“Polarized Politics”: Syria Puts Our System On Trial
It was only a matter of time before our polarized politics threatened to destroy a president’s authority and call into question our country’s ability to act in the world. Will Congress let that happen?
To raise this question is not to denigrate those, left and right, who deeply believe that the United States should temper its international military role. Nor is it to claim that President Obama’s proposed strikes on Syria in response to Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons constitute some sort of “slam dunk” policy that should win automatic assent. But a bitter past hangs over this debate and could overwhelm a discussion of what’s actually at stake.
The wretched experience of Iraq is leading many Democrats to see Obama’s intervention in Syria as little different from what came before. Never mind that the evidence of Assad’s use of chemical weapons against his own people is far clearer than the evidence was about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, or that Obama has been so reluctant to take military action up to now. He faces a peculiar problem: While hawks criticize Obama for not being willing to act boldly enough against Assad, doves criticize him for being too willing to risk a wider war. Members of Obama’s party have to understand the risks of forcing him to walk away from a red line that he drew for good reason.
At the same time, Democrats will never forget how their patriotism and fortitude were questioned when they challenged President George W. Bush on Iraq and other post-9/11 policies. Yes, Bush did sign a fundraising letter before the 2006 midterm election that spoke of Democrats “who will wave the white flag of surrender in the global war on terror and deny the tools needed to achieve victory.” At a campaign event that year, he said of Democrats: “It sounds like they think the best way to protect the American people is to wait until we’re attacked again.”
I bring this up only to remind Republicans opposing Obama on Syria — and I’m not talking about the consistent anti-interventionist libertarians — that some in their party are making arguments now that they condemned Democrats for making not very long ago. Can we ever break this cycle of recrimination?
Obama bears responsibility here, too. Precisely because he had been so unwilling to intervene in Syria, he has handed opponents of his policy some of the very arguments they are using against him. Until Obama decided that the chemical attacks required a strong response, he was wary of getting involved, because the United States has reason to fear victory by either side in Syria. His old view may have been reasonable, but it can easily be invoked to undercut his current one.
The question now is whether Congress really wants to incapacitate the president for three long years. My hunch is that it doesn’t. This is why Republicans such as John Boehner, Eric Cantor and John McCain and Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi, Chris Van Hollen and Gerry Connolly all find themselves battling to give Obama the authority to act. The inconsistency of some Republicans shouldn’t blind us to the fact that others in the GOP are taking courageous risks to avoid paralyzing the president.
They will not prevail, however, unless Obama makes an unabashedly moral case on Tuesday explaining why things are different than they were a few months ago while laying out a practical strategy beyond the strikes. He must do something very difficult: show that his approach could succeed, over time, in replacing Assad with a new government without enmeshing the United States in a land conflict involving troops on the ground.
The administration’s view is that only a negotiated settlement will produce anything like a decent and stable outcome in Syria — and that only forceful U.S. action now will put the United States in a position to get the parties to the table. It’s not tidy or an easy sell, but it’s a plausible path consistent with what the United States can and can’t do.
If Obama wins this fight, as he must, he should then set about restoring some consensus about the United States’ world role. He has to show how a priority on “nation-building at home” can be squared with our international responsibilities. The seriousness of this crisis should also push Republicans away from reflexive anti-Obamaism, Rush Limbaugh-style talk-show madness, extreme anti-government rhetoric and threats to shut Washington down.
If we want to avoid becoming a second-class nation, we have to stop behaving like one.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, September 8, 2013
“Crossing The Line”: Doing Nothing Lowers The Threshold For Use Of Chemical Weapons Now And In The Future
Early in 1987, Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi President, decided to clear out scores of Kurdish villages, in order to undermine separatist rebels. He asked Ali Hassan al-Majid, a general and a first cousin, to lead the project. In tape recordings later produced by Iraqi prosecutors, Majid told Baath Party colleagues that the novelty and the terror of chemical weapons would “threaten” the Kurds and “motivate them to surrender.” On April 16th of that year, Iraq became the first nation ever to drop gas bombs on its own citizens; the gassing campaign lasted two years and killed thousands of people. “I will kill them all with chemical weapons!” Majid told his colleagues. “Who is going to say anything? The international community? Fuck them! The international community and those who listen to them!”
Two weeks ago, on August 21st, a poison-gas attack killed more than fourteen hundred civilians in the suburbs of Damascus, Syria’s capital. President Obama, in fashioning a response, has been burdened by the United States’ recent history with Iraq. The Administration of Ronald Reagan stood by as “Chemical Ali” waged his campaign against the Kurds. Fifteen years later, to justify an invasion of Iraq, the Administration of George W. Bush infamously claimed that Saddam Hussein still possessed chemical and biological arms. It soon became apparent that Saddam had abandoned them. That tragic war has rightly raised the standards of proof that Obama must meet to credibly propose military action in the Middle East, particularly if the casus belli concerns unconventional arms.
