent of which begs scrutiny.
“I have consistently called for a serious, comprehensive strategy to destroy ISIS that includes strong U.S. leadership of an international coalition, increased assistance to partner forces battling ISIS on both sides of the Iraq-Syria border, and intensified efforts to deny the group access to the funding and the foreign fighters that sustain its operations and pose the greatest threat to the United States.
Consistently?…since Aug 19th, 2014. That was her first mention of ISIL or ISIS, in a press release on James Foley’s execution.
We get something else on August 28th,2014 with 8 mentions so far in September (as media and public attention demand her attention?).
That’s Democrat leadership for you.
I think we can say that Jeanne Shaheen “consistently” paid no attention the issue until public awareness made it a potential political liability.
By the way. a year ago Shaheen approved the use of force against the Syrian government and president Assad…
“The resolution I voted for is limited in time and scope and does not authorize American troops on the ground. Rather, it permits an appropriate response to Assad’s international weapons violations that will rightfully signal to his and other regimes, like those in Iran and North Korea, that the United States will not tolerate the use of weapons of mass destruction. I believe that this type of targeted, proportionate response will best protect our national security interests.”
Looking further back, Shaheen has plenty of older press releases an media about the Syrian Government. There’s even one about National Defense authorizations that included Shaheen inspired cooperative and coordinated threat reduction analysis and reporting “language” that authorized the Obama Administration to, you know, cooperate and coordinate reported threats in the region. …so they could then be….um…Reduced, I suppose?
That worked out well.
Obama chose to do nothing, essentially ignored Syria and Iraq after he drew a red line and walked away from it. He ignored it until, let me see…about the same time as Jeanne Shaheen, when media reports lead to public polling that suggested that ignoring it was bad for their ‘collectivist’ political fortunes.
So Shaheen (and Obama) are all uppity about Syria until mid September 2013.
Eight months after the mid-September love fest over Obama seeing his shadow, Shaheen milks the Assad WMD terror-cow one more time that I can find, working with senator Rubio to stop money flowing to Hamas who are working with Assad, and so on. But not a word about ISIL, or ISIS, unless you infer that they are among the rebels and revolutionaries Assad is trying to kill.
Not another word is shared on her press page after that until August when a guy with links to New Hampshire has his head separated from his body by ISIS, a terror group whom Senator Shaheen has never mentioned on her press page up to that point.
If Ms. Shaheen has ‘,em.consistently called for a serious, comprehensive strategy to destroy ISIS’ I’m not seeing it. What I am seeing is knee-jerk political speechifying when something appears to threaten her political fortunes, in a form and manner nearly identical to that of Mr. Obama, whose policies she supports almost to the exclusion of everything else.
I believe it is safe to say that your being ‘serious’ or ‘comprehensive’ about the goings on in the middle east Senator are “limited in time and scope,” relative to the threat they represent to your current job as the Democrat parties US Senator to New Hampshire.
You consistently lead from behind, just like Mr. Obama.
