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“Reality Check”: Assad’s Use Of Chemical Weapons Is Truly Depraved

“We categorically reject even the idea of using chemical weapons … against our own people,” Syrian deputy foreign minister Faisal Mekdad said this week. “This is crazy, morally this is absolutely unacceptable, and no Syrian … from the government will do it.”

Despite those comments, overwhelming evidence indicates the regime of Bashar al-Assad has deployed chemical weapons on the battlefield in Syria.

The most recent — and by far the most devastating — occurred on August 21, when thousands of people were gassed while they slept in the Damascus suburb of East Ghouta.

To realize how depraved it is to use nerve agents on innocent civilians, consider that the attack was “third large-scale use of a chemical weapon in the Middle East and may have broken the longest period in history without such an attack.”

That fact is currently being lost as Congress begins debating whether to approve limited military action in response to the Syrian government’s actions.

Yet that’s the thrust of the Obama administration’s argument.

“Bashar al-Assad now joins the list of Adolph Hitler and Saddam Hussein [i.e., other rulers who] have used these weapons in time of war,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told NBC on Sunday. “This is of great consequence to Israel, to Jordan, to Turkey, to the region, and to all of us who care about enforcing the international norm with respect to chemical weapons.”

The “threat” of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) — nuclear, biological, or chemical — is real, but one of the reasons people are hesitant to advocate a U.S. strike is because the threat of “WMDs” were used as a pretense to hasten the oust Hussein.

The Iraq war notwithstanding, history provides insight into the wickedness of chemical weapons use. That, in turn, informs why the international community has been proactive about neutralizing that threat.

In World War I poison gas was arguably the most feared of all weapons as several countries released more than 1.3 million tons of chemical agents — ranging from simple tear gas to mustard gas — and killed 90,000 men.

The gas, released in open air, spread with the speed and direction of the wind. The same thing happened outside of Damascus on August 21.

By World War II Nazi Germany had developed deadlier gasses and then took air out of the equation by releasing nerve agents in gas chambers. The effect was catastrophic — the largest chambers could kill 2,000 people at once — since the concentration of chemicals is highest in small spaces.

The horrors of the World Wars, as well as the more recent example of Iraq causing 60,000 chemical weapons casualties in their war with Iran in the ’80s, explain why the Obama administration would be aggressively proactive about their use in Syria.

Furthermore, there is the added danger of Syria’s chemical WMDs falling into the hands of extremists who would hesitate much less before wreaking chemical havoc on a part of the world.

That’s why there has been a persistent fear throughout the Syrian conflict that Assad would transfer chemical weapons to Hezbollah, the Lebanese-based terrorist group and Iranian proxy that has more than 60,000 rockets pointed at Israel.

Syria and it’s allies have insisted that Assad is not crazy enough to deploy WMDs on his people. On Friday Russian President Vladimir Putin said it would be “utter nonsense” for Syria’s government to provoke opponents with such attacks.

But overwhelming evidence indicates that he did just that. Now it’s just a matter of what the international community is going to do about it.

As Obama asked “every member of Congress and every member of the global community” on Saturday:

“What message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of children to death in plain sight and pay no price? What’s the purpose of the international system that we’ve built if a prohibition on the use of chemical weapons that has been agreed to by the governments of 98 percent of the world’s people and approved overwhelmingly by the Congress of the United States is not enforced?”

 

By: Michael Kelley, Business Insider, September 1, 2013

September 3, 2013 Posted by | Syria | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“Unlike The Invasion Of Iraq”: The Syrian Government’s Use Of Chemical Weapons Matters To U. S. National Security

On Saturday President Obama said that a large-scale chemical weapons attack “presents a serious danger to our national security.”

This is a key notion in the debate about whether the U.S. should again choose to meddle in the Middle East.

The president gave three reasons:

1) “It risks making a mockery of the global prohibition on the use of chemical weapons.”

Earlier this week Ian Bremmer told Business Insider the U.S. “has to respond given international norms against the use of chemical weapons” because the “costs of not responding at this point are too high.”

The international norm argument underlies Obama’s “question for every member of Congress and every member of the global community: What message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of children to death in plain sight and pay no price?”

