Will the United States of Obama attack Syria, which is an Arab Muslim country? Should it?
The views on this question are all over the map. In my view, whether Obama should attack depends on what he hopes to accomplish, whether he can accomplish it, and whether the price he will pay by attacking (or not attacking) is a price worth paying. I'll elaborate on that toward the end of this post, but first, let's look at how some other people see it.
The reason why this effectively guarantees military action, and why
military action is right, is that the West simply cannot allow a
precedent to be set in which the use of chemical weapons is brushed over
and ignored. This does not, and must not, mean boots on the ground.
Ultimately, the Arab world should sort this out, not us.
But we can do something. Extensive cruise missile strikes against
Assad's military infrastructure (plus a nice little one on his
presidential palace) should be sufficient to make a very necessary
point.
In terms of the calculations, of course, there's the issue of the
humiliation of Barack Obama having set red lines and then allowed them
to be crossed. But that wouldn't be a problem for Obama whose foreign
policy credentials are rightly ridiculed even by many hard core
Democrats.
The problem is that there's just too much at stake, and there are too
many people around Obama in Washington, and in London, Paris, Berlin etc
that know there's no choice but to act.
I absolutely disagree with those who think that the fate of Syria is
any of our business in terms of its possible (fantasy world) transition
to democracy if Assad is deposed. I'd love to see him go, but I'm pretty
certain I'd dislike his successors just as much. No, that's not the
point; which is that we have to adopt a long term strategy that is in
our own interests.
That means making a decisive statement that psychopathic dictators who
think they can "normalise" the use of weapons of mass destruction via
our own apathy or cowardice are proved wrong.
Bret Baier laid it out in his Fox News broadcast this evening: the opposition to intervening in Syria is by far the highest amount of public opposition to any proposed intervention or other military operation in the last 30 years. The numbers against Syria bear no resemblance to the numbers on anything Americans can remember, whether Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, the Balkans, Somalia, Haiti, Panama, or Grenada. Americans aren’t sold on the necessity or wisdom of a military attack on Syria; in fact, opposition to it, in the absence of conclusive proof that Assad used WMD, is a whopping 60 percent.
The fact that most Americans are opposed to a strike is not and will not be dispositive. Obama does not have to face reelection, and he has shown before (see Obamacare) that he is willing to do things that most Americans oppose. If he does that and he's right, it's called leadership. If he does it and he's wrong, he ought to pay a political price.
There are brief, cogent things to say about Syria, about the threat its civil war poses to stability, and about the security problem of chemical weapons use by Assad. But no one in the Obama administration, from Obama himself down through his cabinet-level representatives to Jay Carney, is saying them. We literally do not know the administration’s answer to the most basic question about this whole thing: what would we be conducting a military attack on Syria for?
There is a big difference between proposing to punish Assad, with no decisive end-state in view, and proposing to take action designed to shape or at least promote a particular end-state. The different goals would entail different levels and types of military action. Ideally, they would entail different packages of non-military action as well: principally diplomacy, to lay out, sell, and negotiate any end-state we had in mind.
Yes, there has to be a plan (and the one that Robin Shepherd laid out above sounds reasonable) and no, I'm not convinced there is one. That, unfortunately, is typical of this administration. It makes decisions to get into (Libya) or out of (Iraq) hostile situations in this region with no strategy and no endgame. I'm not sure that there's time for diplomacy, but there's definitely time for Obama to make the case to the American people that it's in America's interest not to allow rogue regimes like Assad's to use weapons of mass destruction with impunity.
The problem is that for Obama, the great communicator, to make such a case, he would first have to respect the American people and believe that their opinions matter. He doesn't. It's plain to me on so many fronts that Obama has no respect for the American people and no empathy for the things with which ordinary Americans have to cope on a day-to-day basis. See, for instance, Obamacare, the Obama family's numerous and exorbitant vacations at taxpayer expense, and the repeated golf games at times when the President's critical judgment is necessary (How many hours a week does this guy work anyway? I'd bet it's less than the average corporate lawyer).
