Garance Franke-Ruta

There's some second-day chatter today about whether gender and sexual identity played a role in Christine Quinn's loss to Bill de Blasio in New York City's Democratic mayoral primary.

I've got to figure the answer is no. She lost both women and gay and lesbian voters, as well as nearly every other group but the very well-to-do in Manhattan, as befits a person seen as the heir apparent to billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Quinn, the City Council speaker, was a transactional candidate in a change election, lacked a memorable message, and had raised the ire of many New Yorkers with her stalling on a paid-sick-leave bill and her pivotal role in overturning the term limits that would have ended the Bloomberg era four years ago. Besides, New York Democratic primary voters previously elected a woman, Ruth Messinger, as their standard-bearer in 1997; she lost decisively to incumbent Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. It's hard to imagine a primary electorate progressive enough to elevate Messinger suddenly turning squishy on gender equality.

As I observed in July, when Anthony Weiner was the momentum candidate most closely competing with Quinn in the polls:

The mayoral race is of interest to the national press primarily as a referendum on the comeback chances of the former seven-term congressman from Queens. It is of interest because of his 2011 sexting scandal and resignation, the redemption narrative of a disgraced national figure seeking to return to national life by governing one of toughest cities there is to run.

But on the ground, that's not what the contest is about. It is about privatization. It is about the poor. Ending stop and frisk. Unemployment, especially among the city's substantial black and Hispanic population. It's about what de Blasio had called "a tale of two cities." It's about the fact that New York City, after nearly 10 years of Republican (and independent) rule, is ready for a Democrat. Hungry for a Democrat. The extra final term of the Bloomberg administration has made some in the wealthier precincts of the city wish he could be appointed mayor for life. But to many others in the other New York, it has felt like democracy has been on hold for the last four years, stopped up like a rusty municipal-housing pipe. Nearly three-quarters of New Yorkers regret allowing him that final term.

That dynamic carried through all the way to Election Day, with de Blasio racking up his solid lead only once Weiner's campaign imploded, and Quinn, as I wrote, "playing the role of Hillary Clinton -- the establishment frontrunner, female, more of an old-school transactional politician." Like Clinton, she was ultimately outshined and out-campaigned by someone rallying an Obama-style coalition of progressive whites and minorities.

The more interesting question to me than whether gender and sexual identity sunk Quinn in New York City is the extent to which the metropolis was an open forum for her ambition. There is only one female mayor leading one of the top 10 largest cities in America, Annelise Parker of Houston. And like Quinn, she's also an out lesbian.

So as far as I can tell, big cities are better for ambitious lesbian politicians than any other sort of municipality. Quinn was able to rise in New York because there was a big enough gay and lesbian community in downtown Manhattan that she could win election when it was still harder for out gay people to win elective office anywhere. She got her start in politics managing the 1991 City Council campaign of Thomas K. Duane, ultimately succeeding him in office when he moved on to the state senate, where he is the only openly gay member. So their district has now produced a dynamic duo of gay state and city leaders: Duane and Quinn, whose position as City Council speaker makes her the second most powerful elected official in city government, and the first woman in the post to boot.

There are a lot of cities where this wouldn't yet be possible, and where one could fairly ask if sexual identity and gender were hindrances. It speaks well of New York that it's not really one of them any more. But it's also unrealistic to think that with so few women gunning for the top city job every election cycle, the tiny handful who do run should have a better shot of winning than the dozens of men, every decade, who have to retire their dreams of calling Gracie Mansion home.

Bill de Blasio, the public advocate for New York City, is on the cusp of being its next Democratic nominee for mayor, and his critics can't decide if his message is going to plunge New York back into the 1970s and take it to "the brink of bankruptcy and rampant civic decay," as Republican mayoral nominee Joe Lhota warned, or usher in a new era of "class warfare," as Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently worried. The one thing people seem to agree on is that de Blasio's mantra about "a tale of two cities" is something they have heard before. Even impartial New York Times reporter Michael Barbaro called it "a tired-seeming message" before acknowledging that it surprisingly resonated with "people still hurting after a traumatic economic recession."

Which raises the question: Just how tired is it? I tweeted back and forth about it with Democracy: A Journal of Ideas founders Andrei Cherney and Kenneth Baer, both also former White House speechwriters. I'd been hearing resonances of John Edwards's 2003-2004 stump speech about the "two Americas" in de Blasio's lines, which made a lot of sense as de Blasio was in 2003 a top New York state strategist for the would-be presidential contender. Baer said it went back further than that, to Mario Cuomo's 1984 Democratic National Convention speech, which was an influence on Edwards, and Cherney countered with William Jennings Bryan's legendary "Cross of Gold" speech from 1896, as the progenitor of the populist strain in Democratic Party politics. And then there is of course the most obvious and direct reference point, from the title of Charles Dickens's 1859 A Tale of Two Cities, a novel about an actual war between the classes during the French Revolution.

The intellectual history of the language of class conflict is so broad a topic books can and have been written on it, but, in short-form, here's some of the background to those famous new old words of Bill de Blasio.

Bill de Blasio, on the stump in New York, August 20, 2013.

When I say all over the city we are living the tale of two cities, all you have to do is come right here and see that a family can be threatened by -- it could be mold, it could be vermin, it could be a door that doesn't lock -- and the City of New York through the Housing Authority can take a year or more to address it while meanwhile not far away in the city there are people living in multimillion dollar condos. If that's not a tale of two cities I don't know what is. And it's unacceptable. It's not how we should treat our citizens.

John Edwards, December 29, 2003.

Today, under George W. Bush, there are two Americas, not one: One America that does the work, another America that reaps the reward. One America that pays the taxes, another America that gets the tax breaks. One America that will do anything to leave its children a better life, another America that never has to do a thing because its children are already set for life. One America -- middle-class America -- whose needs Washington has long forgotten, another America -- narrow-interest America -- whose every wish is Washington's command. One America that is struggling to get by, another America that can buy anything it wants, even a Congress and a president ....

We cannot go on as two nations, one favored, the other forgotten. It is wrong to reward those who don't have to work at the expense of those who do. If we want America to be a growing, thriving democracy, with the greatest work ethic and the strongest middle class on earth, we must choose a different path.

Mario Cuomo, Democratic National Convention Keynote, July 16, 1984.

... the hard truth is that not everyone is sharing in this city's splendor and glory. A shining city is perhaps all the President sees from the portico of the White House and the veranda of his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well. But there's another city; there's another part to the shining city; the part where some people can't pay their mortgages, and most young people can't afford one; where students can't afford the education they need, and middle-class parents watch the dreams they hold for their children evaporate.

In this part of the city there are more poor than ever, more families in trouble, more and more people who need help but can't find it. Even worse: There are elderly people who tremble in the basements of the houses there. And there are people who sleep in the city streets, in the gutter, where the glitter doesn't show. There are ghettos where thousands of young people, without a job or an education, give their lives away to drug dealers every day. There is despair, Mr. President, in the faces that you don't see, in the places that you don't visit in your shining city.

In fact, Mr. President, this is a nation -- Mr. President you ought to know that this nation is more a "Tale of Two Cities" than it is just a "Shining City on a Hill."

William Jennings Bryan, "Cross of Gold" speech, 1896.

... My friends, the question we are to decide is: Upon which side will the Democratic party fight; upon the side of "the idle holders of idle capital" or upon the side of "the struggling masses"? That is the question which the party must answer first, and then it must be answered by each individual hereafter. The sympathies of the Democratic party, as shown by the platform, are on the side of the struggling masses who have ever been the foundation of the Democratic party.

There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.

Come to think of it, Bryan's description of what we today call trickle-down economics was pretty well-restated by Bloomberg, who told New York magazine, "The way to help those who are less fortunate is, number one, to attract more very fortunate people. They are the ones that pay the bills."

Republican Representative Steve Stockman of Texas on Tuesday offered to change his vote and support a resolution to use force against Syria if Barack Obama is willing to give back his Nobel Peace Prize. It's not the first time the president's Nobel has been mentioned by people mocking his push for military strikes against Bashar al-Assad's regime. The anti-war president, calling for force! What a gas ...

But the joke may be on those who think our anti-war president has never made the case for using American military power, or read his speech on what he saw as its appropriate uses, delivered before the Nobel audience in Oslo, Norway, in December 2009. Because despite being the recipient of the prize, Obama introduced himself there as a war president, not an anti-war one:

... perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the commander-in-chief of the military of a nation in the midst of two wars. One of these wars is winding down. The other is a conflict that America did not seek; one in which we are joined by 42 other countries -- including Norway -- in an effort to defend ourselves and all nations from further attacks.
 
Still, we are at war, and I'm responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land. Some will kill, and some will be killed. And so I come here with an acute sense of the costs of armed conflict -- filled with difficult questions about the relationship between war and peace, and our effort to replace one with the other.

