On Friday’s broadcast of PBS’s “NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks echoed his sentiments of President Barack Obama from his column published earlier in the day in which he referred to Obama as a “reluctant” warrior.
Partial transcript as follows:
BROOKS: I think in the House and the Senate, we’re probably not going to get a big debate. We will have a debate about the appropriations, about some of the backdoor funding mechanisms. It strikes me what’s interesting is it seems to me the Democrats are a little more divided on this. It’s a more troublesome issue for the Democrats than it is for the Republicans.
The Republicans are more united. Rand Paul has come out more or less in favor of this. So the — what had been a more isolationist fringe, or however you want to say it, has — that part of the Republican Party has merged and looks more like a conventional Republican Party, the national security party.
The Democrats are the divided ones. And Steny Hoyer, the Democratic leading congressional official, wants to push it beyond the election. But we are having a big national debate about it. People are talking about it on the streets. And what struck me is how hard it is to talk about it, because I think most people think you have no choice but to somehow — you can’t allow a genocidal caliphate in the Middle East.
But how you do it is what has everybody scratching their heads. What kind of coalition are we going to have? What happens if the Iraqi army is not successful on the ground? What happens if the Free Syrian Army, the moderate Syrian opposition, is not super successful?
So, very quickly, I have just noticed the tenor of the debate has shifted from ends for the most part to means. And people are sort of up in the air, because it’s not quite clear exactly how that is going to work.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Mark, the president has asked Congress to support the training of Syrian rebels, assuming they identify these moderate Syrian rebels.
MARK SHIELDS: That’s right.
They have got to be — somebody has got to find out who the moderates are.
DAVID BROOKS: They have got to be for Sam Nunn. They have got to be…
MARK SHIELDS: Is there a test here, I mean, the Lincoln Chafee series?
Yes. No, Judy, the Western — United States — the United States military, western military, has shown its ability, its capacity to come in and dominate the battlefield. But the idea of establishing order, security and peaceful government in its wake after that has eluded us.
And there’s no way in the world — the question of coalition, who are these people? Where are they? Who are the troops who are going to be there to guarantee stability, order and some sense of justice in the areas?
You can’t do that with airstrikes. I mean, airstrikes are wonderful. They’re antiseptic. They’re at a distance. The possibility of your own casualties is finite. But they don’t occupy. You can’t occupy a nation or bring order and stability by airstrikes. So who are people on the ground? Who is the coalition? Where are the troops coming from?
JUDY WOODRUFF: And you’re saying he’s the reluctant warrior, so can the reluctant warrior lead in a situation where we don’t know what the endgame…
DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I think so.
I strikes me a Syrian moderate is anybody against beheading in Syria. That makes you a moderate. But I do think he is a reluctant warrior. He doesn’t want to be there. But that has some advantages. It has the advantage he’s not going to be carried away by his own righteousness.
He’s not going to want to dominate the ground. He — it is going to make him skeptical of everything that generals bring him because he’s not gung-ho. And it’s going to mean he is going to be realistic about our goals.
And turning Syria into a great country is not one of our goals. It’s — and turning Iraq into a viable country is sort of one of our goals. He’s more interested in keeping Iraq stable than whatever happens in Syria. The main goal is degrading these guys, truly one of the most evil manifestation of human life on earth.
And so simply — our goal is destructive. Our goal is not positive. It’s not make the Middle East a better place. Our goal is make sure the Middle East doesn’t get any worse. And so I do think, with that limited goal, with some buy-in from the Sunni tribes who have done it before, they have defeated this kind of army before. It should be possible to degrade this group.
(h/t RCP Video)
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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