OBAMA’S EXCELLENT SYRIAN ADVENTURE: THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE WINNER GETS BY WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM HIS ENEMIES?

9/2/13

President Obama has finally done the right thing regarding the ghastly situation in Syria.

He may have looked more indecisive than the Dane himself in doing so.   Further, he may be doing so for the wrong reasons; a lot of people think the President is seeking Congressional approval of military action against Bashar Assad only as a ruse for changing his mind once again.   All this doesn’t matter.  We can’t count on people’s good motives; Francis of Assisi long ago vacated this mortal coil and there are few decent replacements.  We can only count on people’s actions.   And, regardless of his motivations, the President has finally done the right thing and gone the Constitutional route in asking Congressional approval before sending American blood and treasure on yet another foreign adventure with dubious, yet frightful, potential consequences.  In so doing, Mr. Obama has reversed the approach of every post-War president, with the possible and ironic exception of Richard Nixon, in committing American firepower, money, and troops to combat, which has been, effectively, I am the State.

This circuitous, stumbling in the dark path to righteousness has come at some cost to American credibility.   In his alternating red lines, expressions of outrage, and admonitions to caution, Mr. Obama has displayed more flip-flops than will be seen on the Jersey Shore this Labor Day weekend.   As Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University put it, the President

“…is becoming a laughingstock in the eyes of friends and foe alike.”

While it is hard in the Middle East, or anywhere, for that matter, to distinguish friend from foe (Was it Kissinger, Metternich, or Richelieu who said “Countries don’t have permanent friends; they only have permanent interests?), Mr. Inbar has a point.  Mr. Obama could have saved himself, and this country, a lot of humiliation by saying early on, and unequivocally, that the U.S. has no interests in Syria sufficiently salient to commit American resources and kids to the conflict.   (See 8/27/13’s  SYRIA:  “WE (WILL) GET FOOLED AGAIN!” for only my latest expostulation on why getting involved in yet another Middle Eastern centuries old irresolvable sectarian conflict would be ruinous, or worse, for the United States and the world.)   But the President, as is his wont, blew that opportunity.  

More importantly, if it took an embarrassing to the point of pain Hamlet act on the international stage on the part of the President to finally get him to do what no president since Roosevelt has done, i.e., abide by the Constitution in committing American troops to conflict, that is a small price to pay.

Will the President be able to persuade the Congress to go along with this latest Bushite adventure for who knows what reason in the Middle East?   Or will he suffer the type of heaven sent humiliation that the clear-headed British Parliament sent to the starry-eyed David Cameron?

First, while things can change rapidly and political predictions are thus always perilous, the odds are not good that the Congress will give the President the nod he ostensibly seeks.   Mr. Obama must persuade not only those Congresspersons with the good sense to stay as far away from Syria as one does from a rabid dog; he also must also mollify the likes of Senators John McCain and his mini-me, Senator Lindsey Graham, who seem to have visions of mushroom clouds, and generous payment of IOUs to the “defense” industry, once again dancing in their febrile brains.   One can only hope that the Republican impulse to oppose anything that Mr. Obama proposes will override the GOP reflexive equation of militarism with patriotism and that they will thus join the Democrats, and the libertarian oriented corners of the GOP, to slap Mr. Obama’s hand and save us from another quagmire in the cradle of civilization.

Second, one does get the impression that the President is secretly hoping that Congress will not go along with the Bushite militarism that has led Mr. Obama and his team to ostensibly flak for another folly in the Middle East.   This will enable the President to avoid conflict, blame it on Congress, and breathe a heavy sigh of relief.   The nation ought to join him in that sigh should that be the outcome of this entire fiasco.