World needs Obama to do the right thing and to take his time if he needs to

The difference between a politician and a statesman is that the latter approaches every issue with an open mind, a politician with an open mouth.

I’ve never been certain who said that, although I like to think it was Harry Truman. It’s a piece of advice that I’m guessing President Obama is doing his damndest to follow right now.

Someone I greatly respect posted a different quote on his facebook page the other day. It was from George Kennan, an American diplomat in the period after the Second World War, and famous (in my limited knowledge, anyway) as a “cold warrior”. When I looked Kennan up I discovered in fact he was someone who started life distrusting the Soviet Union and ended up being an advocate of dialogue. He was a man who was at times highly influential, and at other times regarded as something of a crank.

This is the quote my friend picked up — he said in his own facebook post that it seemed particularly timely right now: “There is more respect to be won in the opinion of this world by a resolute and courageous liquidation of unsound positions than by the stubborn pursuit of extravagant or unpromising objectives”.

In posting that, I’m guessing my friend was thinking about President Obama. He knows him pretty well, and although I haven’t asked him, he may be disenchanted with the president. But the quote he uses is a pretty decent expression of the terrible dilemma faced by a world leader at a time like this.

These are the moments when it’s tough, and lonely, at the top. Faced with the strategic and humanitarian catastrophe that is Syria, Obama has the unwelcome choice between an unsound position and an unpromising objective.

When he spoke in the Rose Garden on Saturday last (it was a short speech, but one worth reading by everyone who wants to take a view). President Obama said: “A country faces few decisions as grave as using military force, even when that force is limited. I respect the views of those who call for caution, particularly as our country emerges from a time of war that I was elected in part to end. But if we really do want to turn away from taking appropriate action in the face of such an unspeakable outrage, then we must acknowledge the costs of doing nothing”.

Obama has decided that a military intervention in Syria is unavoidable. He has decided to approach the issue with caution. He is right on both counts, in my humble opinion. And he should be supported on both counts by the rest of the world. Regular readers of this column will know, I hope, that I don’t take an unalloyed view of President Obama. But on this issue, he is right.

Unlike some of the commentators I listened to over the weekend — Eamon Dunphy was a particularly egregious example — I can’t claim expertise, or an in-depth knowledge of the complexities of the Syrian situation or the mid-East.

There are endless arguments — we’ve heard them all over the last few days, and it’s almost impossible to sift through them and arrive at a single point of view. Obama is weak. Obama is a war-monger. He’s doing this for selfish strategic reasons. This is all his own fault because he should have intervened earlier. He totally misunderstands the middle east, Islam, geo-politics. He gave a stupid hostage to fortune by drawing a red line around the use of chemical weapons. What’s the difference between 100,000 people slaughtered by conventional means and 1,000 people murdered by nerve gas? America is in no position to lecture the rest of the world about chemical weapons or weapons of mass destruction – remember napalm and Agent Orange in Vietnam. Remember Hiroshima.

History will judge all that. I remember a President called Bush who was absolutely determined to go to war with Iraq, and his gung-ho attitude made him a hero for some, but caused untold damage. There seems little doubt now that his place in history will be shaped by the Iraq war, and not for the better.

I remember a President called Clinton who went reluctantly to war with the Serbs – he was accused of dithering and vacillating by some, and of using the Bosnian crisis to distract attention from Monica Lewinsky by others. But history has, broadly speaking, already come to the conclusion that it was one of the more important things Bill Clinton did.

It does seem clear to me that Barack Obama doesn’t want to be George Bush. He regards himself as having been elected, at least in part, to end America’s involvement in two wars. I believe in a broader sense he wants to establish a new precedent that would oblige future presidents to consult more widely before taking unilateral action. Obama takes a different view of the world than his republican predecessor — he has tried to reach out to Muslim countries, and seems to me to genuinely want to ensure that America doesn’t act alone. For that, he’s hated in some quarters in the US –often to the point of fanaticism. Mind you, the ones who hate him for that, hate him for everything. When Obama’s history does come to be written, one of the key factors that will be seen to have shaped him is likely to be the depth and ferocity of the opposition he faced, and still faces. It’s easier, in some ways, for him to build support abroad for almost any measure he faces, than to build support at home.

BUT it’s clear that he is facing an issue of principle. Assad is a butcher, in the same league as many of the worst butchers the world has ever known. His use of chemical weapons against his own people, of which there is really very little doubt by any objective standards, is a crime against the world. If it goes unpunished, the world will have to hang its head in shame.

For that reason, the world needs President Obama to do the right thing, and to take his time if he needs to. He knows full well that it is impossible to predict the consequences, or even to be certain if a short and measured attack on Syria will work. But he also knows that there can be no turning back.

The one criticism of Obama that I find impossible to understand is the accusation of dithering. Surely there is something admirable about a US President who goes to war reluctantly? I don’t expect to see Barack Obama on an aircraft carrier, trumpeting about missions being accomplished, or parading himself in a combat jacket. But I do expect him, once he has decided what is the right thing to do, to be both measured and resolute.

He’ll continue to be attacked by the right in America and the left everywhere else. And sometimes he’ll deserve it. On this issue though he deserves time and space and support. Syria will trouble our consciences years to come, in all likelihood. But hopefully that won’t be because we allowed a tyrant and a murderer to face down the rest of the world.