This week on Moyers Company im phil donahue in for bill moyers. We take a look at the deadly civil war in syria and consider the consequences of another American Intervention in the middle east. This menace must be confronted. Syria is not the problem. 30 years of failure of u. S. Military policy in the middle east in the islamic world, thats the problem. And the great powers have got to find a way to stop this war because the refugee crisis cannot be solved without them. Announcer funding is provided by Carnegie Corporation of new york, celebrating 100 years of philanthropy, and committed to doing real and permanent good in the world. The kohlberg foundation. Independent production fund, with support from the partridge foundation, a john and polly guth charitable fund. The clements foundation. Park foundation, dedicated to heightening Public Awareness of critical issues. The herb alpert foundation, supporting organizations Whose Mission is to promote compassion and creativity in our society. The bernard and audre rapoport foundation. The john d. And catherine t. Macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. More information at macfound. Org. Anne gumowitz. The betsy and jesse fink foundation. The hkh foundation. Barbara g. Fleischman. And by our sole corporate sponsor, mutual of america, designing customized individual and Group Retirement products. Thats why were your retirement company. Welcome. Im phil donahue. Bill moyers is away this week and i am pleased to be sitting in for him. Our subject is syria. What began there two and a half years ago as part of the arab spring has turned into an allout civil war. Now has come the shocking evidence of poison gas attacks. A fatal escalation that has led president obama to ask congress to authorize the limited use of military force. And if we take action, where and when does it stop . Historian and analyst Andrew Bacevich is here asking those questions. [ a graduate of west point and vietnam veteran, he served in the military for 23 years before becoming a professor at boston university. His books include the limits of power and washington rules. His latest, breach of trust. Andrew bacevich, welcome. Thank you very much. Well, im pleased to have this chance to chat with you for a lot of reasons. One, i dont know who else has more cred than you. What would a 23year graduate of west point offer us now regarding the dilemma in which obama finds himself, regarding syria . Well, i mean, if i could have five minutes of the president s time, id say, mr. President , the issue really is not syria. I mean, youre being told that its syria. Youre being told you have to do something about syria, that you have to make a decision about syria. That somehow your credibility is on the line. But id say, mr. President , thats not true. The issue really here is whether or not an effort over the course of several decades, dating back to the promulgation of the Carter Doctrine in 1980, an effort that extends over several decades to employ American Power, military power, overt, Covert Military power exercise through proxies, an effort to use military power to somehow stabilize or fix or liberate or transform the greater middle east hasnt worked. And if you think back to 1980, and just sort of tick off the number of military enterprises that we have been engaged in that part of the world, large and small, you know, beirut, afghanistan, iraq, yemen, somalia, and on and on, and ask yourself, what have we got done . What have we achieved . Is the region becoming more stable . Is it becoming more democratic . Are we enhancing americas standing in the eyes of the people of the islamic world . the answers are, no, no, and no. so why, mr. President , do you think that initiating yet another war, because if we bomb syria, its a war, why do you think that initiating yet another war in this protracted enterprise is going to produce a different outcome . Wouldnt it be perhaps wise to ask ourselves if this militarized approach to the region maybe is a fools errand. Maybe its fundamentally misguided. Maybe the questions are not tactical and operational, but strategic and political. You know, i have to say, im just struck by the fact that secretary of state kerry has become the leading proponent for war. Its our secretary of states job apparently he threw his medal he threw his medals back. Well, thats why its doubly ironic. Because the secretary of state is the war promoter. And that our secretary of state happens to be a guy who came into politics basically advertising himself as the guy who because of his understands war . Vietnam experiences, understands war, understands the lessons of vietnam, and is therefore going to prevent us from doing dumb things. On the contrary, hes the lead cheerleader to go do another dumb thing. President obama would say to you, these are children being grossly and painfully killed. Yeah. How can you watch these videos with the foam coming out of the nostrils. And weve got to do something. Well, the attack is a heinous act. Now, does the fact that they were killed with chemicals make it more heinous than if they were killed with conventional munitions . Im not persuaded. I mean, i think the issue, one of the issues here, to the extent that moral considerations drive us policy, and i would say as a practical matter they dont, but lets pretend that they do to the extent that moral ks drive moral considerations drive u. S. Policy, theres a couple of questions to ask. One would be, why here and not someplace else . I mean, just weeks earlier, the Egyptian Army killed many hundreds of innocent egyptians. And we sort of shook our finger at egypt a little bit, but didnt do anything. So why act in syria . Why not act in egypt . I think that that needs to be sort of that needs to be clarified. And the other question will be, well, if our concerns are humanitarian, why is waging war the best meas to advance a humanitarian agenda . If indeed u. S. Policy is informed by concern for the people of syria, lets just pretend thats the case, even though i dont think it is. If its informed by concern for the people of syria, why is