Obama Might Unwittingly Lead U.S. to a Decade of Peace

President Obama might have already achieved more for peace and stability in the Middle East than he is actually aware. The public debate on the Syrian Civil War and a possible U.S. strike on the Assad regime has shown that public opinion strongly favors non-interventionism to the neo-conservativism of recent history. More than a decade of warfare and U.S.-led interventions in the Middle East have illustrated that the use of U.S. military in troubled areas does not necessarily lead to stability and peace.

After a bloody decade-long occupation of multiple countries in the Middle East, the emergence of new terrorist groups, and the disaster in Benghazi, two lessons from the past ten years should be that we aren’t able to predict the unintended consequences of war and that “limited” military campaigns rarely actually come with limits.

Syria can become the tipping point for U.S. foreign policy and the international reputation of the United States. Congress has the chance to show the virtues of western democracy by blocking the President’s war efforts, retiring the agenda of hawkish politicians such as Senator McCain, and keeping the Syrian crisis in the political realm. By doing so, Congress would herald the start of a non-interventionist era of U.S. foreign policy.

In the end, we all just might be glad for having had a president who was too determined to go to war.

Alexander McCobin is a Young Voices Advocate.

4 thoughts on “Obama Might Unwittingly Lead U.S. to a Decade of Peace”

  1. I think that's a wonderful positive attitude & would be awesome however I don't think that is in the cards sadly. Manifest Destiny is in the works on a global scale. We've forgotten our history.

  2. If you are right I think Obama deserves some…maybe a very small part… of the credit. No doubt Hillary would have handled it differently. And Mitt would have tried to please the neocons.

  3. No. Washington will go into Syria directly without the U.N., NATO or Europe, as it did in Vietnam starting in the early '60's. If Obama does go it alone into Syria, then Vietnam will be the best analogy to this policy. No European nation sent any troops to Vietnam, there was no use of the U.N. or NATO as a cover for the U.S. invasion of South Vietnam, and Russia helped North Vietnam and the NLF resist Washington's Vietnam policy. They brought in troops from Australia and South Korea to supplement the U.S. occupation force in South Vietnam and this gave it the cover of an alliance. Waging war abroad is a way of life for Washington, and it is naive to believe that the lack of any cover of an alliance for U.S. military action in Syria will stop it.

    Obama said Assad must go, so it is just a matter of time before he moves into Syria to make good on this policy. What this will highlight once again is the isolation of the U.S. as a global empire. If they can't find a cover of an alliance, or the former imperial powers in Europe don't want to go along, then, fine, Washington will go it alone.

    1. The Disguised Global Capitalist Empire merely 'posing' as, and HQed in, the US does not depend on its 'comparative advantage' of militarist-sector of hard power for world domination — but on its financial-sector (and somewhat lesser corporate-sector) of the Disguised Empire to gain and maintain world domination — which is uniquely accomplished through both its "EXORBITANT PRIVILEGE" [Eichengreen, Barry], and this transnational disguised Empire's leverage of the hidden 'comparative advantage' of being able to quietly make more short-term profits by producing more 'negative externality costs' than the rest of the world, and dumping its 'negative externality costs' on "others" outside the Empire — which means not only in other former countries, but inside the Vonnegutian 'granfalloon' of the US..

  4. As President Barack Obama pointed out in an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN , it was never intended to be an answer to resolving the Syria civil war, but a way of achieving a more limited goal of taking Syria chemical weapons out of Assad's war calculus– under international control those chemical weapons stockpiles would be less likely to fall into the hands of rival rebel groups fighting Assad –it'll also slow the intensity of the civil war and might bring the warring groups closer together on an agreed upon negotiated settlement.

    1. > Achieves Syrian chemweapon disarmement while basically falling down stairs
      > "Look at me, I'm a genius"

      One still does not know whether Assad's "war calculus" included chemweapons in the first place. The president is begging the question, again.

      And what will happen if chemweapons appear again after all of it has been handed over… gonna bomb da rebels?

  5. How about no ME fly zone , no ME drug zone, no ME neoclear zone, no CIAembassies zone > UE Quran NOW

  6. Obama might unwittingly provoke the CIA to open its domestic false-flag playbook, which has been gathering dust for 12 years.

