"No" on ObamaWar

Four years ago, President Obama - newly elected, with majorities in both houses of Congress - and holding a ton of the imaginary currency pundits term "political capital" - passed up a chance to move toward genuine health care reform.  Instead, we got a complex, Rube Goldberg contraption called "Obamacare".

Now, to be sure, Obamacare isn't all bad.  I'd be very much opposed to repealing it.  After all, Obamacare has lowered some folks' insurance bills, at least for a while.  It has allowed many folks with pre-existing conditions to buy insurance.  It has made insurance companies more accountable for how they spend their money.

But there's a lot Obamacare didn't do.  It did nothing serious about reducing medical care or prescription drug costs.  It did nothing at all to increase the supply of doctors - the most obvious step toward both increasing the availability and decreasing the cost of quality care.  It did nothing serious about promoting healthy lifestyles - the single most dramatic step we could take toward cutting the cost of medical care.

Most important, it did nothing to move us toward a single-payer system to replace the embarrassing hodgepodge of conflicting systems which makes America unique - and embarrassingly so - among developed nations.

Obamacare, for all its merits, was basically a can of worms.  With better leadership, and better use of the President's bully pulpit, we could have had a far more progressive, more efficient, less complex law.  Instead, we got a typical, cobbled-together, congressional mess.

Because the new president didn't lead.

Flash forward four years, and we're about to see the same approach taken to war.  With respect to Syria, President Obama - after two years of dithering - has decided, once again, to toss the whole mess to Congress.

And Congress, true to its habits, is beginning to cobble together a complex, Rube Goldberg mechanism to define the conduct of military operations.

And that is something that - as far as I know - has never, ever worked.  Not in all of human history. 

If Congress takes the President up on his invitation to authorize military action against Syria, we're going to get a declaration of something less than war - with a whole lot of restrictions and no clear objective.  And it will solve absolutely nothing.

And I say to hell with it.

But let me be clear as to why. 

I have no problem - none at all - with military operations to depose Bashar al-Assad.  I have no problem with putting him on trial before an international court, or before a court representing a new Syrian government.  Frankly, I have no problem dealing with him as we dealt with Osama bin  Laden - two in the head, two in the heart, and a quick burial at sea.

But that is not what Mr. Obama propose to do.  He proposes some sort of limited, "proportional" response - which essentially means bombing some Syrian military assets.  Some your Syrian soldiers will die.  And some officers.  And probably some unlucky civilians.

Not Assad.  He's supposed to get the "message".

But what's the message?  To obey international law on the subject of chemical warfare? 

Assuming there is such a law, wouldn't that be better done by an international organization - maybe a court, with due process - not the United States and a few allies acting on their own, like some sort of international lynch mob?

Honestly, it's time we outgrew the notion that bombs are some sort of messaging system.  It isn't a way to enforce laws.  And it certainly isn't a way to build a nation.

The purpose of war isn't to communicate, it's to defeat someone - to conquer them and impose your will on them. 

War is a blunt instrument.  And it tends to run out of control - no matter how many pre-conditions you try to write into your plans.

That being so, our Founding Fathers made it clear that they wanted Congress - and only Congress - to have the awesome responsibility of declaring war.  But they did not say that Congress should conduct the war.  That was left to the Commander in Chief.

The Founders, as men of experience and good sense, knew that declaring war is a very big deal - the release of uncontrollable forces which could lead to triumph or disaster.  Only a cautious, bicameral legislative body should decide to commit the country to war.

Only a single individual could then decide how to wage it.

Obviously, we're not doing that.  We're going to pretend that a legislative body can design a compromise war - in the process, handcuffing the President who will then have to conduct it.

So we're going at this all wrong.  The Founders told us how to do it, and we're ignoring everything they said.

Here's what we should do:

The President should go to Congress - not with a few, limited things he plans to do and a lot of promises about what he won't allow to happen - but with a clear, military goal. 

And in this case, the only possible clear goal is the elimination of the Assad regime and - perhaps - the seizure of its chemical weapons stocks. 

That's a military goal.  That's a war goal.

It would, of course, take more than a stand-off attack with cruise missiles.  It would require "boots on the ground".  Men and women would die.  But that's what armies and navies and air forces are for - to engage and destroy an enemy.  The necessary concomitant of that is that some of your own men and women will die. 

But in a war, they're at least dying for something concrete - not so send a message.

But that's not what the President has called for - not what Congress is going to determine.  

They're going to design some legislative compromise, and pretend it means something.

Four years ago, they gave us Obamacare.

Now, we get ObamaWar.