I don’t usually find myself agreeing with Syria…
…but this seems completely on target:
Syria’s government on Sunday mocked Mr. Obama’s decision, saying it was a sign of weakness. A state-run newspaper, Al Thawra, called it “the start of the historic American retreat,” and said Mr. Obama had hesitated because of a “sense of implicit defeat and the disappearance of his allies,” along with fears that an intervention could become “an open war.”
Syria’s deputy foreign minister, Faisal Mekdad, told reporters in Damascus that “it is clear there was a sense of hesitation and disappointment in what was said by President Barack Obama yesterday. And it is also clear there was a sense of confusion, as well.”
Not only a weak horse, but a skittish one.
Skittishness is a bad trait; sudden reflexive panic that often unseats the rider. Hard to fix, too.
The ME villains have Obama’s number. They know how to push his buttons, and he responds exactly the way a narcissist would. To my untrained eye, Obama is a slave to compulsions he can’t control.
Faced with mockery and questions about his effectiveness as a leader, widely compared with Bush who was successful at rounding up international and domestic support for such actions, Obama is compelled to prove he can too. The purpose and the goal for the support and the mission are unimportant to him. Feeding his ego, at the expense of all else, is what matters most.
It is a sad thing to watch a person who has no humility or sense of right and wrong, no moral compass, no guiding principles that anchor him. Everything, even his statist/socialist ideology, are expendable in order to preserve his devine self image. He may be one the shallowest men in history to have ever occupied such a position. Reminiscent of some of the Roman emperors who contributed to the downfall of their civilization.
That immediately after announcing his decision HusseinO played golf with Biden is testimony to a) his narcissism and b) his developing crony deficit. With Biden?
And I bet Joey Hairplugs always lets him win.
I love your heading for this post, N-Neocon. Me too, Kiddo.
I keep flashing back to the deliberate slap that a mixed bag of(mostly)Dems gave to President Bush in ’08 with their a** slathering visit to dear Bashir. The hideous Pelosi, the disgusting toad Bill Nelson and…Wasn’t our current Sec’y of State aboard that Damasus groveling…? All of it OUTSIDE of the C-in-C and hardly disguised as a deliberate embarrassment to him. Induced rage in me then and nausea now.
Thank you for ALL you do here and at Dr.Jacobson’s hangout, Landlady.
When it came to foreign affairs Teddy Roosevelt said walk softly but carry a big stick. BHO does just the opposite: He stomps around carrying a wet noodle.
Thoughts:
It’s odd that the Assad regime would deviate from pattern at this point of the conflict and resort to a chemical attack. But let’s assume for the sake of discussion they crossed the red line and the chemical attack is not a frame-up by “rebels” that include Islamic terrorists who have a known penchant for propaganda-purposed mass murder.
I understand and don’t disagree with Obama’s basic position that, simply, a zero-tolerance community rule has been broken, and the rule must be enforced irrespective of context and other considerations or else the rule will lose its legitimacy throughout the community.
But the context and other considerations matter to everyone else. People and media will probably want to compare President Bush’s Iraq intervention and the Syria problem, but other than condemning chemical attacks on civilians in the Middle East, they’re much more different than similar from a policy standpoint.
The closer comparison is Obama’s Libya intervention and the Syria problem. On their face, the Libya and Syria situations seem similar. The Syria problem has the added dimensions of a chemical attack and a much higher human cost, which imply Obama ought to be able to rally an international response along similar lines as the Libya intervention. But the players align differently for the Syria problem, and in the interim, Obama’s fundamentally flawed Libya and Middle East policies and over-all personal weakness in the competitive global arena have been exposed, thus diminishing his (and American) influence. In particular, Obama’s use of the already legally questionable and novel Responsibility to Protect doctrine as cover to effect regime change in Libya likely undermined his ability to rally support for military action against Syria.
If the enforcement action is calibrated to low enough risk to assuage domestic concern and low enough impact to avoid a retaliatory response, then does it really qualify as enforcement, let alone punishment? It seems Obama just wants something on the record saying Syria was punished rather than something effective that would require greater risk.
Obama seems intent on using President Clinton’s record as his model. His Syria intervention proposal is reminiscent of Clinton’s punitive missile strikes. However, those actions accomplished little and caused more harm in the long term. Clinton’s disastrous practice of talking loudly and carrying a small stick undermined US authority, encouraged the escalation of al Qaeda’s anti-US campaign, and informed Saddam’s rational calculation in his game of brinkmanship chicken against the US-led enforcement of the Gulf War ceasefire and UNSC resolutions.