peppering damascus with cruise missiles the best way to demonstrate that concern . I mean, a little bit of creative statesmanship it seems to me might say that there are other things we could do that would actually benefit the people of syria, who are suffering greatly, who are fleeing their country in the hundreds of thousands. Who are living in wretched refugee camps. Why dont we do something about that . Why wouldnt that be a better thing to do from a moral perspective than bombing damascus . How do we explain medias submissions to these warlike let me just give you one. Nicholas kristof, of the times, since president obama established a red line about chemical weapons use, his credibility has been at stake. He cant just whimper and back down. Whimper. I mean, who wants a whimperer for president . And theres an awful lot of macho in this. And by the way, why cant the president just say, hey, i really shouldnt have said red line. that was a mistake, it was a moment, im a human, sue me, im rectifying that now and im going to take a more well, i think, one point there is that in many respects, this crisis is being driven by domestic politics. I think the president did make a mistake in drawing that red line. I suspect the president actually understands he made a mistake. And then when assad called his bluff, as it were, the president finds him in a the president finds himself in the position where yes, hes got to do something to restore his credibility. Well, when you think about it, its not going to restore any credibility. I mean, when you think about it, is credibility worth going to war for . When you think about it, if indeed american credibility in that part of the world is kind of low right now, is it because the president drew a red line and didnt act . Or could it be because of the folly of american wars in places like iraq . I mean, will bombing syria make the memory of iraq go away . Well, the memory of iraq has already gone away in the eye in for most americans. But is it going to cause people in the arab world or the broader islamic world to forget iraq and all the chaos that we created . I mean, im struck by the fact that were having this sort of national hoopdeedoo about syria on the front page of the paper. If you turn back to page five or page seven, youll get the latest dispatch out of baghdad. Bombs going off in baghdad, killing 65. Is there any relevance to that continuing story coming out of iraq to the prospect of syria . Seems to me there ought to be. I mean, the last time we persuaded ourselves that we needed to act in iraq, we produced a disaster. Now, some number of americans paid for that disaster in terms of soldiers killed, lives shattered. Far, far greater numbers of iraqis paid for that disaster and are still paying for that disaster. So the conversation about syria is far too narrow. It needs to be expanded to include some of these other military misadventures that we have undertaken. And i think it needs to be expanded to include fraudulent relationship between the American Military and american society, which allows our political leaders to go off on these wild goose chases while the American People basically stand by mute. One of the conservative talking heads in the shout shows on cable said that going to if obama goes to congress, hell show weakness. I mean, its only in the constitution. He will show weakness if he obeys the constitution. Everything is turned upsidedown here now. Well, i think if theres one iota of good news here, i think it is that hes gone to the congress. Now, the president didnt go to the congress because he realized that hes a constitutional lawyer and suddenly was becoming a strict constructionist. He went to the congress because he was sitting out there on this limb all by himself, even without the brits, and decided that it was a lonely place to be, that he wanted to see if he could induce the congress to come out and join him. But that said, whether he intends it or not, he is setting a precedent, a precedent that says that maybe when we do attack some country, the congress ought to be consulted. And what, and the significant of that i think is three, four, five years from now, when obamas successor has some great idea that he wants to go bomb somebody or invade somebody, i hope there will be some questions asked that will say, hey, wait a second, mr. President. Back in 2013, before obama acted, he thought he needed to ask the congress. Why doesnt that apply to you . So i think thats the one little bit of good news out of this yeah, except obama made the point emphatically that i dont need your approval. I can go alone anyway. He did. He did. We are the only country with the capacity to do what were about to do in syria. Do you believe that . Theres no question that in terms of the capability to project power, to put ordnance on targets, to mask military power in every dimension, at land, sea, air, cyberspace, our capabilities are beyond anybodys ability to match. Unfortunately, that doesnt necessarily yield wise policy. It doesnt even yield military victory. Again, when you think back on the actual history, the military history of the United States in the middle east over the past several decades, victory has been exceedingly hard to come by. Were always stronger by many measures than the adversary. But somehow or other, being strong doesnt translate into political objectives being achieved quickly or economically. What actually happens is that the projection of American Power leads to unexpected complications. And gets us more deeply imbedded in a set of circumstances that we cant handle. There are enormously deep and powerful forces of change that are have come to the surface and are transforming that part of the world. We have claimed, president s have claimed, George Herbert walker bush, bill clinton, george w. Bush, and now this president have claimed that we possess the capacity to somehow direct or control these processes of change. Even though the truth is, we dont have that capacity. The truth is, we are largely irrelevant to whats going on in that part of the world. But if we reach out and, you