Members of both the U.S. Congress and UK Parliament deemed debate over military strikes against Syria so important that they interrupted summer vacations to participate. I felt obliged to do the same.
Here’s my question for every member of Congress and every member of the global community: What message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of children to death in plain sight and pay no price? What’s the purpose of the international system that we’ve built if a prohibition on the use of chemical weapons that has been agreed to by the governments of 98 percent of the world’s people and approved overwhelmingly by the Congress of the United States is not enforced?
(white house.gov, August 31, 2013)
This was President Obama making the surprise announcement yesterday that, even though he has decided to take military action against Assad, he will stay his hand in order to seek congressional authorization to do so. Frankly, I am stupefied.
After all, this not only calls into question the commander-in-chief authority his predecessors routinely exercised to wage war (e.g., as Reagan did against Grenada, Bush Sr. did against Panama, and Clinton did against Kosovo); it also lends credence to the Republican caricature of Obama as a naval-gazing ditherer who prefers to lead from behind.
Never mind the hypocrisy of Republicans accusing him of leading from behind, while looking to public opinion polls to tell them how to vote on every issue of national importance. This hypocrisy, incidentally, is surpassed only by the folly of relying on the opinions of people – 90 percent of whom probably couldn’t find Syria on a map. The sad, pathetic truth, of course, is that 90 percent of the members of Congress would vote against a cure for cancer if they felt that was the only way to ensure their ignorant constituents would re-elect them.
At any rate, worse still, this (eleventh-hour) pivot to Congress makes Obama look every bit the hopelessly “naïve” community organizer his own former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, accused him of being during their hotly contested 2008 race for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Bear in mind that this announcement came after 10 days of the entire world watching Obama channel Hamlet over whether to bomb or not to bomb Syria. And during this time we were treated to everyone from foreign leaders to political pundits acting like court jesters trying to influence his decision, and the media doing more beating of war drums than beat reporting on his justification for military strikes, which he claims is to deter Assad from any further use of his chemical-weapons arsenal.
I fear, though, that Obama is only providing more fodder for his obstructionist critics in Congress. Not least because all members have just cause to question the merit of authorizing military strikes that he insists are intended to do nothing more than convey a symbolic “shot across the bow” of Assad’s genocidal ship of state….
Meanwhile, am I the only one who noticed the unwitting timing of Obama’s surprising announcement – coming as it did just hours after his nemesis, Russian President Vladimir Putin, deployed his own warships to the Mediterranean (ostensibly to counter Obama’s), denounced Obama’s claim about Assad gassing his people as “utter nonsense,” and warned that any strike against him would be wholly illegitimate.
Given all this, who can blame Putin (and all of his pawns in places like Syria, Iran, and Venezuela) for inferring that he forced Obama to take his finger off the trigger (aka to blink) at the eleventh hour?
But, as indicated above, here is what I find even more troubling: Congressional Republicans have shown a pathological determination to do anything (including betraying their own policies and values) to make Obama look like a “failed president.” Therefore, it seems foolhardy for him to give them this irresistible opportunity to make him look weak and feckless … with the whole world watching no less.
What happens, for example, if Congress succeeds in humbling and humiliating Obama the way Parliament humbled and humiliated Prime Minister Cameron last week (i.e., by denying his request for parliamentary authorization to join Obama’s coalition of the willing)? Remember, these are the same Republicans who were salivating at the opportunity to destroy the full faith and credit of the United States (by forcing a default on the government’s routine debt payment) just to deny Obama credit for forging a sensible, deficit-reducing budget.
If Congress denies his request, Obama would face a real dilemma: go ahead with strikes and risk Republican calls for impeachment; or back off and risk a legacy even more damning than that which Carter sealed when he tried and failed to rescue American hostages in Iran.
Having said all that about Obama’s dithering, ad-hoc, confusing, sausage-making way of deciding whether to bomb or not to bomb Syria, here’s how I think this will play out.
Despite their inclination to march in lockstep with Tea Party Republicans – whose only political objective is to destroy Obama’s presidency, enough Republicans will join forces with enough Democrats to grant Obama the authorization he seeks.
What’s more, I fully expect second thoughts among British parliamentarians over causing an apparent split in the “special relationship” between the U.S. and UK to compel a second, successful vote authorizing Cameron to join Obama’s coalition of the willing.
Accordingly, even though Assad and Putin might be feeling triumphant, perhaps even emboldened, today, I think they’ll be whistling a decidedly different tune in a few weeks when bombs are raining down on Syria.
I, of course, still oppose (limited) military strikes; not least because they would serve no morally consistent or politically strategic interest (as I duly delineated in my original commentary on this looming prospect, “Actually, Isn’t Killing with Gas (Syria) more Humane than Killing with Guns (Egypt)?” The iPINIONS Journal, August 23, 2013).
On the other hand, Obama clearly feels compelled to launch them — if only in a vainglorious attempt to salvage his credibility. But the only hope he has of doing this is to decapitate the Syrian regime, which is responsible — not just for gassing over 1000 of its own people, but for gunning down over 100,000 of them as well.
Specifically, he should bomb every one of Assad’s hideouts. And if he’s lucky, instead of killing Assad, he’ll merely force him to run for his life … right into the bloodthirsty hands of opposition forces — just as Gaddafi did. By the way, in doing this, Obama would surely reinforce his reputation by daring Putin to do something about it….
Then, I say, let the warring factions (i.e., between opposition forces and what remains of Assad’s regime and even among opposition forces) fight for control – just as happened in Libya. But at least any successor would be on notice that, if he presides over the use (or trade) of chemical weapons, he too would suffer Gaddafi’s fate.
Finally, I suspect Assad’s “powder keg” defensive warning about U.S. strikes igniting a conflagration in the Middle East will prove every bit as prescient/effective as it was when Saddam Hussein raised this same defensive warning in a desperate attempt to stave off the U.S. invasion of Iraq. All the same, before launching a single missile, Obama should challenge Putin’s preening manhood at this week’s G20 Summit in Russia by asking him to explain his fetishistic support for a man who uses his military arsenal to gas women and children, then, when challenged, hides that arsenal behind high schools and mosques….
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Killing with gas…