9/11 rendered the Clinton doctrine obsolete.
After 9/11, Bush rationally matched means to the ends of American liberal foreign policy and built on what Clinton did right, eg, the Bush Iraq and counter-terror policies were logical extensions of the Clinton Iraq and counter-terror policies. Obama ostensibly retained Clinton and Bush’s liberal foreign policy goals, but his deviations from Bush’s rational course have resulted in irrational failures.
Clinton at least was savvy enough to fake a paper-tiger liberal foreign policy that delayed the price of his decisions for the next President to pay. After 9/11 exposed the price of the Clinton doctrine, Bush moved to rectify Clinton’s mistakes, but Obama has since squandered the international political leverage that was hard and expensively earned back by the Bush administration.
Obama should have, instead, adapted Bush’s course and built on Bush’s gains like President Eisenhower adapted and built on the course he inherited from the Truman administration. Better decisions by Obama upstream could have prevented or at least mitigated the downstream compounding effects we see today and maintained American leverage in the situation.
At this point, America’s foreign policy in the Middle East appears unfocused and feckless. The most useful thing Congress can make of the Syria dilemma is to open a referendum on Obama’s foreign policy and make him explain why and to what purpose. Use the opportunity to begin a reset of our foreign policy by nailing down Obama’s long-term, big-picture plan for Syria, the region, and how his proposed Syria intervention fits into it all.
It won’t happen, but I would like to see the opportunity used to correct the Democrats’ false narrative of the Iraq intervention and discredit the false narrative’s progenitors. Doing so would go a long way towards restoring rational decision-making in our foreign policy. The false narrative on the Iraq intervention has metastasized from a propaganda device to manipulate voters in order to gain domestic political power into a fundamental guiding principle of American foreign policy that has led to real harm.
This also won’t happen, but in order for me to take Obama seriously again on foreign policy, this is what I need to hear from him or something to the same effect:
It won’t ever happen, but that’s what it would take.
Add: As far as the Islamic terrorists in Syria, I haven’t looked into it, but I assume the bombings that have resumed in Iraq are a spillover effect of the Syria conflict.
Eric at 12:02pm: A thoroughly wonderful Comment, Sir.
Eric at 12:15pm: Far, FAR MORE a result of Obama’s abandonment of President Bush’s Massive Victory in Iraq. That message was read and absorbed by Friends and foes alike.
Eric…
The ‘Syrian’ civil war has metastasized.
Sunnis are murdering Shi’ites in Pakistan — because of their angst over Assad’s war.
The Sunnis are genuinely afraid that Iran will prevail and link up the Levant to Persia; and under an atomic shield, to boot.
President Alfred E Neuman has unleashed the ummah to do what it does best: rent blood.
blert,
Do you have a blog or website where you post your sitrep reviews and analyses? You’ve got good stuff.
Eric,
Once again, great comments. 9/11 gave us the attention of the world and the chance to show the seriousness of Muslim radicalism. Obama and friends undermined this during Bush’s administration and also made it harder for the realists in Europe to tackle their own internal Muslim problems and to cooperate with us.
Eric:
“It’s odd that the Assad regime would deviate from pattern at this point of the conflict and resort to a chemical attack.”
Didn’t the chemical attack come on the 1-year anniversary of Obama’s red-line statement?
This:
“the start of the historic American retreat.”
That is what Obama is giving us and the world – a weak America. Or in the very least a perceived weakness.
Hopefully, whoever is the next President can turn things around; even though he (dare I say “she” as that implies Hillary?) will spend most of his/her term repairing Obama’s damage and not have time or political capital for much else.
Thanks Barry! (and all those who voted for the idiot!)
TR’s quotation is, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”
NOT talk constantly and carry no stick = Obama
About the oddness of Assad resorting to a chemical attack — there was a piece at the Foreign Policy website last week that reported the “major reason why American officials now say they’re certain that the attacks were the work of the Bashar al-Assad regime” was because U.S. intelligence overheard the conservations of “an official at the Syrian Ministry of Defense [who] exchanged panicked phone calls with a leader of a chemical weapons unit, demanding answers for a nerve agent strike that killed more than 1,000 people”.
So, maybe a screw-up or a miscalculation?
