I have so little patience with people who argue that we should commit acts of violence not because they will make things better but because we can’t be seen as bluffers. If people see that we were bluffing once, they’ll never think we’re serious again. Here’s my suggestion for the Do Something Caucus: why don’t you try your strategy in a game of poker?
Okay, every time you get dealt a pair, why don’t you go ahead and bet like you’ve got a straight flush. And if someone calls you on it, just keep throwing money in the pot so they won’t get the idea that you were bluffing. Never fold.
Being good at poker involves the same skills as being good at statecraft. Sometimes you can bluff your way out of a jam. Some times you can’t. And you have to know when to cut your losses or you are going to go broke.
You know, you don’t want to get involved in a civil war that will harm our national interests, but you don’t want people to be killed with chemical weapons, either. So, you talk tough to try to prevent the use of chemical weapons. It doesn’t work.
Do you really think the Iranians are going to conclude that just because we were holding a pair of deuces in Syria that we’re definitely holding a pair of deuces with regard to their nuclear program? One problem we can’t fix, and the other we can (at least, for a while).
How many years did we extend the Vietnam War just so we could create a “decent interval” between our withdrawal and the collapse of the regime in Saigon? Why didn’t we fold earlier? Because we wanted to be more credible? To save face?
It didn’t work. We just lost more money and lives, and had nothing positive to show for it. No one gives a shit that it took a couple of years for Saigon to fall.
If we’re just going to drop a couple of cruise missiles on Syria, we’re not going to change anything. And if we do anything more than that, we’ll be committed to war and the aftermath. And that’s a headache we do not deserve.
If you have a strategy that you think might work, go ahead and share it. But if you are going to argue that acting will probably be somewhere between ineffective and disastrous, but we have to do it anyway, then I have a poker game you are invited to join.
