America may have lost its stomach for military intervention.
The Obama administration has made its case that the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, used chemical weapons against his own people and that a "limited" military response is in order to demonstrate that international norms will — and must — be enforced.
President Obama said during a news conference on Friday, "It's important for us to recognize that when over a thousand people are killed, including hundreds of innocent children, through the use of a weapon that 98 or 99 percent of humanity says should not be used even in war, and there is no action, then we're sending a signal."
The president is attempting to assure the American people that any action in Syria will not involve American boots on the ground and will not be a sinkhole like the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but that is a hard case to make.
The problem is that America seems war weary.
If the administration is correct, this is a human rights tragedy. Something should be done. But must we always be the ones to do it? Does protecting America's interest mean policing the world's horrors?
When innocent lives are taken in the most reprehensible of ways, to whom do their souls cry? Whence comes their justice? Is America's moral leadership in the world carved out by the tip of its sword?
These are profound questions that go straight to the heart of how we see ourselves on a rapidly changing planet. Are we the arbiters of the world's atrocities?
It would seem that Americans are conflicted about that role, at least in this case.
An NBC News poll released Friday found that while 58 percent of Americans believe that the use of chemical weapons by any country is a "red line" requiring a significant United States response, including military action, only 42 percent believe that we should take such action in Syria and only 21 percent are convinced that such action is in our national interest. Fifty percent of Americans believe that we should take no significant military action.
To put that in context, according to data from Gallup, the highest disapproval rate for military action in the last 30 years was 45 percent for military action in Haiti in 1994 and in Kosovo and the Balkans in 1999.
Our current conflicts, no doubt, weigh heavily on Americans' minds.
The war in Afghanistan is now in its 12th year, and the Iraq war lasted nearly 9 years. In fact, only 7 of the past 30 years have seen the United States not engaged in military action in some part of the world, according to Gallup.
And most of the countries where the United States has been engaged are halfway around the world, where few Americans are likely to have been or even be familiar with.
In fact, according to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, only 50 percent of Americans can correctly locate Syria on a map, and an April report from Pew found that fewer than one in five Americans have followed the news about Syria very closely since May 2011.
Convincing Americans that a place they hardly know about poses a security threat may prove difficult. We all remember that the Iraq war was based on faulty intelligence trafficked by the Bush administration and regurgitated by the media. This damaged folks' faith and left them dubious.
Furthermore, the coalition we might expect to support intervention isn't intact. The British Parliament voted against launching a strike on Syria, a shocking move by one of America's staunchest allies. The United Nations Security Council did not resolve to use military force, and there is not likely to be a vote in Congress before any action is taken.
The president is out on a most precarious limb on this issue. It is an unenviable position, where the right moral move could be the wrong political one, where the to-what-end question has a lack-of-clarity answer. Would a "limited" bombing campaign be the military equivalent of slap on the wrist? How would it guarantee an end to the atrocities?
These are the moments — when the support flags and emotions flare — that try the character and constitution of a leader, particularly a leader who rose to prominence as an antiwar candidate.
The president said Friday that "a lot of people think something should be done, but nobody wants to do it." Does he want to? Or must he? And must we? Always?
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