In a rare presidential address to the nation Tuesday night, President Barack Obama laid out his case for military action in Syria should diplomatic efforts fail. But before and after he spoke, Ohio lawmakers in Washington remained wary.
“I was unclear what the president was asking Congress and the American people for,” said Rep. Steve Stivers, R-Columbus, whose congressional district includes Athens County. “We shouldn’t be talking about war if there is a peace option on the table.”
He added, “America is not … a warlike country,” as long as a peaceful solution can achieve an ultimate goal.
The president appeared to strike a similar tone in his address. He outlined his desire to postpone a Congressional vote on military action in favor of diplomatic attempts to disrupt Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government.
Evidence suggests Assad’s government used chemical weapons to kill an estimated 1,400 of his own people Aug. 21 amid a civil war, which has been waging since 2011.
Obama — addressing one-by-one a few concerns he said he had received in letters from Americans — seemingly knew he was speaking to a public anxious about getting involved in conflict in the Middle East.
“I know that after the terrible toll of Iraq and Afghanistan, military action — no matter how limited — will not be popular,” Obama said. But “when dictators commit atrocities, they depend on the world to look the other way.
“If we fail to act, the Assad regime will see no reason to stop using chemical weapons.”
Benjamin Banta, visiting assistant professor of war and peace studies at Ohio University, said Obama was trying to sway lawmakers by easing the concerns of the public.
“The speech, I’m sure (Obama) hopes, will push the polling data such that Congressional members will feel better about voting for the military action,” Banta said in an email.
He went on to say, “...the way Obama argued for the correctness of a limited strike also placed him pretty squarely within the traditional American foreign policy discourse that seeks to balance global leadership with U.S. interests.”
Still, several polling organizations and media outlets have recently found that the public largely opposes American intervention in Syria.
A Sept. 9 Pew Research Center poll indicates that only 28 percent of Americans favor military action, with merely 16 percent strongly in favor.
That makes the idea of intervening in Syria the least-favored U.S. military intervention in the past 20 years, according to a Sept. 6 Gallup poll.
The same poll stated that 13 percent of respondents said they have no opinion on the matter. That’s the highest percentage of people without opinions compared to any other military intervention Gallup measured during the same time frame.
Obama, reluctant to enter a long-term conflict, promised Tuesday that no American troops would be on the ground in Syria. His administration’s plan consists mostly of airstrikes.
The White House maintains that U.S. must intervene in Syria in order to uphold an international norm that bans the use of the chemical weapons Assad is alleged of using.
Not doing anything about the attack degrades that norm, Banta, the OU professor, said.
But Sen. Rob Portman, a Republican from Ohio, came out against the military strikes on the Senate floor Tuesday before Obama addressed the nation.
“We need a long-term comprehensive strategy first, not a strike then the promise of a strategy,” Portman said.
Sen. Sherrod Brown was more on the fence about action in Syria before the president’s speech.
The Ohio Democrat stopped short of saying he hadn’t decided how he’d vote on military force should diplomacy fail, but emphasized a “need to build international support around clear objectives for ending the violence against the Syrian people.”
Portman and Brown could not be reached for comment after Obama’s speech.
ld311710@ohiou.edu
@LucasDaprile
