Posted on 09/01/2013 10:15:45 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
As President Obama moves toward launching military strikes against the Syrian regime, some have been quick to charge him with hypocritically following in the footsteps of the president he long sought to repudiate: George W. Bush.
Ron Paul kicked things off two months ago with a baseless charge of "fixing the intelligence and facts around the already determined policy." More recently, a leading Russian legislator claimed Obama would be "Bush's clone" because "just like in Iraq, this war won't be legit." Fox News columnist and strident U.N. critic Anne Bayefsky declared that Obama will be seen as a "hypocrite or a fraud" for not pursuing a U.N. Security Council resolution after "bashing" Bush on similar grounds.
The Bush swipe is a cheap shot. It also misses the far more relevant historical parallel. Obama is not walking in Bush's footsteps, but Woodrow Wilson's.
As World War I raged in Europe and civil war erupted in Mexico, Woodrow Wilson won re-election in 1916 on the slogan "He Kept Us Out Of War." But Wilson's slogan proved ephemeral, and his strategy of "armed neutrality" finally gave way in the face of German aggression.
Similarly, Obama won the presidency in no small part because of anti-Iraq War sentiment, and was re-elected at least in part for following through on withdrawal. Now Obama faces his own second-term Wilson moment, as Syria's genocidal tactics severely test President Obama's foreign policy goals of facilitating democracy, strengthening international institutions, and avoiding "dumb wars" that sap American lives, resources, and global influence.
The similarities do not end there. Both Wilson and Obama sought to turn away from the imperialism of their predecessors while embracing the use of American influence to spread the right of self-determination abroad. Both expressed restraint regarding the use of military force, yet both pushed back on pacifist constituencies in their political bases and kept their options open. Both were charged with vacillation, and both suffered the occasional rhetorical misstep, as they walked those fine lines in the run-up to military action.
Obama was knocked for drawing a "red line" against the use of chemical weapons without being prepared to follow through, arguably giving Syria license to go farther. Wilson quickly regretted saying America was "too proud to fight" in May 1915, three days after Germany sunk the Lusitania and killed 1,198 people, including 128 Americans. Seven months later, Wilson recalibrated. During a speaking tour promoting a new policy of military preparedness, Wilson made a clear break with his party's pacifist wing: "There is a price which is too great to pay for peace, and that price can be put in one word. One cannot pay the price of self-respect."
Still, Wilson's restraint continued through the 1916 re-election campaign. Then less than three months after Election Day, Germany secretly cabled Mexico, proposing an alliance and offering three American states upon victory. Britain intercepted the code and fed it to Wilson, who publicized it and then took another two months before concluding it was time to enter the war.
Wilson risked being portrayed as a hypocrite, or even an outright liar, considering his campaign slogan. But as it turned out, his patient deliberation and clear reluctance for war buttressed his credibility when the moment for intervention came, helping to bring along a reluctant public.
Most importantly, Wilson did not betray his core principles. He did not flip from isolationism to imperialism. He had been seeking to play the role of peace broker, and end the war in a fashion that would move the world away from colonization and toward self-determination.
Shortly before he knew of Germany's Mexican machinations, he laid out his vision in his "Peace Without Victory" address. Instead of a harsh peace in which the victor punishes the defeated, claims new territory, and sows the seeds of future conflict, Wilson saw a compromise settlement between belligerents, moving the world towards democratic governance and establishing a new "League of Nations" international body to prevent future world wars.
Wilson stuck by this vision even after he picked a side in the war, rejecting calls from both allies abroad and Republicans at home for an "unconditional surrender."
Here too does Obama overlap with Wilson. Military action in Syria is not a betrayal of Obama's foreign policy principles.
This is not a repeat of Bush-style neo-conservatism. There is nothing from the Obama White House that suggests a desire to handpick Syria's leaders, establish permanent military bases, or claim natural resources. While Obama may not seek a U.N. Security Council resolution as he did to oust Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, he is also not suddenly snubbing international law, as he reportedly sees justification in existing treaties such as the Geneva Conventions and the Chemical Weapons Conventions.
The administration's emphasis on limited strikes makes clear that President Obama still wants to do all he can to avoid ending his presidency with a "dumb war" that would mire the United States in a hopeless quagmire.
The White House has even stated that the military strikes will not be designed to spark "regime change," instead stressing that "resolution of this conflict has to come through political negotiation and settlement." In other words, it anticipates some sort of power-sharing agreement between Syrian factions, leading to a government that is fully representative of all Syrian people. This policy objective harkens back to Wilson's "Peace Without Victory."
