I’m struggling to write about the situation in Iraq and Syria in part because I want to hear what the president has to say. One thing I believe already, however, is that Congress ought to debate and authorize the action the president takes, and that it ought to draw circles to hem in what they’re authorizing. There should be a time limit, for example. Congress should have to come back and reapprove military action in six months or a year. We’ve had too much open-ended conflict.
I say that they should authorize his action as opposed to not voting at all. Perhaps they shouldn’t authorize his action and should actually bar him from using military force. But that decision can only be made once we hear the plan.
In making a decision to enter Syria’s civil war the president needs a coherent and realistic plan for ending the war. As far as I know, no one has such a plan. But, an absolute prerequisite is to get the regional players, Sunni, Shia, Alawite, Arabs and Kurds, to agree that they have to give up their dreams of domination. Both Syria and Iraq were once ecumenical societies with a lot of intermarriage and tolerance. If they’re ever going to be anything like that again, the powers that be have to want it. They have to decide that they’d rather have stability than armed sectarian militias. The focus of any plan must start with creating a coalition with that goal.
Without consensus on that goal, our policy will be an odd one where we kill in the name of humanitarianism and there is no end to it in sight.
So, the policy has to be convincing on this score.