Bottom line on this point: The reason that Obama is not making the case for attacking Syria to the American people is that he has no respect for the American people (nor for their elected representatives). Chew on that one for a while.
Jennifer goes on to outline three ways of looking at an attack on Syria: in terms of how much it will disrupt peace in the region, in terms of the damage to Obama's (largely non-existent) credibility in the region, and in terms of what Obama's goals are and whether they can be accomplished. Jennifer frames it this way:
With these three frameworks laid out, we circle back to the problem that the U.S. administration has addressed none of them before the public or Congress. We don’t know how much or if Team Obama, or our eager allies, have thought about what it will mean to the peace to cross Russia and Iran with a military action in Syria. For all we can tell, it has not even occurred to them.
We don’t know what their thinking is on the choice between evils: the evil of intervening or the evil of failing to after defining a red line.
And we don’t know what the driving objective of an intervention would be. That said, we do have an informative (if disquieting) data point from 2011.
Given all these factors, most of us can form a pretty solid opinion of whether we should intervene, and if so, for what purpose. What I have been unable to predict is what Obama is going to do.
What will happen? First, Obama will not say anything to the American people until the attack (or its initial wave if there's more than one) is over. Since the attack is likely to take place under the cover of darkness in the pre-dawn hours (rumored to be tomorrow), I am looking for the same kind of midnight announcement that Obama made when Osama Bin Laden was killed (which did wonders for my traffic, but not much for anything else). And even then, only if it's successful. If a strike is unsuccessful, look for Obama to try to keep the lid on it for a couple of days until he can figure out what to say.
But yes, I believe that there will be an attack. It won't happen because Obama wants it to - he's long past caring about his credibility (if he doesn't respect the people who elected him, how do you think he feels about the rest of the world?). It will happen because like in Libya and like with the disclosure of the Iranian nuclear plant in Qom, the Europeans will push him to do it, and will largely take responsibility for it. Obama will 'lead from behind' again, possibly even with the same 'responsibility to protect' rhetoric that he used in Libya.
The attack will be inconclusive. Some chemical weapons facilities will be hit, and maybe some symbolic targets like Assad's summer palace in Latakia. But the attack will be low-scale enough to keep Russia and Iran out. With all of his scorched earth talk, Assad will not respond either so long as the attack does not threaten his rule. Israel has already proven that with its raids on Assad's weapons shipments. While an attack like the one I'm describing will not stop Assad from using chemical weapons again, although it might make them weapons of an almost-last resort rather than a primary weapon.
And I agree with the Israeli intelligence assessment that Israel will not be hit either. The last thing Assad needs right now is Israel destroying what's left of his weapons - both conventional and unconventional.
Republican Jewish Coalition statement on Samantha Power nomination
The Republican Jewish Coalition has issued a statement in reaction to the announcement that Samantha Power has been nominated to replace Susan Rice at the United Nations, as Rice is moving up to the National Security Council.
In 2008, as an academic who taught at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Samantha Power suggested
that the U.S. should invade Israel militarily to impose a settlement to
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and protect “a new state of
Palestine.” Her writing and public appearances reflected her views that special-interest lobbies in this country (read, the “Israel lobby”) have too great an impact on our foreign policy in the Middle East.
More recently, she served as the first director of President Obama’s
new Atrocity Prevention Board. In her months in that role, the APB was
silent about the thousands of civilians killed by the Syrian government,
the attacks by the Sudanese government of the Nuba tribes in South
Sudan, and other crises around the world. The APB has no web site or social media presence, and has not responded to letters from human rights activists and genocide scholars regarding ongoing atrocities.
Sounds like she'll fit right in the Obama White House and the United Nations.
But her bit of nastiness seems to be tinged with a bit of anti-Semitism as well.
When concerns arose in 2008 regarding Barack Obama and his views towards Israel it generated wrath from Ms. Power,
who was a key foreign policy adviser to candidate Obama. She let loose
in a radio interview while in Europe, "So much of it is about: 'Is he
going to be good for the Jews?" Her writings and sayings are laced with
more of anti-Semitism.