Eric: “The closer comparison is Obama’s Libya intervention and the Syria problem. On their face, the Libya and Syria situations seem similar. The Syria problem has the added dimensions of a chemical attack and a much higher human cost, which imply Obama ought to be able to rally an international response along similar lines as the Libya intervention. But the players align differently for the Syria problem,….”
The big difference – oil. The Europeans were panicked about losing the oil production from Libya. Thus France, Italy, the UK, and Germany were prodding the U.S. to get involved. And that’s where Obama came up with his leading from behind gambit.
General Jack Keane, who was instrumental in advising W for the surge strategy in Iraq, is saying that there is a way to punish Assad with more than just some micro-targeted strikes.
His strategy is two fold:
1. Seriously degrade Assad’s air assets and war infrastructure (oil storage, munitions storage, radar networks, airfields, airplanes, etc.) through some heavy air attacks (Using airplanes as well as missiles) lasting until the job is done.
2. Start supplying more and better weapons (paid for by the Saudis and Gulf States) to the FSA, which he claims is geographically separated from the Al Nusra (al Qaeda) fighters that are mostly in the northern part of Syria. He contends that we can put Marines in Jordan as trainers where the FSA can be armed and trained.
Since Assad is winning right now, this could be a big setback for him and make it more difficult for him to win. It might not put him down, but could make his life far more difficult. Message sent.
McCain and Graham just met with Obama and they seem to be pushing Keane’s strategy. They are hoping that Obama will get their message. I have doubts.
JJ,
Figures. Half of being a serious political scientist is following the energy lines. It was one of my last classes in college and it came the closest to providing a unifying theory of international relations.
The McCain/Graham proposal … I’ll have to take a closer look at it. While Obama’s proposal seems designed to be a statement with minimal effect, their proposal seems designed to make an impact.
But to what end? Just to prolong the conflict? That would be punitive alright, but it doesn’t seem helpful. A version of Operation Linebacker to compel Assad to sue for peace? But negotiate the peace with whom, for what? Bombing Iraq for years didn’t convince Saddam. And after you bomb, if that doesn’t work and you haven’t achieved your objective by other means, then the only move left is boots on the ground. Or kick the can.
If our goal is regime change, which logically it would have to be, and we’re going to be instrumental in bringing that about, then we’d better be confident about who’ll be in charge and the management of the post war.
At the same time, making an old-school Clinton gesture in Syria, in 2013, is just weak, laughably so. All political cost with no real benefit. That’s not the right answer, either.
Eric: “If our goal is regime change, which logically it would have to be, and we’re going to be instrumental in bringing that about, then we’d better be confident about who’ll be in charge and the management of the post war.”
Aye, there’s the rub. Is there anyone we can trust in the Muslim world? McCain, Graham, and General Keane seem to think the FSA is trustworthy. But then many, McCain and Graham among them as I recall, thought the Muslim Brotherhood was a moderate Muslim option.
We’ve had dictators deposed in Egypt and Libya. To what effect? So far, nothing good that any of us can see. What can we expect if Assad goes down? Iran, Russia, Hamas, and Hezbollah are not likely to go quietly into yon night, even if Assad retires to Geneva. So the beat will go on somewhere in the area. Encouraging the Muslim combatants to continue fighting one another may not be all that bad.
I admit it is a conundrum. What to do? As is now apparent to me from looking at the Cold War, maybe just holding the line, though imperfectly, while the clock runs may well be the best we can hope for. Our involvement in the ME has been, since 1949, mostly about keeping the communists from gaining control of the oil there. As their oil runs down and ours builds up, it may well be that time is on our side. We can’t abandon the place. We must do what’s necessary to keep the Suez open, the oil flowing until it dwindles, and the NBC to a minimum. Not an easy task, but if we see those goals clearly, then we can calibrate our actions to hold the line until such time as Islam either reforms or collapses. That, of course, includes giving up on the idea of reforming the Muslim world from the outside.
It’s wouldn’t be very popular, but I think Churchill’s phrase applies here: “”I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”
Obama will not, IMO, offer anything like that. It will be more like, “I have nothing to offer but bluster, tee times, total cluelessness, and speeches.”