He gave a brief outline of the development of international institutions that seek to humanize war and codify a global architecture to "restrict the most dangerous weapons":

... over time, as codes of law sought to control violence within groups, so did philosophers and clerics and statesmen seek to regulate the destructive power of war. The concept of a "just war" emerged, suggesting that war is justified only when certain conditions were met: if it is waged as a last resort or in self-defense; if the force used is proportional; and if, whenever possible, civilians are spared from violence ....

...with the advent of the nuclear age, it became clear to victor and vanquished alike that the world needed institutions to prevent another world war. And so, a quarter century after the United States Senate rejected the League of Nations -- an idea for which Woodrow Wilson received this prize -- America led the world in constructing an architecture to keep the peace: a Marshall Plan and a United Nations, mechanisms to govern the waging of war, treaties to protect human rights, prevent genocide, restrict the most dangerous weapons.

He recognized the emergence of a new type of warfare that's very much like the sort we now see in Syria -- "wars within nations" that trap "civilians in unending chaos" inside "failed states" or on account of "insurgencies":

And yet, a decade into a new century, this old architecture is buckling under the weight of new threats.  The world may no longer shudder at the prospect of war between two nuclear superpowers, but proliferation may increase the risk of catastrophe.  Terrorism has long been a tactic, but modern technology allows a few small men with outsized rage to murder innocents on a horrific scale.
 
Moreover, wars between nations have increasingly given way to wars within nations.  The resurgence of ethnic or sectarian conflicts; the growth of secessionist movements, insurgencies, and failed states -- all these things have increasingly trapped civilians in unending chaos.  In today's wars, many more civilians are killed than soldiers; the seeds of future conflict are sown, economies are wrecked, civil societies torn asunder, refugees amassed, children scarred.

He stood up for the use of force:

We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations -- acting individually or in concert -- will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified....

To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism -- it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

And not just any force -- American force:

I raise this point, I begin with this point because in many countries there is a deep ambivalence about military action today, no matter what the cause.  And at times, this is joined by a reflexive suspicion of America, the world's sole military superpower.
 
But the world must remember that it was not simply international institutions -- not just treaties and declarations -- that brought stability to a post-World War II world.  Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this:  The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. 

He also raised a connection that's worth thinking about as we consider why he has been so ready to risk everything on a measure that the public and members of Congress oppose, in the service of upholding an international norm. The first Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Henry Dunant, the man who helped set in motion the process that led to the global norm against chemical weapons use in 1925.

Even as we make difficult decisions about going to war, we must also think clearly about how we fight it. The Nobel Committee recognized this truth in awarding its first prize for peace to Henry Dunant -- the founder of the Red Cross, and a driving force behind the Geneva Conventions.
 
Where force is necessary, we have a moral and strategic interest in binding ourselves to certain rules of conduct. And even as we confront a vicious adversary that abides by no rules, I believe the United States of America must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war. 

And Obama called for pressure to be brought to bear on those who violate the laws of war, in words that have a familiar ring to them from the last week -- "the words of the international community must mean something":

... in dealing with those nations that break rules and laws, I believe that we must develop alternatives to violence that are tough enough to actually change behavior -- for if we want a lasting peace, then the words of the international community must mean something. Those regimes that break the rules must be held accountable. Sanctions must exact a real price.  Intransigence must be met with increased pressure -- and such pressure exists only when the world stands together as one.

The whole speech is worth a read again, all these years later.

Either U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power and National Security Adviser Susan Rice have been working from a script or the two foreign-policy pros, both mothers, share a remarkable affinity for making similar points in the same way. There's a clear similarity between their vivid descriptions of gassed Syrian children during recent speeches making the administration's case for congressional authorization to use force against the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

As the administration finds that its other messages are, to be kind, not breaking through, its top female national security officials have been making the case that it's about the kids. They know that it is impossible to look at the pictures of fat babies and adorable toddlers wrapped for burial in late August and not be horrified -- not if you have an ounce of humanity. But the question has never been that there was an atrocity committed; the debate has been what to do in response to it. Rice, who spoke on Monday at the New American Foundation in Washington, made an even more impassioned call to consider the children of Syria than Power, who delivered remarks Friday at the Center for American Progress. Their three big points about the little ones:

Gassing children is especially heinous. "They unleased hellish chaos and terror on a massive scale. Innocent civilians were jolted awake, choking on poison. Some never woke up at all. In the end, more than 1,400 were dead, more than 400 of them children," Rice said. "Standing up to the Syrian regime's barbaric use of chemical weapons will affirm the most basic of principles, that nations cannot unleash the world's most horrific weapons against innocent civilians, especially children."

Noted Power: "These weapons kill in the most gruesome possible way. They kill indiscriminately. They are incapable of distinguishing between a child and a rebel. And they have the potential to kill massively."

The parental agony is unimaginable. "In recent days we've been shocked by the videos from Ghouta and other neighborhoods near Damascus. As a parent, I cannot look at those pictures, those little children laying on the ground, their eyes glassy, their bodies twitching, and not think of my own two kids. I can only imagine the agony of those parents in Damascus," said Rice.

Agony was also on Power's mind: "What comes to mind for me is one father in al-Guta saying goodbye to his two young daughters. His girls had not yet been shrouded. They were still dressed in the pink shorts and leggings of little girls. The father lifted their lifeless bodies, cradled them and cried out: Wake up! What would I do without you? How do I stand this pain?" she said. "As a parent, I cannot begin to answer his questions. I cannot begin to imagine what it would be like to feel such searing agony."

Children were killed in their beds. "If we begin to erode the moral outrage of gassing children in their bed, we open ourselves up to even more fearsome consequences," said Rice.

Said Power: "We share the deep conviction that chemical weapons are barbaric, that we should never again see children killed in their beds, lost to a world that they never had the chance to try to change."

Rice extended the discussion of children during a section at the end of her speech:

I've been to more than my share of war zones. Each is horrible and uniquely tragic. But this most recent atrocity is particularly gut-wrenching. And unlike those tragedies of earlier decades, we have the technology on our computers and our smartphones to see the full force unfold in real time.

Children lined up in shrouds, their voices forever silenced; devastated mothers and fathers kissing their children goodbye, some pulling the white sheet up tight around their beautiful faces as if tucking them in for the last time. There are no words of condemnation strong enough to capture such infinite cruelty, but where words may fail us action must not.

Every adult American, every member of Congress should watch those videos for themselves, see that suffering, look at the eyes of those men and women, those babies, and dare to turn away and forsake them.

In short: Do it for the dead children of Syria.

The more the Obama Administration makes its case for the use of military force against Syria to enforce the international norm against using chemical weapons, the more Republicans hate the idea. Republican opposition to intervening in Syria has jumped from 40 percent to 70 percent over just the past week, according to Pew Research data presented today, while Democratic opposition only inched up from 48 to 53 percent. And despite being a "conscience vote," it seems likely that when all is said and done party affiliation will come into play as members of Congress consider the president's proposed course of action and decide how to cast their votes.

Case in point: A small handful of the avowed GOP opponents of the Senate authorization for use of force have a history of being outspoken critics of the president for not being more aggressive on the Syria question. These are their stories. (Emphasis added throughout in italics.)

Hawk: Ted Cruz of Texas

War cry: "U.S. foreign policy should be directed at one central purpose: protecting the vital national security interests of the United States. Arming potential al-Qaida rebels is not furthering those interests, but there is something that is: preventing Syria's large stockpile of chemical weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists. ... Right now we need to develop a clear, practical plan to go in, locate the weapons, secure or destroy them, and then get out. We might work in concert with our allies, but this needs to be an operation driven by the mission, not by a coalition. The United States should be firmly in the lead to make sure the job is done right, but our British allies, for example, are actively bolstering the units that could be used for chemical weapons removal. President Obama needs to assure us that the dangerous, arbitrary cuts to our defense budget caused by sequester have not eroded our ability to execute this vital mission." -- Congressional Record, June 20.

Walk-back: "I think a military attack is a mistake .... They're beginning from the wrong objective because this attack is not based on defending U.S. national security. It is not based on defending Americans or our allies, rather it is -- it is explicitly framed by President Obama, by Secretary Kerry as a defense of what they call international norms. And I don't think that's the job of our military, to be defending amorphous international norms." -- ABC News' This Week, September 8

Flip-flop type: Half-twist. Cruz has been opposed to arming the rebels in Syria, whose al-Qaeda ties he said made planned U.S. support for them "a recipe for disaster." "Don't give weapons to people who hate us," he said in June, so even given his flip-flop on using the military to prevent chemical weapons from falling into the wrong hands, one imagines an AUMF that includes greater support for the rebels, as the Senate version does in its non-binding amendments, is something he'd oppose.

Hawk: Marco Rubio of Florida

War cry: "According to administration reports and the assessments of some of our closest allies, chemical weapons have been introduced into the Syrian conflict. It's clear the 'red line' drawn by President Obama has now been crossed. The time for passive engagement in this conflict must come to an end .... We must not allow Assad to continue violating all international norms by using these vile weapons and allowing Syria to descend further into chaos and instability. This will have disastrous consequences for U.S. interests for decades to come." -- Official statement, April 25.

Walk-back: "[T]hose who argue that what happens in Syria is none of our business are wrong. And that is why I have, for over two years, urged the president to pursue a more robust engagement in the hopes of helping the Syrian people replace Assad with a stable, secular and moderate government. However, while I have long argued forcefully for engagement in empowering the Syrian people, I have never supported the use of U.S. military force in the conflict. And I still don’t. I remain unconvinced that the use of force proposed here will work. The only thing that will prevent Assad from using chemical weapons in the future is for the Syrian people to remove him from power. The strike the administration wants us to approve I do not believe furthers that goal." -- U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Sept. 4

Flip-flop Type: Backwards half-twist. Unlike Cruz, Rubio wants the U.S. to help the rebels take out Assad. So he's arguing that he opposes the AUMF because it does not go far enough, and at the same time that he's opposed to using the U.S. military directly to overthrow him. Obama's "red line" comment in August 2012 did not include a specific action plan. "We cannot have a situation where chemical or biological weapons are falling into the hands of the wrong people," Obama said at the time. "We have been very clear to the Assad regime -- but also to other players on the ground -- that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus; that would change my equation." Rubio says the Assad regime crossed that line in April. Whatever it meant.

Hawk: James Inhofe of Oklahoma

War cry: "Bashar al-Assad's use of chemical weapons against his fellow Syrians has clearly crossed President Obama's self-imposed 'red line' and marks a significant turning point in a tragic chapter in the region's history. Without American leadership, the situation will continue its downward spiral....

"It's more important now than ever that President Obama step up and exhibit the leadership required of the commander in chief .... Continued inaction by the president, after establishing a clear red line, will embolden Assad and his benefactors in Tehran to continue their brutal assault against the Syrian people." --USA Today op-ed, "Obama can't wish away Syrian crisis," May 9.

Walk-back: "I don't consider [Obama's] current calls a fulfillment to my request then, nor my requests of today. In the time that has passed since I called for this strategy, more than 30,000 additional Syrians, including young children, have been murdered by Assad .... Part of a long-term strategy would include reversing course of the president's past 4 1/2 years of budget cuts." -- Newsmax, September 5

Flip-flop type: Full twist. Inhofe says now that his September 5 call for Obama to “follow through on what we say and ensure the security of our allies and partners" was not about Syria but about reversing the sequester and other cuts in the military. Inhofe wrote in May that Obama's red line had been crossed, but now argues America can't do anything about it: "The state of our military today cannot afford another war .... Now the President is proposing another contingency operation without even a hint of reversing course on his irresponsible defense cuts that will continue over the next nine years. He cannot have it both ways – gutting our military and still expecting it to protect our national security. "

Less than two months after being sworn in as the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power stood before a crowd of Washington reporters and members of the international press to deliver a sharp rebuke of the goings-on at the international body that is her new professional home.

A liberal interventionist whose human rights advocacy helped shape the views of a generation of thinkers, she laid out in fresh detail conflicts within the UN Security Council that have derailed U.S. attempts to use the UN to put pressure on Syria over what she called "the uniquely monstrous crime that has brought us to this crossroads."

Power's training as journalist and story teller -- she won the Pulitzer for her 2003 book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, about U.S. inaction in the face of the massacres in Rwanda -- was evident in her speech at the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank and advocacy organization that has close ties to the Obama administration. She used color and detail to make her case for why all other options had been exhausted and a military strike was the only remaining option, bringing in the human interest story of a "father in al-Guta saying goodbye to his two young daughters."

It felt a little emotionally manipulative. Because ultimately, she was not there to make the case for a humanitarian intervention on behalf of the people of Syria, but to deliver the administration's case for upholding the international norm against chemical weapons by conducting a punitive bombing campaign against targets held by Bashar al-Assad.

And in that effort, the U.S. has found itself blocked over and over at the UN by Russia, and also China. Below is the section of her speech about the UN:

Russia, often backed by China, has blocked every relevant action in the Security Council -- even mild condemnations of the use of chemical weapons that did not ascribe blame to any particular party. In Assad's cost-benefit calculus, he must have weighed the military benefits of using this hideous weapon against the recognition that he could get away with it because Russia would have Syria's back in the Security Council. ....

At this stage, the diplomatic process is stalled because one side has just been gassed on a massive scale and the other side so far feels it has gotten away with it. What would words in the form of belated diplomatic condemnation achieve? What could the international Criminal Court really do, even if Russia or China were to allow a referral? Would a drawn-out legal process really affect the immediate calculus of Assad and those who ordered chemical weapons attacks? We could try again to pursue economic sanctions, but even if Russia budged, would more asset freezes, travel bans and banking restrictions convince Assad not to use chemical weapons again when he has a pipeline to the resources of Hezbollah and Iran? Does anybody really believe that deploying the same approaches we have tried for the last year will suddenly be effective?

Of course, this isn't the only legitimate question being raised. People are asking, shouldn't the United States work through the Security Council on an issue that so clearly implicates international peace and security? The answer is, of course, yes, we could if we would -- if we could, we would, if we could, but we can't. Every day for the two-and-a-half years of the Syrian conflict, we have shown how seriously we take the UN Security Council and our obligations to enforce international peace and security.

Since 2011 Russia and China have vetoed three separate Security Council resolutions condemning the Syrian regime's violence or promoting a political solution to the conflict. This year alone Russia has blocked at least three statements expressing humanitarian concern and calling for humanitarian access to besieged cities in Syria. And in the past two months Russia has blocked two resolutions condemning the generic use of chemical weapons and two press statements expressing concern about their use.

We believe that more than 1,400 people were killed in Damascus on August 21, and the Security Council could not even agree to put out a press statement expressing its disapproval.

The international system that was founded in 1945, a system we designed specifically to respond to the kinds of horrors we saw play out in World War II, has not lived up to its promise or its responsibilities in the case of Syria. And it is naive to think that Russia is on the verge of changing its position and allowing the UN Security Council to assume its rightful role as the enforcer of international peace and security. In short, the Security Council the world needs to deal with this urgent crisis is not the Security Council we have.

Congress, this call is on you.

President Obama does not intend to act in defiance of Congress if it votes down a resolution authorizing the use of force in Syria, White House Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken told Steve Inskeep on NPR's Morning Edition Friday.

"Has the president decided what he will do if Congress votes no on using force?" Inskeep asked during the short segment.

"You know Steve, when, after the events of August 21, we reached out to Congress and we had conversations with members of Congress across the country," Blinken replied. "And the one thing we heard from nearly all of them is that they wanted their voice heard and their vote, and their votes counted."

"The president of course has the authority to act, but it's neither his desire nor his intention to do, to use that authority absent Congress backing," Blinken said.

It was the second such signal-sending move of the day, following on the heels of Peter Baker's report in the New York Times:

Although Mr. Obama has asserted that he has the authority to order the strike on Syria even if Congress says no, White House aides consider that almost unthinkable. As a practical matter, it would leave him more isolated than ever and seemingly in defiance of the public’s will at home. As a political matter, it would almost surely set off an effort in the House to impeach him, which even if it went nowhere could be distracting and draining.

Another way to look at this: If Obama were comfortable acting alone -- that is to say, without the support of Congress, the United Nations, NATO, the Arab League, or any major allies save France -- to order a strike on Syria, he had the opportunity to do so without going to Congress and requesting that each of its members rouse their electorates and invest political capital in considering and voting on the question for themselves.

Instead, he surprised his aides and decided to put one of the most difficult foreign-policy questions of his presidency before a body he's spent the past two-and a half years detouring around by using executive orders and administrative discretion whenever he could, on hot-button topics from immigration to the implementation of the health-care law.

"I did not put this before Congress, you know, just as a political ploy or as symbolism," Obama said during a news conference at the G20 Summit in Russia Friday morning. "I put it before Congress because I could not honestly claim that the threat posed by Assad's use of chemical weapons on innocent civilians and women and children posed an imminent, direct threat to the United States.

"In that situation, obviously, I don't worry about Congress; we do what we have to do to keep the American people safe. I could not say that it was immediately directly going to have an impact on our allies. Again, in those situations, I would act right away. This wasn't even a situation like Libya, where, you know, you've got troops rolling towards Benghazi and you have a concern about time, in terms of saving somebody right away."

But the president declined to say what he'd do if Congress votes down the resolution.

"I think it would be a mistake for me to jump the gun and speculate, because right now I'm working to get as much support as possible out of Congress," Obama said.

"I was under no illusions when I -- when I embarked on this path. But I think it's the right thing to do. I think it's good for our democracy. We will be more effective if we are unified going forward," he said.

"I put this before Congress for a reason," Obama repeated, after ABC News's Jonathan Karl tried to goad him into a fresh response to the earlier question about what he's do if Congress votes the use-of-force resolution down. "I think we will be more effective and stronger if, in fact, Congress authorizes this action. I'm not going to engage in parlor games now, Jonathan, about whether or not it's going to pass, when I'm talking substantively to Congress about why this is important and talking to American people about why this is important.

"Now, with respect to Congress and how they should respond to constituency concerns, you know, I do consider it part of my job to help make the case and to explain to the American people exactly why I think this is the right thing to do.
And it's conceivable that at the end of the day, I don't persuade a majority of the American people that it's the right thing to do," the president continued. "And then each member of Congress is gonna have to decide, if I think it's the right thing to do for America's national security and the world's national security, then how do I vote?

"And you know what? That's -- that's what you're supposed to do as a member of Congress. Ultimately, you listen to your constituents, but you've also got to make some decisions about what you believe is right for America."

In short: Congress, this one is on you.

In January, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul made his first visit to the state of Israel, where he attended his first Shabbat dinner, saw the Sea of Galilee and visited the Western Wall.

The trip, according to a National Review piece, "was one turning point in the transformation of Rand Paul from libertarian gadfly to viable presidential candidate," an effort undertaken by "a group of Evangelicals and Jews determined to help get Paul right with Israel."

They may have to try again: Any good will he may have built up with that trip seems poised to vanish as Paul now finds himself on the opposite side of major Jewish groups, pro-Israel lobbyists, and the expressed opinion of the government of Israel when it comes to supporting a U.S. strike on Syria.

Already by June, Paul was being condemned in Haaretz as "The single greatest danger to Israel’s standing in the U.S." for his desire to end all foreign aid, including aid to Israel. In July, he riled feathers at Jewish and conservative pro-Israel groups when he temporarily defended his neo-Confederate aide and book co-author Jack Hunter.

Now, between toying with the idea of filibustering the Senate vote authorizing use force in Syria (a position he's subsequently walked back), his contention that there's little difference between deaths from chemical weapons or bullets, and his invocation, during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing Tuesday, of concern for Israel as his reason to vote against a U.S. intervention that Israel backs, Paul seems certain to once again cement his place as someone standing way outside the mainstream of pro-Israel thinking on the right.

"Is it more or less likely that Israel will be attacked? I think there are valid arguments for saying the region will be more unstable if we get a superpower involved in a civil war, more unstable for Israel if we get a superpower involved and the Syrians feel like they have to show Israel something, or Iran gets involved," Paul told reporters after the Senate hearing. He elaborated on his opposition in a Time magazine piece Thursday.

And while the continuum of pro-Israel thinking in the U.S. encompasses a diverse array of opinions, it is the thinking on the right side of the political spectrum that will matter for the junior Paul when it comes to making a 2016 potential presidential bid. "Rand Paul is a guy who wouldn't support U.S. military action to stop Iran from getting a nuke, or to defend our ally Israel if Iran were to attack them, so it's no surprise he won't support military action to stop Assad from using WMD, either, let alone to ensure American leadership or credibility in the world," said one official with a pro-Israel organization.

* * *

Conservative Jewish and Pro-Israel groups have shown remarkable unanimity on the subject of a strike. The Republican Jewish Coalition issued an action alert this week in support of the use of force resolution. So has AIPAC, the main pro-Israel lobbying group in the United States. "AIPAC urges Congress to grant the President the authority he has requested to protect America’s national security interests and dissuade the Syrian regime's further use of unconventional weapons," the group said in a statement issued Tuesday afternoon.  "Simply put, barbarism on a mass scale must not be given a free pass .... That is why America must act."

The lobbying group also issued an action alert, urging supporters to write letters to members of the House and Senate calling on them to "grant the President the authority he has requested to protect America’s national security interests and dissuade Damascus from further chemical weapons use." And it is preparing to launch an unusual effort to lobby members of Congress on behalf of the Syria resolution -- something it did not do for either the war in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Israeli leaders had "remained completely quiet on how they thought the US or the west should respond," The Jerusalem Post reported earlier this week. But that changed late Tuesday, when Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren posted on Facebook: "Israel agrees with President Obama that the use of chemical weapons is a 'heinous act' for which the Assad regime must be held accountable and for which there must be 'international consequences.'"

Other major Jewish groups also weighed in. “Those who perpetuate such acts of wanton murder must know that they cannot do so with impunity,” the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, which represents 52 national Jewish agencies, said in a statement backing the use of force. "We welcome President Obama’s demonstration of U.S. leadership in responding to the use of chemical weapons in Syria," said Barry Curtiss-Lusher and Abraham H. Foxman, national chair and director, respectively, of the Anti-Defamation League in a statement. "We support the president’s decision."

On Wednesday the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, an umbrella group for 14 national and 125 local Jewish groups, also endorsed the use-of-force resolution. So did the progressive Jewish Daily Forward, based in New York.

"We believe it is important for American Jews to state out loud what Israelis are understandably constrained from saying: Congress should work with President Obama to craft a measured but powerful military response to the Assad government’s use of chemical weapons against its own people, and to ensure as best as it can that even the worst consequences of such an attack are anticipated and, if possible, ameliorated," Jane Eisner, the editor-in-chief of the Forward, wrote Wednesday in a strongly worded editorial calling for U.S. intervention.

Even J Street, the progressive alternative to AIPAC, has been more forceful than Paul on the Syria question. "J Street is outraged by, and condemns in the strongest terms, the Assad regime's use of chemical weapons against the people of Syria," the group said, quoting Kerry's statement of last week that "the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians ... by chemical weapons is a moral obscenity."

"The United States and the international community must hold President Assad and all responsible for this heinous crime fully accountable," the group said, though it stopped short of calling outright for a military intervention.

* * *

 

"While we welcome Senator Paul's concern for Israel's security, we are inclined to trust the assessment of the Israeli prime minister over his," said Noah Pollak, executive director of the Emergency Committee for Israel and a frequent hawkish critic of Obama's conduct of U.S. foreign policy.

And there's the rub for Paul. While his isolationism may, indeed, rally Tea Party types and Republicans weary of war to his side, it will not come without a cost. That cost is how he's viewed by another community he's sought to build ties with in advance of a presidential bid.

The missive arrived under the name of Andy Surabian, political director of the Tea Party Express, the most electorally powerful of the various national Tea Party groups. The subject line: "URGENT: Don't let Syria distract you."

Of course I had to click through.

"Fellow Tea Party Activist," the letter began. When did I sign up for this list again? I asked myself, recalling earlier in the day my surprise at discovering I still follow Herman Cain on Twitter.

While the Obama administration is busing [sic] fumbling the international crisis in Syria, they are hoping that this will distract the American people from the fight that we are waging back home: the battle to defund Obamacare.

So much is packed into that one sentence. Isn't Congress, which will decide what to do in Syria, back home now, too, for recess? But I understood what they were driving at, even as the email raised other questions, such as: This is really the argument they want to make right now?

President Obama would love nothing more than for us to lose focus and turn our attention to the tumultuous Middle East while he walks us off the government-run healthcare cliff.

I am going to have to ask the White House about this, clearly.

We can't be distracted and need your immediate support so we can continue to work tirelessly to rid America of this horrendous law.

Ah, a fundraising appeal. Of course.

It can be hard for organizations to turn on a dime and tie their messaging to current events. Just ask whoever is behind Kenneth Cole's Twitter account. But sometimes mixing messages can, well, just send a mixed-up message.

That said, maybe it's just hard to compete with the Obama campaign's record-breaking header "Hey."

By now we've all heard the number: 100,000 dead since the Syrian civil war erupted in March 2011. But who are they? And who killed them? And is that number even right?

In late July, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon estimated that the death toll in the conflict had reached 100,000. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is sympathetic to the opposition and publishes a daily body count from the fighting in Syria, puts the present number higher.

Reported Agence France-Presse on Sept. 1:

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the toll since the beginning of the 29-month uprising now stands at 110,371 people, with at least 40,146 civilians killed including nearly 4,000 women and more than 5,800 children.

The group, which relies on a network of activists, doctors and lawyers on the ground throughout Syria, said 21,850 rebel fighters had also been killed.

On the regime side, the group reported the deaths of at least 27,654 army soldiers, 17,824 pro-regime militia and 171 members of the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, which has sent fighters to battle alongside the Syrian army.

The group counted another 2,726 unidentified people killed in the fighting throughout the war-torn country up until August 31.

There's some controversy over the way the group counts civilians; their number  probably includes some fraction of civilians who had taken up arms, which is to say, irregular rebel fighters, as well as a mix of pro- and anti-regime civilians. Pro-Assad fighting forces sustained 41 percent of total deaths since the conflict began, according to the Observatory numbers.

A June report in McClatchy provided some context:

There are no official counts of deaths in Syria, and the Observatory’s new statistics are likely to be sharply disputed. Another group, the Syrian Network for Human Rights, which makes no effort to tally government casualties, released a report last Wednesday that claimed that it had documented 83,598 deaths, of which 75,992 were civilians and 7,606 were rebel fighters.

