Friday Open Thread [6.20.14]

Yes! It’s Friday! And tonight and tomorrow night are your last chances to attend the Clifford Brown Jazz Festival. Tonite’s headliner is Ariel Larrieux and tomorrow’s headliner is Brian Culbertson. Grab your chair and head down to Rodney Square — this is one of the truly fantastic events in Wilmington and an awesome way to spend an evening. Or Saturday afternoon AND evening!

Via Kevin Drum, we find that the LA Times is actually capturing some of what looks to be Obama’s approach to these interventions:

According to this article, this is a President who wants to know what happens once the shooting stops. While I’d be happier with less shooting, it is good to be reminded that Obama is not John McCain or any of the trigger happy crowd:

Last fall, as President Obama weighed airstrikes against Syria, deliberations followed a clear pattern: The president solicited scores of options, planners returned with possibilities, and, according to people involved, Obama would reply with the same question: And then what?

Over the last several days, with Obama mulling involvement in another Middle East conflict, this time in Iraq, that dynamic has held.

[…]Obama’s approach — the persistent “and then what?” question — reflects his deep skepticism about the ability of military intervention to fix entrenched problems, a suspicion that some note has grown, or at least solidified, during his tenure.

[…]That view won support Wednesday from the general who was the architect of the so-called troop surge under George W. Bush. The U.S. should reengage militarily in Iraq only if the country’s sectarian communities reach a political agreement, retired Gen. David Petraeus said at a conference in London. “This cannot be the United States being the air force for Shia militias, or a Shia on Sunni Arab fight,” he said.

We couldn’t create political order at the end of a gun the last time, and it is even less likely now.

Barbara Boxer tells it like it is:

During an interview Thursday with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, Boxer, who voted against the Iraq War resolution in 2002, recalled a conversation she had with McCain around that time.

“Listen, I’m happy to listen to John McCain because I like him as a person. But if anyone — anyone — is to tell us what to do, it’s not him,” Boxer said. “He told me when I was very worried, after I had voted no on the Iraq War, and it was going on and on. He said to me, he was so sweet about it, he said, ‘This thing’s going to be over in three to six months.’ And that’s what Rumsfeld said. That’s what they all said. They were wrong.”

“Andrea, if you took your car into a mechanic and he destroyed the whole car and you couldn’t even turn it on, you wouldn’t go back to the same mechanic when there’s a problem,” she added.

What’s up for you this weekend?