Things are now moving pretty fast in Syria. A lot faster than I’m moving, since I’ve meant to write about this since yesterday morning.
While we were gazing at our navels and talking about the NSA “scandal” revealed by Edward Snowden, Bashar Assad was winning the war against the rebels. He was doing so with the help of Vladimir Putin, Hezbolla and Iran (the source of promising news today). It was like that movie-length version of the old “Batman” TV series, when all of the Caped Crusader’s arch-villains came after him and Robin at once.
Anyway, there are many things to consider:
- Why should WMD have been the “red line”? My wife asked me that one last night; it wouldn’t have occurred to me. I realized that “because it’s always the line you don’t cross, since WWI” wasn’t good enough. In a way, it doesn’t make good sense — 150 killed by WMD (or so we say; Syria calls it a “caravan of lies” in one of those charming turns of phrase we get from that part of the world) vs. 90,000 to 120,000 total in this conflict? Is it really worse to kill people with gas than with bombs? Well, I thought about it a good bit, and came up with a theory — maybe President Obama came up with this one because he was the one guy in his administration who didn’t want us to get involved, so he came up with a line that he thought neither Assad nor anyone else would be stupid enough to cross in 2013. But then I said, nah — I think he just chose it because that’s always the bright line. Tradition.
- Is it too late to do any good? Will we try to nudge things toward a good outcome (which would be having a faction other than Assad or the friends of al Qaeda win), only to fail because we went in too late? In which case folks who think the way the president has up to now will say, “See, we can’t really affect these things; we need to be more humble in our foreign relations, yadda yadda.”
- Just how are we going to accomplish this, anyway? How good are our contacts with the “good” rebels, and do we even know who they are? Can we establish clear supply lines? How much danger will we have to put our own people in, such as flying Chinooks in, etc.? What kinds of weapons are we going to give them? Small arms? If so, do we have anything better than the AK-47s that are already so common in the region (and every other region)? OK, on that last one, I know the answer is no, but maybe they don’t have enough Kalashnikovs, or enough ammo, or we can help them with other weapons. I’d like the particulars, if it doesn’t violate operational security.
- Do we already have special ops people in country — Delta, SEALs and the like? I expect so, since we’re now told the decision to help the rebels was made weeks ago. I certainly hope so. We need to have contacts and relationships pretty much established.
- What are the Russians going to do? On one level, they’re doing the same thing they did before Iraq — saying we’re wrong about the WMD (OK, that’s not exactly what they did before Iraq, because everybody thought there were WMD, but it’s kinda the same, in that they don’t want us to do anything about it). On another, this is high stakes for them. They’ve got that warm-water naval base (you know what great store they set by warm-water naval bases). They’ve been helping Assad win. He’s been their guy forever, and his daddy before him. They’re really ticked that we’re going to neglect to take our F-16s and Patriot missile home when we’re done with a joint exercise we just happened to be doing with Jordan.
- Are the Brits and the French going to help? I thought it was sort of weird yesterday when PM David Cameron said that no decision had been made to give arms to the Syrian rebels. Didn’t the Brits and the French insist that the EU drop its arms embargo? So what gives?
OK, that’s enough to get us started with…
Related Posts
Barack Obama got punk’d by Bill Clinton, simple as that. This does not sound like a good idea, for a variety of reasons, all of which are very eloquently summarized here.
When you write that “Assad is winning the war against the rebels… with the help of Vladimir Putin, Hezbollah and Iran…” you are forgetting that Assad also maintains significant internal domestic support, even among a large segment of the Sunni middle-class, who may not like him much but fear what they perceive the alternative to be, far more.
You missed the biggie: What’s our objective?
By the way, you can’t fight the government (effectively) with small arms. Sending small arms is a joke.
I doubt that it’s just small arms. I’d like to know more…