You may recall, even though it feels like a couple of centuries ago now, that there was quite some debate about the decision to hand over responsibility for Syria’s chemical weapons program to the UN, headed up by the Russians. Here is Mike Doran, who was on AC360 Later with me on Sep. 10:
It wouldn’t surprise me if, weeks from now, President Obama were attending the United Nations General Assembly while still holding meetings about a U.N. resolution to compel Assad to give up his chemical weapons. I guarantee you that as we speak, Assad’s chemical weapons team is frantically pouring bottles of Chanel No. 5, which Hezbollah stole from Lebanon, into missile shells that it will deliver to the U.N. in an elaborate demonstration of compliance with the agreement. We will take one whiff, call it perfume, and cry foul.
Russian officials and Secretary of State John Kerry have lauded the Syrian government for its cooperation with the preliminary work of the experts, sent by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, a group based in The Hague that ensures compliance with the treaty banning them. Syria’s government joined that treaty last month after having spent decades amassing an enormous stockpile of the munitions and refusing to acknowledge it possessed them.
Syrian state television released a brief video on Tuesday showing the organization’s experts at work. The experts oversaw the first destruction of components on Sunday, with the goal of rendering inoperable all of Syria’s production, mixing and filling equipment by Nov. 1.
Perhaps Doran still believes this is all a “Potemkin disarmament effort,” as he once tweeted. I’d like to see him defend that posture against the current facts on the ground. Speaking of people who know nothing and never get called on it, here’s a statement about the UN agreement from Senator John McCain and Butters from less than a month ago:
We cannot imagine a worse signal to send to Iran as it continues its push for a nuclear weapon. Without a U.N. Security Council Resolution under Chapter 7 authority, which threatens the use of force for non-compliance by the Assad regime, this framework agreement is meaningless. Assad will use the months and months afforded to him to delay and deceive the world using every trick in Saddam Hussein’s playbook. It requires a willful suspension of disbelief to see this agreement as anything other than the start of a diplomatic blind alley, and the Obama Administration is being led into it by Bashar Assad and Vladimir Putin.
And yet what we learn today is that by November 1, “all of Syria’s production, mixing and filling equipment” will be inoperable. Will this buffoon ever concede this? Of course not. The same statement accuses Assad of deceiving the world like Saddam. But Saddam’s ultimate deception was leaving the impression that he had WMDs, when he didn’t. It appears McCain has yet to absorb the most basic fact of the last war he successfully lobbied for (he’s unsuccessfully lobbied for a few dozen since, if memory serves).
Here’s Jeffrey Goldberg who knows so much about the complexities of the Middle East:
This plan probably won’t work. Assad is a lying, murdering terrorist, and lying, murdering terrorists aren’t, generally speaking, reliable partners, except for other lying, murdering terrorists.
Wrong again! More neocon wrongness from Jon Tobin at the magazine that roasts war criminals, Commentary:
[T]he Russian-sponsored process to get rid of Assad’s chemical weapons is an invitation for the Syrian tyrant to delay and obstruct any efforts to actually remove the toxic material and lock the U.S. into a partnership with a man that even United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon labeled as a criminal.
So why are the UN, the US, and Russia so happy with how things have worked out thus far? Now, of course, this is still an early stage, and we may have to wait a much longer time to see the real truth. But I seriously doubt any of these alleged hard-nosed foreign policy experts would have predicted the thoroughness of the Syrian cooperation so far, do you? I doubt it just as much as the idea that they will ever concede error, even when it is staring them, like newly-charred bodies in Baghdad, in the face.
(Photo: U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) speaks about recent developments in Syria September 17, 2013 in Washington, DC. The senator was speaking during a forum at the Council on Foreign Relations. By Mark Wilson/Getty Images.)