The Wrongologist

What’s
Wrong Today:

On
Friday, House Speaker John
Boehner named Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida as qualified to be vice
president. “I think the number one quality is, are they capable of being
president in the case of an emergency?” Boehner added.

Boehner also said
that Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio and Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana fit his
criteria that the pick be capable of serving as president.

So What’s Wrong?

 

Boehner waited to endorse Rubio until he showed
his mainstream Republican chicken hawk chops:

 

Rubio said
last Wednesday that a unilateral
“military solution” from the United States may be needed to stop Iran
from acquiring a nuclear bomb and that we may need to lead an initiative in Syria without the UN.

Rubio, speaking at The Brookings
Institution with Joseph I. Lieberman (I-CT), said that it was imperative that
the United States not “stand on the sidelines” of a simmering Middle
East, but instead provide leadership to resolve global crises. He observed:

“Our preferred
option since the US became a global leader has been to work with others to
achieve our goals, …America has acted unilaterally in the past  and I believe it should continue to do so in
the future, when necessity requires,”

He was
alluding to Iran. Here are some other thoughts from the same speech:

“We should
also be preparing our allies, and the world, for the reality that
unfortunately, if all else fails, preventing a nuclear Iran may, tragically,
require a military solution.”

Rubio noted
how Washington should be prepared to bypass the United Nations when “bad
actors” prevent it from taking meaningful steps, such as on Syria.

“The Security
Council remains a valuable forum, but not an indispensable one,..We can’t walk
away from a problem because some members of the Security Council refuse to
act.”

Rubio lambasted Russian president-elect
Vladimir Putin’s preaching of “paranoia and anti-Western sentiments”
and said the “curtain of secrecy that veils the Chinese state” makes
it unwise to trust them to lead on global economic and political freedom. He went
on to point to Syria as an example of the need for US engagement. “The
region is waiting for American leadership,” Rubio said:

 

“You need the
center of gravity to instigate this coalition (supporting opposition groups in
Syria) and move forward with a defined plan. In the absence of American power
and American influence and American leadership, it’s hard to do that.”

So, Rubio is campaigning for vice president
by promising to embroil our country in two more Middle East wars, and to do so
without the backing of international law.

This isn’t the kind of thing you just flounce
into: Syria is 2/3rds the size of Iraq, and Iran is 3 times more populous, so
Rubio is willing to commit us not only to bear more thousands of war dead and
badly wounded but also to spend additional trillions in distant Middle Eastern
deserts.

Sounds like John McCain.

So
if you like your luggage to match, why not another absurdity in the second chair?