The Observatory, however, is considered the most authoritative source for reports on the daily violence in Syria, and it’s the only group that routinely attempts to categorize deaths according to whether the victims were civilians, rebels or government fighters.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights, also based in London and sympathetic to the opposition, now issues a monthly report on deaths, though the last one posted on its website appears to be from June. Its last comprehensive report, "83598 people have been killed since Syria's uprising against Bashar al-Assad : including 74993 civilians , 8393 of them are children , 7686 women and 2441 tortured to death," was published in May.

John Kerry is no longer a member of the U.S. Senate.

It's a fact he and some of his former colleagues struggled to recall at moments during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing Tuesday on "The Authorization of Use of Force in Syria." Kerry and John McCain bantered like old friends, Kerry stood up for his successor's right to display a nameplate, and Barbara Boxer addressed her former colleague as "John," before quickly correcting herself to "Mr. Secretary."

Kerry, too, at one point seemed to lose sight of the fact he was there as an administration spokesperson seeking to reassure and convince a skeptical public, as well as his former colleagues, and not to think out loud as the discussant he had been for so many years when he served as chairman of the committee. The topic: the critical question of whether the Obama Administration plans for there to be American troops on Syrian soil.

In the House, Democrats Chris Van Hollen and Gerry Connolly have been drafting a reworked version of the proposed White House authorization for use of force. The representatives' version, according to the Washington Post, includes "a legally binding stipulation that no ground troops would be deployed."

"Mr. Secretary, we received from the administration a proposed resolution for the authorization of force, and of course that is a negotiation between the Congress and the administration," current Chairman Robert Menendez of New Jersey asked. "Would you tell us whether you believe that a prohibition for having American boots on the ground -- is that something that the administration would accept as part of a resolution?"

"Mr. Chairman, it would be preferable not to, not because there is any intention or any plan or any desire whatsoever to have boots on the ground," Kerry replied. "And I think the president will give you every assurance in the world, as am I, as has the secretary of defense and the chairman.

"But in the event Syria imploded, for instance, or in the event there was a threat of a chemical weapons cache falling into the hands of al-Nusra or someone else and it was clearly in the interest of our allies and all of us, the British, the French and others, to prevent those weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of the worst elements, I don't want to take off the table an option that might or might not be available to a president of the United States to secure our country."

Menendez interrupted. "If we said that there'd be no troops on the ground for combat purposes, that clearly would, I assume ...."

"Well, assuming that, in the going to protect those weapons -- whether or not they had to, you know, answer a shot in order to be secure, I don't want to speak to that. The bottom line is this -- can I give you the bottom line?" Kerry replied.

Menendez said something inaudible, but everyone was eager for the bottom line.

"I'm absolutely confident, Mr. Chairman, that it is easy -- not that complicated -- to work out language that will satisfy the Congress and the American people that there's no door open here through which someone can march in ways that the Congress doesn't want it to, while still protecting the national-security interests of the country," Kerry unspooled his answer. "I'm confident that can be worked out. The bottom line is, the president has no intention and will not, and we do not want to, put American troops on the ground to fight this -- or be involved in the fighting of this civil war, period."

Senator Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican, was less than satisfied with this answer. "I will say that -- in response to your answer to Senator Menendez, I didn't find that a very appropriate response regarding boots on the ground," he said later in the hearing. "And I do hope as we move through this, the administration can be very clear in that regard."

Kerry walked his earlier comment back: "Well, let me be very clear now because I don't want anything coming out of this hearing that leaves any door open to any possibility. So let's shut that door now as tight as we can. All I did was raise a hypothetical question about some possibility -- and I'm thinking out loud -- about how to protect America's interests.

"But if you want to know whether there's any -- you know, the answer is, whatever prohibition clarifies it to Congress and the American people, there will not be American boots on the ground with respect to the civil war."

It was that kind of a day, a picture captured by McClatchy made clear:

After this MCT photo was taken, Assad burst into flames. pic.twitter.com/m0HQnAJjgX

— Andrew Kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) September 3, 2013

When the Congress of the United States of America authorizes a military intervention, the result is usually a war. American presidents, even after the passage of the 1973 War Powers Resolution, generally have not sought congressional approval in advance of brief interventions and targeted military strikes. That makes Obama's request for Congress to authorize the use of force in a limited strike against Syria unusual.

But I wonder if there's not also a logic of escalation that comes into play now that Obama has requested Congressional authorization, creating a very real possibility that the result of a formal authorization for use of force will be a more aggressive or protracted intervention than what we'd have seen had the president not sought Congress's buy-in. If Obama had acted alone to order a bombing campaign over Labor Day weekend, that would likely have been the end of it. Outraged liberals and furious isolationist Republicans would have united in criticism of his use of presidential power, rallying forcefully against further intervention in a conflict the vast majority of Americans don't want the U.S. to enter.

Now, however, we are seeing pressure from Republican hawks for the administration to go beyond Obama's rather clinical rationale for intervention -- upholding the international norm against chemical-weapons use that the major norm-setting international institutions, such as the U.N., scarcely seem devoted to any more. Senators like John McCain and Lindsey Graham want the outcome of the congressional process to be a strategic plan for resolving the conflict in Syria and removing Bashar al-Assad from power.

“We cannot in good conscience support isolated military strikes in Syria that are not part of an overall strategy that can change the momentum on the battlefield, achieve the president’s stated goal of Assad’s removal from power, and bring an end to this conflict, which is a growing threat to our national security interests,” McCain and Graham said in a statement Saturday.

The same message is coming from a chorus of hawks in the press, who are arguing that an intervention that sends a message on chemical weapons but fails to change the balance of power in the underlying conflict is inadequate. "Congress should not support any resolution that does not, in addition to targeting chemical weapons, also aim to turn the tide against Assad and pressure him to seek a negotiated settlement," National Review's Mario Loyola argued, in one of many examples of people calling for a broader approach. Nor is it just hawks -- an intervention without “an objectives-based strategy” defies logic, according to Frederic Hof, the former Obama State Department point man on Syria. One writer has even accused Obama of flirting with "appeasement" in Syria.

Obama on Tuesday reiterated before a White House meeting with congressional leaders that any intervention would be limited. "This is not Iraq, this is not Afghanistan," he said. "This is a limited, proportional step that will send a message not only to the Assad regime, but to other countries that may be interested in testing these international norms, that there are consequences."

But now the president, too, is talking about long-term strategy. The planned intervention "fits into a broader strategy that we have to make sure that we can bring about over time the kind of strengthening of the opposition and the diplomatic and economic and political pressure required so that ultimately we have a transition that can bring peace and stability not only to Syria but to the region," Obama said Tuesday.

And he has expanded the timeframe for action: "not just now but also in the future as long as the authorization allows us to do that." It has not escaped notice that the use of force authorization the White House sent Congress would seem to have been written for a longer and broader campaign than the one publicly proposed by the administration last week. It's so broadly worded, in fact, that Democrats in the Senate have expressed concern and are working to pare it down.

“I know it will be amended in the Senate,” Sen. Patrick Leahy said, calling it "too open-ended." Rep. Chris Van Hollen said the amendment would benefit from an express prohibition on ground troops -- use of which Obama has also repeatedly ruled out -- and perhaps also an expiration date. But unless the expiration date is less than a week from the measure's passage, even that option would be likely to authorize a more prolonged effort than the president initially proposed. Four Republican senators have indicated support for the existing proposal, including McCain and Graham.

On Monday, McCain confirmed after meeting with Obama that the administration has made a shift to a broader argument based on longer-term strategic goals, at least in private. "We believe there is in formulation a strategy to upgrade the capabilities of the Free Syrian Army and to degrade the capabilities of Bashar Assad. Before this meeting, we had not had that indication," he said.

Now, if Obama gets congressional approval, he'll be getting it in what is likely to remain a fairly open-ended way, as part of a strategy with bigger aims, and owe his legislative success in part to the support of the most hawkish members of Congress. Is there any doubt they will continue to pressure him to act under the authorization they will have granted him, and that his White House requested? And that the forces gunning for intervention, once mobilized, will have a momentum of their own?

As we head into a period of vigorous congressional debate over whether to authorize the use of force against Syria, it's instructive to look back at America's history of congressional war declarations.  The Congressional Research Service put together a great mini-history in 2011, "Declarations of War and Authorizations for the Use of Military Force: Historical Background and Legal Implications," by Jennifer Elsea and Richard Grimmett, which is worth a read at this juncture.

The obvious take-home is that America has done a better job of winning its declared wars in the last century than achieving clear-cut victories in ventures authorized under legislative measures that fell short of a formal declaration of war.

The United States Congress has not formally declared war since World War II. All of our wars in the Middle East have been authorized using other means, which rather goes to the heart of the nature of those different conflicts. U.S. entry into World War I and World War II took place through joint congressional resolutions stating "a state of war exists between the Government of Country X and the Government and People of the United States," where country X was, variously, Germany, Japan, Italy, and so on.

