Incoherent Speechifying
by digby
I didn’t hear the president’s speech until this morning and I’m sorry I couldn’t listen last night so that I could toast the ghost of George W. Bush’s presidency. I may have missed the references to mushroom clouds and crop dusters but it was certainly an homage to the old standby, “we need to fight ’em over there so we don’t have to fight ’em over here” with some lugubrious Gersonian handwringing over “gassing his own people” thrown in for good measure.
I guess he felt he had to make the case that the boogeymen were coming to kill all the nice American children in their beds so that the people will believe they are fighting for their survival instead of getting involved in another war over an abstract ideal that nobody else in the world seems to think is worth fighting for. And maybe he’s right. It’s certainly reasonable to assume that the people can only be moved to support war at this point to defend the country against a direct threat. That they are tired of these abstract entanglements that cost this nation huge sums of money and almost inevitably a pile of dead Americans is obvious.
Unfortunately, the threat of al Qaeda getting hold of these weapons is demonstrably more likely if Assad loses his civil war than if he doesn’t, so that rationale is somewhat incoherent. And nothing we do with respect to Syria will make any of them anywhere less likely to want them. Gassing people is right in their wheelhouse.
The assertion that American soldiers will face chemical weapons on the battlefield if this isn’t adequately addressed in Syria is also unlikely. I don’t know what “battlefield” he’s talking about, but I think everyone knows that the banned chemical weapons are ineffective in war and that the US would respond very harshly if its own soldiers were attacked with them. Over the course of many decades these weapons have rarely been used and always in a very limited way by creepy middle eastern despots (often with our knowledge and permission.) To imply that American soldiers are at risk if we don’t respond militarily to this action in Syria is unbelievable and frankly, over the top.
Moreover, while the president went out of his way to convey that we, as a people, must be morally outraged by this use of chemical weapons, he also went out of his way to assure us that we are not so morally outraged that we will do anything more than beat our chests and lob a few bombs and call it a day. The laundry list of previous military actions, from Iraq to Libya and Kosovo, that these proposed strikes aren’t anything like, makes you wonder just what the point is. Meanwhile, I suspect that the people, hearing moralizing refrains about “gassing his own people” as an echo of Iraq are wary of taking the president at his word. It’s all very confusing.
I’m not surprised that he asserted that it was the threat of force that brought Russia and Syria to the bargaining table but to believe that, one would have to assume that they don’t read the papers and be aware that the British gave a thumbs down, the president is not backed by the American people and that he stands to lose his vote in congress. It’s not as if George W. Bush is out there screaming “we WILL disarm Bashar Assad” while the country is reeling from a catastrophic terrorist attack. I suspect they know very well that President Obama has a very difficult political road to walk here at home which means the threat of force isn’t what brought them to the negotiating table — it’s the hope of a face saving way out of an increasingly impossible situation made possible by his weak domestic position on this. So continued saber rattling is probably not the greatest idea in the world. (They will, of course, continue to insist that the threat of force is necessary “leverage” to gain support in the congress. Just as they did with Iraq. So …)
Anyway, I doubt the speech changed anyone’s minds, but who knows? The people are often moved by the president making the case for war — yanking the patriotic heart strings is tried and true. But this CNN snap poll (which is a very dicey measure of public opinion so take it with a grain of salt) didn’t show a lot of movement. We’ll have to wait to see how it sets with the public over the course of the next few days to really know:
The president said in his speech that he’s asked congressional leaders “to postpone a vote to authorize the use of force” against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s military while diplomatic efforts to address the crisis continue. “It’s too early to tell whether this offer will succeed, and any agreement must verify that the Assad regime keeps its commitments,” Obama said. “But this initiative has the potential to remove the threat of chemical weapons without the use of force.”
According to the poll, 61% said they support the president’s position on Syria, with 37% saying they oppose his response to the Syrian government’s alleged use of chemical weapons against its own citizens.
The poll indicates that nearly two-thirds of those who watched the speech think that the situation in Syria is likely to be resolved through diplomatic efforts, with 35% disagreeing.
But Obama said that he’s ordered the U.S. military “to maintain their current posture to keep the pressure on Assad, and to be in a position to respond if diplomacy fails.”
According to the poll, those who watched the president were divided on whether Obama made a convincing case in his speech for U.S. military action in Syria, with 47% saying he did and 50% saying he didn’t.
The survey indicates that the speech didn’t move the needle very much on whether U.S. air strikes against Syria would achieve significant goals for the U.S. Thirty percent of speech-watchers questioned before the address said yes. That number edged up to 36% following the address. And 39% said it was in the national interests of the U.S. to be involved in the conflict in Syria, edging up from 30% before the speech. Sixty percent said it was not in the national interests to get involved, down just five points from before the speech.
Fifty-two percent said following the speech that they were more confident of the president’s leadership on military and international issues, with 16% saying they were less confident. But 52% said the speech did not change their opinion.
Sigh. This will play out as it will play out. And it’s fluid so I don’t think anyone can predict what’s going to happen.
Meanwhile, I think Jon Stewart had a good take: