Since 9/11, September has been a blood-thirsty month in political Georgia.

The day after the towers fell in New York City and the Pentagon burned, U.S. Sen. Zell Miller famously called for the obliteration of large portions of Afghanistan – collateral damage be damned.

“I say bomb the hell out of them,” Miller cried, to loud applause.

A year later, in 2002, U.S. Sen. Max Cleland found himself accused of being soft on terrorism. In a subsequent TV ad, Republican challenger Saxby Chambliss placed the Democratic incumbent in the same picture frame as Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Cleland lost.

The lesson struck home in a state packed with military personnel: Never be caught on the wrong side of a national security issue.

And so the widespread rejection by Georgia Republicans of U.S. intervention in the fast-moving confrontation with Syria is worthy of notice.

U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson split with his Georgia colleague, the exiting Chambliss, in opposition. “Without exception, people had serious concerns about a third potential conflict in the Middle East in a decade,” Isakson said in an interview this week.

On the U.S. House side, Georgia Republicans found themselves at odds with House Speaker John Boehner, who endorsed President Barack Obama’s proposed military strike to punish Syria for gassing its own citizens – before it was sidetracked by Russia’s diplomatic initiative.

“If you look at Iraq, Afghanistan, the Arab Spring, look at Libya – we haven’t had a lot of success. We haven’t finished anything up in a neat package. And so the American people are a little bit leery,” U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Savannah, said Monday.

Former secretary of state Karen Handel, like Kingston a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, has felt comfortable enough with her anti-intervention position to launch two radio-ad attacks on Michelle Nunn, a Democratic candidate for the same job – who endorsed the military strike. The latest will hit the airwaves today.

Somewhere, a baffled Max Cleland is shaking his head.

(In a statement issued Wednesday, Nunn didn’t back away from her support for military action, but endorsed the diplomatic pause. “I share with members of both parties the hope that international diplomatic action can safeguard and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons,” she said.)

Like other Republicans, Handel pointed to Obama for her decision. “President Obama has failed to make the case. His foreign policy is a disaster,” she said in one of her ads.

Granted, since the gassing incident last month, Obama’s position on Syria has been somewhat extemporaneous. First he drew a red line, then tossed the hot potato to Congress, then embraced Vladimir Putin’s proposal to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons.

If George W. Bush’s campaign to invade Iraq was a polka with a never-varying beat, when it comes to Syria, Obama has embraced his inner Thelonious Monk.

But for Republicans, blaming Obama when it comes to rejecting action in Syria is also convenient — on two levels. First, it papers over the growing GOP divide over America’s role as the world’s leading cop on the beat. Since 2008, the second-biggest change in the politics of U.S. foreign policy has been the rise of the GOP’s libertarian wing in Congress – and a renewal of the Republican party’s historic isolationist tendencies.

Remember that, only last September, Republicans left their national convention in Tampa with barely a mention of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan.

With Syria, every call for intervention by U.S. Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has been matched by a note of skepticism from Rand Paul of Kentucky.

In Georgia, U.S. Rep. Paul Broun – yet another Republican Senate hopeful – has come closest to Paul’s foreign policy views. “Without there being any direct threat to American national security, I do not find military intervention in Syria to be within our national interest, particularly in our current economic state,” Broun said.

Another reason for Republicans to point to Obama for their lack of appetite when it comes to a Syrian adventure: What goes around comes around. When they return to the White House, many Republicans – despite any misgivings from their libertarian wing – won’t want to be bound by Obama’s precedent of demanding congressional approval first.

(The War Powers Act permits a president to take military action first, followed by the ratification of Congress within 90 days.)

I raised the matter of precedence with Isakson. Only two months ago, the Georgia senator supported the nomination of Samantha Power, Obama’s choice to become the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, in part because of Power’s support for extending U.S. military power when humanitarian crises require it. Power helped persuade Obama to intervene in Libya, Isakson pointed out at the time.

This week, his answer on the example created by Syria was nuanced.

“Every incident is different. Every environment in which an incident takes place is different. Diplomacy is always preferable to war, as long as you’re winning – accomplishing your goal,” said Isakson, who now occupies the Senate seat once held by Zell Miller. “Will this be a cookie-cutter? No. But it will probably raise the visibility of diplomacy more than it might have been raised earlier.”

September has become a very different month in Georgia politics, and we may be better off for it.