It would be impossible to write such a sentence about Syria today. In what meaningful way does a state of war exist between the United States and Syria? None. That's why Congress, if it approves anything, will approve an authorization for the use of force. And if history is any guide, that's going to be a rather open-ended commitment, as fuzzy on the back-end as on the front.

Here are the 11 formal declarations of war:

And here are the 11 conflicts governed by congressional legislation authorizing force but not declaring war, per the CRS report.

• May 28, 1798 and July 9, 1798. FRANCE. Legislation  authorizing the president to instruct commanders of U.S. Navy warships to “subdue, seize and take any armed French vessel which shall be found within the jurisdictional limits of the United States, or elsewhere, on the high seas...”
• February 6, 1802. TRIPOLI. Legislation authorizing the president to “equip, officer, man, and employ such of the armed vessels of the United States as may be judged requisite...for protecting effectually the commerce and seamen thereof on the Atlantic ocean, the Mediterranean and adjoining seas" in response to threats from Tripoli.
• March 3, 1815. ALGERIA. Legislation authorizing the president to use the U.S. Navy, “as judged requisite by the President” to protect the “commerce and seamen” of the United States on the “Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean and adjoining seas” in response to conflict with the Dey and Regency of Algiers.
• March 3, 1819. PIRATES. Legislation enacted “to protect the commerce of the United States, and punish the crime of piracy.”
• January 29, 1955. FORMOSA. Legislation authorizing the president to “employ the Armed Forces of the United States as he deems necessary for the specific purpose of securing and protecting Formosa, and the Pescadores against armed attack....”
• March 9, 1957. THE MIDDLE EAST. “To undertake, in the general area of the Middle East, military assistance programs with any nation or group of nations of that area desiring such assistance.”
• August 10, 1964. SOUTHEAST ASIA. Gulf of Tonkin resolution.
• October 12, 1983. LEBANON. "The Multinational Force in Lebanon Resolution."
• January 12, 1991. IRAQ. Congress passed the “Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution.”
• September 18, 2001. TERRORISTS. A joint resolution to authorize "the president to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons."
• October 16, 2002. IRAQ. "Authorization for Use of Military Force against Iraq Resolution."

Update: "Where is Korea?" the commenters, below, cry. That is a good and tricky question. The Korean War was not authorized by Congress. President Truman committed American troops in Korea in 1950 under the United Nations Participation Act of 1945, which was ratified by the U.S. Senate, citing resolutions passed by the United Nations Security Council in 1950. This precedent -- the constitutionality of which has been debated -- has been cited by subsequent presidents as justification for using military force without congressional authorization, as in Panama in 1989 and Iraq in 1990 under George H.W. Bush, and Haiti and Bosnia under President Clinton in 1994. According to a 1995 article in the American Journal of International Law, "Presidents and their advisers point to more than two hundred incidents in which Presidents have used force abroad without first obtaining congressional approval."

The Law Library of Congress, part of the Library of Congress, has a solid fact sheet on the War Powers Resolution of 1973 and some of the military actions that have led to reports to Congress under it, even if there was not advance authorization. One key point from it to keep in mind: "U.S. Presidents have consistently taken the position that the War Powers Resolution is an unconstitutional infringement upon the power of the executive branch."

Parents are not their children. Parents are not their children. Today is one of those days when you have to just keep saying that to yourself, as the views of two prominent political fathers threatened to eclipse those of their offspring.

First, Wyoming U.S. Senate hopeful Liz Cheney came out against same-sex marriage, putting her at odds with her father, former vice president Dick Cheney, who supports a state-based approach to making it legal. (And also putting her at odds with her sister, who married a woman in Washington, D.C., a little more than a year ago.)

Then video hit the social web of former congressman Ron Paul -- whose son, Sen. Rand Paul, will make his first Meet the Press appearance Sunday -- calling the chemical attack in Syria a "false flag" by al-Qaeda to draw the United States into "a strife that's been going on in that region for thousands of years."

"I think one of the reasons why they say, well, this is not regime change because we're not really positive who set off the gas," Paul asserted during an appearance on Cavuto on Fox Business on Wednesday. "I mean, the group that's most likely to benefit from that is al-Qaeda. They, you know, ignite some gas, some people die and blame it on Assad. Assad, I don't think, is an idiot. I don't think he would do this on purpose in order for the whole world to come down on him."

I think we can safely expect the younger Paul to be asked about these assertions on Sunday.

Secretary of State John Kerry laid out in a briefing Friday the facts that led U.S. intelligence to conclude that the chemical weapons attacks in the Damascus suburbs were launched by the Syrian regime. The Wall Street Journal assessed those claims, and found that "Intelligence veterans said Friday that the unclassified presentation of the intelligence assessment appeared solid."

A full transcript of Paul's appearance on Cavuto follows.

More »

President Obama faces a radically different public-opinion environment than he did even two years ago, when the U.S. prepared to act against Muammar Gaddafi's forces in Libya, as he seeks to make the case for an attack in Syria. Why are things so different now? It's not as simple as that the public is "war-weary," as is frequently said. Here are some of the other forces I believe to be at work:

1. 9/11 is a distant memory. The threat of terrorism once exerted a strong sway on Americans, creating an automatic bias toward action. That's no longer the case. This is good! It's a sign of the success of the more than decade-long campaign against al-Qaeda. But it also means that the emotional backdrop of our thinking about external threats and obligations has shifted. In the wake of Edward Snowden's revelations, in particular, Americans are in the thick of a moment of reconsidering what they agreed to -- and what was done without their knowledge -- in their moments of greatest fear, and not an era of fearfully agreeing to things without debate. When George W. Bush warned in 2002 "we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun, that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud," his warning came against the backdrop of orange alerts and panicked runs on hardware stores for plastic sheeting and duct tape. Times have changed, and without engaging in Bush-style fearmongering about threats to the homeland or making a humanitarian case for intervention, as in Libya, it's going to be harder for any political leader to sell the once-burned, twice-shy public on the need for rapid action abroad.

2. It's a new Congress. Three wave elections after the push to war in Iraq, we have a quite a different Congress. National Journal's Shane Goldmacher reports: "Only 32 current senators served in 2002 during the fall vote on the Iraq war resolution and only 38 were there when American troops launched the invasion in the spring of 2003. In the House, roughly 40 percent of current members -- 172 of them -- were sworn in at the time of the 2003 invasion. That means that, for many in the current Congress, this is the first time they've experienced the drumbeats of war, outside of the strikes that Obama authorized against Libya earlier in his presidency. And instead of marching in line, the fresh faces are among those most loudly demanding a public debate." On the Democratic side, in particular, you have a fair number of folks who were elected -- like Obama himself -- in hopes that they would take a different approach to foreign policy than Democrats took in the early Bush years. They are now doing that.

3. The cost of raising questions is low, for the moment. Congress is on vacation. As Keith Koffler smartly points out, it is not going to come back to town until September 9 unless Obama or its leaders force it back. "Our elected representatives today are on Caribbean Islands and rolling green golf courses, or wandering about delightfully quaint European cities. They have no intention of breaking it off to come back and vote on some silly war. That's why you don't hear their leaders clamoring for Obama to stage a vote -- they'd be jeopardizing their positions as leaders," he notes. The people who are pressing Obama to call an emergency session of Congress might also think of calling on Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Harry Reid, who thus far have not publicly indicated any need to reassemble their legislative bodies. As it is, talk is cheap for at least one more week. So is silence. While 116 members of the House have called on Obama to seek congressional approval before taking action in Syria -- a move that 80 percent of the public supports -- the outcome of White House's Syria briefing with 27 of the 535 members of Congress Thursday night was a call for the administration to do more to sell its proposed intervention, not a flurry of efforts to force a return to Washington ASAP and a vote.

4. Obama never has to stand for election again, but the jockeying for 2016 is well under way. It's possible Obama's intervention in Libya would have earned louder opposition from Democrats and liberals if the president had not also still faced reelection, which doubtless tempered some voices. That he won't again opens up the floodgates of criticism from people who expect to be standing on the political stage long after he is gone, as well as by some who hope to take his chair.

5. There's no longer widespread optimism about the Arab Spring. It was easier to make the case for intervening in the Arab world against monstrous, human-rights-violating dictators when there was the hope of democracy or any kind of positive outcome on the other side. Between the Morsi regime's spectacular failure and the subsequent military coup in Egypt and the extensive instability in Libya that led to the death of a U.S. ambassador in Benghazi (even if U.S. intervention succeeded in saving Libyan lives) the argument that the U.S. can pick sides in Arab nations in a way that's beneficial to either our interests or the well-being of Arab peoples long-term has been deeply damaged.