She even went so far as to call Israelis "bastards"
She even promoted Palestinian propaganda that a massacre was committed in Jenin-even telling off a New York Times reporter (!) who did not agree with her view
She also wanted to impose a settlement on Israel, backed up with the placement of US troops (Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel thinks likewise, btw).
Her
adherence to the Soros-funded principle of Responsibility to Protect as
an international policy can be used as a cudgel against Israel when it
comes to the Palestinians and any actions Israel may be compelled to
take in Lebanon to defend herself from Hezb'allah (now busy committing
war crimes in Syria at the behest of the mullahs in Iran).
Ms. Power also derided concerns about Iran's nuclear weapons program in a Time magazine column,
stating that it was a figment of the imagination conjured up and
promoted by George Bush to gin up pressure on Iran . She counseled, what
else, outreach and engagement not further pressure. She will be great
at the United Nations: great for Iran, great for Hezb'llah, great for
Hamas.
She will be widely welcomed in that hotbed of hatred.
White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters
that the message of Clinton's trip will be that it is in nobody's
interest for there to be an escalation of military conflict in Gaza. He
added that Hamas must end rocket attacks into Israel and that Egypt can
be a partner in helping to resolve the conflict in Gaza.
Clinton's visit comes amid an flurry of diplomatic visits to the region aimed at securing a cease-fire to end to the hostilities in Gaza.
UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday called for an immediate
ceasefire and said an Israeli ground operation in the Palestinian
enclave would be a "dangerous escalation" that must be avoided.
"Immediate steps are needed by all to avoid a further
escalation, including a ground operation which will only result
in further tragedy," he said, before adding that Israel has "legitimate security concerns."
Ban
spoke at a news conference in Cairo after talks with Arab League chief
Nabil Elaraby. Later on Tuesday, the UN secretary-general will travel to
Israel for talks with Netanyahu.
In a meeting with President
Shimon Peres in the President's Residence on Tuesday, German Foreign
Minister Guido Westerwelle on Tuesday confirmed his frequently voiced
stance that Israel has the right to defend herself against rocket
attacks from Gaza.
"The German People and the German Government stand by Israel's right
to protect and defend itself against missile attacks from Gaza; and
Hamas has the responsibility to stop the missile attacks against
Israel," Westerwelle said.
"We're all interested in a cessation of
hostilities," he said, adding that everyone was working towards a
de-escalation of the situation and doing their utmost towards a
achieving a ceasefire, but the cessation of rocket-fire against Israel
was incumbent upon Hamas.
On Monday night, Westerwelle met with
Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, before heading to
Ramallah to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
The bottom line is that although no one expects us to roll over and play dead (thank God for that), no one is willing to see us actually resolve the problem either.
Some of you may recall the discussions in March 2011 about a 'new' doctrine of humanitarian intervention called Responsibility to Protect (R2P), which was used to justify NATO intervention in Libya. Michael Ignatieff argues that the current standoff over big power intervention in Syria shows that the doctrine is dead, although one of the causes of that death is the West's unwillingness to stand behind it.
At the end of the Cold War in 1989, we told ourselves history had a libretto—a story about liberty—set to a happy tune. Once regimes like Russia and China allowed market reforms, political reforms would follow, since peoples with economic freedom were bound to demand democracy too. The people have done so repeatedly since 1989 and both regimes have shut them down.
Our idea that history had a libretto of freedom led the West to misread Russia and China’s strategic intentions. We brushed aside signs that they were refusing to embrace our view of the world. Russia resisted NATO expansion to its border and refused to give the alliance a green light over Kosovo, but we thought their need for foreign capital would soften their intransigence over time. Chinese leaders dug in when asked to devalue their currency and they continued to imprison dissidents. But we assumed they would cooperate with us on other issues because they sought integration into the global economy. For too long we believed they were behind us on the march to freedom but were heading in the same direction.
