What to Do?

The safest and smartest thing the president of the United States could do now is trust the American people.

He should go before them, and listen to them, as he did in declining to officially support the Syrian insurgents who were trying to oust al-Bassad.  The American people overwhelmingly reached out to their Washington representative, sending a message loud and clear that the public was reluctant to support another war.

I understand there are American lives endangered, specifically, the next journalist on the chopping block, and the other Americans suspected to be in the hands of the Islamic State.  But the lives of these few individual captives should not determine the course of America's military policy...

If the president cannot go before the American people -- himself, not sending in his place lower-level advisors -- and make the case that it is in America's national security interests, here at home, to fight the Islamic State, then we should decline to make further war.

Britain's citizens are not interested in a Syrian War.  Still, their prime minister understood the importance of the situation to cancel his personal vacation, or postpone it to a more appropriate time.

I honestly doubt the president intends to take the current aerial bombardment of Iraq into Syrian territory.  I don't think he will even try to make the case for such a need to the American people.  If he was going to do that, he would obviously be laying the groundwork, showing through his actions that this is a national priority.

It's not.
Americans know this, no matter how much the think-tank experts, foreign policy analysts, and national security advisors work to tell us otherwise.

The problems are over there, and we don't want another 9-11 here.
To avoid this, we don't bomb willy-nilly, not really understanding which political leaders we ought to still be supporting, and which insurgents are on the "good guy" list this month.

The Foley video was sad, and sickening.  But I think few Americans would buy the logic that the journalist's death was a "terror attack" that indicates further attacks here at home.  Jim Foley was there, not deserving of slaughter, surely, but he he knew the risks, having spent more than a month in captivity in Libya previously.  His death is a crime, but not a war crime.

The real crime would be if the democratic Obama administration, enabled by a go-along to get-along weak American press, attempts to cheer-lead the country into buying another Middle East, allegedly defensive war. 

FDR warned about the dangers of "fear itself".  One wonders if this current crop of political experts, armed with their creative writing degrees and a false confidence in their own prediction and decision-making abilities, overrides the common sense of the American people -- who still remember the pricetag the country paid for our Vietnam losses.  In some segments of the population, of course, the price paid was higher than in others.

Ironically, those who were proud of being in school during that era, being "too smart" to serve, are the same ones currently advising us that going to war in Iraq (and crossing the border into Syria) is the only option to protecting our own country.  Do you believe that?  Do the majority of Americans -- including the young voters, and the newcomers?  I don't think so.

The best thing President Obama could do at this time, is to play to his political strengths.  Lead from behind, then.  Let the American people -- who remember Vietnam, who understand the costs of war to all segments a working economy, and who also know the irreplaceable human toll, which is quickly forgotten when the cameras switch off and move on to the latest big story... -- guide you.

There is no credible case for again taking the nation to war, to defeat an enemy that is not ours, when we are not sure of our own support in the region.  We need to pull back, put more responsibility on the people of the region to fight for change, to accept their own leaders, and to adapt to the situation the previous American invasion has placed them in. 

It's not pretty, but to continue futher killings and causing more refugee displacement and infrastructure destruction only delays the day of reckoning that must come.  Listen to the American people -- not the sliver of unrealistic advisers who have been proven wrong so often previously -- and let us decide if the risks and pricetags of making war in another Middle East country are worth it.

Survey says... No Thank You.