A low point in Barack Obama’s presidency was reached when both his previous secretaries of defense said he’d bungled Syria. Leon Panetta said it was a mistake to threaten an attack and not follow through: “When the president of the United States draws a red line, the credibility of this country is dependent on him backing up his word.” Robert Gates said it was a mistake to even threaten an attack, because if we did attack, “in the eyes of a lot of people we become the villain instead of [Syrian president Bashar al-]Assad.” Their disapproval of Obama made headlines, but just as telltale was their disagreement with each other.
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Presidents are graded by history according to how they respond to crises. But for the U.S., Syria isn’t a crisis—it’s a quandary. When crises come along, the public demands action that gets results. If a Pew poll last week on Syria is halfway accurate, Americans favor inaction. By a 67 percent to 23 percent margin, the public told Pew that President Obama did the right thing when he revoked his threat of air strikes to let diplomacy work its wonders—even though the public has no faith in diplomacy. Just one American in four thinks this diplomacy will lead to Syria actually giving up its chemical weapons. A mere 8 percent think Syria can be trusted, and about 20 percent think that of our new diplomatic allies, the Russians.
But as Chapman noted in another column, Obama described the attack he was threatening as “a shot across the bow,” while Secretary of State John Kerry said he hoped it would have “downstream impact” on Assad’s military capacity. (A lesson apparently learned from Vietnam—and Afghanistan, and Iraq—is not to overpromise what a show of American muscle can achieve.) If an act of war won’t accomplish much, why not skip it in favor of an equally ineffective act of peace? The Pew report indicates Americans much prefer the next futile gesture in the Middle East to be one that doesn’t blow anybody up.
Chapman called Obama “the luckiest politician on the face of the planet,” a guy who’d just been saved “from looking like an appeaser, a warmonger or an incompetent.” What’s more, said Chapman, Putin’s lifeline was actually a pretty good one, a diplomatic maneuver that “serves the interests of every important party” (except Syria’s rebels, but Chapman reasoned that at least they don’t have to worry about being gassed again).
Chapman’s a self-described libertarian, and I suppose Byrne would say, “If the shoe fits . . .” But though Byrne’s language is typically over-the-top, I sympathize this time with the point he’s making. Taboos must remain taboos—the world needs to hang on to every circumscription of war it’s got.