Of course, none of the above guarantees that Obama's vision will triumph. Wilson learned that the hard way.
Wilson did succeed in accelerating the end of the war and jump-starting a negotiated settlement. But after long multi-party negotiations that he personally undertook, Wilson reluctantly accepted harsher terms for Germany's surrender than he deemed fair. And a debilitating stroke in 1919 muddled his thinking and warped his ability to compromise with the Republican-led Senate, dooming ratification of the treaty and America's entry into the League of Nations.
But Wilson's inability to close the deal doesn't mean he was foolish to try. He came pretty close, and a healthier Wilson with a stronger foreign policy team could well have pulled it off. In fact, President Franklin Roosevelt's team did just that, proving Wilson's wisdom correct with the founding of the U.N. after World War II. We have not suffered world wars since.
Obama may be taking a mighty gamble, but it is in pursuit of self-determination and an international order intolerant of genocide, not an ignoble quest for empire.
Bill Scher is the executive editor of LiberalOasis.com and the online campaign manager at Campaign for America's Future. He is the author of Wait! Don't Move To Canada!: A Stay-and-Fight Strategy to Win Back America, a regular contributor to Bloggingheads.tv and host of the LiberalOasis Radio Show weekly podcast.
Where’s the “Barf Alert”?
Nah, he’s more like PeeWee Herman than like either of them.
I had to cut the hell out of the headline as it was. Go look.
We have Wilson to thank for 100,000 obituaries (give or take a few thousand) in American newspapers from WWI.
Justice? Not so much.
The Imperial Caliph Obama-the-Undocumented First Moslem
is deliberately blaming the wrong side
so that blowback will follow
against America and Israel.
As his handlers have long planned.
No, he is following in the footsteps of feckless Jimmy Carter
Exactly! It’s nothing like Bush, cause, well, Bush was BUSH! Evil, man! A republican! Darth Cheney! H-a-l-I-b-u-r-t-o-n!!!! Papa Bush!
On the other hand, St. Barack, would-be father of St Trayvon, the Child, MEANS well! His HEART is in the right place, even if a lot of innocents get killed...
/S
This guy is a fool.
UN has prevented world wars? Try nuclear capability.
Bombing Syria is all because Barry embarrassed himself. He wants to use US resources for personal reasons (no big change there).
He must have been through the "Time Masheen"
‘On Syria, Obama is more like Wilson than Bush: This isn’t about imperialism. It’s about justice.’
Pure, unadulterated horsesh*t.
I’m exhausted from reading the backflips in this article. This is hilarious.
“Obama is not walking in Bush’s footsteps, but Woodrow Wilson’s.”
-Mr. Wilson bores me with his Fourteen Points; why, God Almighty has only Ten! (Georges Clemenceau)
It’s his fellow A-rabs killing A-rabs, and we can’t have the ‘future caliph’ looking like he cannot control ‘his people’, now can we?
As for my 2cents, watch for the right wind pattern, target everything that isn’t Israel, and press “the red Staples button”!!
No, he is exactly like Donald Duck, sound and fury wrapped in inability and incompetence. The only real difference is you had a choice in watching a Donald Duck cartoon.
What an idiot. The UN has not prevented world wars. What has prevented world wars is the USA's projection of military power around the world since WWII.
But the writer may be right to compare Obozo with Wilson: Wilson was a feckless, vacillating, incompetent, ivory-tower, know-nothing pontificator, and so is Obozo.
Fine, I'll bite.
It’s World War One; there’s thirteen million killed; it was all because the militaries of both alliances believed they were so highly attuned to one another’s movements and dispositions, they could predict one another’s intentions, but all their theories were based on the last war. And the world and technology had changed, and those lessons were no longer valid, but it was all they knew, so the orders went out, couldn’t be rescinded. And your man in the field, his family at home, they couldn’t even tell you the reasons why their lives were being destroyed.
And here we are 100 years later, we haven't learned a damn thing.
Remold the World Nearer to Hearst Desire, through the Good Red Wine of the Battlefield, and if more than a few get crushed underneath?
Well....You can't make an Omelet without breaking 13 Million Eggs.
Liberals Disgust me.
Would that be the "reset" red Staples button? Or the "easy" button? Either would work.
Wilson’s stroke and subsequent muddled thinking led to his wife becoming the unelected President. Obama’s hubris and drug-induced muddled thinking are the reasons Valerie Jarrett is our unelected President. That and enough voters with muddled thinking to elect both of these losers twice.
Of course, in Wilson’s election, you can’t place any blame on women voters.
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