J.J. Should Assad be toppled, Does anyone believe the new leadership in Syria would not align itself with Iran? What choice do they have? They’re currently all a client state, with no real resources to support a healthy economy. They rely on Iran for a great deal. Many in the Aasad government and military defected a couple of years ago; they are in a position to renegotiate deals with Iran, if they prevail. i don’t see how we can expect a new regime to be significantly different from a US standpoint than it is today. Syria needs Iran. Neither the US nor the rest of the Arab world is going to rush in to pick up the pieces after this is over.
Graham and McCain, the perennial foreign policy dunces, were all-in on Egypt and Libya. Those two are 100% reliable when it comes to doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. We need to run as fast as possible from whatever those two nitwits are advocating.
southpaw, I agree that there is no clear way forward. All the choices are bad. Trying to keep the war going with no clear victor may be the best option among many bad ones.
I recognize that McCain and Graham are invested in the idea that the Muslim world can be reformed from the outside or that there are moderates that can be useful to the goal of “shrinking the gap.” At this point, I’m skeptical of that.
Doing nothing leads to a loss of credibility. We lost credibility during the Clinton years and it led to 9/11. Do we want to be seen as a total paper tiger with all that such a reputation entails?
These are all gnarly questions that I hope much smarter people than me are thinking long and hard about. Keane’s strategy seems to me to be calculated to make us credible again without putting boots on the ground or creating a wider war. But neither is gauranteed. Nothing is riskless.
Funny how we don’t hear the term “chickenhawk” any more. It was all the rage back in 2002-03.
JJ: “Trying to keep the war going with no clear victor may be the best option among many bad ones.”
A sneaky objective of keeping a war going by assisting, supplying, and training the underdog to even up the odds is one thing. There’s nothing sneaky about directly and heavily applying US military force.
To use direct and heavy US military force to keep a war, with all of its destructive effects, going rather than to shorten that war is morally indefensible, invites nasty consequences, and implies a calibrated outcome control I don’t think is possible.
It brings to mind the extraordinarily clumsy decision by Bush Senior, that only could have seemed plausible in the Oval Office, to encourage open revolt against Saddam, but then only support that revolt if and only if it was carried out by Baathist officials and military officers he imagined we could control.
And what about the nasty consequences if it didn’t happen exactly as imagined? Which of course, it didn’t.
Iraqis like Muqtada’s father and uncles (and brothers, I believe), rising up against Saddam, risking, and losing their lives merely on the universal trust the world had in the word of the American President in 1991. Honor go poof.
And when those Iraqis got slaughtered for trusting the American President, guess who had to reconcile that betrayal up close and personal. It wasn’t Bush Senior. It was the American soldiers on the ground in Iraq, fully armed and equipped with the pre-drawdown Desert Storm military, who were ordered to stand down and not assist or intervene on behalf of the Iraqis begging them face-to-face, and who got a front-row seat to the slaughter of those same Iraqis.
Clinton made his mistakes with Saddam, but Bush Senior’s bungling of the immediate post-war with Iraq is much more to blame than Clinton for the failure of the disarmament mission that led to OIF and problems we faced in OIF. If I was Muqtada, I’d hate America with every atom of my being, too.
Bush was admirable and honorable on Iraq, but his family and America had a lot to make up for.
Keeping a war going via direct and heavy US military force? The US military can perform amazing feats, but I think we need to be very careful with that one.
Eric: “To use direct and heavy US military force to keep a war, with all of its destructive effects, going rather than to shorten that war is morally indefensible, invites nasty consequences, and implies a calibrated outcome control I don’t think is possible.”
Yes, that’s true. But it’s also true that letting Assad win, which looks pretty certain now, is also going to lead to many evil consequences for people in Syria, Jordan, and Turkey while it allows Iran, Russia, Hamas and Hezbollah to grow stronger. None of that is good for Israel or the U.S. Nor can we calibrate or control what can happen then.
A stronger Iran means a more dangerous and probably nuclear armed Iran. Does that lead to a nuclear armed ME? Considering the Saudis fear the Iranians, it must almost certainly happen. Then where do we go?
On the other hand, if we take Assad down, how do we calibrate or control what happens then? Pace Egypt and Libya, we have little control on outcomes in the Muslim world. Libya and Egypt look to become havens for terrorists and their planning organizations. Without Assad what happens in Syria? Another place where al Qaeda can thrive? Or continued civil war between the FSA and al Nusra? Or?
