“So What If the Syria Solution Is Messy”: President Obama Got Putin And Syria To The Table, And That’s What Matters
The U.S. came close (we are told, anyway) to bombing Syria in retaliation over the alleged use of chemical weapons in the civil war there. Since then, democracy-challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin has stepped in, and is helping to broker a deal by which another bad actor, Syria, would give up its weapons.
That should sound like a pretty good outcome, if it works out. But in Washington, the conversation has been all about image and what has become known in Beltway speak as “messaging.”
President Obama has been criticized for looking weak – first, more than a year ago, for not being tougher on Syria, and now, for vocalizing his understandable reluctance to bomb a Middle Eastern country. He’s been accused of offering mixed messages, by saying the U.S. needed to enforce the “red line” against chemical weapons, but then saying he took no pleasure in doing so. He was criticized for thinking about bombing without consulting Congress, then chided as indecisive for listening to those criticisms and asking for Congress’s opinion (though not its advance approval, Obama was quick to note).
Then Putin wrote a critical op-ed in The New York Times, criticizing the U.S. for its assertion of “exceptionalism,” and saying the rest of the world had grown tired of being pushed around by America.
There is some legitimacy to much of this criticism. But the more important point is, so what?
Who cares if Obama didn’t deliver an unequivocal, we’re-going-to-bomb-them speech, especially if such a speech would lock us more securely into a wartime box? Was it the threat of an attack that got Syrian leader Bashar Assad to talk to Putin? Was it Putin’s desire to gain some level of legitimacy and credibility on the world stage that led him to talk to Assad? Was it Putin’s own concerns about chemical weapons being used by insurgents in his own country that led him to get involved? Who cares?
Being an adult, being a diplomat, and, yes, being a leader means staying focused on the final goal – not on how you got there. So what if Putin wags his finger at the U.S. in an American newspaper? He can bully us on Facebook if he wants. Does it matter, if the end result is Syria giving up chemical weapons without the U.S. having to risk American lives or spend American dollars to make it happen?
Obama had indeed gotten himself into something of a box by drawing a “red line” against chemical weapons (and it should be noted that many of his critics on the right were some of the ones pushing him to get tough on Syria). But Assad was in a box, too. He didn’t want to get bombed. He threatened retaliation if he was bombed – and didn’t really have much to back that up. But politically, he couldn’t be viewed as giving in to Obama or to Secretary of State John Kerry. His only face-saving measure was to deal with someone like Putin – an “imperfect messenger,” to borrow a phrase from Anthony Weiner. But Putin was probably the only person who could deliver it.
Style points do matter, sometimes. But they are not an end in themselves. Looking tough or decisive is not success. Getting rid of the chemical weapons is what will count as a win.
By: Susan Milligan, U. S. News and World Report, September 20, 2013
“For The Sake Of Complaining”: The Right Struggles To Hide Its Disappointment With Diplomatic Progress In Syria
A couple of years ago, after the United States and its allies used military force to help remove the Gadhafi’s government from Libya, Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) issued one of my favorite Republican press releases ever. The two senators, who had eagerly spent months touting U.S. military action in Libya, issued a joint statement commending the “British, French, and other allies, as well as our Arab partners, especially Qatar and the UAE.”
McCain and Graham eventually said Americans can be “proud of the role our country” played, but they nevertheless condemned the Obama administration’s “failure” to act in Libya the way the GOP senators preferred.
It was striking at the time for its bitterness — the United States had achieved its strategic goals, but instead of celebrating or applauding Obama’s success, Republicans pouted and whined.
It’s funny how history sometimes repeats itself. Over the course of six days, the Obama administration pushed Syria into the chemical weapons convention, helped create a diplomatic framework that will hopefully rid Syria of its stockpiles, successfully pushed Russia into a commitment to help disarm its own ally, quickly won support from the United Nations and our allies, and did all of this without firing a shot.
Republicans are outraged.
U.S. Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) today released the following statement on the U.S.-Russian agreement on Syria:
“What concerns us most is that our friends and enemies will take the same lessons from this agreement — they see it as an act of provocative weakness on America’s part.”
McCain wasn’t scheduled to appear on “Meet the Press” yesterday, but he was nevertheless added at the last minute. It was, after all, a Sunday.
It’s not just McCain, of course. Over the weekend, it seemed as if much of the chatter out of the Beltway was an effort to spin a diplomatic resolution as necessarily disappointing and evidence of a presidential mistake, if not outright failure.
It’s difficult to take such talk seriously.
In fact, Fred Kaplan’s take seemed compelling to me.
