Were I in Congress, I would vote against the authorization to use military force in Syria. The reason I would do it is that the president who is advocating the use of military force in Syria is completely incoherent on the reasons for it, what he seeks to accomplish with it, and what he plans to do if things don't go his way, either in Congress or in the Middle East.

The performance at the press conference today was the worst of Barack Obama's career. Nothing comes close. Attribute it to jet-lag, or to the exhaustion that finally may be overtaking the man after five years of dealing with the monkey-house opposition he was handed but, on the single deadliest issue a president can face, he looked very much like a man who was tired of his job. To take each of the above points one at a time:

Failing to respond to this breach of this international norm would send a signal to rogue nations, authoritarian regimes and terrorist organizations, that they can develop and use weapons of mass destruction and not pay a consequence. And that's not the world that we want to live in. This is why nations around the world have condemned Syria for this attack, and called for action. I've been encouraged by discussions with my fellow leaders this week. There is a growing recognition that the world cannot stand idly by. Here in St. Petersburg leaders from Europe, Asia and the Middle East have come together to say that the international norm of the use against chemical weapons must be upheld, and that the Assad regime used these weapons on its own people, and that, as a consequence, there needs to be a strong response.

Then, one might ask, why don't his "fellow leaders," especially the ones whose credibility in the region has not been left in a shambles by previous cock-ups, pony up and actually do something?

It was unanimous that chemical weapons were used, a unanimous conclusion that chemical weapons were used in Syria. There was a unanimous view that the norm against using chemical weapons has to be maintained. That these weapons were banned for a reason and that the international community has to take those norms seriously. I would say that the majority of the room is comfortable with our conclusion that Assad, the Assad government, was responsible for their use. Obviously, this is disputed by President Putin, but if you polled the leaders last night, I'm confident that you'd get a majority who said it is most likely, we are pretty confident, that the Assad regime used it.

But we're not in this for regime change, except that we said we were a while ago. Again, what is this all about? If Assad did this, he's a monster. He should go. We agree. Or not.

But ultimately what I believe in even more deeply, because I think that the security of the world and my particular task looking out for the national security of the United States requires that when there's a breach this brazen of a norm this important and the international community is paralyzed and frozen and doesn't act, then that norm begins to unravel. And if that norm unravels, then other norms and prohibitions start unraveling. And that makes for a more dangerous world. And that, then, requires even more difficult choices and more difficult responses in the future.

Apparently, "Norms" -- even ones about which the United States has been considerably blithe in the past -- are the latest dominoes over which to theorize.

You know, over 1,400 people were gassed.

Oops, wait. I thought over 1400 people were killed. Is this a change? Did I miss a memo?

Over 400 of them were children. This is not something we've fabricated. This is not something that we are looking -- are using as an excuse for military action. As I said last night, I was elected to end wars, not start them. I've spent the last four and a half years doing everything I can to reduce our reliance on military power as a means of meeting our international obligations and protecting the American people. But what I also know is, is that there are times where we have to make hard choices if we're gonna stand up for the things that we care about.

Please tell me how "the American people" are threatened here. (They might be, if we make the Great Boom Boom, and Assad loses control of some of these weapons, and they fall into the hands of The Opposition, some of whom we support, but not really.) Are we all in danger of "Norms" falling on our heads?

You know, if people who, you know, decry international inaction in Rwanda and, you know, say how terrible it is that there are these human rights violations that take place around the world, then why aren't we doing something about it? And they always look to the United States. Why isn't the United States doing something about this? The most powerful nation on Earth. Why are you allowing these terrible things to happen? And then if the international community turns around when we're saying it's time to take some responsibility and says, "Well, hold on a second, we're not sure." That erodes our ability to maintain the kind of norms that we're looking at.

We didn't intervene in Rwanda, which was a one-sided genocidal slaughter of a people, and not a civil war, because Bill Clinton didn't want American troops dying to protect Africans, because he knew how that would play in, ahem, certain parts of the country. And, if what the president says here is true, then the rest of the world should grow the fk up and take care of its own problems. We don't have to be a hall monitor with cruise missiles.

What I have said, and I will repeat, is that I put this before Congress for a reason. 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. 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.

This is not an answer. This is not within an area code of an answer. You could drop a Tomahawk on this and not damage anything resembling an answer. If the crisis is as important (and as imminent) as the president says it is, then he should have just let fly, and he should have signed on with John McCain, instead of telling us that he's going to bomb Assad to the table in Geneva, and that he went to Congress for whatever justification he's talking about here. I think, if they vote him down, he's going to strike anyway, and I think there will be hell to pay in the Congress once he does. Right now, the argument for war seems to be that we have to do something, because Norms are falling and children are dead, and this is what we need to do because we're not really trying to involve ourselves in a civil war, and we're not sending troops, and that isn't really making war or taking sides.

(Thought experiment: what if The Opposition gets its hands on these weapons -- not an unreasonable scenario -- and uses them?. Again, the Norm has fallen. Do we bomb them? If not, have we not taken a side? Are we not then part if a civil war?)

This is an administration that can't even say out loud that dropping hundreds of cruise missiles is making war in a place. The longer the muddle, the more hell there will be to pay, and the best thing for everyone to do right now is nothing.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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