Author: Andrew Sullivan

The fisking from readers over my Bush-Obama comparison continues:

“But we are going to war despite the fact that ISIS is no more a direct threat to the United States than Saddam was – arguably much less, in fact.”

Really? And exactly how did Saddam threaten the U.S.? I’ll give you the reported attempt to kill George H.W. Bush in 1993, though that was never proven true. But there was no serious threat after that. Saddam did not conduct any public executions of U.S. citizens, and he did not threaten terrorist attacks against the U.S. There was no threat beyond the hysteria promoted by you and the neocons.

If you dismiss ISIS as a threat, you are surely hiding your head in the sand. That does not necessarily mean our incursion is the proper course, but your decision to equate Obama with Bush is more than a little depressing.

Another quote of mine:

“And it’s much smaller than George W Bush’s coalition in 2003.”  

Size matters?  You might want to revisit that Coalition of the Willing list; not a single Arab or Middle Eastern country signed on.  Most of the countries enlisted contributed nothing (if you discount that infantry division from Micronesia).  And most of the rest made a token contribution.  GW Bush‘s coalition was pure PR.  And how many American chits got pushed across the felt to obtain that “coalition”?

Whatever contributions the Gulf States, the Saudis, and Jordanians make, they made their commitment public, and that’s not nothing in this region.  Truth is, Saudi, Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian forces did very little in Gulf War I.  But the public alliance was deemed necessary for legitimacy in the region.

And another:

“I can’t imagine [Obama supporters] downplaying the folly of this if a Republican president were in charge.”

Umm … seriously?

Do you not recall that Congressional Democrats did in fact acquiesce like little lambs when Bush was president, and they also did the same when any Republican launched military action in the past, be it Papa Bush and Panama, Reagan in Lebanon, Grenada, etc?

Another, from our Facebook page:

“This comes perilously close to proving that our democracy doesn’t really have much of a say.”

Not really, does it? I mean, sure, Obama was America’s choice (twice!). But the elected Congressfolk were their constituencies’ choices, too. And in both cases, most people share some of their president’s priorities, but not all, and share some of their congressfolks’ priorities, but not all. This is simply the result of a mixed government, which democracy, flawed as our version may be, has brought us. The democracy does have a say, and it seems to be saying that we elect these people for the promises *we* want them to keep, not the ones *they* want to keep.

Another:

“This is an illegal war …”

I’m not in favor of the bombing in Syria, but not for legal reasons.  The Authorization for Use of Military Force (S.J.Res.23) specifically states:

the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

Note the specific words “he determines”.  These words delegate to the president all of the power to decide to whom the resolution applies.  No one else needs to agree with his determination, because under the law passed by Congress, the determination is his alone to make.  President Obama has decided it applies to the organizations the US is currently bombing.  Therefore, the action is authorized by Congress, and no further authorization is required.

If Congress wants to rescind or amend the AUMF it has the power to do so, but until then, Congress delegated authority to President Obama, and he is The Decider.

Another piles on further:

“This is an illegal war, chosen by an unaccountable executive branch, based on pure panic about a non-existent threat to the United States, with no achievable end-point.”

I must disagree on almost all counts.

First, Congress has willingly abdicated its war-making responsibilities in this instance, largely for political reasons. For Republicans in Congress, the calculation is particularly crass. By refusing to accept the responsibility of taking the reins on this action, they are free from any responsibility for outcomes – except, of course, for their certain continuing ability to criticize Obama no matter what he does. If he takes no action, he is aiding and abetting our enemies; if he acts strongly, then he was too slow and too timid to act in the first instance.

So, please, spare us the “illegal war” hyperbole – it would be illegal only insofar as Congress wanted to exert its authority, but to the contrary, Congress has willingly waived it.

Second, there has been no rush to war here, no fear-mongering, and most notably, no lying about the cause and purpose of this action – in other words, the antithesis of the snake-oil sales-pitch of the Bush Administration.  You call that a small matter.  I think most rational people would find Obama being honest, forthright, and direct to be a sea-change from the fabrications and evasions of the previous administration.

