The War Wary President

The point is this. The facts before us lead to the conclusion that the former Presidential Candidate and Congressman from Ohio, Dennis Kucinich may have been correct when he proposed a Ministry of Peace. Because as a whole, America is a war-weary nation.

One writer recently admonished us as a people for even using this term. After all, he argued, in World War II we sacrificed much to win a war. And in Vietnam, the draft polarized a nation. In this case, we have a volunteer army and most have not felt the pain and sacrifice of past war years.

But, on the other hand, we have lived through a huge economic downturn. And to give the American people credit, our society is a global village that is much more inter-connected so we have experienced many scenes that would not have been possible in past years. The internet and social media has changed our social conscience, for better or for worse.

So, the idea that we are not war-weary is not justified. If we had not invested blood and treasure in these two wars, we may have used that investment to build super-highways and schools, roads or bridges that would sustain us in competition with our global trading partners. As it stands, we are in debt and woefully behind the times in all measures of social progress.

So let us not quibble about how we got to this point. We all know that this is a war-weary nation. And we elected a President to preside over a “sadder but wiser” mentality concerning future engagements. This brings us to the present. The Syrian conflict is not one that Obama has rushed to embrace.

Admittedly, there have been half-hearted measures of support from the administration for a floundering resistance movement in Syria. But on the whole, we have managed to stay out of this conflict. If the President does manage to pull off the “coup” of having negotiated a peaceful withdrawal of the alleged chemical weapons stockpile from Syria, then we should all breathe a collective sigh of relief.

Most probably, the far right will find fault with all manners of this sausage-making enterprise. However, we are a war-weary people and we have elected a war-wary President. Let us rejoice and be glad of that fact.

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