Conservatives Need to Put Up or Shut Up on Syria

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

In the Washington Post today, Jackson Diehl writes that President Obama’s approach to Syria has been a serial failure. He tried engaging with Bashar al-Assad. That didn’t work. When war broke out, he tried brokering a settlement via the United Nations. That didn’t work. Then he tried to get Vladimir Putin on his side. That didn’t work either. So what now?

For the past three months, Obama’s policy has become a negative: He is simply opposed to any use of U.S. power. Fixed on his campaign slogan that “the tide of war is receding” in the Middle East, Obama claims that intervention would only make the conflict worse — and then watches as it spreads to NATO ally Turkey and draws in hundreds of al-Qaeda fighters.

No doubt it’s easier for Romney and the Republicans to talk about the death of an ambassador in a terrorist attack than to ask war-weary Americans to think about this. But it is Syria that is Obama’s greatest failure; it will haunt whomever occupies the Oval Office next year.

These kinds of columns always stonker me. The reason is that nothing comes after these two paragraphs. Diehl spends 800 words disparaging Obama’s failure in Syria — which is fair enough, up to a point — but won’t tell us what he thinks Obama should have done. It’s just like Paul Ryan’s painfully evasive answer about Syria in last week’s debate. After Ryan went through the same stale bill of particulars that Diehl did, Joe Biden smiled and asked, “What would my friend do differently? If you notice, he never answers the question.” That was true, and after a bit more filibustering Martha Raddatz asked Ryan three times, “What’s your criteria for intervention?” He wouldn’t answer.

Nobody ever does. Sure, we could provide arms directly to the rebels — though the failure so far of indirect arms transfers should give everyone pause for thought on that front. We could provide them with a bit more intelligence. We can keep trying to beef up sanctions. But that’s penny ante stuff. It wouldn’t make a big difference and everyone knows it. You’d need a sustained ground action or, at the least, a sustained bombing campaign to really make a dent.

We could do that, of course. We could send in ground troops. We could provide air cover for the rebels. We could lob cruise missiles into Damascus. But look. Since he took office, Obama has doubled our presence in Afghanistan. He’s participated in an armed intervention in Libya. He’s ramped up the drone campaign in Pakistan and Somalia by 10x. That’s three wars. Do Ryan and Romney and Diehl and their friends really think we need yet another one? If they do, they should speak up plainly instead of pretending that if only Obama had waved his magic wand, Assad would already be out of power.

If you want us to go to war in Syria, have the guts to say so. If you don’t, say that too. But if that’s the case, at least have the grace to put a lid on the bluster and the fatuous recriminations. It’s contemptible stuff.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate