President George W. Bush uncharacteristically used common sense last year when he rejected aid for an Israeli strike on Iran, David Sanger reports in today’s NYT. This is good news. Yet, writes Stephen Walt at Foreign Policy, Obama’s arrival hardly signals that the military option is off the table:
First, there are still influential voices in Washington who maintain that the United States cannot permit Iran to maintain an independent enrichment capability, and who believe that the United States should use force to prevent this in the event that diplomacy does not succeed. [...]
Second, as the United States draws down its presence in Iraq, Iran’s ability to retaliate in that area of operations will decline. Opponents of the military option will lose one of the obvious counter-arguments to an attack (though there are plenty of others), and opposition within the uniformed military (which has been deeply skeptical of the military option in the past) may decline.
Third, Obama will almost certainly try the diplomatic route first, just as he promised in the campaign. The question is whether the diplomatic strategy that the administration follows has any realistic chance of succeeding.
Walt also points out that the rumoured appointment of Dennis Ross as Obama’s Iran troubleshooter would give air strike advocates a “front-and-center” position in the new administration.
The nation owes more than thanks to three unlikely modern day patriots: professional poker player, musician, and retired attorney, Leo Donofrio; life long Democrat and former Pennsylvania assistant attorney general, Phil Berg; and Soviet emigree and attorney, Dr. Orly Taitz (she’s also a dentist).
While Mr. Donofrio painstakingly established the airtight case that BHO could not be an Article II “natural born citizen” (at BHO’s birth, dad was British/Kenyan, not American, citizen) Leo’s Stay of the 12/15/08 electoral college vote was denied by SCOTUS as procedurally unripe.
Nevertheless, since no congressman and senator objected on 1/8/09 to Congress’ count and certification of the electoral vote which would have turned resolution of Obama’s eligibility issue over to Congress — rendering moot the Berg and Taitz (Lightfoot) cases — Berg finally does achieve standing on the issue of actual harm, to be addressed at the Friday 1/9/09 SCOTUS Conference on Writ of Certiorari. Obama’s failure to submit evidence of his constitutional qualification for the 1/9/09 conference will mean he cannot thereafter challenge Berg’s request to enjoin the 1/8/09 Congressional electoral count and certification, albeit retroactive, scheduled for SCOTUS conference Friday 1/16/09. Moreover, Chief Justice Roberts has scheduled a full Court conference on the Lightfoot case Friday 1/23/09 in the event there needs to be a Constitutionally mandated action, the Inauguration itself, to enjoin retroactively.
Now that BHO is in checkmate and cannot be POTUS, he can be a patriot as well. He need not subject the nation to the expense and trauma of requiring SCOTUS to overrule his ‘Presidency’. BHO can and should voluntarily step down with Biden becoming Acting POTUS under the 20th Amendment, and under the agreement all potential claims by the Government for itself and on behalf of others against BHO are released.