Tag: Syria

by Patrick Appel

Amy Davidson asks:

What is the disadvantage of going to Congress? That they are loud and annoying and someone will try to introduce a resolution tying action in Syria to Obamacare? If the Administration can’t stand up to Ted Cruz, it can hardly hope to frighten Bashar al-Assad. And if going to Congress now feels time-consuming, how does it compare to the hours, days, weeks, and sanity expended on the Benghazi hearings? Those might have happened anyway, but they got a fair share of their formless force from the Administration’s initial decision to not really bother with Congress and the War Powers Act when it came to Libya. If you haven’t been asked in the first place, there is no cost to turning a tragedy into a piece of political theatre.

Alex Altman expects Syrian intervention to become a political bludgeon:

The only sure thing is Obama’s opponents will use Syria against him, no matter how it turns out.

House Speaker John Boehner‘s new letter to the president, released late Wednesday afternoon, is a sign of how they may try. Boehner’s letter requests “a clear explanation of our policy” and interests that require intervention, as well as “a clear, unambiguous explanation of how military action — which is a means, not a policy — will secure U.S. objectives.” It notes points of agreements. It includes a list of 14 important questions. But it’s mostly notable for what it doesn’t include: a request for Obama to seek congressional approval.

Instead Boehner wants “substantive consultation,” a phrase that is vague enough to verge on meaningless. The subtext is clear. Republicans will be happy to hammer the president for acting unilaterally, which Obama himself once disavowed. But many want no part of a vote. Backbenchers could wind up on the wrong side of history. And Boehner would have to wrangle a majority out of a restive party that, on this issue, is perhaps even more divided than usual.

Ramesh Ponnuru doubts that Congress would vote for war:

This is not a military action that we are undertaking to defend ourselves from attack or to protect a core interest. The congressional power to declare war, if it is not to be a dead letter, has to apply here. And it seems to me exceedingly unlikely that Congress would vote to commit us in Syria, because the public manifestly opposes it. This is a war with no clear objective, thus no strategy to attain it, no legal basis, and no public support.

Ed Morrissey, on the other hand, suspects that Congress would authorize force:

Why not go to Congress? There is at least as large a bipartisan group urging action, probably more than enough in both chambers to get easy passage of a limited pass.  The authorization would give Obama more political cover on what is undeniably an unpopular action, and spread the blame to both parties.  Chuck Todd suggested yesterday that the White House is afraid that “isolationists” will block the authorization, and that the delay in getting approval would be too great … Delay? Well, it’s been months since the first time Syria used chemical weapons, which makes a rush to action here moot. Furthermore, the UN wants more time to determine what exactly happened anyway.

Cassidy wonders whether the delay in Britain will spur congressional debate:

After yesterday’s dramatic developments in London, which culminated in Prime Minister David Cameron delaying a parliamentary vote to authorize British participation in an American-led attack, President Obama faces the choice of putting off the bombing or going ahead without the support of America’s closest European ally. Should he choose to hold off for a few days, which seems likely, it will give Congress time to consider the matter, and to schedule a vote approving military action. Until now, the White House has resisted such a vote, and the Republican leadership has stopped short of demanding one. But now that Britain has allowed the people’s representatives to have a say, and also given the U.N. inspectors in Syria some time to complete their investigation of last week’s awful gas attack, the political dynamic in Washington may change.

Drum hopes so:

There are legitimate issues surrounding the powers of the president and the extent to which Congress can micromanage military attacks. But this is something that Congress should actually spend some time debating, instead of just folding up and letting the president do whatever he wants with nothing more than a bit of muttering about separation of powers. The president may be commander-in-chief, but that doesn’t mean the U.S. military is his personal plaything. It’s past time to make that clear.

Earlier Dish on congressional approval and Syria here.

by Patrick Appel

Kevin Baron reports that the US won’t seek UN or NATO permission to bomb Syria. Larison comments:

In practice, the governments involved in this attack will be more or less the same ones that intervened in Libya, but there will be no illusion of international approval or alliance backing that the Libyan war received. If NATO had endorsed the action, it wouldn’t make it any more legal, but it would have created the superficial impression of a Western consensus in favor of it. As it is, the attack will most likely be backed by the U.S., Britain, and France, plus the activist Gulf monarchies that have been doing their part to worsen Syria’s conflict.

Millman argues that, if “we launch an attack on Syria, it will not be under any legal warrant whatsoever”:

[T]he entire public justification for an attack is the to punish Syria for a crime of war – that is to say, the justification is the need to uphold international law. In other words, an attack would be an open declaration that the United States arrogates to itself the right to determine what the law is, who has violated it, what punishment they deserve, and to take whatever action is necessary to see it carried out.

