After a decade of war weariness, it's astounding how thoroughly public perceptions and American politics have changed on the subject of foreign policy and, in particular, waging war in the Middle East.
The Syrian conflict and the brutal chemical weapons attacks by the dictator, Bashar Assad, may prove to be a watershed moment for America, the superpower.
In 2003, as the U.S. invasion of Iraq approached, the American people reached a near fever-pitch of patriotism. Anyone who dared question the wisdom of attacking Saddam Hussein, or the Bush administration’s military strategy, was quickly shouted down and often labeled a traitor.
Now, when similar anti-war sentiments are expressed, in much more forceful tones, they are greeted with applause. Even John McCain, a war hero, is berated by his constituents for favoring a U.S. military response to the thug, Assad, for gassing 400 Syrian children and 1,000 men and women.
What’s going on here?
A ruthless Muslim dictator with strong ties to Iran and Hezzbollah, a major threat to Israel and a destabilizing force in Lebanon, has broken a 90-year-old international taboo that even the Nazis shied away from – using chemical weapons on innocents – yet many of the foreign policy hawks of a decade ago are opposed to any kind of U.S. response, even shooting cruise missiles from a safe distance.
I would suggest that Macomb County’s congresswoman, Candice Miller, is an accurate barometer of the changing views of the American electorate on foreign policy.
A Harrison Township Republican, Miller was a staunch hawk when President George W. Bush insisted that retaliation against Saddam was a proper reaction to the al-Qaida attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11.
After it was proven that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, Miller stood firm. She was an outspoken supporter of putting more boots on the ground -- the 2007 troop surge -- and later declared that the architect of that strategy, Gen. David Petraeus, was one of the finest generals in U.S. military history.
When suicide bombings in Iraq continued and the elected parliament revealed itself as clearly dysfunctional, Miller’s mentions of Iraq subsided significantly.
When Petraeus and President Obama devised an Afghanistan surge – with the White House agreeing to triple the number of U.S. troops there nearly a decade after the initial foray -- Miller’s comments on Afghanistan and Petraeus gradually dropped off to nearly nothing.
Today, Miller opposes an attack on Syria, particularly the president’s willingness to go it alone.
Why? “We can no longer be the policeman of the world,” she said.
Those are the exact words spoken a decade ago by many anti-war activists.
We’ve come full circle in our politics. The political spectrum is no longer a horizontal line, it is a circle with those on the far right, libertarian Republicans, and those on the far left, ultraliberal Democrats, joining hands in opposition to foreign policy excursions.
In 2003, the French fries in the Capitol Hill cafeterias were renamed freedom fries as Americans became outraged that France would not join our war coalition. After the British parliament recently voted against assisting with a U.S. attack on Syria, I suspect any congressman who proposed changing the name of the English muffins in the cafeterias to, let’s say “military muffins,” would be labeled a clown.
As someone who supported the war, I fully understand the nation’s Iraq syndrome, the fatigue and distrust that come with a bloody military intervention that went badly.
But we are taking a turn. Isolationism is now considered a viable U.S. foreign policy.
Isolationism began to creep into our politics when the troops who returned home at the end of the Iraq War were greeted not with parades, not even with a special welcome home. It began to show itself when a significant majority of the country began to ignore the developments in the Afghanistan War.
Yet, war fatigue does not absolve us from our responsibility as the strongest nation on earth, the protector of human rights and individual dignity and overall civility. We have chosen, over decades, to be the patron of global order and the enforcer of international law, which means nothing less than imposing a penalty for outrageous behavior.
We chose that path in a unified, bipartisan way as Americans. And we’ve lost nearly 1 million soldiers over the past century in a show of our resolve.
During the Cold War, we were not fighting just to defeat communism, we sacrificed American lives because we stood up and delivered a message that massacring and enslaving populations on God’s Green Earth was unacceptable.
In the current scenario, the debate over the Syrian madness, inaction would be the worst reaction.
The “red line” that has caused Obama so much grief was not created by the president, it was drawn nearly 100 years ago by the international community. And Syria remains one of just five nations that have refused to sign the global compact that outlaws chemical weapons. Now we have a humanitarian crisis with 5 to 7 million Syrian refugees.
This is not the time for hyper-partisanship or Obama bashing. This is not the time for finger-to-the-wind politics.
The polls show overwhelming public opposition to a military intervention in Syria. Yet, when Syrian use of chemical weapons was only a scenario, the numbers were very different. One December poll showed 63 percent support for a retaliatory attack to make Assad suffer the consequences of using chemical agents, with 73 percent support among Republicans. In other words, we’ve witnessed a national flip-flop.
House and Senate members citing lopsided polls surely know that most of the people answering those surveys could not find Syria on a map. The war-wary public does not appreciate that “American interests” call for a firm response to a tyrant with past ties to terrorist groups, including al-Qaida in Iraq.
A U.S. strike would likely weaken the hard-liners in Iran, mark a blow to Hezzbollah and possibly Hamas, shore up our commitments to Israel and say to the world, from North Korea and China to numerous hot spots along the Mediterranean Sea, that the genie is not out of the bottle on chemical weapons.
That’s a scenario that is clearly in the best interests of the United States.
In the end, is there any rationale that says rockets that invade the calm of night and silently deliver a horrific form of death are now acceptable in the 21st Century?
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