Obama's critics lose sight of big picture with Syria

The war faction in the Republican Party is stirring again, this time over Syria.

There is a rising chorus of Republican voices criticizing President Barack Obama's handling of the Syrian civil war and basically saying that the United States should do whatever is necessary to ensure that the rebels oust Bashar Assad.

Certainly, Syria is a heartbreaking wreck. Since the conflict began, 17,000 have been killed. More than 300,000 have become external or internal refugees.

The U.S. has a strategic interest in seeing Assad gone, goes the argument, because he is an ally of Iran. And if the United States were to take a leadership role, he could be ousted with less bloodshed.

The same claim was made regarding Libya, that Moammar Gadhafi could be ousted with less bloodshed if the U.S. took the military lead.

It's not clear where this notion that the United States does war neat and tidy comes from. The last dictator the United States took the lead in ousting, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, resulted in more than 115,000 civilian war-related deaths and 2.7million displaced persons.

Chasing the Taliban from Afghanistan was neat and tidy. Basically, all the U.S. did was tip the balance of power from one ragtag militia, the Taliban, to another, the Northern Alliance.

But what happened after that was far from neat and tidy. A decade and half-a-trillion dollars later, we still have nearly 90,000 troops there. Civilian war-related deaths just since 2007 are estimated at around 12,000. More than 300,000 Afghans are believed to be internal refugees.

The Republican war faction claims not to be calling for boots on the ground in Syria. But if the U.S. took the military lead and things got messy and disorderly, which is more likely than not, they would. They always do. And they always oppose withdrawing ground troops once deployed.

The present call is for the United States to arm the rebels and provide air cover. But it is far from clear that such a direct U.S. involvement is necessary to oust Assad.

Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar are committed to seeing him gone and are providing material assistance to the rebels. Combined, they have a GDP 25 times that of Syria's, and military expenditures 30 times as great. If Assad is to be ousted, U.S. taxpayers don't have to pay the bill.

The Republican pugilists, however, believe it is better for the U.S. to take the lead even if it isn't necessary. They are still grumbling about Libya even though, objectively, it seems preliminarily quite a success story. The dictator is gone. The country has elected the least Islamist government in the Arab Spring. No one in Libya is looking to the United States to provide security, electricity, roads, hospitals or schools. Other countries took the lead. The U.S. supporting role cost just $2billion and no U.S. casualties.

The problem with many Republican hawks is they actually prefer for other countries to depend on the United States and fail to discriminate between where U.S. involvement is necessary and where others can shoulder the burden.

Only the United States can lead the effort to put sufficient international pressure on Iran to abandon the development of nuclear weapons. But between the Sunni Arabs, Turkey and Israel, there's more than enough local opposition to manage its regional troublemaking without the United States.

There's a lot not to like in Obama's foreign policy. But one of the things he has done right is nudge other countries to take more of a role and responsibility in these kinds of regional conflicts.

Mitt Romney is running as a Republican tough-guy wannabe. His foreign-policy pronouncements are at least as bellicose as George W. Bush's. It's worth noting that Bush's approach to the rest of the world was soundly repudiated by voters in 2006 and 2008.

In any conflict, the Republican war faction can conjure up some U.S. interests at stake. We're a global power. Everything that happens everywhere affects us.

But the Republican war faction misses the bigger picture. Not everything that happens everywhere requires us. And it is decidedly not in the United States' interest to own all the world's messes.

Reach Robb at robert.robb

@arizonarepublic.com.

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