Shutdown theater and Nixon’s Ghost

Andrew McCarthy:

Funding Jihadists while Denying Military Benefits
We can fund al-Qaeda but we can’t fund the families of our war dead?

Here is where we’re at: The Republican establishment the guys who told us that for a trillion dollars and several thousand American casualties, we could build “Islamic democracies” that would be reliable U.S. allies in the War on Terror say it is Ted Cruz who is “delusional” and the effort to stave off Obamacare that is “unattainable.”

These self-appointed sages are, of course, the same guys who told us the way to “stabilize” and “democratize” Libya was to help jihadists topple and kill the resident dictator who, at the time, was a U.S. ally, providing intelligence about the jihadists using his eastern badlands as a springboard for the anti-American terror insurgency in Iraq. That’s probably worth remembering this week, during which some of our new “allies” abducted Libya’s president while others car-bombed Sweden’s consulate in Benghazi site of the still unavenged terrorist massacre of American ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other U.S. officials 13 months ago.

Not to worry, though. So successful do they figure the Libyan escapade was, GOP leaders are backing a reprise in Syria. It is there, we learn from a Human Rights Watch report issued this week, that our new “allies,” the al-Qaeda-rife “rebels,” executed a savage atrocity just two months ago. Sweeping into the coastal village of Latakia, the jihadists slaughtered 190 minority Alawites. As the New York Times details, “at least 67 of the dead appeared to have been shot or stabbed while unarmed or fleeing, including 48 women and 11 children.” More than 200 other civilians were captured and are still being held hostage.

McCarthy raises several key issues that are lost in the MSM’s breathless horse race coverage of the shutdown.

I found this one especially interesting:

And, you’ll be pleased to know, supporting the Syrian “rebels” is a high enough priority that it’s not part of the 17 percent of the federal government affected by the “shutdown.”

And this:

You know, there’s also a 1996 law on the federal books that makes it a felony to provide material support to terrorists. It’s not vague. In fact, it’s clear as a bell, according to the many federal courts that have applied it in sentencing scores of jihadist-abettors to hundreds of years in prison.

Don’t you find it strange, don’t you think the public at large would find it strange, that in a shutdown Obama has instigated in order to enforce the Obamacare law Americans don’t want, he so skews the rest of our law that his administration says we can fund al-Qaeda but we can’t fund the families of our war dead?

In his 1977 interview with David Frost, Richard Nixon offered this defense of his actions:

When the President does it, that means it is not illegal.

That answer has taken on an almost mythic status on the Story of Watergate. On one hand we have the arrogant Imperial President who recognizes no limits on his power. On the other, we have a brave band of reporters and special prosecutors who set out to prove that no man, not even the President, is above the law in America.

The battle is joined, Nixon is toppled, and the Rule of Law is saved in America.

So, if that is true, how is it possible for this Administration to support al Qaeda terrorists in Syria?