2) “It endangers our friends and our partners along Syria’s borders, including Israel, Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq.”

The U.S. stated, in a law signed by Obama in July 2012, that the strategic environment in the Middle East poses “great challenges to the national security of the United States and our allies in the region, particularly our most important ally in the region.”

And several of America’s other allies in the region are calling for U.S. intervention aimed at toppling Assad so that the devastating 29-month conflict ends.

“Obama never needed to go searching for a coalition of the willing for Syria; one … has been knocking, in fact, at the door of the Oval Office for quite some time,” Interpreter Magazine Editor-in-Chief Michael D. Weiss wrote in Foreign Policy. “Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates, all see Syria as a grave short-term threat to their national security.”

3) “It could lead to escalating use of chemical weapons, or their proliferation to terrorist groups who would do our people harm.”

This reason involves the fear that Assad would transfer chemical weapons to Hezbollah, the Lebanese-based terrorist group and Iranian proxy that has more than 60,000 rockets pointed at Israel.

Furthermore, Michael Gordon of The New York Times reported that effective strikes “may also send a signal to Iran that the White House is prepared to back up its words, no small consideration for an administration that has proclaimed that the use of military force remains an option if the leadership in Iran insists on fielding a nuclear weapon.”

In Obama’s words: “If we won’t enforce accountability in the face of this heinous act, what does it say about our resolve to stand up to others who flout fundamental international rules?”

So, unlike the invasion of Iraq, it appears that the Assad’s regime’s perceived large-scale use of chemical weapons — and a response to such an action — actually involves legitimate national security interests.

 

By: Michael Kelly, Business Insider, August 31, 2013

September 2, 2013 Posted by | Middle East, National Security | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“The Few, The Proud, The Frightened”: Only The Fringe Standing With Rand Paul On Aid To Egypt

Yesterday wasn’t the best day for Rand Paul’s efforts to transform himself from a less cranky version of his old man into a power broker and potential presidential candidate in the Republican Party. Aside from Chris Christie’s contemptuous rejection of Paul’s suggestion that they sit down over a tall cool one and resolve their war of words over foreign policy, Paul failed to make much headway in the Senate in his long-standing attempt to cut off military aid to Egypt, despite having an almost ideal set of circumstances. While Democrats united behind the administration’s position that an aid cutoff could de-stabilize Egypt, most of the floor action involved the pummeling of Paul by his Republican colleagues, prior to a 86-13 vote against his amendment to the THUD appropriations bill.

WaPo’s Dana Milbank captured the flavor of the debate:

More than a dozen senators sat or stood at their desks in the usually empty chamber, engaging Paul, who tried to rebut their points. So many wished to join the fray that Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) extended the debate.

The result reinforced the proud tradition of internationalism in the body, and in the GOP. For all the talk of a Republican civil war over foreign policy, Wednesday’s vote showed that the internationalists still dominate. McCain portrayed Paul as the heir to the America Firsters. But there has been no growth in the isolationist sentiment since March, when an amendment to restrict aid to Egypt failed, 74-25, or since September 2012, when a Paul bill to cut off aid to Egypt, Pakistan and Libya went down, 81-10.

The coup de grace probably occurred when Lindsay Graham read aloud a letter from AIPAC opposing the aid cutoff.

McCain needled Paul. “The question here is whether the senator from Kentucky knows what’s better for Israel, or Israel.”

Paul shook his head, reclaimed the floor and challenged the “so-called leadership” of AIPAC.

When the clerk called the roll, McCain whipped his colleagues aggressively: arguing with Dean Heller (R-Nev.) after the new senator took Paul’s side, applauding when John Hoeven (R-N.D.) voted against Paul and working over Tim Scott (R-S.C.) until the senator cried uncle. “I’m with you,” Scott said.

For the Republican internationalists, this wasn’t about winning but dominating.

