I sit in wonder at
the wisdom of those who drew up our Constitution. They believed the right structure for our
democracy should be representative, not direct. They realized that there are
details of government that should not be left to the masses, and in those days
of lack of education, access to special
knowledge and parochial views were characteristics of the general public , so
they put ultimate war powers in the
hands of a wiser Congress.Later, Congress gave the President the power to take action temporarily before consulting Congress. On the other
hand, the elected representatives still had the duty to represent their constituencies,
even though their personal judgments may have differed.
That tension, between Washington legislators and their constituents is playing out now in the Syria debate as
public opinion has jelled to oppose any intervention and many Congresspeople
are sitting on the fence. It will take some profiles in courage for any of them
to buck public opinion.
I for one am usually skeptical of both the unquestioned wisdom of our leaders
and of public opinion, but in this case,
I am also aware that emotions of recent events cannot be the sole determinant
and override the enlightened
rationality of many leaders in
Washington when it comes to shaping and
conducting foreign policy. That
is especially true when all but less
than 30% of the public have been paying
little attention and are just waking up to where Syria is and what is going on
there. We can fault our education system or our preoccupation with daily
struggles or an ideology or media inattention
, but often our view of world history is limited to
just this side of recent events.
I remember public opposition to intervention in the Balkans
in the 1990’s , but most of the public could not identify Kosovo or Bosnia on the map nor could they grasp its complex
history. Nonetheless, we look back at US limited action there as a success even
with our airplanes zooming to targets at the
same moment the Senate voted against it.
The public’s lack of trust in the President’s or Washington’s leadership, as Peggy Noonan asserted in a
recent Wall Street Journal column, is due to his perceived failures in handling the Arab Spring. But this lack of trust is not just five years old. It is also a product
of decisions of the Bush administration that got
us into Iraq and Afghanistan, bolstered by a public that only wanted to “get”
someone, anyone, for bringing down the
World Trade Center towers.
The current war weariness and anti war sentiment is also kin to the disillusionment
of the public nearer the end of the Viet Nam war.. Public opinion was “gung ho” at the beginning, remember? Or remember in
the wake of World War I, our isolationist popular opinion pressured FDR to sit back while Hitler blitzed England and
rolled across Europe.
Ah, you say. In some cases the administration lied to
us. No doubt that explains why so many
in Congress this time have been made
privy to classified information and only but the most extreme feel the
intelligence about Assad’s role in the gassing is a lie. Besides, limited action being
proposed in Syria is not boots on the ground as it was in Iraq, World War I or II,
or Viet Nam, either .It is more like our Balkan intervention motivated by
outrage at the human suffering at the
hands of perpetrators of ethnic cleansing.
Will we wait until Assad or some other rogue nation thinks
they can get away with use of chemical weapons or ethnic cleansing and test us once more ? Then what? My guess future presidents will
not consult Congress in advance of limited military action again. It is just too gut wrenching. Presidents have the constitutional powers to
take short term action, but they will have learned the consequences of asking
Congress first.
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