SYRIA - WORSE THAN DOING NOTHING - DOING NOTHING THE WRONG WAY

Congressman Eliot Engel of the Bronx, ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Relations Committee, said in an interview while the President was reaching his Syria decision that there was nothing worse than doing nothing.  Unfortunately the President found something worse.  He tossed the ball to the Congress and now puts the prestige of his Presidency on the line, as already was the credibility of his country.  Instead of speaking softly and carrying a big stick President Obama spoke loudly and often about the Syrian use of chemical weapons and then asked permission to use a stick.  Regardless of whether the Congress authorizes him to strike Syria he has done inestimable damage to the office of the Presidency and to our nation’s alliances throughout the world.

If the Congress votes no, and as I write this on Sept. 5 it appears the Senate will vote yes and the House no, the ball is back in the President’s court. If he then acts he negates the very logic and sincerity of going to Congress but if he doesn’t act abdicates the position of the United States as the world leader - a position assumed after WWII because our failure to take that leadership after WWI was in part a cause of WWII.

Should other nations be responding to Syria’s use of chemical weapons?  YES.  But should the failure of others to do something justify our doing nothing. NO.  During the Second World War many people went to FDR and asked him to bomb the death camps - he was dissuaded by those who said we would be killing the inmates (incredible) and by those who questioned the veracity of the evidence. When General Eisenhower liberated the camps he had film makers and photographers take as many pictures as they could because he wanted people never to forget. It doesn’t matter if we remember atrocities if we do nothing when they reoccur.  Due to a courageous American President the genocide in Kosovo was ended and democracy brought to Serbia and Kosovo without one losing the life of one American soldier.  Had he asked Congress first who knows if we would have done anything?

American Presidents of course should ask Congress, under the Constitution, to declare war and Madison. Polk, McKinley, Wilson, and FDR did so.  But for limited military actions most Presidents have sought either Congress’ unofficial approval or post action approval.  In 1801/02 President Jefferson with an almost non-existent Navy sent a battleship to the Mediterranean to combat the Tripolitania pirates -- sufficient force was used to get a negotiated peace -- and he was praised for doing it. 

Americans don’t like War.  We as a people have opposed almost every war we’ve been in before it was declared and get weary and unsupportive if the war lasts to long.  And, that includes the first one - the War for Independence.  But Americans will support their President when they use military force to defend our interests and our values (most notably the support of Pres. Lincoln in both saving the union and freeing the slaves).  Limited strikes such as Jefferson in Tripoli, Reagan in Grenada, Clinton in Kosovo, these met with public approval as did Korea in the early years after Truman acted; but, Americans are not going to decide to involve us in a foreign war when most of them can’t identify countries on a map outside of Mexico and Canada.

Americans would support a President who would tell them the truth, and Obama has, and take a course of action supporting our nation’s historic opposition to use of chemical weapons.  One person is elected to make this tough decision - and it’s not the members of Congress who are elected based on local issues and district boundaries.  And, this nation decided over 225 years ago that the British Parliament doesn’t speak for us.  While we created and have been the world’s greatest proponent of the United Nations we made clear after 1945 that we would not let the veto power hamper action in our nation’s interest and we would not subordinate our values and commitments to a majority vote among nations. 

The President gave the nation his decision. He should have owned it and taken action accordingly.  When the history of this time is written, in fifty years, I hope no historian has to write that America could have stopped a future holocaust had it taken action in 2013 as they write about how the west could have stopped Hitler had they taken action in 1936.   

When the southern states seceded President Buchanan was urged by some members of his Cabinet to take action.  Buchanan was a long time Pennsylvania lawyer and got his start in politics at the local level in 1812 - he knew some of the authors of the Constitution.  So he came to the conclusion that the Constitution did not permit secession -- but, alas, the Constitution according to Buchanan did not permit the President to do anything about it.  In 2008 and 2012 I truly believe that most Americans thought they were electing another Lincoln not another Buchanan.

5 September 2013