I’ve been pretty critical of the Obama administration’s foreign policy efforts since he’s taken office, primarily because he has opted to follow the Bush administration approach of shooting first and asking questions later.
But thankfully — despite the ravings of a former presidential candidate whose reputation as a foreign policy expert is belied by his actions and the facts — President Obama opted not to follow this script in Syria.
Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta acknowledged that he and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, had supported a plan last year to arm carefully vetted Syrian rebels. But it was ultimately vetoed by the White House, Mr. Panetta said, although it was developed by David H. Petraeus, the C.I.A. director at the time, and backed by Hillary Rodham Clinton, then the secretary of state.
We apparently were far closer to entering the Syrian civil war than maybe we realized, which would have put us in the all-to-familiar position of bearing responsibility for the fate of a fractured nation in a region coming apart at the seams. We overthrew an Iraqi dictatorship, only to create chaos. We helped overthrow a vile religious sect in Afghanistan, only to have chaos ensue and the religio-political group return to prominence. We joined with the Libyan rebels to toss out a tin-pot dictator, only to find ourselves mired in a slowly simmering, gun-laden conflict there (which has taken the life of teh U.S. ambassador and others). And so on — and this is only since the turn of the new millenium.
Our track record in interceding in other-people’s wars — and not just our track record, as the Soviets/Russians, the French, and the English can attest — is pretty piss-poor. Vietnam (France and later the U.S.), Afghanistan (the Soviet Union and later the U.S.), Algeria (the French), Chechnya (Russia) — the evidence seems strong enough so that we should at least apply the brake and slow down before we act.
That’s not how the Hawks view it. John McCain, the senior Senator from Arizona, a veteran of Vietnam and a former POW, is as blood-thirsty as they come, having rewritten an old Beachboys tunes to make clear how he would handle Iran, having called for the United States to help the nation of Georgia stand up to a nuclear-armed Russia, and so on.
Then came yesterday:
“How many more have to die before you recommend military action?” Mr. McCain asked Mr. Panetta on Thursday, noting that an estimated 60,000 Syrians had been killed in the fighting.
That appears to be the question that the foreign policy establishment asked — not a terrible question, but certainly not the only question that should be asked. Shouldn’t we ask, of course, whether our actions will make things better or worse? That apparently was the question asked by the president and the reason he opted not to follow the shoot-first crowd. In this case, the issues were: what happens to the guns we send over, whose hands will they end up in and what will they mean for regional stability.
The president has not commented, but Daniel C. Kurtzer, a former United States ambassador to Israel and Egypt, told The New York Times that
the potential risks outweighed the gains. Even with thorough vetting, he said, it would be difficult to ensure that the weapons did not end up with unreliable or hostile groups.
“The problem that I think the White House has identified much more clearly than the national security team is, ‘Who are you going to deal with?’ ” Mr. Kurtzer said.
This put me in mind of a Star Trek episode in which Capt. Kirk and the Enterprise enter into an arms war with the Klingons, Kirk’s motivation being to maintain a level playing field militarily to protect a put-upon people. The implication — remember, this was during the Vietnam era and at the height of the Cold War — was that this was just the first step and that these warring tribes would soon be fighting with more and more sophisticated weaponry. A metaphor for mutually-ensured destruction, but also an endorsement — Kirk may be saddened, but he ultimately sees that he has no choice.
So, while there are McCain-style politicians and policy advocates out there who view everything through the war spectrum and think U.S. military might is the answer to nearly all questions, the Kirk approach is what rules the foreign policy establishment. It is a false sense of realism that has pushed an important question to the side.
That question? Our new secretary of state, John Kerry, is famous for asking it as the Vietnam war slowly wound down — in 1971, during the Summer Soldier hearings before Congress:
How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?
That we have asked that question and continue to ask that question, that we have, as Kerry said in 1971, ask “with thousands of rationalizations,” is our failure. Kerry went on in his testimony to accept and endorse smaller military actions, but he managed to ask the one question that seems to have fallen from the public discourse in an era when our foreign policy has become increasingly militarized.
While we use drone technology — which makes the fighting of war seem risk free — we also still send men and women into battle. They die — in smaller numbers, thanks to improvements in protective gear — and they are maimed both physically and mentally. And yet, aside from possibly Chuck Hagel, no one seems to factor that into the equation. No one wants to ask what impact our actions will have on the average Syrian, Afghan or Iraqi in the small village, the one who is just trying to get by. Will they be better off? Will our military men and women be better off?
This is an issue that reaches beyond the Risk-like strategy games the decision-makers engaged in by our leaders. This is a human question. McCain is right to ask how many more will die if we do nothing, but he also needs to ask how many more will die if we act.