Larison adds:

[W]hat strikes the U.S. and its allies launch against Syrian forces in the next few days will be contrary to international law. Now most Americans and even some American liberal internationalists probably don’t care about this, but it is a fairly significant flaw in the claim that the forthcoming missile strikes have something to do with enforcing international norms and creating a “rules-based order.” Indeed, it sinks the only argument for this particular attack.

by Patrick Appel

One reason Syria Comment is against American intervention in Syria:

The opposition is incapable of providing government services: Millions of Syrians still depend on the government for their livelihoods, basic services, and infrastructure. The government continues to supply hundreds of thousands of Syrians with salaries & retirement benefits. Destroying these state services with no capacity to replace them would plunge ever larger numbers of Syrians into even darker circumstances and increase the outflow of refugees beyond its already high level. Syria can get worse.

Most militias are drawn from the poorer, rural districts of Syria. Most wealth is concentrated in the city centers that remain integral (such as Damascus, Lattakia, Tartus, Baniyas, Hama, etc.), which have survived largely unscathed in this conflict, and have not opted to continue the struggle. If the militias take these cities, there will be widespread looting and lawlessness which will threaten many more civilians who have managed to escape the worst until now.

Many in these urban centers have managed to continue leading fairly stable lives up to the present; despite the tremendous level of destruction seen so far, many areas are still a long way from the bottom. It would be preferable to avoid a Somalia-like scenario in the remaining cities and provinces.

It’s not at all clear that U.S. intervention can improve the economic or security situation for Syrians.

Peter Galbraith argues that, if “our military intervention is not going to be effective we shouldn’t do it, and if it’s not clearly going to lead to a better situation, then we shouldn’t do it”:

[W]hat’s so striking about the Syrian situation is the minorities have not joined the revolution. It’s almost entirely a Sunni revolution. And that should be more concerning to people in Washington than it is. It’s understandable why the Alawites would stay with Assad. Understandably, they fear they may face genocide if he is overthrown. But the Kurds, who were the first to rise up against Assad in 2004, simply don’t trust the opposition. They think they’re interested in a Sunni Islamic regime that will exclude them and maybe be dangerous to them. The Christians, the same thing, and the Jews, the same thing. I consider that lack of support like a canary in the mine, and we ought to pay more attention to it.

by Patrick Appel

Jack Goldsmith asks why Obama doesn’t get Congressional approval to attack Syria:

Why is President Obama going to act unilaterally?  Why doesn’t the man who pledged never to use force without congressional authorization except in self-defense call Congress into session to debate and authorize the use of force in Syria?  Why doesn’t he heed his own counsel that “[h]istory has shown us time and again . . . that military action is most successful when it is authorized and supported by the Legislative branch,” and that it is “always preferable to have the informed consent of Congress prior to any military action”?  Why is he instead rushing to use force in a way that will set a novel constitutional precedent for presidential unilateralism that will far outlive his presidency?

Since U.S. intervention in Syria portends many foreseeably bad consequences, and because there is so little support in the nation for this intervention, why not get Congress on board – not just to legitimate the action, but also to spread political risk?  Why exacerbate the growing perception – justified or not – of a presidency indifferent to legal constraints?  Why not follow the example of George H.W. Bush, who sought and received congressional authorization for the 1991 invasion of Iraq, or George W. Bush, who did the same for the 2003 invasion of Iraq?  Or to take an example more on point, why not follow David Cameron, who (embarrassingly for the President) recently called Parliament into session to debate and legitimate Britain’s planned involvement?

Fallows is on the same page:

Even if Obama has already made up his mind to launch a strike, and even if that operation goes perfectly, something about it will go wrong. Messages will get blurred and bungled; the fog of war will interfere; innocents will be killed. How many people planning the bomb-Serbia campaign in 1999 imagined that it would create a crisis between the U.S. and China, because of the mistaken bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade?

Obama can’t know what exactly will happen if he launches a strike. But he should know, for sure, that even the cleanest intervention will bring mistakes, tragedies, and eventual blame. Therefore it should be 100% in his interest to share responsibility for the decision before it is solely his.

by Patrick Appel

Reuel Marc Gerecht claims that “America’s credibility in the region — which is overwhelmingly built on Washington’s willingness to use force — will be zero unless Obama militarily intercedes now to knock down the Assad regime”:

If the president intends to maintain American influence, which means maintaining a credible threat to go to war to stop Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons, then Washington’s response to Assad’s challenge must be devastating. The entire regime must be targeted: elite military units, aircraft, armor and artillery; all weapons-depots; the myriad organizations of the secret police; the ruling elite’s residences; and other critical Alawite infrastructure.

