The Fun-House Mirror That Is the Syria Decision

Alan Lowenth­al has a head­ache.

Who can blame him? The fresh­man House mem­ber, a Cali­for­nia Demo­crat, is genu­inely torn — torn up, really — over wheth­er to vote for mil­it­ary strikes against Syr­ia. After a clas­si­fied brief­ing Wed­nes­day in the House For­eign Af­fairs Com­mit­tee, he was head­ing back to Long Beach, no closer to a de­cision than be­fore.

“This is a very pained dis­cus­sion,” he said. “There are no good an­swers, and there are very grave con­sequences no mat­ter what we do. There’s a mor­al di­lemma about the use of chem­ic­al weapons — which are just ter­rible — by a dic­tat­or. On the oth­er hand, there are con­sequences that we’ve seen when we in­volve ourselves, es­pe­cially uni­lat­er­ally, and we could put ourselves tre­mend­ously at risk.”

Per­haps the most un­en­vi­able job in the world these days is to be a mem­ber of the Con­gress wrest­ling with what to do about the crisis in Syr­ia. There are fierce, com­pet­ing pres­sures swirl­ing around these fence-sit­ters, de­pend­ing on their rank, party af­fil­i­ation, con­stitu­ents’ de­mands, for­eign policy ori­ent­a­tion, and, yes, even their reelec­tion pro­spects or am­bi­tions for high­er of­fice. House Minor­ity Lead­er Nancy Pelosi has called it a “vote of con­science,” sug­gest­ing that polit­ics won’t come in­to play, but every­one knows that’s im­possible in such a highly po­lar­ized en­vir­on­ment and with midterms a little over a year away.

Lib­er­al Demo­crats such as Lowenth­al have a nat­ur­al res­ist­ance to war, but they also want to back up one of their own in the White House. Then there are the polls show­ing that a ma­jor­ity of voters op­pose mil­it­ary ac­tion. Of the 653 e-mails, phone calls, and so­cial-me­dia com­ments Lowenth­al’s of­fice has re­ceived, only 11 fa­vor strikes.

Also weigh­ing on him and oth­er mem­bers is Is­rael’s se­cur­ity. As a Jew, Lowenth­al said, he’s par­tic­u­larly sens­it­ive to the hor­rif­ic im­ages of in­no­cent people be­ing gassed. But does bomb­ing Syr­ia in­crease or de­crease the threat that its ally, Ir­an, poses to Is­rael? Lowenth­al isn’t sure.

Re­pub­lic­ans feel a dif­fer­ent set of pres­sures. Some view the pres­id­ent’s de­cision to ask Con­gress for au­thor­ity as a trap, lay­ing the ground­work for shar­ing the blame. “A lot of people in Con­gress wish he had not bucked it to them,” said Re­pub­lic­an lob­by­ist Charlie Black. Sid­ing with a Demo­crat­ic pres­id­ent could be a ma­jor li­ab­il­ity for Re­pub­lic­an mem­bers fa­cing primary chal­lengers next year or con­tem­plat­ing their party’s White House nom­in­a­tion in 2016. “There’s al­most a re­flex­ive im­pulse among Re­pub­lic­ans to op­pose any­thing Obama is for,” said Mike Mc­Curry, who was a State De­part­ment spokes­man and a press sec­ret­ary for Pres­id­ent Clin­ton. Among the po­ten­tial GOP pres­id­en­tial can­did­ates, Sens. Rand Paul of Ken­tucky and Ted Cruz of Texas have de­nounced Obama’s plan; Sen. Marco Ru­bio of Flor­ida voted against mil­it­ary force as a mem­ber of the For­eign Re­la­tions Com­mit­tee on Wed­nes­day.

Such votes could emerge as key cam­paign is­sues three years from now. Just ask former Sen. Hil­lary Rod­ham Clin­ton of New York, who voted with dozens of oth­er Demo­crats to go to war in Ir­aq in 2002. What seemed like a safe vote at the time, amid a cer­tain amount of post-9/11 pat­ri­ot­ic fer­vor, turned tox­ic in the Demo­crat­ic pres­id­en­tial primary six years later.

Clin­ton, who went on to be­come Obama’s sec­ret­ary of State, came out in sup­port of mil­it­ary ac­tion in Syr­ia this week.

But there was no cloak­ing this move in 9/11 unity. “Be­fore the next pres­id­en­tial elec­tion, we’ll know which side was right on Syr­ia and which side was wrong,” said Re­pub­lic­an con­sult­ant Steve Schmidt, who ad­vised 2008 nom­in­ee John Mc­Cain.

In a sign that some Re­pub­lic­ans are put­ting their feel­ings about the White House aside, House Speak­er John Boehner and House Ma­jor­ity Lead­er Eric Can­tor are back­ing Obama’s call for mil­it­ary ac­tion. That Boehner, Can­tor, Pelosi, and Obama are on one side, and Paul, Ru­bio, and Cruz are on the oth­er — along with lib­er­al Demo­crats such as Reps. Charlie Ran­gel of New York and Alan Grayson of Flor­ida — makes it starkly clear that this is no party-line vote. The old rules, un­der which Demo­crats res­ist mil­it­ary en­tan­gle­ments and Re­pub­lic­ans cham­pi­on for­eign in­ter­ven­tion, no longer ap­ply. That leaves mem­bers even more isol­ated and con­fused.

Lowenth­al could nev­er have con­tem­plated that the Demo­crat­ic pres­id­ent who won elec­tion op­pos­ing the war in Ir­aq would urge him to green-light a mis­sile strike in an­oth­er part of the Middle East. Nor could Rep. Cory Gard­ner, R-Colo., have en­vi­sioned the split in his party over for­eign in­ter­ven­tion.

“Of course it mat­ters what the speak­er of the House says, but it also mat­ters what most of the mem­bers of my com­munity say, and my con­stitu­ents from left to right op­pose in­volve­ment,” Gard­ner said. “In the end, I will vote ac­cord­ing to what I be­lieve is right.”

Gard­ner in­sists the vote “tran­scends polit­ics.” With the lives of wo­men and men in uni­form at stake, this isn’t like vot­ing on the farm bill or the debt ceil­ing. “This vote is in a cat­egory by it­self,” he said. “You can’t com­pare it to any oth­er vote.”

The com­plex­it­ies of the crisis in Syr­ia make it dif­fi­cult to cal­cu­late polit­ic­al ad­vant­age. So a de­bate laced with polit­ics, in some re­spects, is some­how lib­er­ated from polit­ics. That makes the up­com­ing vote all the more un­pre­dict­able. Even the large ma­jor­ity of Amer­ic­ans wear­ily fed up with the dys­func­tion in Con­gress will be watch­ing closely. No one has the lux­ury of turn­ing away.

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