6. The moral argument for why chemical weapons are different is no longer as obvious as it once was. One of the trickiest arguments for the administration to make to the public is why it's worse for Assad's forces to kill children with sarin gas than to drop an incendiary napalm-like bomb, also made with chemicals, on a school, or to gun families down in the street. Morally, the outcome is the same -- death, injury, and suffering of innocents -- and if gas survivors struggle with after-effects for life, the same is also true for those who survive guns and bombs. Since World War II, poison gases have been used mainly in the Middle East. The Chemical Weapons Convention, which states that "each state party to this convention undertakes never under any circumstances ... to use chemical weapons" and to which Syria is not a party, was signed only in 1993. This 20-year-old treaty seeking to enforce the post-World War II international norm against chemical weapons use does not appear to have a great deal emotional resonance for the American people, now so many generations removed from the horrors of World War I, the great chemical-weapons build-up of the Cold War, and Hitler's gas chambers.

Update: Fallows adds one more, namely, "We've been at war now for 10 years non-stop, the longest period of such sustained engagement in American history. Not to mention, those wars have not turned out well."

This Slate piece giving advice to entry-level job applicants in journalism about how to get their cover letters noticed made me think I ought to share a similar advice piece for new freelancers I put together for a women in media list-serv I'm on, inspired by the frequent and unnecessarily life-complicating errors of form I'd seen come in over the transom over the years, and some frequently asked questions about what can be an opaque process to newbies. Here are some basic rules to live by for people on the outside looking in.

* * *

1. If you are going overseas or somewhere on location, contact an editor before you go, so that you can offer to pitch stories from the scene. Don't wait until you come back with a story that may or may not be right for an editor -- and until it's too late to do any additional reporting from the scene, or to switch focus entirely -- to pitch the only piece you reported.

2. That said, unless you are going on location somewhere, do not write to ask if you can pitch things. Either write with a pitch, or ask to be put in contact with the editor who oversees the topic you want to pitch on if you know your one contact at a publication is not him. These days a lot of institutions are in flux and there's nothing easier for someone then pressing forward on a message.

3. Don't pitch topics. Pitch stories. That can take anywhere from one sentence to three or four grafs, but it's rarely longer.

4. Do not send your pitch as an attachment. It will get read faster if you put it in the body of your email, because that way the editor you're pitching can read it on her iPhone/iPad/Samsung Galaxy S4 while in line for lunch or waiting for a meeting to start, instead of having to be at her computer in her office. Take advantage of your chance to grab someone's attention during an interstitial moment by making your work easy to absorb by people with cutting-edge media consumption patterns.

5. But beware of being too cutting edge: Do not text or direct-message story pitches, unless you know an editor really, really well and have a great rapport. Respect your idea enough to send more than 140 characters explaining it.

6. Editors who work with free-lancers tend to accept pre-written stories less frequently than stories they can talk to you about before you file. It's more fun for editors to be part of the thinking and shaping part of putting the story together -- this is called "front-editing" -- than to just come in after the fact and clean up. So as between sitting down and writing something to file unsolicited and sending a query first, send the query.

7. That said, if you're going to send a complete draft unsolicited -- and plenty of these do get published -- odds of publication go up markedly if it is already clean and well-composed copy when it arrives. Don't send rough drafts unsolicited; send your best work. Spell check. Have a friend copy-edit you if you need to. You've gone through all the trouble to write something you believe in -- take that extra step to polish it.

8. The same goes for fact checking: You need to have everything locked down before you send something you've already composed. Think about it: What if the editor wants to run it right away? You don't want to have to scramble on the fly to confirm things and/or tell the editor your facts aren't actually already airtight.

9. Always include your phone number in your pitch email, in case the story idea is intriguing but not quite right for whatever reason. That will allow the editor to reach out to you to tweak the concept, instead of having to chase you down. Your goal should be to minimize the number of email volleys an editor needs to have with you to put something in play.

10. If you don't hear back about a pitch within a couple of days, depending on the news value of the pitch, it's not unheard of to send a follow-up email. Sometimes people are busy and lack of response doesn't always mean you've been rejected.

11. If your pitch is time sensitive, say so in the pitch and say you'd love a response within a set period. Also, if you're pitching about an event that's been planned for months, don't wait until the day before to send a query.

12. Never send pieces to multiple outlets at the same time without telling all the editors you've pitched that you've done this. It's better not to send pitches to multiple places at the same time at all, but sometimes it has to happen for reasons of timeliness. But you never want to be in a situation where an editor has accepted your piece, and then you have to go and yank it from her sad, disappointed hands because some other outlet that you pitched first but was reading more slowly weighed in with an answer. If you need to move on because the first outlet you pitched hasn't responded, drop that first editor a note letting him know, as a courtesy.

13. If your idea is turned down, don't take it personally. It's just an idea, it's not you. Very frequently, if your pitch is good but "not quite right for us at this time," people will reject your initial pitch but then assign you something that they want instead, especially if you stay in touch.

14. If you've never worked with an editor before, it helps to let them know a little bit about who you are and who else you've written for in your initial pitch letter, so they don't have to Google you. This can take from one sentence to one graf.

15. If you want some really, really long thing, like a book excerpt, to be considered, send it along with the initial pitch, or at the very least have it handy to send immediately if the editor expresses interest in considering it. Don't make the editor have to chase you to even get the material to review.

16. Make sure your major story source will work with you before you pitch. You don't have to have everything locked down at the pitch stage, but if it's a profile, it helps to know the person you want to profile is gettable. Your worst case scenario is having your pitch accepted and then having to tell the editor you can't deliver because you can't get the interview your entire pitch was predicated on.  

17. If your story idea has been accepted, get clarity before filing on what the policy is regarding cross-posting to a personal blog. Most people don't care if you repost something to your personal blog after it has been published, but it's considered extremely uncool to file something you've already published, even if just in part, on your personal blog and just hope no one will notice. It could also potentially turn you into the journalism scandal du jour.

A new poll from Public Policy Polling has some fun details in the cross-tabs about political differences around movie-viewing preferences. Obama 2012 voters went to movies more frequently than Romney 2012 voters, 44 percent of whom "almost never" saw movies in theaters, the pollsters found. Obama voters were more positive about horror films and romantic comedies as well, perhaps a direct reflection of the different demographics of the voters, as women are more into rom-coms and were more likely to vote Obama.

There was also a big gap on enjoying dramas, which Obama voters were more into. There was no real difference between the voting groups in enjoyment of comedies, to which 78 percent of both groups were favorably disposed.  Everybody likes to laugh!

Obama voters were slightly more likely to see films in theaters, while Romney ones were somewhat more likely to see them on TV. Perhaps because of that, Romney voters were less favorably disposed to 3D movies.

WASHINGTON -- The hottest accessory at the "Let Freedom Ring" ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was a yellowed button from the original march, worn by a man or woman with white hair.

Paul Stanley, 70, wore a baseball cap's worth of old buttons, as well as ones from earlier commemorations of the 1963 march, which he attended as a young man. "I grew up here when Washington, D.C., was Jim Crow," he said.

He couldn't go into restaurants back then, and if he wanted to buy food from one he had to eat it outside, he recalled. Thanks to the civil-rights movement, he can can go into the restaurants, hotels, and movie theaters that he was not able to enter in some places in the South as late as 1968, he said, ticking off the improvements. As importantly, "We're able to speak our minds."

But there was still work to do when it came to the jobs, education, and voting-rights outlook, he said. "We're only halfway there." That's why he appreciated Barack Obama's political speech at the rally so much. "I'm very happy today to see our black president and the speech he made," said Stanley, now a resident of Bethesda, Maryland.

In interview after interview, it was clear: For the former marchers, Obama wasn't just a manifestation of Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream -- he was someone they were looking to to go after the unfinished parts of it, from jobs to education to preserving the voting rights they'd fought so hard for during their salad days. "So much progress was made as far as voting rights. I remember my mom and dad not being able to vote," recalled Beverly Johnson, 65, an administrative coordinator at a professional association in Washington, who came to the march at the age of 15 with a group of friends. "It breaks my heart that so much is going on now trying to move backwards in voting rights."

When it comes to the issues that remain, "the president, he probably addressed them better than anyone else," said Roland Johnson, 74, a former marcher, Peace Corps volunteer, and retired philanthropic professional from Philadelphia. Like Stanley, he found Obama's remarks the highlight of the day, which otherwise had too much about King and "the Dream" and too little about jobs and freedom for his taste.

There was a bit of a tendentious debate around the commemoration over whether or not King was engaged in a fundamentally conservative project, as National Review put it, or was somehow secretly a conservative. Maybe the National Review writers should have talked to more of the former marchers. 

The ones who returned Wednesday were not conservatives; black and white alike, they were the sort of people political strategists these days call the Democratic base, even if Democrats were not all on their side back in the day. And they were grateful that Obama's speech had injected a bit of political spice into what was otherwise a fairly depoliticized commemoration of their highly political fight for freedom.

It wasn't an accident that the vast majority of the merchandise for sale along the way to the rally site on the National Mall wove together images of King and America's 44th president.

In fact, if you want a reason every single Republican leader asked to be part of the commemoration line-up turned down the opportunity to stand up for civil rights in front of a giant statue of Lincoln in favor of marking the anniversary in restricted settings before ideological compatriots, or not at all, there's your answer. The men and women Obama commemorated as "men and women without rank or wealth or title or fame" and "ordinary people whose names never appeared in the history books, never got on TV" today are no more conservative today than they were in 1963. They've just swapped their formal protest suits and dresses for T-shirts and jeans.

