Obama vs. the Hawks: How Obama Has Fought the War Machine
Nina Burleigh, Rolling Stone: Obama vs. the Hawks: How Obama Has Fought the War Machine
Seven months since that hot August afternoon, the Syrians, after fits and starts, have handed off over 500 metric tons of deadly chemicals, nearly 46 percent of their stock, and the deadline for the rest to be destroyed comes at the end of April. Which looks like a better outcome than a prolonged bombing campaign, but conventional Beltway wisdom is that Obama fumbled in August, angered the Saudis and Israelis, and “damaged American credibility,” as The Wall Street Journal put it.
On the Senate floor in February, McCain stood before photographs of dead Syrian children, predicting a future president would have to “apologize” for Obama’s inaction. “What haunts me even more than the horror unfolding before our eyes in Syria is the thought that we will continue to do nothing about it,” McCain said.
Worst of all, by Washington insider standards, Obama theoretically diminished his own power by asking for congressional authorization. In D.C., it’s an axiom that you never willingly give away any kind of power, especially executive power, and especially when it comes to military strikes.
But many of those who shared the president’s reticence were the very men and women who would have been in charge of putting themselves and their people on the line: the military. In a letter to the House Foreign Affairs Committee two days before the chemical attack, Joint Chiefs Chairman Dempsey expressed grave concern over establishing a no-fly zone, warning that any military action could spiral out of control and lead to American boots on the ground. “There’s a broad naiveté in the political class in foreign-policy issues,” retired Lt. Gen. Gregory S. Newbold complained to The Washington Post regarding a potential strike on Syria. Beltway thinking, he said, reflects a “scary simplicity about the effects that employing American military power can achieve.”
Let us be grateful for the wars we have avoided by electing Obama instead of McCain to the Presidency.