As for the claim that the threat is “non-existent,” well, I suppose that depends on whether one is willing to abandon any and all responsibility for the mess caused by the Bush invasion of Iraq and walk away entirely.  The problem, of course, is that walking away and doing nothing has consequences – for the Kurds, for Iraqi moderates, and for Iraq’s new government.  Do we turn our back and close our eyes to the slaughter?  Do we abandon the Kurds yet again?  There are no easy solutions, nor any certain outcomes. But doing nothing is neither helpful nor moral.

To paraphrase Colin Powell, we broke it, we bought it.  Obama didn’t choose this mess. He is merely struggling to try to clean up a nearly intractable mess.  So, yeah, targeted air strikes are the worst option … except for everything else.

The rest of the reader dissents here and here.

(Photo: US Secretary of State Colin Powell holds up a vial that he said was the size that could be used to hold anthrax as he addresses the United Nations Security Council on February 5, 2003. Powell urged the UN Security Council to say “enough” to what he said was Iraq’s 12 years of defiance of international attempts to destroy its chemical and biological weapons. By Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images)

But first, a reader “couldn’t resist making a few alterations to ‘Bill O’Reilly’s Dumb Plan to Defeat ISIS’”:

But many readers think I’m the one being dumb by comparing Obama to Bush:

Andrew, you really let your emotions dictate your judgement.  I mean REALLY. Let’s start by clearing something up, this isn’t a war.  It is a military operation.  There is a difference. You wrote: “It is true we are not sending in 140,000 troops into another country. We are sending almost none…” Ok cool, so can you stop calling it a “war” please?  You’re sensationalizing this in the same manner Fox News does.

To my more important point, the first time I heard the name ISIS was on The Dish earlier this summer.  Those early stories you posted were about ISIS killing thousands of people and burying them in mass graves.  You remember that right?  If so, then what the fuck is the problem?  Dude, they’re killing shitloads of people and they’re not going to stop.  Ok?  Can you please stop acting like some Ron Paul college kid?

It’s not a war; it’s just a kinetic military operation that just dropped a huge amount of bombs on another sovereign country! It’s not dead; it’s just pining for the fjords! Dude, of course it’s a fucking war. Sometimes I wonder if Americans would regard it as a mere “military operation” and not a “war” if another country started carpet-bombing Atlanta. You think? Another reader:

That headline – Is Obama Pulling A Bush? – is a tremendous insult to your readers. Obama isn’t embarking upon regime change; he’s hoping to tamp down a rogue organization through airstrikes. That’s a compelling difference. We’re not completely destabilizing an existing government and forming a new one from scratch; we’re providing cover while an effete government refreshes itself politically.

If that were all the differences, it would be enough to find the equating of these wars insulting. But also, the White House isn’t using The New York Times, the Secretary of State and the United Nations to employ a bait-and-switch this time. There’s no setting up of an all-powerful bogey man to discredit rebuttals. This time, the ISIS situation is pretty clear to anyone who can tune into 60 Minutes or Newshour.

Let me take those points one by one. Obama did explicitly callfor “regime change” in Syria, the country we are now bombing, and is now training and arming some Syrian rebels who are the dictator’s foes. As for the notion that we are “providing cover while an effete government refreshes itself politically” – really? The core problem in Iraq is that we replaced a Sunni minority’s despotic rule with a Shiite government backed by militias after a period of extraordinary sectarian blood-letting between the two. Despite a new prime minister, there are very few signs that the government in Baghdad has achieved anything like a “refreshing”.

It still does not command the trust of the Sunnis, cannot fill its interior and defense ministries because of sectarian division, and its army, after huge sums spent on it by the US, turned and fled when it came to operating in Sunni areas. This is the core issue – and we have not resolved it, and we have gone to war without settling that core question. I don’t know how many times the US is going to support a counter-insurgency campaign by a government without broad legitimacy and still hope for success. But at this point, one might have a smidgen of hope that we have learned something from the past. But it appears we haven’t.

