Tag: Syria

by Brendan James

Sean Lee, a blogger living in Lebanon who’s skeptical of intervention, delivers a sharp message to fellow leftists:

[I]f your opinion of Syria is actually an opinion about the United States, I have no interest in hearing it, and it’s probably safe to say that most Syrians (or at least all of the ones I know) who are faced with the business end of the regime’s ordinance don’t either. I can’t think of a single Syrian who’s willing to get killed so you can flaunt your anti-imperialist street cred from the comfort of your local coffee shop.

Ramah Kudaimi is even more direct:

I think taking a position of the US should not get involved through a military intervention is fine. DON’T put it as “Hands off Syria” implying this is some kind of American conspiracy. DON’T argue this is about US not having a right to taking sides in a civil war. DON’T make it all about money for home since we do want more humanitarian aid. DO frame it as what will help bring the suffering of Syrians to an end.

We’re used to hearing the charge of abstract moralism leveled at advocates of intervention: those puffy Western pundits and armchair generals who convert every instance of mass atrocity into a simple moral quiz best answered with cruise missiles. And it’s true: there’s usually an inverse relationship between the level of a commentator’s self-righteousness and their knowledge of the country they intend to throttle. Tiny, wretched countries like Iraq and Syria suddenly echo the threat of European fascists on the march. There’s been no shortage of this posturing among those making the case for intervention in Syria.

But Lee and Kudaimi, like anyone outside of the interventionist bubble, are often forced to interact with a different crowd that, through either ideology or exhaustion, is equally guilty. Just as misguided liberals or delusional neocons perceive militarism as a sign of ethical yet  “hardheaded” foreign policy, many on the left and the Paulite right wear their anti-interventionism as a badge of honor, using a horror like Syria as a test of personal strength: it proves they’re not fooled by Washington’s propaganda or vulnerable to humanitarian appeals. And so arguments are reverse-engineered from a general attitude about the United States, global capitalism and waning empire.

For a taste, here’s self-appointed spokesman for the Arab world Robert Fisk, today:

by Patrick Appel

A new NBC poll finds that an overwhelming majority of Americans think Obama should be required to get approval from Congress before attacking Syria. A chart on the key question:

J.D. Tuccille wants Obama to go to Congress:

If President Obama is feeling lonely after the British vote, asking Congress to debate military action would give him excellent cover for either gathering support or backing away from unilateral warmaking — and it would also abide by the Constitution. That’s an approach Barack Obama himself would have approved, not so many years ago.

Larison continues to doubt that Obama will bother to get congressional approval:

If Obama doesn’t think he is legally required to go to Congress, wouldn’t it still make sense politically to involve Congress and get their backing for his attack? It might seem so, but the case for the attack is so weak that it wouldn’t withstand much public scrutiny, much less debate in both houses.

Because the proposed military action is supposed to be brief and limited, Obama probably sees going to Congress as a useless headache and unnecessary complication. Of course, it shouldn’t matter whether he feels like doing it. Unlike Cameron, he is obliged to do this when he plans to initiate hostilities against another state. It is up to members of Congress and the public to make him fulfill that obligation. Unless that happens, Obama will go ahead with the attack as if Congress is irrelevant because it will have proven itself to be exactly that.

The lesson Amy Davidson hopes Obama will take from Cameron:

Obama may take the British vote as proof that he can’t risk putting himself in Cameron’s position. But facing Congress after things don’t go according to plan—if there even is a plan—would be all the more humiliating. Obama can’t win this the way that Cameron lost it: by talking as though he is the only one acting according to principle, and that those who disagree just haven’t seen enough pictures of the effects of chemical weapons. There are principles at work in wondering whether something that feels satisfying but causes more death and disorder is right, too. The real Cameron trap is thinking that a leader can go to war personally and apolitically, without having a good answer when asked what’s supposed to happen after the missiles are fired. Does the President get that?

by Patrick Appel

Back in May, Jonathan Mercer spelled out why national “credibility” is a terrible reason to go to war:

Do leaders assume that other leaders who have been irresolute in the past will be irresolute in the future and that, therefore, their threats are not credible? No; broad and deep evidence dispels that notion. In studies of the various political crises leading up to World War I and of those before and during the Korean War, I found that leaders did indeed worry about their reputations. But their worries were often mistaken.

For example, when North Korea attacked South Korea in 1950, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson was certain that America’s credibility was on the line. He believed that the United States’ allies in the West were in a state of “near-panic, as they watched to see whether the United States would act.” He was wrong.

When one British cabinet secretary remarked to British Prime Minister Clement Attlee that Korea was “a rather distant obligation,” Attlee responded, “Distant — yes, but nonetheless an obligation.” For their part, the French were indeed worried, but not because they doubted U.S. credibility. Instead, they feared that American resolve would lead to a major war over a strategically inconsequential piece of territory. Later, once the war was underway, Acheson feared that Chinese leaders thought the United States was “too feeble or hesitant to make a genuine stand,” as the CIA put it, and could therefore “be bullied or bluffed into backing down before Communist might.” In fact, Mao thought no such thing. He believed that the Americans intended to destroy his revolution, perhaps with nuclear weapons.

Similarly, Ted Hopf, a professor of political science at the National University of Singapore, has found that the Soviet Union did not think the United States was irresolute for abandoning Vietnam; instead, Soviet officials were surprised that Americans would sacrifice so much for something the Soviets viewed as tangential to U.S. interests. And, in his study of Cold War showdowns, Dartmouth College professor Daryl Press found reputation to have been unimportant. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviets threatened to attack Berlin in response to any American use of force against Cuba; despite a long record of Soviet bluff and bluster over Berlin, policymakers in the United States took these threats seriously. As the record shows, reputations do not matter.

by Patrick Appel

Obama claims that he hasn’t made a decision regarding Syria, but he emphasizes that “the international norm against the use of chemical weapons needs to be kept in place”:

Fisher thinks that this is the primary rationale for using force:

The U.S. decision to move toward possible strikes appears, rightly or wrongly, wisely or unwisely, to be all about reinforcing international norms. It’s not about us; it’s not about “because Obama said so.” It’s about “because international norms say so.”

Alex Massie wants to know exactly what we are trying to achieve:

We are clear that we do not wish to remove Bashar al-Assad from power. So we do not think his use of chemical weapons is that big a deal. Certainly not a big enough deal to make the case for regime change.

The plan, in as much as there is one, seems to be to put him in detention rather than expel him. But to what end? Will bombing Syria persuade Assad to modify his behaviour? Is our objective to make him offer the rebels a “fairer fight”?

… How, having intervened once, can the United States and its allies walk away? Shoving Assad onto the naughty step seems an insufficient response to his misdeeds. If the aim is simply to persuade Assad that any further use of chemical weapons will bring additional consequences it might be wise to consider what those consequences might be.

Marc Lynch likewise worries that intervention will lead to more intervention:

[T]he administration’s loud protestations of limited aims and actions are only partially reassuring. Much the same language was used at the outset of the Libya campaign. Everybody knows that it will be excruciatingly difficult for Obama to hold the line at punitive bombing after those strikes inevitably fail to end the war, Assad remains publicly defiant, the Geneva 2 diplomatic process officially dies, and U.S. allies and Syrian insurgents grumble loudly about the strike’s inadequacy. Once the psychological and political barrier to intervention has been shattered, the demands for escalation and victory will become that much harder to resist. And what happens when Assad launches his next deadly sarin attack — or just massacres a lot of Syrians by non-chemical means? This too Obama clearly knows. But that knowledge may still not be enough to save him.