The Obama Administration, Britain, and France say there is little doubt that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is responsible for the recent slaughter, although they concede that the evidence is not airtight. The video imagery of the aftermath is indelible: unbloodied corpses, including toddlers’, in white shrouds; hospital patients choking and drooling. The chances that rebels were responsible seem slim to nonexistent. Yet last Thursday Britain’s Parliament, citing the West’s failures in Iraq, voted to reject an attack on Syria for now, because a majority did not judge the available evidence of Assad’s guilt to be definitive.
Last year, President Obama said that he would consider the use of chemical arms during Syria’s civil war a “red line” that, if crossed, would require American action. Last week, the President and his Secretary of State, John Kerry, sounded as though they had decided to strike against Assad. The dilemma they confront is a mercifully rare one. Since the First World War, there have been fewer than a dozen wars or acts of terrorism involving chemical arms. Before Syria, the last such attack occurred in 1995, when Aum Shinrikyo, a millenarian cult, released sarin gas into Tokyo’s subway because its leaders believed that mass killing would catalyze the apocalypse.
It is hard to grasp why any rational person would use chemical weapons, even amid the terrible exigencies of war. Gas weapons cannot be aimed in order to spare children or other noncombatants. They cause fear and prolonged suffering in victims, and cripple some survivors. They can contaminate the environment with poisons that last beyond a war’s end. And, because gases travel unpredictably on the wind, the weapons’ utility on a battlefield is limited.
Yet Saddam saw great value in chemical arms during the nineteen-eighties, and his twisted logic bears examination in the light of Syria’s deteriorating conflict. Saddam first used gas bombs to thwart Iran’s zealous swarms of “human wave” infantry. Chemical terror broke the will of young Iranian volunteers, a lesson that informed Majid’s subsequent Kurdish campaign. The Reagan Administration’s decision to tolerate Saddam’s depravities proved to be a colossal moral failure and strategic mistake; it encouraged Saddam’s aggression and internal repression, and it allowed Iraq to demonstrate to future dictators the tactical value of chemical warfare.
The consequences of similar passivity in Syria now are unknowable. After more than two years and a hundred thousand deaths, the war has descended into a miasma of kidnappings, executions, and indiscriminate attacks. It would not be surprising if Assad or his henchmen seized upon selective gassings as a way to break the opposition’s will, or to flush rebels from strategic neighborhoods. Obama has said that his aim in Syria is to prevent more gassings, not to overthrow Assad. Since the costs of even a limited Western military intervention in Syria might be very high, in diplomatic standing and in lives, it is reasonable to ask whether the cause of punishing and deterring the use of chemical weapons is worth the risks.
Assad’s forces have already killed tens of thousands of civilians with conventional weaponry. But chemical warfare is a step beyond. Since the Second World War, governments and armies have gradually forsworn weapons that do not distinguish between soldiers and civilians. These include nuclear, biological, and chemical arms, and also land mines and cluster munitions. The treaties that ban such arms are building blocks in a decades-long campaign by human-rights activists to insist that warfare be subordinated to international law, that soldiers attack only other soldiers, and that generals be held accountable for where they aim their weapons.
International laws and informal warnings of retaliation are designed to dissuade dictators and terrorists from using weapons of mass destruction under any circumstances. A failure to enforce such norms in Syria would likely lower the threshold for chemical use in this and future wars. Obama’s deliberateness about military action in Syria is understandable. The consequences of intervention may be difficult to control; the Syrian opposition is fractured and influenced by jihadi fighters. As Iraq has shown, the public requires transparency, accountability, and democratic deliberation when war crimes become a basis for more war.
In Iraq, starting in 2006, Chemical Ali went on trial for mass murder and other crimes against humanity. The proceedings were undeniably flawed. Yet they put Majid’s murderous arrogance on full display to his countrymen, and guaranteed that the record of his guilt can never be obscured. He was hanged in 2010. The prospect of even such rough justice for Syria’s chemical bombers looks elusive. Yet Obama’s original instincts were sound. There are red lines even in a war as devoid of clarity as Syria’s. The best available evidence is that on August 21st Bashar al-Assad’s forces crossed to the other side.
By: Steve Coll, The New Yorker, September 7, 2013
“I Don’t See Anything”: Pulling The Curtain Back On Syria
When I was a law student in 1982, I escaped torts by backpacking through Syria and taking a public bus to Hama, where the government had suppressed a rebellion by massacring some 20,000 people.