Another reader:

I wonder how you can veer between Obama’s Nobel comments you posted the other day and your desire to criticize this campaign against ISIS as a panicked fool’s errand. There is evil in the world. ISIS planned a genocide of an ethnic minority in Iraq, kills en masse (villages, police cadets), rapes and enslaves young women, beheads innocent journalists, an aid worker and now a hiker – but this is none of our business. When does it become our business? What about that Nobel speech and evil that cannot be negotiated with and tramples our most cherished values? What country is still the most admired in the world because of those values? And if we don’t act on them, what does it say about us?

Ah, but that is sentiment and we’re dealing in hard realities here. This is not our fight. They are not an imminent threat, you say. How far do you let these people go and grow before it qualifies as your “imminent threat”? I’d like to see the punditry offer constructive solutions instead of constantly criticizing.

You’ve never underestimated Obama. Why begin now?

The Syrian war killed 200,000 people and we stayed out – for good reasons. Why was my reader not demanding a new war in Syria before now? The only answer is the rise of ISIS, and its grotesque media strategy. And my deeper point is simply this: even if we should do something to counter this kind of evil, what if there’s nothing we can actually do that doesn’t make the situation worse in the medium and long-term? What if we are indeed helpless to do anything other than direct Jihadist terrorism more squarely at the US and the West? Another points out:

Look at what Obama’s already accomplished.

Avoiding the slaughter of thousands of innocent Christians who were stranded with almost certain death at their doorstep, but for our air strikes. Of course if he was 100% determined to wipe ISIS out, then he’d have to send in troops, but my thinking is that by kicking things off in this manner, he’ll massage the other countries in the area to actually provide the ground troops. He realizes the US doesn’t support sending troops in – yet – so is doing what he can with air strikes.  Maybe with a few more American beheadings they just might support them. And I would too.

I still hope the other countries figure out a way, since they’re more directly involved, but if they don’t? You’d be fine with just sitting back and watching ISIS keep up their derangement?

In a word, yes. I do not believe ISIS can sustain itself for very long. No such group has managed to do such a thing before without its own insanity and brutality creating a backlash. We have just swallowed their hype – and elevated them in the eyes of the Arab and Muslim world. You have to remember: however disgusting ISIS is, the Arab-Muslim world will always regard the US as worse. Always. Another sees a long game:

How exactly do you ask someone to fix a problem that cannot be fixed?  You buy time.  And that is precisely what Obama is doing. He is slowing the Islamic State, stopping their forward movement, and spending his time behind the scenes working with all the nations in that area to get them to deal with it.  Because that is the only solution that works.

It is messy.  It is not clear.  It is not guaranteed in any way to be successful.  But it is responsible, and what a clear thinking leader does when there isn’t a better option. Isolationism is no better than neoconservatism or being an interventionist; they are all extremes and wrong.  Reality requires, in my view, the ability to modulate between the two poles when assessing and dealing with current circumstances.  A “doctrine”, as Bush had, is the scariest and worst possible method of dealing with this as it implies that there is a universal strategy that will fix the situation … like when you heard that we would be greeted as liberators – because the doctrine says so.

That’s by far the most potent criticism I’ve yet read. I can only say that I hope my reader is right. Another puts me on the couch:

Your rhetoric on this “reckless” war and implicit and explicit suggestions that what’s happening now is no better or different than 2002-03 all over again have mostly been off-base at best and an embarrassment at worst, and if I was an armchair psychologist, I’d say it’s some weird attempt at atonement for your (admitted) idiocy with respect to the invasion of Iraq. Oops, too late.  I said it.

In any event, stop, breathe, and try to take a more balanced look at what’s going on.

Another adds:

I read the e-book collection you put together – “I Was Wrong” – and it was hysterical between 2001-2003. Don’t fall into that rabbit hole again.

Earlier dissents here. And more to come.

(Photo by Getty)