And so, assuming all goes according to plan, Assad loses his stash of deadly chemicals — but he stays in power, at least for the time being, and the Russian Federation re-emerges as a serious player in Middle Eastern politics. A win-win-win for Putin.
At the same time, Obama can cite his threat to use force as the reason Putin suddenly swung into action (this might even be true, to some extent). He can thus take at least joint credit for ridding Syria of chemical weapons and upholding international law. And he is saved from having to make good on letting Congress vote on whether to authorize the use of force — a vote that he seemed all but certain to lose. A win-win-win for Obama.
I’d just add that Obama also gets the benefits that come with not using military force — while the diplomatic course moves forward, the White House won’t have to fear the unknown and unpredictable consequences of dropping missiles on another Middle Eastern country.
At this point, Republican complaints made a right turn at unpersuasive and landed at unseemly. Many on the right urged Obama to engage in saber-rattling against Syria, then complained when the president did just that. Many on the right urged Obama to take the issue to Congress, then complained when the president did that, too. Many on the right said they supported military intervention, right up until Obama agreed with them. Now Republicans seem to be complaining … just for the sake of complaining.
Neil Irwin had a worthwhile item over the weekend, asking, “Was Obama’s Syria strategy brilliant or lucky?” It’s not an unreasonable question, but note that the choices are predicated on an assumption: the outcome is good for the U.S. in general and the Obama administration in particular.
If the right could at least try to hide their disappointment, it might be easier to take their views on foreign policy seriously.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, September 16, 2013
“Revenge Is A Dish Best Served Coherent”: The Right Works Backwards To Make Their Thesis Of Putin Look More Impressive
The Hill published a curious piece this morning with a provocative headline, “Putin gets his revenge on Obama.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s criticism of the United States in the op-ed pages of Thursday’s New York Times was a revenge of sorts on President Obama. […]
The op-ed was the latest salvo in an open feud between Obama and Putin — one which the Russian appeared this week to take an upper hand when a last-second diplomatic proposal from Russia led Obama to ask Congress to call off votes authorizing strikes against Syria.
I’ll concede I’m not an expert in the nuances of international diplomacy, but the notion that the Russian president has exacted “revenge” on President Obama seems odd to me.
Let’s take stock of what happened this week: (1) the United States threatened Syria, a Russian ally, over its use of chemical weapons; (2) Syria then vowed to give up its chemical weapons; and (3) Russia has committed itself to the diplomatic process the United States wants, which is intended to guarantee the success of the Syrian disarmament plan.
So, Obama, at least for now, ended up with what he wanted, which was then followed with more of what he wanted. If this is Putin exacting revenge, I suspect the White House doesn’t mind.
Indeed, the op-ed certainly caused a stir, but let’s not exaggerate its significance. “Putin gets his revenge on Obama” sounds awfully dramatic, but I don’t imagine President Obama was reading the NYT with breakfast yesterday, telling those around him, “Putin wrote a newspaper piece? And it chides the United States? I’ve been foiled by my strategic better! Curses!”
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) told The Hill, “It’s a sorry state when we have to take our leadership from Mr. Putin.” What does this even mean? The U.S. told Russia we intend to do something about the threat posed by Syria’s chemical weapons; Russia is now working on helping eliminate that threat. In what way does the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee sees Americans taking our leadership from Putin?
Peggy Noonan wrote of Putin’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this morning, “He twisted the knife and gloated, which was an odd and self-indulgent thing to do when he was winning.”
The possibility that the Obama White House is actually achieving its strategic goals with these developments is apparently unimportant — Noonan and other Republicans are too overwhelmed by the belief that Putin got his revenge by writing an unpersuasive and inconsequential op-ed in a newspaper.
We’ve talked a couple of times this week about the right’s increasingly creepy affections for Putin, a phenomenon that only seems to be getting worse. This morning, though, I’m beginning to see the elements of a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts — the right decided in advance that Obama’s rival must be impressive because he’s Obama rival, so they work backwards to make their thesis look more impressive.
Just over the last few days, for example, Tucker Carlson heralded Putin for “riding to President Obama’s rescue” while Russia “humiliates the United States.” Charles Krauthammer added that it’s Putin’s government that’s “playing chess here with a set of rank amateurs.”
So, every development is then filtered through the conservative prism that says Putin is President Tough Guy Leadership. The Russian gently rebuked the U.S. in an op-ed? Then conservatives must be right about Putin’s impressiveness!