know, use our military powers to drop some missiles here and there, we can sustain the illusion that we have some kind of relevance. But we dont. In your book, your commentary about a loss of the Citizens Army is especially germane to whats happening now with syria. Its easier now to go to war is one of the points you make. And as now we think about syria, how do those two come together . Well, id back up from syria a little bit. And i think id want to tell a story that begins really back at the end of the vietnam war. A war that divided the country, a war that in many respects shattered the United States military. And part of the response to that war was that the American People decided to jettison the longstanding tradition of the citizen soldier. Richard nixon endorsed that when he ended the draft and declared the creation of an allvolunteer force. And for some considerable period of time, this seemed like a smart move, a good thing for the country. It let citizens off the hook, also gave us highly capable and welltrained and welldisciplined soldiers. What only became evident after the cold war ended, however, was that this new professional army really was no longer americas army. It was washingtons army. And washington began to as in washington, d. C. . As in washington, d. C. And washington began to do with that army whatever they wanted, regardless of whether the people had signed up to the enterprise. And this greater penchant for war, i think really reached its zenith after 9 11 with president george w. Bushs decision to invade iraq, as so many people have said, a country totally uninvolved in 9 11. And this was the ultimate testing time for this great, professional army of ours. And im sorry to say it failed the test. We were supposed to win quickly, economically, easily. We didnt win. And instead, we ended up with a protracted war. Part of a series of post9 11 wars where, bringing us to where we are today, where syria may well yet be another one of these wars, waged by washington with its army, while the people are left sitting on the sidelines. And making no real sacrifice, was it 1 of our citizens . Yeah, its interesting. You know, sort of the inverse of the complaint of the occupy movement. You know, the occupy movement said theres the 1 of the rich people who are screwing the 99 . And when it comes to basic military policy, we have the 99 screwing the 1 . Its the 1 who get sent off to fight these endless wars. So its going to be easier then to have another one and another one. We havent even, it seems to me, we havent even looked at ourselves regarding the wars that weve had. Thats nobody thats one of the most troubling aspects of this whole thing. It staggers me that the American People have so quickly put the iraq war in the Rearview Mirror. Indeed, wont even look in the Rearview Mirror. Because if they did, they could see in the Rearview Mirror the smoking ruin that we left behind. Instead, there is this preoccupation to deal with the next crisis, which as we speak, is syria. Six months from now, itll probably be something else. I imagine that so few people sacrifice, for example, in the iraq war. In your book, in one line, you take the breath away by revealing that you lost your son. And i know you certainly have no responsibility to get into this, and i do not mean to labor it. But is it possible for you to share your own, with us, your own thoughts . Its probably not. I have tried to make it a rule that thats a private matter and i try to keep it private. But i was watching your film, your wonderful documentary. One of the things that makes it so powerful is the way the young soldier and his family opened them up, opened themselves up to you. Thats what made the film. On the other hand, because of my personal experience as i watched that, i said to myself, i could never bear to do that. Just couldnt bear to do it. Its got to stay private. If i lost somebody in a war, i guess i felt it was the most sanitized war of my lifetime. I think if youre going to send your young men and women, as we say quaintly, in harms way, show the pain. Dont sanitize the war. I agree. And you know, in one, in the sense, one way we may sanitize the war by putting restrictions on, you know, what can be filmed and all that. But we also sanitize the war in the way the waging of war is consigned to certain sectors of society. If harvard, princeton, and yale sent their guys to war. Were there, this inclination to turn away from the ugliness would be unsustainable. Thats why, you know, one of the things i tried to emphasize in the book is to contrast the post9 11 wars with world war ii. The socalled good war. The last war that we actually won, outright. A war that was fought by citizen soldiers. Not by accident, a war in which our leaders, from president roosevelt on down, said that this will be a peoples war. There will be sacrifice across the board. It will be fought with a peoples army. Even citizens who are not in the army will participate in their own way. Their taxes will go up, not down, like after 9 11. So part of the argument is that a war waged by citizen soldiers that engages the energies and attention of the American People is in fact more likely to result in success, victory, political objectives achieved, than has been our experience with a professional army, which in many respects is qualitatively superior. But it doesnt win. In my own encounters with dissenters, and theyre out there, theyre out there in great numbers, and we all wonder why there arent more ive seen a lot of empty seats. And ive seen a lot of blowback, a lot of criticism, you know the story, unpatriotic, you dont understand, geopolitical. Im curious to know how youve dealt with this and how much personally. Im thinking of you as that young, goodlooking cadet, and when you entered west point, how proud your parents must have been, how proud you were, and im sure proud today. What, over the years how did your brain evolve here . Where youve become one of the leading voices in dissent and honest analysis of americas Foreign Policy . I mean, lifes a journey. You know, we are born in a set of circu