"We were dressed a little different" then, said Nadine Whittington, 80, a 50-year resident of D.C.'s Adams Morgan neighborhood and march veteran, because "there was pressure" to look proper. "This is a little more casual," she said, pointing to her red sweat pants. She wore a matching "Free D.C." red baseball cap in support of D.C. statehood, her latest cause.

The 1963 march was a revelation for her, black and white standing together, and beyond even that, touching each other, strangers bonding across races, hand-in-hand. "I was born in 1933," she said. "That kind of thing didn't go on a lot. I'll say this, what happened the first time was a real blessing for us .... I'll never forget at the end, how we held hands like that" -- she crossed her arms, extending one hand to each side -- "and sang a song. It was so spiritual."

The Rev. Richard Cox, 79, came down from Philadelphia, where he preaches at the First United Methodist Church of Germantown. He stood in the drizzle wearing his minister's collar, a large turquoise ring, and a sign that read "1963-2013 Still in Search of Justice," until the letters on the sign bled.

Florence Claggett, 62, came up to him and asked, "Were you here 50 years ago?" When he affirmed so, she exclaimed, "I was too!" At times the event felt like a bit of a reunion for strangers united by their shared role in history. Sadly, the organizers had failed to provide any ribbon or button the original marchers could wear to identify themselves to each other or to those who wanted to honor them.

Claggett, who lived in D.C., was just 13 years old at the time of the march and took a bus downtown with some friends to join it. "I had a marvelous time," she said. "I had no idea of the significance."

"It was a very scary time because of the bias against blacks and of course people were saying there'd be violence at the march," Claggett recalls. She's still here in D.C. today -- "still fighting," and trying to get statehood for the city, equal pay, quality education and access to "fresh foods in the neighborhoods."

Claggett was on the young side for a marcher, but many of her compatriots were not much older or more politically sophisticated than her back in the day. "When I came I was a novice. I really didn't understand," Merlyn Kettering, 71, of Takoma Park, Maryland, said. Raised in Ashland County, Ohio, he'd grown up in a completely white community and came to the march after being challenged and emotionally engaged by a Southern Christian Leadership Conference exercise during an ecumenical conference earlier in August 1963. At the march, "I felt the agony for the first time of a people who didn't know the same liberty and justice for all," he said, "and I began to feel that sense of urgency." From the pacifist Church of the Brethren, he was a conscientious objector during Vietnam, joining the Peace Corps after King and Bobby Kennedy were shot. He wound up stationed in Nigeria and eventually married in Jamaica, embarking on a life in a "biracial, bi-cultural relationship."

"Today was much more emotional for me because I understand now," he said. "Today was very powerful for me. When I first came I did not know that it would be."

Mary Shearard, 67, of Northeast Washington, brought along a plastic sleeve with a news picture of herself at the original march. "I had just graduated from high school that summer," she recalled, pointing at her younger, hat-wearing self in the image. She marched with her father's D.C. union, Local 209, ending up at the Reflecting Pool. "It's a bit of an inspiration to see that we can bring so many people together peacefully yet again," she said. "There was so much fear this was going to turn into a riot [in 1963]. The city was literally surrounded."

Not everyone had a souvenir they could trot out. Beverly Johnson had had one of the best seats in the house for the speeches that day: "I remember all the excitement, the people. We actually sat on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial," she said. But all she has to commemorate her historic perch are her memories. "In those days, we couldn't afford cameras, so we don't have pictures of ourselves in those special moments."

Members of  Congress and the foreign-policy establishment are warning that a U.S. intervention in Syria could backfire and lead to greater civilian casualties by prompting an intensification of the civil war there and a crackdown by the Assad regime on its own people. Democrat Chris Murphy, who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the L.A. Times he worried that a U.S. intervention that amounted to "little more than a slap on the wrist" could "mean an even greater loss of life within Syria" down the road.

It's a risk the administration is aware of. “There’s a possibility that the Syrian government would use chemical weapons again, and I don’t think you can discount that,” a senior administration official told Defense One. “You’ve got to remember, this is a government, a regime, essentially a dictatorship that is playing for its survival, and when you’ve got a situation like that, then these people use any means they can to survive.”

A 2012 study by Reed Wood, Jacob Kathman, and Stephen Gent published in the Journal of Peace Research gives credence to those worries. "Military interventions in favor of the rebel faction (as opposed to pro-government or neutral interventions) tend to increase government killings of civilians by about 40 percent," wrote Professor Erica Chenoweth of the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver over at the academic blog The Monkey Cage, summarizing the research. By upsetting the balance of power in intrastate conflicts, outside interventions can cause a regime that sees its hold on power weakening to redouble its efforts and lash out brutally.

From Wood, Kathman, and Gents's abstract:

As a conflict actor weakens relative to its adversary, it employs increasingly violent tactics toward the civilian population as a means of reshaping the strategic landscape to its benefit. The reason for this is twofold. First, declining capabilities increase resource needs at the moment that extractive capacity is in decline. Second, declining capabilities inhibit control and policing, making less violent means of defection deterrence more difficult. As both resource extraction difficulties and internal threats increase, actors’ incentives for violence against the population increase. To the extent that biased military interventions shift the balance of power between conflict actors, we argue that they alter actor incentives to victimize civilians. ... We test these arguments using data on civilian casualties and armed intervention in intrastate conflicts from 1989 to 2005. Our results support our expectations, suggesting that interventions shift the power balance and affect the levels of violence employed by combatants.

You can read their complete study here.

Why is the United States poised to engage in military intervention in yet another Middle Eastern nation?

Over the past two days the Obama Administration has made an effort to limit the ambitions and rationale for a strike in Syria, and to lower expectations for what an intervention might accomplish.

First, a strike against the regime of Bashar al-Assad would not be an attempt to win the war for the opposition forces, the White House said Tuesday. "There ... should be no doubt for anyone who approaches this logically, that the Syrian regime is responsible for the use of chemical weapons on August 21st outside of Damascus," Press Secretary Jay Carney said during his regular briefing. "We have established with a high degree of confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons already in this conflict."

But any response will have a limited aim. "I want to make clear that the options that we are considering are not about regime change," Carney said. "It is our firm conviction that Syria's future cannot include Assad in power, but this deliberation and the actions that we are contemplating are not about regime change."

And while an assault might be motivated by humanitarian concerns, it will not be a humanitarian intervention. Despite Secretary of State John Kerry's strong words Monday about the immorality of the slaughter outside Damascus, the most likely U.S. response will not be a robust effort to end the war, nor directly address itself to the ongoing humanitarian crisis caused by a civil war that the U.N. calculates has killed more than 100,000, many of them civilians, over two and a half years. And so the killing will go on. Displacement will go on (more than 2 million people have been registered as refugees, half of whom are children). Slaughter of innocents will continue, so long as the conflict there does, because that's how modern wars are conducted -- through the bodies of civilians.

What an intervention will be, then, is a limited response to a specific act in defense of an international norm (though not, apparently, an international law). Carney made this plain Monday: "What we are talking about here, as Secretary Kerry made clear, is a response to the clear violation of an international norm. And it is profoundly in the interest of the United States and of the international community that that violation of an international norm be responded to .... It is important to make a distinction here when it comes to this violation of an international norm -- it's not just an incident that pertains only to Syria or to the region, it is a violation that pertains to the whole world."

In this, he echoed Kerry, who earlier said: "The meaning of this attack goes beyond the conflict on Syria itself. And that conflict has already brought so much terrible suffering. This is about the large-scale indiscriminate use of weapons that the civilized world long ago decided must never be used at all, a conviction shared even by countries that agree on little else."

And yet what Assad's forces did to the people of suburban Damascus (click-through warning: GRAPHIC) was not an assault on the world; it was an assault on individuals with real lives and particular histories. The chemical attack is something that happened to them, not to all of us, even if we are horrified by it.

Responding to the attack in defense of an abstract system of global norms may be necessary for preserving those norms, but has the odd effect of bleeding moral force out of the argument toward action and replacing it with self-interest. 

It is a case for war as global administration, and using force against selected forms of prohibited atrocity in order to preserve a system we want in place for our own sake -- taking action on behalf of something that "is profoundly in the interest of the United States," as Carney put it.

It makes sense that the administration would foreground American interests at stake in the conflict, thanks to the complexity of the situation on the ground and Americans' wariness of intervening in Syria. Decisive majorities in three recent polls opposed all forms of intervention, and just 28 percent in a June CBS News/New York Times poll said that the U.S. has an obligation to do something about the war there.

But after more than a decade of ambitious wars with expansive aims, so narrow a reading of what the U.S. ought to do will surely disappoint hawks who want the U.S. to intervene robustly against Assad in the conflict. And also, perhaps, those who would be more supportive of an intervention if they thought it might actually hasten an end to the suffering in Syria.