Syria marks the end of these illusions and the post-Cold War period that went with them. A vast swathe of the globe, from the Russian border to the Pacific, including the tributary states of the Russian near-abroad, is now in the hands of venal, ruthless, deeply corrupt, single-party elites. These elites—Russian and Chinese—will draw closer together, as they understand that they have made the same strategic choice. Both are using capitalism to consolidate political despotism. They both see the world as a battle between elites like themselves with unlimited power and Western elites whose power is limited by democratic liberty.
When they look at the world this way, the Russian and Chinese regimes mock our view of history. They believe history is on their side. The economic crisis now entering its fifth year confirms their view that democracies are divided, incompetent, venal, hypocritical, and above all, weak. As Putin himself said in a speech in Moscow on July 9, our economic malaise is “weakening the dominant role of the so-called historical West.” Where the US and the West intervene, as in Iraq or Afghanistan, and try to impose what Putin called “missile-bomb diplomacy” we do not stay the course, and where we fail to back words with actions, as in Syria, we confirm the Russian and Chinese instinct that we are weak.
Syria tells us that the era of humanitarian intervention, “responsibility to protect,” is over, because it assumed a historical progression that has turned out to be false. The idea that the “international community” should shoulder together the responsibility to protect people from murderous regimes made sense only on the assumption that we all wanted people to live in tolerably decent ones. Neither Russia nor China takes this view. They are perfectly content with a world of Mugabes and Assads and they suspect, with more than just cynicism, that the West, for all its protestations, is too. For we are tired and worried about our economies back home and responsibility for other people’s freedom has turned out to be a costly and dirty business.
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the Western alliance had no intention of intervening in Syria even in the event of a U.N. mandate to protect civilians, and urged Middle East countries to find a way to end the spiraling violence.
Rasmussen told Reuters Friday he also rejected the possibility of providing logistical support for proposed "humanitarian corridors" to ferry relief to towns and cities bearing the brunt of President Bashar al-Assad's crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.
"We have no intention whatsoever to intervene in Syria," Rasmussen said in an interview, during a visit to mark the 60th anniversary of Turkey joining the alliance.
...
Asked if NATO's stance would change if the United Nations provided a mandate, Rasmussen was doubtful.
"No, I don't think so because Syria is also a different society, it is much more complicated ethnically, politically, religiously. That's why I do believe that a regional solution should be found," he said.
The good news is that the 'Responsibility to Protect' doctrine has been exposed as being empty. Of course, that would not stop them from trying to use it against Israel.
I've discussed the Responsibility to Protect doctrine many times - check here, here and here among others.
In this video, Frank Gaffney appears on Fox Business News with Eric Bolling to discuss the civil war in Libya. First, Aaron Klein of WND reports on Samantha Power's relationship with far-leftist George Soros and their common affinity for the 'Responsibility to Protect' provision in the UN's Libya resolution. The left correctly sees this 'Responsibility to Protect' as a blow to American sovereignty; it's time all Americans (and Israelis) get to know the implications of this dangerous new precedent.
I've already posted on the possibility that Samantha Power will become Secretary of State in a second Obama administration. After reading this post, the question you should be asking yourself is why should she bother? She already has enough influence over President Obama's thinking - she is his intellectual soulmate - and he is already implementing her foreign policy without the need for a Senate confirmation hearing or constant Congressional oversight. Stanley Kurtz demonstrates how and why.
A survey of Power’s writings indicates her long preoccupation with a series of issues now associated with Obama’s most controversial foreign-policy moves. In a 2003 piece for the New York Times, for example, Power bemoaned the reluctance of American policymakers to apologize to other countries for our supposed past mistakes. While Obama’s controversial (and so far unproductive) willingness to engage with the leaders of rogue states was initially attributed to a novice error during a 2007 debate with Hillary Clinton, the need to deal directly with even the worst rogue states is a major theme of Power’s second book, Chasing the Flame. That book was written in 2007, while Power was advising Obama’s presidential campaign. A 2007 piece by Power in The New York Times Book Reviewattacked the phrase “War on Terror,” which of course the Obama administration has since dropped.
