President Obama’s decision to bomb the murderous fanatics who call themselves the Islamic State, is a case of doing the right thing for the wrong reason.

I support the bombing as a moral imperative. America erred in failing to intervene to prevent the genocide that took place in Rwanda in the ’90s. Bombing of the Islamic State avoids a national repetition of that error. It would have been morally unjustifiable for us to have withheld the use of force when there was no other way to prevent these butchers from slaughtering tens of thousands of wholly innocent people. The label genocidal is justified because the victims were chosen on religious and ethnic grounds.

The continued threat by this group of vicious thugs to murder large numbers of innocent people calls for continued bombing.

Unfortunately, Obama has refrained giving this explanation for our intervention, and for a reversal of his decision to reduce America’s military involvement in the area. In an odd hierarchy of political values, it is generally considered better for a president to justify military action on the grounds that it is important for America’s self-defense than to make clear we are doing something because there is a level of barbarism beyond which a decent nation cannot sit idly by and watch.

So we are told that the Islamic State is a threat to the United States. It is not, and the explanations of why it is lack logic. One argument is that if we do not bomb them they will attack us. In fact, the exact opposite is the case. People intent on establishing their superiority through this kind of violence in a particular region are likelier to attack those who try to prevent it than those who sit it out. That is not an argument for sitting idly by. But it is a refutation of the notion that the reason we should be attacking this gang is to protect ourselves.

The next argument is that if we do not stop them from murdering people there, some of them will come to the United States. In its most ludicrous form this consists of right-wing Texas Republicans claiming in the teeth of all the evidence that individuals are sneaking in through Mexico. But there is zero evidence of this. And if they do have the intention to come to American to attack us, bombing them in Iraq or Syria will have no effect on that unless the assumption is that we will bomb to the unachievable point where every single one of them is dead.

The last argument that it is in America’s interest because we want to preserve stability in the Middle East. I wish. The mutual hatreds and consequent violence plaguing so many Middle Eastern countries is, unfortunately, far beyond the capacity of America to correct. A more plausible argument of how to further our interest in stability came from Tom Freidman, in a brilliant column in The New York Times on Sept. 18, agreeing with an analyst who said that a large part of the problem is the assumption on the part of many Arab leaders that they can leave the job to America. Once those in the region who have an even greater need than we do to combat the Islamic State killers know that it is up to them, they are more likely to act.

There are two negative consequences of this flawed reasoning. First, it has led the president to assert that he needs no congressional authorization to bomb Syria. Sadly, he has now subscribed to the strained legal argument that because some people in the Islamic State were once part of al-Qaida the president has the unilateral authority to bomb in a foreign country. This is not only very bad constitutional theory for a democracy, it has very negative implications for the future.

If it is accepted that these people are a threat to the United States, on what basis can the president withhold ground troops? We have a right as a nation engaged in a moral act to calibrate the level at which we will deal with it, but once we inaccurately conclude that the Islamic State is a threat to the United States, the president will lose the argument for our showing some restraint.

One encouraging sign in this is that the American people seem far better capable of making the distinction than either the president or the congressional majority. Public opinion is supportive of bombing these terrible people, but not of renewing a ground war. This is an implicit recognition on the part of the public that the justification for our military involvement is a humanitarian one, not self-defense. The swing in favor of even a limited military intervention came out of a horror at the brutality of these people, and not from any rational argument that they are a threat to us.

The president is resisting the pressure he is getting from John McCain and his fellow hawks to start another ground war. But by relying on the argument that these people are a threat to us, rather than a threat to humane values, he is strengthening the hands of those who are seeking to push him where he does not want to go.

Barney Frank is a retired congressman and the author of landmark legislation. He divides his time between Maine and Massachusetts.

Twitter: @BarneyFrank

— Special to the Telegram