Nearly every American war since 1945 has been sold on similar promises that each presumptive conflict will be anything but war. Yesterday, Bush Sr. sold what would spiral into the doomed Black Hawk Down episode as ”doing God’s will.” On the eve of the millennium, it was humanitarian bombing in Yugoslavia. Today, joining a familiar chorus, John Kerry is selling Obama’s Syria pitch as “limited action.”
The stalemate to save South Korea’s Butcher of Bodo from Kim Jong-un’s Stalin-aligned grandfather was sold as a “police action” against communism. Since then, war has not been Constitutionally declared on North Vietnam, their allies in Cambodia, Laotian guerillas, Grenada, Libya (twice), Panama, Iraq (twice), Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, or Afghanistan. Even U.S. military engagements in the Philippines, Sudan, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, North Africa, or anywhere around the world since 9/11 have all been “overseas contingency operations.” The legislative branch has yet to exercise its legal war making powers since 1941. Since 1950, the executive always has. President Truman, breaking two centuries of checks and balances, did not seek a declaration of war to commit nearly 50,000 men and women to an early grave. Many Korean War casualties were draftees on both sides.
So even if a limited strike against Bashar Assad’s forces were modeled after Clinton’s cruise missile crusade on Iraq, wouldn’t those involved on both sides view a Desert Fox reboot as an act of war? In 1962, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a skirmish between American and Cuban/Soviet vessels would have been considered an act of war between the superpowers with apocalyptic implications.