In an appearance at Columbia University, just hours before the president’s Libya address, Power herself identified the protection of the citizens of Benghazi as the core purpose of our current intervention. Yet it should not be thought that Power’s shaping of Obama’s reasons and actions ends there. Almost a decade ago, Power laid out a series of secondary, interest-based justifications for humanitarian interventions — e.g., avoiding the creation of militarized refugees who might undermine regional stability, and flashing a discouraging signal to regional dictators — all of which were featured in Obama’s speech to the nation. To be sure, these “interest-based” justifications were largely rationalizations for an intervention driven overwhelmingly by humanitarian considerations. Yet Power’s broader and longstanding framing of the issue has been adopted wholesale by Obama.
In Power’s view, to be credible, humanitarian interventions must respond to immediate danger (thus Obama’s waiting until the militarily unpropitious moment when Benghazi itself was under imminent threat), must be supported by multilateral bodies (thus the resort to the U.N., NATO, and the Arab League in preference to the U.S. Congress), “must forswear up front . . . commercial or strategic interests in the region” (thus the disavowal of regime change as a goal of our multilateral action), and must “commit to remaining for a finite period” (as Obama has pledged to do in Libya). Even NATO’s threat to bomb the rebels if they kill civilians (which struck many as unrealistic, and at cross-purposes with our supposed military goals) is foreshadowed in Power’s writings, which highlight the need to police both sides in any humanitarian action.
...
The novel doctrine of “responsibility to protect,” which Power means the Libyan action to enshrine in international law, could someday be used to justify military intervention to impose a “two-state solution” on Israel (apparently this is one of Power’s longstanding goals, although she now disavows it). The International Criminal Court, which Power has long defended, may someday enable the leftist Europeans who run it to place American soldiers and politicians on trial for supposed war crimes. The Obama administration’s troubling acquiescence in the development of sweeping international prohibitions on “aggression” may one day make virtually any use of force not pre-approved by the United Nations subject to international sanctions. These are the long-term goals of Power’s policies, although they are seldom confessed or discussed.
On rare occasions, Power comes straight out and admits that the sorts of interventions she favors constitute an almost pure cost to American national interest, traditionally defined. More often, she retreats into the language of “pragmatism” and “self-interest” to justify what she knows Americans will not support on its own terms. That is Samantha Power’s way and, not coincidentally, Barack Obama’s way as well.
For Israel, which is loathed by Power, this is especially bad news.
What's really behind operation Odyssey Dawn in Libya, writes Salim Mansour, is that the Arab League has suckered the West into doing their dirty work for them (Hat Tip: Tundra Tabloids).
The lives of Arabs and non-Arabs in the region whose countries are members of the league, but lack oil wealth — Yemen, Bahrain, Darfur within Sudan, etc. — are cheap, inconsequential and certainly not worth the expenditure needed to save them from their respective despots.
Similarly, the lives of the poor, beaten and killed by despots — kith and kin of Libya's Gadhafi — in places like Zimbabwe, North Korea and Myanmar, or where democracy movements are openly crushed as in Iran and China, are not worth a dime beyond the merely ritual official regrets announced by western governments. Neither are the lives of people killed by terrorist bombings as in Israel and India.
League members are a collection of authoritarian states where widespread violations of human rights are notoriously routine.
There is no instance in the league's 66-year history when its members were sufficiently moved by evidence before them — even genocide as in the case of Saddam Hussein's repeated massacre of Kurds and Iraqi Shiites — to protect the abused.
The Libyan situation offered the league an opportunity to redeem its dishonourable record.
Arab states possess military resources that they could have deployed as a league operation and, in keeping with the UN principle of "responsibility to protect," placed in effect a no-fly zone over Libyan air space to save civilians and punish Gadhafi.
But the unwillingness of the league to intervene in Libya, or anywhere else in the Arab world — save for its unrelenting hostility towards Israel — is related to the fear of establishing a precedent among its members that nobody wants.
However, a precedent of a sort with unsavoury consequences for the future has been established. The league has talked the UN and western powers into doing its bidding without assuming any responsibility for consequences it finds politically distasteful or unpopular.