Again, this might be more persuasive if Obama weren’t getting exactly what he wants right now.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, September 13, 2013
“Where’s My War?”: Spoiling The War With Iran That GOP Hawks So Fervently Desire
Last week I predicted that a lot of conservatives would wind up opposing the president’s request for a use-of-force resolution aimed at limited objectives based on a revival of the ancient “no-win-war” meme: that only a big, brawling unlimited war based on imposing America’s will unilaterally is worth fighting. Now that the threat of a military strike is being explicitly linked to the possibility of a diplomatic solution, neocons and regular old-school defenders of the military-industrial complex look to be stampeding in that direction.
Mitch McConnell has released his draft speech opposing a use-of-force resolution, and it relies very heavily on the no-win-war meme (even if his real motives are inveterate Obama-hatred and fear of getting out of synch with his most crucial ally is his primary battle back home, Rand Paul).
On the deepest level, I think it comes down to a fundamentally different view of America’s role in the world. Unlike the President, I’ve always been a firm and unapologetic believer in the idea that America isn’t just another nation among many; that we’re exceptional. As I’ve said, I believe we have a duty, as a superpower without imperialistic aims, to help maintain an international order and balance of power that we and other allies have worked very hard on over the years.
This President, on the other hand, has always been a very reluctant Commander in Chief. We saw that in the rhetoric of his famous Cairo speech, and in speeches he gave in other foreign capitals in the early days of his administration. The tone, and the policies that followed, were meant to project a humbler, more withdrawn America … and, frankly, I’m hard pressed to see any of the good that’s come from it.
He goes on and on, but the bottom line is that he won’t support a limited war and doesn’t think this president is capable of anything else.
Since neocons like John McCain and Lindsey Graham were already furious at Obama for failing to commit fully to war in Syria, and stayed on the reservation only when the use-of-force resolution was amended to aim at a change of the balance of forces between Assad and the rebels, it will be interesting to see if they defect as well (they have not so far) if the diplomatic initiative doesn’t collapse right away.
But neocon blogger Jennifer Rubin, who previously managed to support the use-of-force resolution while continuing to hurl insults at its prime proponent in the White House, has had enough of this peace talk:
This is fitting in a way. The president went to Congress for political cover. Then he went to Putin. Congress at this point is entitled to tell the president to solve his own mess.
Yeah, it’s sad that Obama may be in the process of spoiling the war with Syria that was supposed to pave the way to the war with Iran that so many GOP “hawks” actually want. So many of them may well move from a tactical alliance with Obama to a tactical alliance with Rand Paul, squawking belligerently all the way.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, September 10, 2013
“The Unknown Man”: Rummy Returns And It’s Like He Never Left
Don Rumsfeld, believe it or not, is back. And though I haven’t read Rumsfeld’s Rules, (available in paperback soon!), I’m pretty sure he hasn’t changed a bit. Which is something that I think it’s fair to say is true of most people who worked at high levels for George W. Bush. As far as they’re concerned, they were right all along, about everything. Rumsfeld thinks President Obama is going about this Syria thing all wrong, about which he could well be right, but how can anybody hear him offer opinions about that sort of thing and not remind themselves that he bore as much responsibility as anyone for what was probably the single greatest foreign-policy screw-up in American history?
Anyhow, the real reason I mention Rummy is that Errol Morris has a new documentary about him coming out soon called The Unknown Known. Like Morris’ The Fog of War, his film on Robert McNamara, it’s basically a long interview with Rumsfeld. But unlike McNamara, Rumsfeld has no regrets. Watch this preview all the way to the end: http://youtu.be/NptUMuDAljA
“Not an obsession. A very measured, nuanced approach.”
To me, that self-satisfied smile Rumsfeld gives at the end says, You can try all day, buddy, but I’m never going to say we were wrong. Give me your best shot. Rumsfeld seems to be treating the interview like a game, which in some sense it is. It might seem odd that Rumsfeld would agree to participate in the film, but he has no small amount of self-regard. He no doubt believed that no matter what Morris asked him, he’d be able to give the answer he wanted and not get trapped into saying something embarrassing. In the end, he’d be victorious. Just like he was in Iraq, right?
But the fact that he can describe the administration’s beliefs about Iraq as “Not an obsession. A very measured, nuanced approach” is quite something. You’d expect at least an acknowledgement that things didn’t work out quite as they had hoped. This is, after all, the man who said about phantom WMDs, “We know where they are,” and who predicted about the war, “It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months” (another time he said, “Five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn’t going to last any longer than that”).
The propaganda war over Iraq never ends, I guess. Maybe the bigger the mistake you make, the more you need to convince yourself and others that it was never really a mistake to begin with.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, September 4, 2013
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