Obama’s Plan To Do ‘Something’ Is Not Convincing

If the most powerful man in the world is war-weary, then he should adopt a lower profile in tackling the Syrian crisis, argues historian Dirk-Jan van Baar.

America is war-weary. Barack Obama has said so; furthermore, he is war-weary himself. By using chemical weapons against its own people, however, Syria has crossed Obama’s “red line.” Therefore, he is considering taking military action. Secretary of State John Kerry, who believes that there is already sufficient evidence against the Assad regime, has said the same thing and then gone on to assure the American people that he is war-weary too. Obama’s “red line” has been crossed, though, and so the U.S. cannot refuse to take responsibility or allow the use of such weapons to go unpunished. The U.S. must do “something” because otherwise, the president’s credibility will be questioned. He just needs to work out what that “something” will be.

What it will not be is war. It will not last long. The intention is not to remove Assad; there will be no boots on the ground. The president will also seek the approval of Congress, even though it is not required and despite seeing what happened to his most important ally, David Cameron, who lost a similar vote in the House of Commons. Obama was elected to end wars; he wants to make sure that the American people are behind him.

He will not get the support of the United Nations, which is in a state of paralysis. The Bush regime worked this out back in 2002, but after heavy criticism for acting unilaterally, it still went to the United Nations to try to seek support for taking action against Iraq. Hard though it is to remember now, this led to Resolution 1441, which had unanimous support, even Syria’s — Bashar al-Assad’s Syria, always seen as less of a danger in comparison to Saddam’s Iraq, but which has the weapons of mass destruction that Iraq did not. Surely something stinks about that.

Moral Crusaders

George W. Bush and Tony Blair were the sort of moral crusaders whom you never doubted would take action in Iraq, but with Obama and his policy of doing “something,” it is like groping in the dark. He is going to do “something” for the sake of his own credibility, but he does not even believe in it himself. The president makes passionate speeches and lets us watch him deliberate, but there is no debate about a political strategy for Syria and the Middle East. Obama wants to keep out of Syria and not start a new war, even though his plan to punish Assad would itself amount to an act of war. How convincing is that?

The answer came from Vladimir Putin, who thinks the American assertion that Assad was behind the gas attack in Damascus is “utter nonsense”: so much for Obama’s credibility. Not that we can expect the truth from Moscow, either; 30 years ago, when he bombed Hama, we saw that Assad’s father would stop at nothing. Putin, however, did pose the logical question as to why Assad should decide to gas his own citizens when he was winning anyway, and when in so doing, he would be crossing Obama’s “red line,” thus risking an American intervention. In Russia, with its cynical worldview, this is incomprehensible. Putin, who sees the world in terms of realpolitik, had another surprise waiting for him, though. Despite plans for an overhaul of relations with Moscow, Obama called off a meeting with him. He considers Western public opinion on gay rights more important than the gassing of Syrian children.

No Respect

This lack of a strategic vision is causing repercussions in Syria, where Putin remains steadfast in his support for Assad, who is also backed by Iran — he could even be called an Iranian puppet. That country was itself a potential target for preventative action at the beginning of the year, but we do not hear any more about that. In Israel, all this flip-flopping by Obama is causing horror. You have to conclude that his foreign policy has totally failed. His outstretched hand toward the Muslim world has been slapped back, his European allies feel neglected and an overhaul of relations with Russia is urgently required. China is not being consulted at the United Nations; the withdrawals from Afghanistan and Iraq are leading to new attacks. Outside the Western world, there is little respect left for Obama. This is a bitter disappointment for the first post-racial American president, who hoped his charisma alone would be enough to change the world. That kind of magic has gone. No wonder he is war-weary.

Part of the blame lies with Bush, whose wars he inherited and who told his fellow Americans to do their patriotic duty by going shopping in the aftermath of 9/11. You would get sick and tired of that, but war-weary? You might think the Muslim world would suffer from it, but it keeps on going. The problem with Obama is that he is doing everything backward. He wrote an autobiography before he became president, won a Nobel Prize before he had brought any peace and announced a surge of troops in Afghanistan at the same time as plans to bring them all back home. The best thing you can say about the approach to Syria is that it is pure Obama. Before any action had even started, he announced the bombing would not last long. But prophet Obama’s glory days are behind him now. Nobody still believes that firing off some cruise missiles will bring Assad to heel, much less peace to the Holy Land, and Obama will not get his credibility back by doing something to which there is no apparent point.

Anti-Bush

Obama is stuck in his self-appointed role as the antidote to Bush, while at the same time, he is responsible for doing similar things. As a result, when he is faced with a conflict where outsiders feel he should intervene, he struggles to retain credibility. Therefore, he resorts to covert action — like in Pakistan — or engages in pretense. But a U.S. president who prefers to lead from behind runs the risk that other people will drag him into conflicts he would rather avoid.

To sort out the Middle East, America needs to have a strategy for the long term, behind which the whole of the Western world — including Israel — can unite and which takes proper account of the various dangers lurking in the Muslim world. A U.S. president remains credible as long as he has a clear plan and sticks to it, if need be, even against his own better judgment. This was what Bush did in his later years: He was not concerned with people believing in him but continued to do what he thought was necessary. Obama could do the same, but what he cannot do is be war-weary and yet go to war — that is farcical. An Obama who keeps quiet and stops drawing “red lines” would be preferable to that. In so doing, he would be acting like the president of the United States, a powerful man with whom the rest of the world has to live for another three years.