    1. It hasn't been that long. Anthrax, Underwear bomber, any other group of idiots some secret agent man convinced to do something stupid, etc. Rumor has it that the next big one will be around Christmas in DC and used as an excuse to move the capital from DC to Colorado. It will be viewed as the last gasp of our empire.

        1. They got real good breweries though. Some of the best German style craft beers you'll taste this side of the big blue pond.

      1. You might be on to something, Mic. How about moving the entire DC government, including the Pentagon, into Cheyenne Mountain where they´ll be safe from the bad guys? But keep them there for as long as there are terrorists to threaten them.

  7. It’s true. The Obama Administration’s case for a military strike was so flawed and deficient in so many ways that it has alerted the public to the fact that our government is not nearly so adverse to war as it could be or should be — especially the executive branch, just as Madison expected it would be. It is probably a good thing, if only as icing on the cake, that the President is still making his casus belli since the more he pushes it the more disgusted the public becomes.

  8. How does almost no one seem to notice that the war in Syria is still progressing, still spilling over its borders and getting worse? That Iraq right next door is also at boiling point?

    … and that we're still heavily involved?

    All we're talking about here is delaying overt US airstrikes. Our funding and other involvement in the toppling and destruction of the Syrian state continues apace.

  9. Really, the polls are encouraging. The majority of people in America are absolutely tired of war. Fewer people believe the media scare tactics anymore. Also, America's ability to gather support overseas has really worn out. They've absolutely burned their support with stupid wars. It's going back to more like it was in the 60's when the world basically hated the USA for the Vietnam war.

    It's not peace, I don't think this will stop them from starting wars, but it's going to make everything more difficult and less effective. The passive resistance to all this war craziness is going to frustrate everything they do, and everything they try to do to fix this (like all the NSA spying) will just make it worse.

  10. I see things as becoming worse rather than better. With the American public losing the blood lust created by 911, It becomes increasingly obvious it is time for another false flag event. Stand by for an injection of patriotic fervor.

  11. The presidents are there to guid the war they were elected for not to solve it, Syrian war is Hillary Clinton acting as Madeline Albright war, if anyone thinks that Obama didn't know about it, think again, is just that the syrian war, in all fronts, the political spectrum and war rooms is lost, what they trying to do is keep their losers face flipping by not knowing what hit them. They have no idea what they have done to who and how to correct their lies, so they lie again and come up with what is to late. To start with they shouldn't listen to Saudis nor Israeli government taking them as USA friends, nor having any economic relation with so they wouldn't carry their wars. Then again, presidents are not elected by the people for the people, they are elected by corporation and for corporations, people just vote for them.

  12. Wishful thinking, not while AIPAC is in charge of DC and Israel has no regards for international law, plus the UN is impotent and look the other way when Israel use banned cluster bombs on civilians. Peace won’t come to the middle east that easy.

  13. RE: "Obama Might Unwittingly Lead U.S. to a Decade of Peace"

    MY COMMENT: Over AIPAC's dead body! ! !

  14. Let's not forget that the present "peace" initiative is due entirely to Vladimir Putin's brilliant statesmanship, along with Obama's ineptitude and John Kerry's stupidity.

  15. This mini-article has clearly lost sight of facts, in a quixotic quest for Platonic perfection.

    Obama is more interventionist than Bush Jr. He has overthrown two relatively friendly authoritarian regimes (Libya, Egypt), resulting in more terrorism, chaos, death and destruction. He is already intervening in Syria, by providing weapons in an idiotic coalition with parts of Europe, and Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, etc.

    Not all interventions are good nor are all bad. To "intervene" simply means to get in between warring parties. To intervene on behalf of an aggressor would be unjust; to intervene on behalf of a victim of aggression, might be just. If in accord with justice, an intervention might be wise or unwise, depending on facts.

    Anti-interventionism has as much to do with libertarianism, as does vegetarianism. "Intervention" and "aggression" are two entirely separate and distinct concepts. Which the writer of this article would know, if he had bothered to learn what liberty is about. Rather than pontificating about points where he is clearly clueless.

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  17. After a bloody decade-long occupation of multiple countries in the Middle East, the emergence of new terrorist groups, and the disaster in Benghazi, two lessons from the past ten years should be that we aren’t able to predict the unintended consequences

  18. After a bloody decade-long occupation of multiple countries in the Middle East, the emergence of new terrorist groups, and the disaster in Benghazi, two lessons from the past ten years should be that we arena??t able to predict the unintended consequences

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