US Secretary of State John Kerry has been at pains to argue that the Obama administration's proposed military strike against Syria, presumably using missiles, is not about going to war. A week ago today he told members of Congress:
When people are asked, do you want to go to war in Syria? Of course not. Everybody, 100 percent of Americans would say no. We say no. We don’t want to go to war in Syria either. That's not what we're here to ask. The president is not asking you to go to war, he's not asking you to declare war, he's not asking you to send one American troop to war. He is simply saying we need to take an action that can degrade the capacity of a man who’s been willing to kill his own people by breaking a nearly 100-year-old prohibition, and will we stand up and be counted to say we won't do that. That's not -- you know, I just don't consider that going to war in the classic sense of coming to Congress and asking for a declaration of war and training troops and sending people abroad and putting young Americans in harm's way.[1] That's not what the president is asking for here.
On Thursday, Kerry reiterated to MSNBC's Chris Hayes: "Chris, you know, I've thought a lot about this. I know the lessons of war. I don't believe this is taking America to war." At a press conference in Paris, last Saturday, he insisted: "We are not talking about going to war, this is not Iraq and it's not Afghanistan. It's not even Libya or Kosovo." And yesterday, in London, Kerry asserted: "We are not going to war."
Can any sane person doubt that a missile attack on the US by a foreign government would be considered an act of war? Now, please consider the words of a young Lt. John Kerry, speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971:
We veterans can only look with amazement on the fact that this country has been unable to see there is absolutely no difference between ground troops and a helicopter, and yet people have accepted a differentiation fed them by the administration.
No ground troops are in Laos, so it is all right to kill Laotians by remote control. But believe me the helicopter crews fill the same body bags and they wreak the same kind of damage on the Vietnamese and Laotian countryside as anybody else ... [2]
Substitute missiles for helicopters and Syria and Syrians in place of Laos and Laotians and it sort of puts Kerry's advocacy for attacks on Syria in a special light.
Notes:
1. The last US military engagement backed by a Congressional declaration of war was WW II.
2. Congressional Record (92nd Congress, 1st Session), April 22, 1971, pp. 179-210.