by Patrick Appel
Micah Zenko asks:
Even a limited cruise missile strike will not be merely an attack on Assad’s chemical weapons capabilities, but an attack on the regime itself.
Subsequently, the United States will be correctly perceived by all sides as intervening on behalf of the armed opposition. From there, it is easy to conceive how the initial limited intervention for humanitarian purposes – like Libya in 2011 – turns into a joint campaign plan to assure that Assad is toppled.
If this is the strategic objective of America’s intervention in Syria, President Obama should state it publicly, and provide a narrative of victory for how the United States, with a small number of partner countries, can and will achieve this.
Bret Stephens, for one, wants Assad eliminated:
The world can ill-afford a reprise of the 1930s, when the barbarians were given free rein by a West that had lost its will to enforce global order. Yes, a Tomahawk aimed at Assad could miss, just as the missiles aimed at Saddam did. But there’s also a chance it could hit and hasten the end of the civil war.
Larison pushes back:
One of the persistent flaws in hawkish thinking about foreign conflicts is that the foreign strongman is treated as the embodiment of everything wrong with the country, and consequently hawks tend to think that by removing the strongman the country’s problems will be remedied very easily. Killing off the leadership of the regime likely wouldn’t hasten the end of the conflict.
Would killing Assad prevent the U.S. from being drawn into the conflict? That seems implausible. If the U.S. killed regime leaders, it would probably invite retaliation that sooner or later would make U.S. involvement in the conflict almost unavoidable. Having taken the dramatic step of striking at the top levels of the Syrian government, would the U.S. then be content to leave Assad’s successor in peace? Not very likely. Stephens’ proposal is a recipe for sucking the U.S. deeper into an intense sectarian conflict.
Gillespie adds:
I don’t doubt Stephens desire to kill Bashar Assad; indeed, the world would not weep a single tear over that tyrant’s death, or the demise of his regime. But the cavalier attitude toward war is stunning, isn’t it, as is the foam-flecked invocation of “civilization.”
Indeed, if the best case for a U.S. war with Syria is that “the future of civilization” is at stake, it’s clear that pro-war forces have no argument other than overheated rhetoric. The simple fact is that Syria’s civil war (and that’s what we’re facing here) is not the test case for civilization, Western or otherwise.
The Dish 