Proudly Patriotic but Skeptical on Syria Attack
By MICHAEL WINES, NYT
WAYNESBURG, Pa. — From his bar-side perch at Hot Rod’s House of Barbeque here, 57-year-old Wolf Tripp argued that President George W. Bush had ample cause a decade ago to dispatch troops and armor into Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein. “Look at the mass graves,” he declared. “Hussein gassed his own people.”
The gassing last month of hundreds of Syrian civilians is entirely another matter. And sending cruise missiles there to punish the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, is out of the question, Mr. Tripp said this week.
“What are we going to do, borrow more money from China to fight?” he said. “It’s their civil war. Why are we going in there?”
As President Obama tries to rally domestic support for military action against Syria, the skepticism in Waynesburg only underscores the political hurdles he faces. This bucolic, if fading, corner of southwest Pennsylvania wears its patriotism on its sleeve, shirttail and pockets. At the time of Mr. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, a Quinnipiac University poll in Pennsylvania found that 86 percent of the voters in and around Waynesburg were solidly behind him.
(More here.)
WAYNESBURG, Pa. — From his bar-side perch at Hot Rod’s House of Barbeque here, 57-year-old Wolf Tripp argued that President George W. Bush had ample cause a decade ago to dispatch troops and armor into Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein. “Look at the mass graves,” he declared. “Hussein gassed his own people.”
The gassing last month of hundreds of Syrian civilians is entirely another matter. And sending cruise missiles there to punish the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, is out of the question, Mr. Tripp said this week.
“What are we going to do, borrow more money from China to fight?” he said. “It’s their civil war. Why are we going in there?”
As President Obama tries to rally domestic support for military action against Syria, the skepticism in Waynesburg only underscores the political hurdles he faces. This bucolic, if fading, corner of southwest Pennsylvania wears its patriotism on its sleeve, shirttail and pockets. At the time of Mr. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, a Quinnipiac University poll in Pennsylvania found that 86 percent of the voters in and around Waynesburg were solidly behind him.
(More here.)
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