Below is Will Brownsberger’s explanation why he would vote against authorizing Pres. Obama to strike Syria for using chemical weapons against its own people. “An ad hoc decision to bomb, is not leadership”. Those are powerful words, no? I wish Will didn’t mention climate change in this otherwise, well thought out statement regarding Syria. I need to have a one-on-one meeting with Will about that issue. My only other concern is if Obama decides to strike Assad and his military targets, we do so together, as one nation. We unite and rally around Obama and what he is doing, basically, we don’t tolerate mass slaughter by the use of chemical weapons. I do feel, reading how the Vietcong were emboldened by the war protestors, and how elected Democrats railed against Pres. George W., that we don’t give one hint of aid and comfort to the enemy.
“After the best reflection I can give the matter from where I currently sit, I have concluded that, were I already seated in Congress, I would vote against the present resolution authorizing bombing of Syria.
I believe that it is in America’s long term interest to take a consistently principled approach to foreign policy and that the presently proposed bombing cannot be justified on a principled basis.
Of course, assuming our intelligence is credible, there are many principles enshrined in international conventions which could be invoked to justify the bombing — norms against not only chemical weapons, but also against torture and the conventional mass slaughter of civilians (bordering on genocide). However, we have not applied those principles in a consistent way or through any international deliberative framework. They therefore lack credibility as a justification for bombing. Further, unilateral bombing serves to undermine our international agreements.
America’s security does depend on America’s global credibility. But America’s global credibility depends, in turn, on the predictability of American foreign policy. For 45 years after World War II, American foreign policy was governed by the essential imperative to fight communism. Blind focus on that imperative led us into Vietnam and into partnerships with dictators who violated the human rights of their people. But the world knew what our priorities were and we acted within regional treaty frameworks.
Since the fall of the Berlin wall, our foreign policy has drifted into incoherence. We enter some conflicts, but not others, without a coherent framework for making the choices. The choices depend, to a large extent, on the perceptions and inclinations of the current President and his or her dominant advisors. While, through ad hoc decision-making, a President may maintain short-run transactional credibility in dealing with other leaders, our nation has slowly lost credibility before the global public.
The central foreign policy challenges we face are climate change, terrorism, nuclear proliferation (a much greater concern than chemical proliferation), the disintegration of order in some failed states, and perhaps Chinese hegemonic ambitions. The only way for America to reclaim real leadership in the world is to create coherent policy frameworks for addressing these problems and to support them with ratified regional or global agreements. Most importantly, America needs to act within the deliberative processes defined by those agreements.
In turn, the only way to build a coherent policy framework that Congress will support financially and through the ratification of relevant agreements is through robust public debate. I do applaud the President’s decision to submit the Syrian question to Congress — a decision which fosters robust debate.
Congress should now decide against the bombing. We should respond to the outrage by increasing humanitarian aid to refugees, by expanding military aid to moderate factions with Syria, if we can reliably identify them, and by setting in motions sanctions and other forms of pressure, perhaps including an international criminal indictment of Assad. Military power should be used in Syria only with broad backing from other democracies within a ratified treaty framework. The President has a real opportunity to lead here, but an ad hoc decision to bomb is not leadership.
As a member of Congress, I will work to amend the War Powers Resolution to assure that Presidential decisions to go to war — and a few nights worth of bombing is a war, although a fast war — are all clearly subject to Congressional approval. America does have a special role as a beacon of human rights and democracy. We should not allow our democracy to atrophy by allowing future Presidents to deploy the military without broad popular support.”