The center of Hama was pulverized into a vast field of rubble interspersed with bits of clothing, yet on the fringe of it stood, astonishingly, a tourism office. The two Syrian officials inside, thrilled to see an apparent tourist, weighed me down with leaflets about sightseeing in Hama and its ancient water wheels. After a bit of small talk, I pointed out the window at the moonscape and asked what had happened.
They peered out at the endless gravel pit.
“Huh?” one said nervously. “I don’t see anything.”
It feels to me a bit as if much of the world is reacting the same way today. The scale of the slaughter may be five times that of 1982, but few are interested in facing up to what is unfolding today out our window in Hama, Homs, Damascus and Aleppo.
As one woman tweeted to me: “We simply cannot stop every injustice in the world by using military weapons.”
Fair enough. But let’s be clear that this is not “every injustice”: On top of the 100,000-plus already killed in Syria, another 5,000 are being slaughtered monthly, according to the United Nations. Remember the Boston Massacre of 1770 from our history books, in which five people were killed? Syria loses that many people every 45 minutes on average, around the clock.
The rate of killing is accelerating. In the first year, 2011, there were fewer than 5,000 deaths. As of July 2012, there were still “only” 10,000, and the number has since soared tenfold.
A year ago, by United Nations calculations, there were 230,000 Syrian refugees. Now there are two million.
In other words, while there are many injustices around the world, from Darfur to eastern Congo, take it from one who has covered most of them: Syria is today the world capital of human suffering.
Skeptics are right about the drawbacks of getting involved, including the risk of retaliation. Yet let’s acknowledge that the alternative is, in effect, to acquiesce as the slaughter in Syria reaches perhaps the hundreds of thousands or more.
But what about the United Nations? How about a multilateral solution involving the Arab League? How about peace talks? What about an International Criminal Court prosecution?
All this sounds fine in theory, but Russia blocks progress in the United Nations. We’ve tried multilateral approaches, and Syrian leaders won’t negotiate a peace deal as long as they feel they’re winning on the ground. One risk of bringing in the International Criminal Court is that President Bashar al-Assad would be more wary of stepping down. The United Nations can’t stop the killing in Syria any more than in Darfur or Kosovo. As President Assad himself noted in 2009, “There is no substitute for the United States.”
So while neither intervention nor paralysis is appealing, that’s pretty much the menu. That’s why I favor a limited cruise missile strike against Syrian military targets (as well as the arming of moderate rebels). As I see it, there are several benefits: Such a strike may well deter Syria’s army from using chemical weapons again, probably can degrade the ability of the army to use chemical munitions and bomb civilian areas, can reinforce the global norm against chemical weapons, and — a more remote prospect — may slightly increase the pressure on the Assad regime to work out a peace deal.
If you’re thinking, “Those are incremental, speculative and highly uncertain gains,” well, you’re right. Syria will be bloody whatever we do.
Mine is a minority view. After the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, the West is bone weary and has little interest in atrocities unfolding in Syria or anywhere else. Opposition to missile strikes is one of the few issues that ordinary Democrats and Republicans agree on.
“So we’re bombing Syria because Syria is bombing Syria?” Sarah Palin wrote, in a rare comment that liberals might endorse. Her suggestion: “Let Allah sort it out.”
More broadly, pollsters are detecting a rise in isolationism. The proportion of Americans who say that “the U.S. should mind its own business internationally” has been at a historic high in recent years.
A Pew survey this year asked voters to rate 19 government expenses, and the top two choices for budget cuts were “aid to the world’s needy” and the State Department. (In fact, 0.5 percent of the budget goes to the world’s needy, and, until recently, the military had more musicians in its bands than the State Department had diplomats.)
When history looks back on this moment, will it view those who opposed intervening as champions of peace? Or, when the textbooks count the dead children, and the international norms broken with impunity, will our descendants puzzle that we took pride in retreating into passivity during this slaughter?
Isn’t this a bit like the idealists who embraced the Kellogg-Briand Pact that banned war 85 years ago? Sure, that made people feel good. But it may also have encouraged the appeasement that ultimately cost lives in World War II.
O.K., so I’ve just added fuel to the battle for analogies. For now, the one that has caught on is Iraq in 2003. But considering that no one is contemplating boots on the ground, a more relevant analogy in Iraq may be the 1998 Operation Desert Fox bombing of Iraqi military sites by President Bill Clinton. It lasted a few days, and some say it was a factor in leading Iraq to give up W.M.D. programs; others disagree.
