John Boehner Shares his Scott Walker-Like Delusions About Foreign Policy

You might remember how John Boehner went all Stepford-like on Fox News Sunday and screamed that he was going to shutdown Homeland Security, and oh by the way it’s all Obama’s fault? If you didn’t watch the entire interview, you missed a few other Boehner nuggets.

This is what Boehner is saying, that his interview was “about Republicans’ focus on jobs and the people’s priorities, the House’s plan to keep the Department of Homeland Security funded, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s address to Congress, and more.” It’s difficult to reconcile any of this to reality, and it’s a hard sell, as you can see even by the wording direct from John Boehner’s Press Office:

A good start on jobs and the people’s priorities: “Just yesterday, [the president] signed the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention Act, that would help get more services to our veterans that we’re losing at a rate of 22 a day. The Keystone pipeline’s been done. … The House has passed several dozen bills already. We’re off to the fastest start of a Congress in the 25 years that I’ve been here. … But we’re off to a good start. We’ve passed the 40-hour workweek requirement in ObamaCare so that people aren’t getting their hours cut. We passed the Hire More [Heroes] Act out of the House, to make it easier for small businesses to hire veterans. How about making it easier to export liquid natural gas overseas to our allies that are begging for it?”

Seriously? No, Keystone XL, like Benghazi, will never die. So people aren’t getting their hours cut…but getting their insurance benefits cut instead, like that’s preferable. This is not helpful to the middle class. It’s an attack on the middle class. How stupid does Boehner think we are? (Don’t answer that!) Or is he listening to Rick Perry’s nonsense about how Texans “don’t want no damn health insurance!”?

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A robust strategy and authorization to defeat ISIL: “We need a robust strategy to take on ISIL. No one has seen one from this White House yet. In addition to a robust strategy, I think we need to have a robust authorization. And I don’t believe that what the president sent here gives him the flexibility or the authority to take on this enemy and to win. And so I look at the submission by the president of the beginning of the process. We’re going to have exhaustive hearings in the Foreign Affairs Committee, the Intelligence Committee, the Armed Services Committee. And we’re going to have bipartisan discussions about how we strengthen this authorization.”

“A robust strategy to defeat ISIL…” Has Boehner been talking to Scott Walker, that college dropout? Remember how much trouble Walker got himself into trouble with his college dropout level understanding of foreign policy: “I think we need to have an aggressive strategy anywhere around the world. I think it’s a mistake to -.” Aggressive strategy/robust strategy, both short on specifics.

We know Boehner and other Republicans want boots on the ground again. But we have to ask, since Boehner won’t, who are they going to shoot at when they get there, these boots? Was American Sniper so inspiring that we want to destroy Fallujah again? Shoot everybody who might be an ISIL-sympathizer? And we can do it to Libya too?

This isn’t the old glorious days of empire: the Mahdi isn’t going to ride up to General Kitchener and present his dervishes for destruction.

Things have changed a lot since the 19th century’s colonial rebellions. Modern asymmetrical warfare is ugly, in case Boehner hasn’t noticed. Ugly for those on the receiving end but ugly too for those on the giving end. Nothing is affirmed, unless you are a psychopath like Chris Kyle, or a delusional fan of American Exceptionalism like Blake Shelton (after getting himself liquored up, of course).

The pursuit of the facts about Benghazi: “The idea here is to give the American people the facts about what happened. Why wasn’t the security for our embassy in Libya, the extra security, given to the Ambassador after repeated requests the night of the event. Why didn’t we attempt to rescue the people that were there? Why were the people there told not to get involved? And then, as importantly, when did the president know this, and why for some two weeks, did he describe it differently than what it really was? There are a lot of unanswered questions, and as Trey Gowdy, the chairman of the Benghazi committee has been told by me, I don’t need a big show here. What we need are facts. The American people deserve the truth about what happened, and that’s all what we’re interested in.”

And Benghazi again? Really? What about The U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence’s Investigative Report on the Terrorist Attacks on U.S. Facilities in Benghazi, Libya, September 11-12, 2012, which, we were told, “is meant to serve as the definitive House statement on the Intelligence Community’s activities before, during, and after the tragic events that caused the deaths of four brave Americans”?

So we know already what happened in Benghazi. We’ve been told what happened in Benghazi time and time again. The Republicans just plug their ears and refuse to listen, even to their own definitive report.

What the American people really deserve is a different Congress. We deserve a Congress of men and women who are beholden to our interests, not men and women (looking at you, Mary Fallin) who whore themselves out to the Koch brothers and to others of the 1 Percent, to oil companies and other large corporations. We deserve a Congress which will actually work for the American people, not for themselves. We deserve a Congress that at least knows the difference between fact and fantasy.

John Boehner, every time he opens his mouth, shows himself unworthy of the position he occupies. As out of his depth as speaker as George W. Bush was as president, he is a sad and pathetic little man at a time when the United States needs a statesman. The delusional John Boehner is, all too sadly, a prime example of everything that is wrong with the Republican Party in 2015. At the least, we deserve an adult. We get this instead.

Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.