It Is Public Support For Diplomacy That Pushes Obama
The people of the United States have a very different view on war and peace than the politicians, think tankers and journalists in Washington DC.
Consider this sentence from a NYT Mark Landler piece about the (alleged but yet unproven) Obama
shift from military might to diplomacy:
It is harder for a president to rally the American public behind a multilateral negotiation than a missile strike, though the deep war weariness of Americans has reinforced Mr. Obama’s instinct for negotiated settlements over unilateral action.
That sentence is completely wrong. The U.S. public is much easier to convince of negotiations than of missile strikes. Noise from some hawkish politicians in Washington, which Landler probably confuses with the public opinon, does not give the real picture. Two recent polls clearly express that.
When Obama wanted to strike Syria 59%
opposed such an attack with only 36% supporting it. While only 20% oppose negotiations with Iran 75%
support them.
It is not, as Lander claims, that the public wants missile strikes and is against diplomacy. It is Obama who wanted the missile strikes on Syria and it was public opinion that pressed Congress and him not to launch such strikes. It was Russian, not Obama's, diplomacy that gave him a way out from the missile strikes he had planned. It is likewise the public that presses for negotiations with Iran and that would not support any new war against it.
Landler somewhat claims that Obama takes the lead in the turn towards a more sane and diplomatic U.S. foreign policy. That is just not the case. Obama may use the current diplomacy with Iran, which is still preliminary, only to later justify a war. The U.S. public is much less hawkish than Obama and the general consensus in Washington. Obama is for now simply following the public's lead because - as the aborted Syria strikes showed - he can no longer ignore it.
M of A - It Is Public Support For Diplomacy That Pushes Obama