THAT murkiness is not surprising. To me, the lessons of history in this area are complex and conflicting, offering no neat formula to reach peace or alleviate war. In most cases, diplomacy works best. But not always. When Yugoslavia was collapsing into civil war in the early 1990s, early efforts at multilateral diplomacy delayed firm action and led to a higher body count.
Some military interventions, as in Sierra Leone, Bosnia and Kosovo, have worked well. Others, such as Iraq in 2003, worked very badly. Still others, such as Libya, had mixed results. Afghanistan and Somalia were promising at first but then evolved badly.
So, having said that analogies aren’t necessarily helpful, let me leave you with a final provocation.
If we were fighting against an incomparably harsher dictator using chemical weapons on our own neighborhoods, and dropping napalm-like substances on our children’s schools, would we regard other countries as “pro-peace” if they sat on the fence as our dead piled up?
By: Nicholas D. Kristof, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, September 7, 2013
“Padding The Coffers”: When Crass Fundraising Takes A Grimm Turn
Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.) announced just days ago that he would support President Obama’s call for military intervention in Syria. “We have to keep our word; this is about our credibility,” the New York Republican said last weekend. “We can’t permit a precedent where there is a use of chemical weapons and there is no response.”
Four days later, Grimm changed his mind, and announced yesterday he opposes the policy he’d previously endorsed.
I’ll leave it to others to speculate as to why, exactly, the congressman reversed course so quickly and completely, but Grimm appears to have tipped his hand a bit.
Rep. Michael Grimm, a New York Republican, is sending out fundraising emails based on his decision to switch from supporting President Obama’s Syria plan to opposing it.
Grimm’s campaign list sent out the fundraising call on Thursday with the subject line “Oppose Military Action in Syria.”
The fundraising appeal, sent within a few hours of Grimm’s newly announced position, asks donors, “Will you stand with me in opposing President Obama’s plan with a donation of $25 or more right now?” It adds, “Stand with me today with a donation of $25 or more to strongly oppose military action in Syria.”
Terri Lynn Land, a Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Michigan, yesterday tried to pull the same fundraising stunt.
To be sure, there are no laws or ethics rules prohibiting this sort of crass fundraising, and for all I know, there may well be prospective sucker donors out there who respond to these appeals.
But I like to think reasonable, fair-minded observers can agree that this is just cheap and ugly. In Grimm’s case, we have an elected member of the U.S. Congress telling constituents and supporters (1) Syria used chemical weapons to slaughter civilians; (2) the U.S. is weighing a military response; (3) Grimm flip-flopped over the course of a few days; so (4) send Grimm some cash because … Obama is bad. Or something.
Pro tip: don’t try to exploit a national security crisis involving a chemical-weapons attack to pad your campaign coffers. Just. Don’t. Do. It.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, September 6, 2013
“When Liberals Enable Tyrants”: Can A Liberal Oppose Tyranny And Support Military Intervention At The Same Time?
What is liberalism supposed to be about on the world stage? What values and goals do American liberals wish to promote around the world? I’m pretty certain most would say free democratic societies; full political rights for ethnic minorities; equal rights for women and, with any luck, gay people; a free press; an independent judiciary; and so forth. And, where those cannot be achieved, at least a base-level opposition to tyranny, reaction, religious fundamentalism, and so on.
Most would name these things. But, I have to say, most rank-and-file liberals don’t seem to me to be very passionate about them. What most liberals are passionate about is one thing: opposition to U.S. militarism. That’s what really roils the loins. Ever since Vietnam, there’s been this template, this governing notion that every military action the United States undertakes is by definition both immoral and bound inevitably to lead to a quagmire; that the U.S. military can do only bad in the world. Lord knows, there’s plenty of evidence to back up the claim, and a posture of deep skepticism about all military plans and promises is the only serious posture (abandoned by most of the “serious” people back in 2003).
I’ve described here two impulses: the desire to do good in the world, or at least to prevent the bad; and opposition to American force. Often these desires can exist in harmony. But what if they conflict? Why is opposition to any projection of force always the deciding factor? At times it can lead people into some very illiberal little corners.
I say this is one of those times. Taking no action now, after what Assad did, strengthens the hand of murderers, theocrats, and some of the most illiberal people on the planet. Yes, I have concerns about what might happen. You’ve read many columns, I’m sure, and heard many Democratic members of Congress on cable television talking about the potential catastrophic effects of a strike. I don’t deny them. I worry about them daily.
But I bet you haven’t heard many people talk about the potential harmful effects in the region of not striking the Assad regime. Yes, you probably saw Lindsey Graham and John McCain talk about how Iran would be emboldened in its nuclear ambitions, but that’s not even the half of it. Here are six consequences of not launching a strike against Syria, all of which could harm small-d democratic hopes in the region and, indeed, potentially increase the carnage.
