When I hear President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry give reasons why the U.S. must use force in Syria, I think I am listening to rewrites of President Bush and Colin Powell's remarks about why the U.S. must go to war in Iraq.

In some ways, Obama's claim that if the U.S. does not act in Syria other Mid-East countries will fall under the domination of the Iran-Syria cabals are reminiscent of the disproved Domino Theory of the 1950s.

After much criticism that America is no longer relevant for acting like an ostrich during the slaughter in Egypt and Syria, the U.S. has again acted like a hawk in Syria without knowing whether we are making friends or helping our enemies gain new adherents.

America is also faulted by critics for not acting moralistically.  No pacifist am I.  In fact, I usually lean to the hawkish side when America's true vital interests are attacked.  But I support a pragmatic, instead of a moralistic, foreign policy that clearly determines it is in the essential interests of the U.S. and its allies before using our military to clean up the continuous civil war messes of non-allies, the exception being in cases of genocide. 

History shows that America's moralistic deeds have resulted, instead of gaining us new friends, in much of the world hating us, thinking we are bullying bad cops.  The days are long gone when the U.S. is thought of as a country that only seeks to do what's right.

 It's easy for people to say America has lost its influence and moral character by not acting inEgypt and Syria.  But there are serious consequences of playing policemen to the world every time a civil war explodes.  In both Syria and Egypt we thought we knew who the bad guys were but history shows we didn't know who the good guys are. 

Afghanistan is a good example of  how supplying arms to supposed good guys, without really knowing their beliefs, backfired when those same arms were used against Americans and how our supposed good guy ally is more interested in taking money under the table and ignoring drug trafficking than than establishing a democratic county.  

Ever since the end of the draft in 1973, pulling the trigger is too easy for our lawmakers who send other peoples children into harm's way.  Perhaps if we reinstituted the draft and their own children and those of relatives and friends were at combat risk our policy toward being policemen to the world would change.

Despite my misgivings about the U.S. acting as the policeman to the world, I believe that America should not be held back from any actions it deems necessary to protect ours or our allies' national interests because it lacks international backing.

Those decisions should be made by our senior elected and appointed government officials based on classified intelligence reports and not by pundits or members of the Senate and House whose raison d'être seems limited to fending off primary opponents and getting re-elected.

Students of history know that presidents bypassing Congress and using or threatening to use military force before or without receiving Congressional authorization is in our nation's DNA, dating back to presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, and more recently to presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, Johnson, Nixon, both Bushes, Clinton and Obama.

As a believer in a strong presidency, despite my distaste of American involvement in civil wars, because of Obama's unfortunate "red line" remarks, I believe the president has no choice but to order military action against Syria, congressional authorization or not, if only to show Iran and North Korea and other countries that want to do the U.S. harm that when a U. S. president speaks he means what he says.

But in the future, I hope presidents will be more careful with their words.

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Arthur Solomon was a Senior Vice President/Senior Counselor at Burson-Marsteller, where he handled national and international accounts and traveled worldwide with top foreign government and Olympic officials as a media consultant. He is available at [email protected].