Middle Eastern culture of bargains made in bazaars is well known and in such haggles, sellers regularly find happily deluded suckers. The league made a winning bargain over Libya, and suckers of those left to pick up the bill and take the blame.
And why does the Arab League suddenly feel motivated to 'redeem its dishonorable record'? No, it's not because they've suddenly repented. It's because they are using the opportunity to create a precedent for invoking R2P (responsibility to protect), which can later be used against 'that s***ty little country' that takes up less than one tenth of one percent of the land mass that the Arab Muslim dictatorships call home.
Given that motivation, the West may not have fallen into a trap. It's at least as likely that they played along.
Purim is a lot of fun but exhausting. When most of your friends don't own cars and you do, if you want to see people, the onus to take the initiative to them falls on you. And aside from everything else, Mrs. Carl and I (since Mrs. Carl started going along instead of the younger girls) take the opportunity of Purim to see friends we don't see so much during the year. So like I said, it's fun but exhausting.
I see that the earlier post about the possibility of the no-fly zone against Libya being used against Israel has aroused a lot of comments, so I'd like to throw two other posts into the mix.
Omri Ceren notes a reference to a 'new doctrine' in UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon's announcement of the use of force against Muammar Gadhafi.
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon also said on Thursday that the justification for the use of force was based on humanitarian grounds, and referred to the principle known as Responsibility to Protect (R2P), “a new international security and human rights norm to address the international community’s failure to prevent and stop genocides, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.”
Omri suggests that the doctrine is not new, but what is new is the context in which it's being used. Until now, it was used mainly against African countries where there were real humanitarian concerns (think Darfur or Rwanda) that justified intervention.
But Omri notes that in 2009, the UN created something called the International Coalition For The Responsibility To Protect. That 'coalition' is principally being funded by anti-Israel NGO's and, as you might suspect by the date, it was created in response to Operation Cast Lead. The fact that the Libyan operation has now been tied to the 'responsibility to protect' makes for an even more dangerous precedent to 'protect' the 'Palestinians' against Israel. In fact, the following statement, issued during Operation Cast Lead, makes the connection even clearer:
The recent escalation of violence in Gaza has raised serious questions about the use of the Responsibility to Protect to urge international action to protect civilians in the conflict. The Responsibility to Protect has been referred to, notably by Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, but also others who claim that crimes committed in Gaza by Israeli forces have reached the threshold of R2P crimes.
We have exhaustively proven that most of the 'crimes' committed by Israeli forces in Gaza were not crimes at all, and we have proven that the manner in which Hamas waged war exposed citizens to danger in a manner in which they lost their protection under the Fourth Geneva Convention (sorry - no time to look for links now. Will try later if people ask). But that wouldn't stop the UN from calling for intervention.
The other post I wanted to show you is a direct response to the commenters who said that the US 'would never treat Israel like Gadhafi' and that the American people would take to the streets if Obama ever did. J.E. Dyer (who is a former US Naval Intelligence Officer) argues that the United States would not need to act.
Obama’s abdication of U.S. leadership puts the implications of “Responsibility to Protect” in a new light. The question now is whether U.S. participation is needed for the declaration and enforcement of a no-fly zone on the R2P principle. For a target country the size of Libya, our forces represent a convenience. But even for a nation with extensive territory, it’s not clear that U.S. capabilities are a necessity. It would have taken France and Britain longer to disable the Libyan air defense system, but they could certainly have done it themselves.
We still hold a veto on the UN Security Council; we could prevent the UN from authorizing a bumper crop of no-fly zones around the globe. We must hope Obama would use the veto to do so – and that regional coalitions would, like Obama and the other Western leaders, regard the imprimatur of the UN as indispensable. But they may not. France and Britain aren’t the only nations that will come up with reasons to use armed force abroad in the absence of American policy leadership.
The question about using R2P to “protect” Gaza (or other provinces in other disputed areas of the world) may not be whether the U.S. will agree to it and participate in it – Frank Gaffney’s question – but whether we are willing to actively prevent others from undertaking it.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
