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Obama will have to make some decisions. But it’s far better to let the Syrians do this themselves, if they can. We cannot prevent every casualty. That’s starting to sound like a doctrine to me. Call it the doctrine of no doctrine: using our power and influence but doing so prudently and multilaterally, with the crucial recognition that Egypt is different from Libya is different from Syria is different from someplace else. According to the foreign-policy establishment, if you want to have a self-respecting big-D doctrine, you’re not supposed to recognize differences. The doctrine must guide all cases. But that is exactly the kind of thinking that has led—always—to tragedy. The Truman Doctrine was never meant to be applied to Vietnam. The Bush Doctrine was applied to Iraq based on a series of lies told to the American people. And so on. If the Obama Doctrine is nothing like those, so much the better. This does not yet greatness make. These dramatic changes have to work out for the better, and here the United States has a huge role to play. With respect to Libya, for example, we have control of about $37 billion in assets we can dole out to the transitional council. And yes, we probably are interested in its oil. But that doesn’t have to mean stealing it. All the Western countries that backed the rebels have to play a constructive and non- (forgive me for such a dated word) imperialist role in helping the country build its future. So there’s work to be done. But it’s hardly impossible to envision an Obama administration in a few years’ time that has drawn down Afghanistan and Iraq, helped foster reforms and maybe even the growth of a couple of democracies around the Middle East, and restored the standing of a country that Bush had laid such staggering waste. And killed Osama bin Laden. If this is weak America-hating, count me in.
Newsweek/Daily Beast special correspondent Michael Tomasky is also editor of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas.
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