The New York Times reported yesterday morning that the latest beheading of an American journalist “raised the pressure on the president to order military strikes on the group in its sanctuary in Syria.” The Boston Globe had an article that made a similar point.
I've criticized Obama quite often, but on foreign policy he has generally done a good job, as he has up to now, kept us out of major conflicts. (Has anyone kept count of the number of wars we'd be in right now if we we're fighting everywhere John McCain and Lindsay Graham think we should?) Hopefully, Obama will resist the calls to get us involved in Syria. The desire for war may be intense among the punditocracy and the calls for action popular with Republicans in Congress (although they are of course resisting a vote on the issue), but the American people don't seem especially hot to send their sons and daughters over there.
If we do go, then they'll have fooled us twice, by a charitable count. Osama bin Laden couldn't have gotten a better reaction from the U.S. had he written the script himself. We spent billions of dollars, thousands of lives and for our trouble we got an Iraq headed toward partnership with Iran or worse and, in the Arab world, enhanced reputations for the people we are now being pressured to attack. Are they shaking in their boots? No, all the signs are that they want us to attack. Sure some of them might be killed, but they don't care about that. In the long run, they win by provoking us into attacking them, and we lose, by getting mired in yet another un-winnable war. Let them fight each other to the death. We should stay on the sidelines.
As to the journalists, the beheadings are of course barbaric. But journalists who go into those areas assume certain risks. We can't let the fate of individual Americans who put themselves in harm's way dictate our foreign policy. The fact is, the most effective way to deal with these people is to ignore them. That may not be entirely possible, but the closer we can come to that policy the better off we'll be.
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