Cue the Jaws soundtrack. Josh Rogin reports that the administration has asked the Pentagon to draw up plans for a no-fly zone in Syria:
President Obama’s dual-track strategy of continuing to pursue a political solution to the two-year-old uprising in Syria while also preparing for more direct U.S. military involvement includes authorizing the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the first time to plan for multilateral military actions inside Syria, the two officials said. They added that no decisions on actually using force have yet been made.
“The White House is still in contemplation mode but the planning is moving forward and it’s more advanced than it’s ever been,” one administration official told The Daily Beast. “All this effort to pressure the regime is part of the overall effort to find a political solution, but what happens if Geneva fails? It’s only prudent to plan for other options.”
In an update to the story, a Pentagon spokesman claims that there “is no new planning effort underway” and that the “Joint Staff, along with the relevant combatant commanders, continue to conduct prudent planning for a range of possible military options.” Friedersdorf cuts through the pro-war jargon:
The article also quotes Robert Zarate, policy director at the Foreign Policy Initiative, a hawkish organization. His euphemisms of choice: “No doubt, the United States and its like-minded allies and partners are fully capable, without the use of ground troops, of obviating the Assad regime’s degraded, fixed, and mobile air defenses and suppressing the regime’s use of airpower.”
Does anyone think he’d describe Syrian planes bombing a U.S. aircraft carrier as “obviating” our naval assets? The question before us is whether America should wage war in Syria by bombing its weapons, maintaining a presence in its airspace, and shooting at its pilots if they take off. On hearing the phrase “no-fly-zone,” how many Americans would realize all that is involved?
I trust “start a war against Syria” would poll poorly.
Which is why we must be careful that this does not get rushed, especially after the Libya debacle. And yes: debacle. Here’s the actual Benghazi story Republicans are uninterested in, for some reason:
Attacks on police stations and patrols have become frequent in the city, which has been the scene of power struggles among armed Islamist factions.
There’s also a classic power vacuum, as the Libyan parliament bars anyone who was part of the former regime from governing, forcing the resignation of chairman of the Libyan General National Congress. It reminds me of the great error of de-Baathification in post-Saddam Iraq. Allahpundit suspects a no-fly zone (NFZ) over Syria won’t happen:
The only way a (NFZ) will play politically for Obama with American voters is if it’s the same sort of turkey shoot that the Libyan NFZ was — which it won’t be. McCain told the Daily Beast that a realistic plan for a no-fly zone “would include hundreds of planes, and would be most effective if it included destroying Syrian airplanes on runways.” It’d be a huge, aggressive operation, and the presence of those Russian missiles means it might not be without casualties.
I’d say the two most important imperatives for the Obama administration in the next three years are negative ones: not getting involved in wars in Syria or Iran. The more energy-independent we become, the easier it will be to leave this region to its own demons.
(Photo: Men search for their relatives amongst the bodies of Syrian civilians executed and dumped in the Quweiq river, in the grounds of the courtyard of the Yarmouk School, in the Bustan al-Qasr district of Aleppo on January 30, 2013. By J M Lopez/AFP/Getty Images)
The Dish 