As far as being morally indefensible, the only thing I can say is that we are not engaged with an enemy that follows any moral code. We keep getting mixed up about what we are facing. Yes, we would like to stop the killing. Tell that to the Islamic fanatics that are doing most of it. We don’t have the stomach to do the kind of killing that would actually defeat the Islamists. Can we at least help them in killing one another? The answer is that we don’t have the stomach for that either. We have wondrous weapons, but weapons without will don’t mean much. Assad, Putin, and Iran are all rejoicing in that.
Like I say, there are no good choices in Syria. I think General Keane’s strategy is the lesser of several evils.
Here’s a link to another discussion of choices in Iraq:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/miriamelder/foreign-policy-hands-wonder-whats-the-point-of-obamas-syria
This one leans toward achieving a negotiated settlement in Syria with Assad stepping aside. Hmm, what are the chances of that? Remember when we offered amnesty and a luxurious retirement in Switzerland to Saddam Hussein? I believe that a similar deal was offered to Gadaffi. Damn, those Muslim dictators can’t be bribed. And when/if he does step aside, who decides what happens next? Details…….they bedevil.
Eric Says:
September 2nd, 2013 at 8:16 pm
Great comment overall, and as for that last part, if history tells us anything, it’s that the American people will not continue to support an open-ended war with vague, murky objectives. Get in, win it, and get out.
For a while the Civil War seemed to be a stalemate, and a peace movement started in the North, which argued for a negotiated settlement.
We weren’t in World War I long enough for that to happen. American troops only started arriving in Europe in large numbers in early 1918, and the war was over by the end of the year.
Our involvement in World War II was only a little over 3 1/2 years from Pearl Harbor to V-J Day. But given the horrific casualties on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, if it hadn’t been for the atomic bombs we would have had to invade the Japanese home islands, and that would have made D-Day look like a picnic. I think a popular movement to end the war with a negotiated settlement would have arisen at that point. Many Americans would have considered further bloodshed to be pointless, since Japan was no longer a threat to the U.S. by then.
Korea and Vietnam seemed like they had no clear objectives to most Americans (certainly not “victory”), so they didn’t have broad-based support.
Most recently, Iraq and Afghanistan showed what can happen when a war drags on too long. While the strategy may have been sound, and was achieving success, the government changed hands and the incoming party felt the need to repudiate the policies of its predecessor.
I think this is an inherent problem with long wars in a democratic society. I think it’s also the reason why our space program has been spinning its wheels for the last 40 years. Any project that requires a long lead time to come to fruition is subject to alteration or cancellation when the political winds shift.
JJ,
Maybe that’s what Obama is already planning to do and just can’t say so in public.
He did use R2P as an excuse to break Qaddafi. Maybe he’ll have everyone believing he’s planning to hit a few minor targets Clinton-style, and then break out a target list like Michael Corleone taking care of family business.
rickl: “I think this is an inherent problem with long wars in a democratic society.”
The democratic way of war since WW2 has been problematic.
Most people intuitively understand that the logical objective of war is to defeat the enemy. And not just technical defeat, but defeated in a way that his threat and danger is conclusively eliminated and our system of peace is imposed.
China’s intervention in the Korean War moved us off the logical objective to war. The restraints placed on our side in the Vietnam War were all about the Korean War. We’ve also fought our wars within the contextual frame of the global community, which means we’ve fought under complicated political limits. Our missions haven’t been straight man-2-man fights, at least not for our side. Our deployments have been restrained for similar reasons as police are restrained.
The big-picture restraints are often in direct conflict with the small-picture needs of the mission. Bush Senior badly bungled the post-war of the Gulf War due to the big-picture restraints that have everything to do with our democratic way of war since WW2.
To Clinton’s credit, he maneuvered within the big-picture restraints to set up the legal and policy conditions to go back for regime change in Iraq and impose our system of peace, which should have been done in the 1st place as the logical objective of the Gulf War. My fault with Clinton is that Op Desert Fox should have been OIF, and from a legal and policy standpoint, it was. But practically, Clinton kicked the can. At least Op Desert Fox set the precedent and the stage for OIF.
Eric: “..Clinton kicked the can.”
Billy Boy kicked MANY cans. Baa-Daa-Bing. I’ve lost count of the cans kicked by our present pathetic excuse. Makes Bubba Clinton look almost adroit. (NOT!)
Clinton didn’t have the balls to do much after he ran off to Canada to escape the draft, and ordered the Rangers out of Mog. That stuff is dangerous for people’s political careers, this military fighting on the ground stuff, in his eyes.