Christopher Caldwell

Obama knows that America has lost its appetite for war

The age of 'maximalist' foreign policy may be drawing to an end

Photo by Pete Souza/White House via Getty Images 
issue 07 September 2013

It was to Fort Belvoir that President Barack Obama repaired on Saturday, minutes after he announced that attacks by the Syrian government on a rebel stronghold in Damascus constituted ‘an assault on human dignity’ and a ‘serious threat to our national security.’ By using what the US government says was sarin gas, Syria’s dictator Bashar al-Assad crossed a ‘red line’ that Mr Obama had laid down a year before. The President has asked Congress to authorise an attack on Syria as soon as legislators return on 9 September.

Fort Belvoir is home to the US army’s 29th Light Infantry Division. More to the point, it is the site of a terrific 18-hole golf course, and the President had a mid-afternoon tee-time with the Vice President. Mr Obama, unlike his predecessor, is not going to rush off to war.

But only because he has just suffered the most stinging political setback of his presidency. Rushing to war is just what Mr Obama wanted to do.

Written by
Christopher Caldwell

Christopher Caldwell is a contributing editor of the Claremont Review of Books and the author of The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties.

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