Well, maybe. 13 Republicans decided to Stand with Rand on aid to Egypt. That’s just one short of the number of Republican senators who stood with McCain and Graham on immigration reform, which was supposedly a triumph of party “pragmatism” against the craziness of the House GOP. You also see some significant names supporting Paul’s amendment: Mike Lee, the majordomo of the Senate’s “constitutional conservatives,” and his boon companion Ted Cruz, a potential rival of Paul’s in 2016. There’s Mike Enzi of Wyoming, who may be counting on help from Paul in rebuffing a primary challenge from Lynn Cheney that bids fair to become a national Neocon crusade. And then there was Mitch McConnell, who has clearly decided that snuggling up to Paul is his best insurance against his own primary challenge next year.

For dedicated Paulites, this was just another vote in a long struggle against foreign policy internationalists in both parties. For the GOP as a whole, it’s unclear whether the vote pitted the dominant faction against the fringe, or the party’s past against its future.

 

By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, August 1, 2013

August 3, 2013 Posted by | Foreign Policy | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“The Last Thing Egypt Needs”: The Problems Are So Daunting That The Lack Of Democracy Is Not The Top Priority

In addition to all the experts, thinkers, pundits and others who have been cited about the loss of democracy in Egypt, let me quote a certain West Point expellee who, in a different context, uttered words that now fit the situation: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” Rhett Butler neatly summarizes my position on democracy in Egypt.

I hope not to sound too cynical. I have always had a soft spot for Egypt. The people are gracious and aware that theirs is a storied and wonderful civilization. But the issue is not whether Egypt is a democracy or something else. The issue is whether Egypt provides for its people and keeps out of trouble. After that, if Ramses II returns, it’s okay with me.

For 34 years — under three regimes now — Egypt has kept the peace with Israel, which is worth a yearly Nobel Peace Prize. For all but the past two years, this peace was maintained by authoritarian regimes — Anwar Sadat’s and then Hosni Mubarak’s. They had their imperfections, but bellicosity was not one of them.

Democracy is nice, but it is not a panacea. The American insistence that the world mimic us — ain’t we pretty close to poifect? — has always struck me as both patronizing and contemptuous of history. The overriding challenge of all incipient democracies is how to handle minority issues. For a very long time, the United States did not do very well in this regard. We disenfranchised African Americans and used all sorts of devices to keep them in penury and politically powerless. Southern states insisted on Jim Crow laws, and their representatives in Congress — many of whom loathed racial segregation — voted to maintain it lest they wind up losing at the polls. It took the often non-elected courts, Supreme or less so, to remedy the situation. The people are not always wise.

In many cases, the democracies that emerged in Europe after World War I evolved into intolerant, rightist regimes. Hitler — the überexample — had enormous popular support even though Germans were well aware that he was enamored of violence and a bit unbalanced about Jews. To the east, the popularly elected governments of Poland and other nations treated their various minorities roughly — the Jews roughest of all. All sorts of restrictions were imposed on Jews throughout Eastern Europe, everything from “seating ghettos” in Polish universities’ lecture halls to a requirement in Romania that Jewish medical students learn their profession only on Jewish cadavers.

The Holocaust and the ethnic cleansing that followed World War II reorganized Eastern Europe into neat ethnic enclaves — otherwise who knows what would be happening today. The Middle East is not so well-ordered. The Jews are gone — 75,000 or so booted out of Egypt in the 1950s and ’60s, 120,000 out of Iraq around the same time — but Shiites rub up against Sunnis, and Christians against Muslims. In Egypt, the Coptic Christians felt endangered by a government — elected or not — run by the Muslim Brotherhood.

America’s interest is in a stable Middle East. If stability can be combined with democracy, all the better. But it was the authoritarian governments of Egypt and Jordan that signed peace treaties with Israel when, you’d be assured, popularly elected ones would never have done so. (As it was, the treaty cost Sadat his life.)

For Mohamed Morsi, sooner or later he might have had to balance the $1.5 billion that Egypt annually gets from the United States — most of it military aid — against a popular clamor to repudiate the peace with Israel. The Israel question, abetted by an appalling amount of anti-Semitism, is just too easy to demagogue. It is what race was in the Jim Crow South or, to wax truly esoteric, what Belorussians were in inter-war Poland.