Military interventions don’t automatically make future threats to use force more credible. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan drained the treasury, exhausted the American military, and lowered the public’s support for wars of any kind. If we never fought those wars, Iran and Syria would have much more reason to fear our saber-rattling because America would still have the will and resources to launch a real war should the need arise. Getting bogged down in Syria makes our threats to Iran less credible, not more. Larison sighs:

If the “credibility” argument is nonsense, and it is, how ridiculous is Obama’s willingness to make policy decisions on the basis of it?

If Obama knows that the military action he’s about to order is useless, it is that much more indefensible if he proceeds to order it. The fact that the attack will be brief and relatively low-risk for U.S. forces is its only redeeming feature. An attack on Syria has the potential to trigger retaliation, lead to military escalation, or possibly even spark a regional war, and yet it is entirely unnecessary for U.S. or allied security. Obama’s readiness to use force obviously isn’t in doubt, but each time he yields to the impulse to intervene militarily when no U.S. interests are at stake his reputation on foreign policy takes a well-deserved hit.

Walt makes a similar argument:

What is most striking about this affair is how Obama seems to have been dragged, reluctantly, into doing something that he clearly didn’t want to do. He probably knows bombing Syria won’t solve anything or move us closer to a political settlement. But he’s been facing a constant drumbeat of pressure from liberal interventionists and other hawks, as well as the disjointed Syrian opposition and some of our allies in the region. He foolishly drew a “red line” a few months back, so now he’s getting taunted with the old canard about the need to “restore U.S. credibility.” This last argument is especially silly: If being willing to use force was the litmus test of a president’s credibility, Obama is in no danger whatsoever. Or has everyone just forgotten about his decision to escalate in Afghanistan, the bombing of Libya, and all those drone strikes?

by Patrick Appel

Waldman mocks the Weekly Standard‘s call for war:

[I]n case you were on the fence about whether the American government should take military action in Syria, Kristol has returned with an open letter urging President Obama to get bombing post-haste, and go big. You can find the letter on the Weekly Standard‘s website, where it runs under the not-sarcastic headline, “Experts to Obama: Here is what to do in Syria.” Among the “experts” are not only Kristol himself, but a whole bunch of folks with a nuanced grasp of the subtleties of Middle East politics and a track record of wise counsel on matters of war. People like Iran-Contra criminal Elliot Abrams, evangelical leader Gary Bauer, former seat-warming senator Norm Coleman, French gadabout Bernard-Henri Levi, foreign-policy genius Karl Rove, and presidential laughingstock Tim Pawlenty, not to mention the hilariously named Arch Puddington, who apparently is an actual person and not a character from a children’s book.

Scott Lemineux piles on:

I’m not 100% sure that military intervention in Syria is wrong. But it is true that 1. al-Assad is terrible 2. ????? 3. Bomb lots of stuff! is a terrible argument, and the arguments — really assumptions — in the above letter have scarcely more meat on them. There should be a very strong presumption against military action, but instead it’s the one form of government action that doesn’t seem to face any kind of cost-benefit analysis in our political discourse at all.

Conor joins the chorus:

I’d never claim to be a foreign policy expert. But I know enough to scoff when The Weekly Standard grants ”expert” status to Karl Rove, and to discount the prognostication skills of everyone that urged American intervention in Iraq without the faintest idea of what would follow. But in D.C., expert status is never taken away for being repeatedly, catastrophically wrong.

In response to the Weekly Standard, Fallows names the military thinkers he trusts:

Whose advice would I like to hear? Andrew Bacevich’s, for one. And it turns out he has already weighed in.  For another, Jim Webb. I’ll ask him, but there is this clue from last year. Or Anthony Zinni, whom I will try to locate. Significantly, unlike virtually all of the experts urging “surgical” intervention, these are people who have fought in wars themselves or been responsible for their aftermath. Perhaps Robert Gates too — and now that I look, I see how he is leaning. Or James Mattis — and, as it turns out, his instincts are the same. Also Gary Hart, who has just written in a similar vein, for instance: “The use of force is not a policy; it is a substitute for policy.”

So: the men who gave us Iraq on one hand, the people who were against it or far more cautious on the other. Let’s give the tie-breaking vote to Dwight Eisenhower, from up in heaven. One guess about what he would recommend.