With his determination to go to war against Syria, President Obama seems to have lost both his mind and his political sense.
First the president claimed the authority to attack countries on his own without any attack on the United States or even any plausible threat to the country — to launch an attack just to “send a message” to an awful regime without really damaging that regime at all, another war on the cheap fought not to be won but just to strike a pose.
Then, having seen the British Parliament heroically rebuke the prime minister for identical arrogance, the president said he would seek the approval of Congress but still not be bound by Congress’ decision.
And though certain leading Republicans, like Sen. John McCain and House Speaker John Boehner, can’t wait to get the country into another war, public opinion — including the opinion of many other Republican leaders and probably most ordinary Republicans — is overwhelmingly against another adventure to civilize the barbarians.
It has taken them a while to wise up but after Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan — Afghanistan being where still another serviceman from Connecticut was killed last week accomplishing nothing of any value to his country — most Americans are sick of this nonsense. They realize that in the most benighted part of the world there are just not enough good guys worth helping; that tribalism and religious fanaticism there are so ingrained as to be far beyond any reasoning with; that while both sides in Syria have children, those children are brought up to hate and murder those who are different; and that any liberation will have to be achieved from within the barbarian ranks themselves, that foreign intervention just changes the subject.
Of course this means enormous suffering, but welcome to Planet Earth. The president only makes himself ridiculous by arguing that 1,400 deaths in Syria by poison gas require military intervention by the United States when tens of thousands of deaths in Syria by heavy artillery, aerial bombardment and strafing, and rifle fire have been overlooked. Indeed, just a few years ago the president’s now war-mongering secretary of state, then — Sen. John Kerry, was supping cordially with the Syrian dictator and proclaiming how reasonable the guy was.
Opponents of military intervention in Syria are not what they are being called, “isolationists.” Rather they note that the president has offered no course of action that will accomplish much either for Syria or, far more important, the United States itself.
This doesn’t mean that the United States should not be moved by the Syrian civil war. It just means that, as Connecticut U.S. Rep. John Larson noted last week, the approach to be taken is international, through the United Nations, or perhaps through Syria’s neighbors, who are being swamped with refugees.
If the president’s senses hadn’t left him, he would have tried the international approach first and thereby at least forced onto Syria’s patrons, Russia and Iran, some responsibility for the brutality of the Syrian regime. International cooperation might impose a land and air blockade on Syria and establish safe zones for refugees within the country and possibly, over time, identify political elements that might be worth supporting.
But even many advocates of military intervention acknowledge that most of the rebels in Syria are as bad as the Syrian government and are already committing their own atrocities.
The virtue of nation-states in the international order is that they function as firewalls. Terrible suffering may happen within them but until all of humanity advances beyond tribalism and religious fanaticism, containing atrocities within those firewalls is probably the only realistic objective of international security. And at least this time the suffering doesn’t have to be American suffering too.
Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.