- It's not moral. As my twitter friend says:
Nowhere on the list of conditions required to prosecute a just war will you find...Face Saving. #SyriaWhat Just War DOES require is "proportional response" -- meaning proportionate to a moral end. Obama's own words "shot across the bow" tell us this strike isn't intended to DO anything, it's just for show.
— Stephen Hollingshead (@PolicyDr) September 2, 2013
- Moreover, strategically, such a strike will either do nothing whatever OR what if by some fluke it were to actually take out Assad and even further chaos were to descend? Then we're drawn into a war and for what? Who are we supposed to side with? Al Qaeda? Iran? There are zero good outcomes for us in Syria. And a "shot across the bow" is liable to embolden our enemies, not teach them a lesson, as Marc Theissen argues in the link just above.
- Politically, what does the GOP gain? A share in the blame for a stupid -- and enormously unpopular on a bi-partisan basis-- policy. It's important the President take all the blame for this policy if he's going to go through with it.
More and more the GOP just seems like an unthinking caricature of itself. Tax cuts and military tax cuts and military tax cuts and military. Anyone thinking about how to apply principles in specific situations?
I suppose what they think is they are going to prove they aren't obstructionists. Fine fellas, but not even of wicked deeds?
Sigh. Neither the cause of peace in the Middle East, nor the country, nor the party, nor any individual politician stands to gain anything from supporting the strikes in Syria. So why?
Update: Eliot Cohen makes as good a case FOR the Syrian intervention as can be made (subscribers only), but he front-loads all the counter-arguments, which to my mind outweigh the alleged good which he states as follows (link is to a Weekly Standard excerpt of the full piece:
[A]s a practical matter, critics can ask why the U.S. should intervene after a massacre, however hideous, of some 1,400 Syrians, when America has refused to act over the slaughter of 100,000 in the preceding two years. And, even if the U.S. strikes at Assad and helps bring about his downfall, the danger is real that having administered a defeat to the regime and its sponsor, Iran, America will hand a victory to al Qaeda.I say it's too late for that. The world already knows we're unserious and not going to stand by our friends because we elected Obama twice: Obama who needlessly insults our allies; Obama who turned victory in Iraq into defeat and Obama who is busily withdrawing from Afghanistan by blowing up our own materiale we're leaving behind in our haste to exit. And Obama who, as Cohen points out in earlier 'graphs, declared a red line, declared he was going to strike and then:
These are all serious arguments. But weightier are the counterarguments. For better or for worse, the credibility not only of this president, but of America as a global power and a guarantor of international order, is on the line. If the U.S.—after its president said two years ago that Assad must go and then, a year later, drew a red line at Syria's use of chemical weapons—now does nothing, profound conclusions will be drawn by a China ready to bully its neighbors, by a North Korea whose scruples are already minimal, and by an Iran that has already killed many Americans in a covert war waged against us in Iraq and Afghanistan.
America's friends will realize that its word means nothing. As a result, they will either abandon us, or arm themselves with nuclear weapons. And these countries will be increasingly willing to wield them in a world in which they have no great ally who may be counted upon to stand by them in an hour of need.
On Saturday, when President Obama overruled his advisers, reversed his own policy, and declared that he whould not act against Syria until Congress had its say, he did not -- as he might have-- recall Congress for that purpose. Instead, Mr. Obama said he would wait for 10 days or more. Then he promptly left the White House for the golf course. Later this week, he'll travel to Stockholm and then to St. Petersburg, Russia, for a G-20 Economic summit.To make a serious point about America's policing the world, you have to BE serious, and if your little message has unforeseen consequences, you have to do serious follow up on the mess you make, which Obama won't. It is not possible for Obama to command the respect of the world; he isn't a serious person, he has no commitment to this task, and the American people are tired of war and he is not the man to rally us. So, even though I take the point about our standing in the world and see that he has made things more dangerous for Americans everywhere, still no. Because he is not the man for the job and is just going to make things worse. A "shot across the bow" invites more mockery and looks just as weak if not moreso than doing nothing. And there's a serious chance of turning Syria over to al-Qaeda.
Update 2: Heh. Similar points but oh so deliciously expressed.