(1) An Emboldened Assad
If the U.S. doesn’t strike, Assad would be emboldened to intensify the fighting in rebel-held areas. Rebel groups of different kinds hold a large number of cities and towns, as this map will show you. What if, concluding that the war-weary West doesn’t really care what he does and isn’t going to lift a finger to stop him, Assad (with Iran’s help) launches savage campaigns in these areas?
No strike is a green light for Assad to take over all the liberated areas by any means necessary, maybe including, again, chemical weapons. The CWs weren’t used last month just because he’s a big meanie. They were used to ferret rebel fighters out of their strongholds. Why wouldn’t he do it again if no one does a thing to stop him? And again?
(2) More Radicalized Rebels
Also within Syria itself, it’s possible that a failure to strike will radicalize more rebels and turn more of them against the United States and send them into the waiting arms of ISIS and al-Nusra, the al Qaeda affiliates. It certainly seems safe to say that the “good” elements of the anti-regime forces, the people looking to the West for help, would be the losers if we don’t strike. Both the regime and the rebel Islamists have been killing members of the better rebel factions, and both groups would get the message from no U.S. strike that those factions have no protector.
(3) A Win for Hezbollah
Hezbollah, Assad’s ally and Iran’s terrorist proxy army, could more easily take over in Lebanon if the U.S. holds back. Right now in Lebanon, there is no government. I don’t want to drag you too deeply into Lebanese politics, but Hezbollah wants one of two things: either to be in the government, or at least to have what is called the “obstructing third” privilege that permitted it in the last government to block anything the government wants to do. On the other side are pro-Western politicians who have sought to reduce Hezbollah’s influence. No strike would only embolden Hezbollah, which could then decide on key military and security appointments in the next government.
(4) A Strengthened Iran in Iraq
Why? Because of the ongoing competition between Iran and Saudi Arabia for Iraqi influence, no strike would probably make Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki tilt more toward Iran (Saudi Arabia supports a U.S. strike, albeit not quite openly). Lately, according to Ken Pollack, Washington and Tehran have been in a kind of unexpected entente in Iraq. And Tehran probably has enough on its plate in Syria to prevent it from starting to make power moves in Iraq. But it’s possible, if the U.S. stands down over Syria, that Iran could start doing just that in Iraq, even as the country seems to be sliding back into civil war.
(5) A Blow to Israel
And there’s Israel to think about it. If Nos. 2 and 3 above come to pass—a strengthened al Qaeda and Hezbollah—well, that can’t be very good news for Israel. There are now “resistance brigades” affiliated with the Syrian regime operating in the long-disputed Golan. These brigades, too, will take note if the United States does nothing here.
(6) A Nuclear-Trigger-Happy Iran
There is, yes, the ultimate question of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. I think it’s hard to argue that a U.S. strike would delay those ambitions. But it is not hard to argue the opposite—that the lack of American action against Syria would make Tehran feel that much freer to proceed with that much more impunity.
Looking back over my list, who could benefit from the U.S. not taking action here? Assad, the dictator with the blood of 100,000 on his hands. Iran, one of the world’s most reactionary regimes. Hezbollah, a terrorist force that crushes the democratic aspirations of the Lebanese people. And al Qaeda, the extremist fanatics behind 9/11. Are those the kinds of people liberals want to help? I’m sure liberal members of Congress who’ve announced they’re voting no—Raúl Grijalva, Alan Grayson, Charlie Rangel, Barbara Lee, and about 17 others—have spent a heck of a lot of time thinking about what could go wrong if we do strike. I bet they haven’t given a moment’s thought to what could go wrong if we don’t.
I say that’s worth thinking about. Also worth thinking about is the fact that many liberal-minded people from the region, and certainly many or virtually all of the nonextremist rebels, want the United States to act. From their point of view, without the United States’ engagement, the region is buried in slaughter, theocracy, and darkness. I would expect American liberals at least to stop and think about that.
Again, no one is talking about 130,000 ground troops. That was a qualitatively different thing, and I opposed it from the start. Yes, an American attack might escalate matters. But it also might not. We got in and out of Libya. It’s not clear what that one accomplished yet, although we did presumably prevent a slaughter of many thousands in Benghazi. It is clear what we accomplished in Kosovo, where another murderer was removed from office and hauled to the Hague (without one American life lost). So it doesn’t always end badly. And it isn’t always immoral. This is one of those cases where, if the scale of the action is appropriate and if it works, a military incursion can actually serve liberal ends. No, that’s not for sure. But it is for sure that doing nothing helps the reactionaries.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, September 6, 2013
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