After the collapse of Weimar Germany — a democracy but an extremely messy one — some intellectuals, including Hannah Arendt and Theodor Adorno, questioned whether democracy was always a wonderful thing. The answer, of course, is nothing is always wonderful. The Egyptian democracy was tending back toward authoritarianism and, no matter what had happened, the country might have seen its last real election. In the short run, no government can reverse the population explosion, provide jobs for young people or ameliorate what climate change is doing to the Nile Delta. Egypt’s problems are so daunting that the lack of democracy is not the top priority. First things first. Before Egypt needs a democratic government, it just needs a government.

 

By: Richard Cohen, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, July 8, 2013

July 10, 2013 Posted by | Egypt, Middle East | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“A Renegade Chop Shop”: Five Reasons Ronald Reagan Couldn’t Make It In Today’s GOP

Former Senate Majority Leader and Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole slammed the state of the Republican Party over the weekend, telling Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace that the GOP should be “closed for repairs” and lamenting that some of the most famous Republicans would have no chance at becoming party leaders in the Tea Party era.

“I doubt [I could fit in with the modern party],” Dole said. “Reagan wouldn’t have made it, certainly Nixon wouldn’t have made it, because he had ideas. We might have made it, but I doubt it.”

While Dole’s criticism of his party’s current platform could be debated, his assertion that Ronald Reagan wouldn’t have prospered in the current political climate is pretty much unassailable. Here are five reasons that Republicans’ favorite Republican could never fit in with today’s party:

Taxes

Although modern Republicans have posthumously deified Reagan as the patron saint of tax cuts, he actually signed at least 10 tax increases totaling $132.7 billion during his eight years as president, and had raised taxes several times before that as governor of California.

Ideologically “pure” Republicans like Eric Cantor may deny it, but if Reagan ran today, he would completely flunk Grover Norquist’s anti-tax test, and be eaten alive by the Tea Party.

The Deficit

Modern Republicans tend to portray the federal budget deficit as an economic and moral issue of the highest importance — an attitude that Reagan echoed when he declared the deficit to be “out of control” shortly after taking office in January, 1981. Once he was in the Oval Office, however, Reagan began enacting policies that would infamously lead Vice President Dick Cheney to scoff that “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter.” Within two years the deficit had nearly tripled, reaching $208 billion, and by the time Reagan left office it was at $155 billion; during Reagan’s two terms America went from being the world’s largest international creditor to the largest debtor nation.

In fairness, this is the one position on this list that the right may have been able to forgive. After all, as former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum once said, “We’re all Keynesians during Republican administrations.”

Immigration

Long before Rick Perry’s “oops” heard ’round the world, the Texas governor’s presidential ambitions were already on life support due to his refusal to disavow a law providing in-state college tuition for the children of illegal immigrants — a position that got him vociferously booed at a Tea Party-sponsored debate.

If the crowd couldn’t handle that benign position from Perry, they certainly wouldn’t have liked the fact that Reagan granted legal status to about three million undocumented immigrants when he signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. If you’d like to know what the right’s criticism might have sounded like, look no further than Tea Party representative Steve King (R-IA), who recently blamed the ’86 reform for President Obama’s election.

Israel

Reagan’s complicated relationship with Israel is yet another issue on which he and the Republican Party’s right wing could never have agreed — not after the Reagan administration called on Israel to adopt a total settlement freeze and place its nuclear facilities under international supervision, and sold highly advanced military jets to Saudi Arabia. Not to mention Reagan’s 1985 trip to Germany, where he initially declined to visit the site of a concentration camp but agreed to lay a wreath at a cemetery containing the remains of 49 members of the Waffen-SS. As Haaretz‘s Chemi Salev put it, “If Obama treated Israel like Reagan did, he’d be impeached.”

Gun Reform

Even if Reagan had somehow managed to survive all of the other issues on this list, his support for expanded gun sale background checks and an assault weapon ban would certainly have killed his chances of winning over the GOP base. Although Reagan — who was shot in an assassination attempt in 1981 — makes for a sympathetic gun reform advocate, if Republicans can attack Sandy Hook parents, they could certainly have gone after the Gipper.

Plus, the “he only supported gun control because he was senile” excuse wouldn’t work quite as well for an active candidate.

 

By: Henry Decker, The National Memo, May 27, 2013

May 28, 2013 Posted by | GOP | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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