Syria: A War That The Pentagon and Americans Do Not Want

Despite the drumbeat of the Obama administration and some Congressional leaders, a significant majority of Americans want nothing to do with another war in the Middle East.   We have heard the arguments all before and the result was that a gullible public and lazy mainstream media allowed America to plunge into the disaster of the Iraq War.   Some call this public reaction the "Iraq Syndrome"  as if it is some phobia to be overcome.  Other - rightly in my view - call this aversion to a new war common sense and a case of learning from past mistakes.   Andrew Sullivan cites a piece in the American Conservative that makes this latter argument.  Here are highlights:

Larison dismisses the argument that anti-interventionists are suffering from “Iraq Syndrome”:

[T]his is becoming a common way to describe the absolutely justifiable and sane reaction of the public and even many in Washington to the disaster of the Iraq war. Interventionists call this a syndrome because it is supposed to be seen as an affliction or something from which Americans need to recover, as if there were something unhealthy or harmful in becoming extremely wary of waging wars of choice in countries that we don’t understand very well for dubious and often unobtainable goals. On the contrary, the existence of this so-called “syndrome” is proof that the public is very sensibly recoiling from the repeated misjudgments and mistakes of their political leaders.

Most Americans are firmly against making yet another major foreign policy error, and what they keep hearing from Washington and from much of the media is that they are suffering from some kind of malady that needs to be cured with another war.

This truly is becoming a battle between the Washington war-machine and the people it is supposed to protect. And yes, Iraq is relevant. Of course it is relevant. And no, as Daniel argues, this is not a syndrome. It is not a syndrome to look twice before crossing the street, when you have been run over by a truck twice in the last decade. In any case, the parallels are so close as to be almost absurd. The president is trying to get support for a military campaign against a Baathist leader in a murderously divided Middle Eastern country in order to prevent the use of WMDs and to send a message to Iran. I mean: is there any more obvious analogy? Now I know the president has ruled out “boots on the ground”. But there are already boots on the ground, in a covert war the war-machine has already launched.

But it is not just the American public that opposes another intervention disaster.  An op-ed in the Washington Post authored by a retired Army major general and former commandant of the U.S. Army War College makes the case that the Pentagon for once doesn't want this war either.  Here are some highlights:

The tapes tell the tale. Go back and look at images of our nation’s most senior soldier, Gen. Martin Dempsey, and his body language during Tuesday’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on Syria. It’s pretty obvious that Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, doesn’t want this war.

 Dempsey’s unspoken words reflect the opinions of most serving military leaders. . . . . After personal exchanges with dozens of active and retired soldiers in recent days, I feel confident that what follows represents the overwhelming opinion of serving professionals who have been intimate witnesses to the unfolding events that will lead the United States into its next war.

They are embarrassed to be associated with the amateurism of the Obama administration’s attempts to craft a plan that makes strategic sense. None of the White House staff has any experience in war or understands it. So far, at least, this path to war violates every principle of war, including the element of surprise, achieving mass and having a clearly defined and obtainable objective.

They are repelled by the hypocrisy of a media blitz that warns against the return of Hitlerism but privately acknowledges that the motive for risking American lives is our “responsibility to protect” the world’s innocents. Prospective U.S. action in Syria is not about threats to American security.
They are outraged by the fact that what may happen is an act of war and a willingness to risk American lives to make up for a slip of the tongue about “red lines.” These acts would be for retribution and to restore the reputation of a president. Our serving professionals make the point that killing more Syrians won’t deter Iranian resolve to confront us. The Iranians have already gotten the message. 

They are tired of wannabe soldiers who remain enamored of the lure of bloodless machine warfare. “Look,” one told me, “if you want to end this decisively, send in the troops and let them defeat the Syrian army. If the nation doesn’t think Syria is worth serious commitment, then leave them alone.” But they also warn that Syria is not Libya or Serbia. Perhaps the United States has become too used to fighting third-rate armies. As the Israelis learned in 1973, the Syrians are tough and mean-spirited killers with nothing to lose. 

[T]oday’s soldiers know war and resent civilian policymakers who want the military to fight a war that neither they nor their loved ones will experience firsthand.