Syria, Chemical Weapons & US Intervention: Obama Lucky or Astute in Manoevring Putin and Assad?

The scenario I painted yesterday of a radicalized Middle East spilling over into Russia instead of the US isn’t such a stretch after all. Not according to Henry Kissinger, who spoke with Christiane Amanpour onCNN about Syria, Assad’s use of weapons of mass destruction, US policy and relations with Russia past and present.

When Amanpour asked Kissinger if he supported a limited military strike he said that he didn’t initially but he had changed his mind when Assad used the sarin gas. Like Obama he doesn’t believe the US should interfere in civil wars or be the world’s policeman, although he did say the US should be the world’s last resort. But the use of weapons of mass destruction is something entirely different, because it’s a global issue and one that can’t be ignored. It is very dangerous, he said, to legitimize them, which is what the world, with the exception of Obama and Hollande of France – and, to do him justice, David Cameron – is doing right now.

Kissinger supported Obama’s statement that Assad’s actions don’t pose an imminent threat to the US but they do pose a long-term one. Of course they do, they put the power to use weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a megalomaniac. And they set a precedent.

Kissinger mentioned the more imminent threat, which was to Russia. It would explain why Putin, who has backed Assad assiduously up to this point and flexed his muscles against the US, pounced on US Secretary of State John Kerry’s apparent throw-away comment that there would be no need for a military strike if Assad would agree to an international team policing the destruction of his considerable arsenal of sarin and mustard gas. Kerry apparently didn’t for a minute believe it could happen. Or that’s what was reported.

Vladimir Putin is a bully but not an entirely stupid one. He’s been able to support Assad and get away with it so far without too much damage to Russia’s foreign relations. But he really doesn’t want the military strike. I believe it isn’t because he cares about Assad and his supporters, but because he sees the danger of being a patent sworn enemy of what will be an even more empowered radicalized Middle East once the US intervenes.

Maybe Obama saw that a mile away, and maybe Kerry’s comment was more planned than is generally believed. Maybe in fact it was very carefully planted. 

Barack Obama isn’t a war President. He doesn’t like it, doesn’t believe in it, doesn’t want it. In fact he wants the world to stop fighting with guns and do it with words. He has always recognized that America’s foundation – the middle class – was disintegrating. His policies have been driven by a profound humanitarianism but they have also created the only option for the US holding onto its international power.  Obama saw what the Romans didn’t see. They kept their eye on foreign power and disintegrated at the core. So he has averted the fall of the US Empire that has been predicted for years – by many with relish.

He’s been very reluctant to step in with US military might when other presidents would have gone in guns blazing. But, like Kissinger, he recognized the danger of letting sarin gas be used with impunity, and that the issue at stake is a global one, and not a Syrian civil war one. 

And perhaps he’s cleverer at reading people and at foreign relations than anybody gives him credit for. He’s been accused of painting himself into a corner by first insisting on a limited military strike and then backing down and handing the power over to Congress. (Rarely reported is that he actually said he would consult Congress but not necessarily be guided by them.) It’s been said that he’s just lucky Kerry made that innocuous comment. Lucky? I doubt it. Exceptionally astute is more like it.

If Barack Obama can succeed in manoeuvring Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad towards a safer world without firing a single weapon he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.

They are both megalomaniacal, stubborn bullies and neither has an ounce of ethic. Which Obama has not lost sight of. Not to be forgotten is that he has said unequivocally he has reservations that either of these two men would keep their word, sending a clear message to Putin and Assad that they are not off the hook.

US Congress Weighs the Pros and Cons of Military Intervention in Syria

Syrians on both sides of the civil war have weighed in on the debate in Congress about whether to support President Obama’s call for a limited military strike. The rebels and Bashar al-Assad supporters are deluging members of Congress with various media pleading their case. Supporters continue to claim that Assad forces didn’t use the sarin gas and emphasise the danger of the US effectively supporting Al Qaeda.

Rebels insist the gas was used by Assad forces, and continue to plead for assistance against a tyrant who reigns undemocratically and massacres his own people with impunity. 

The problem for the West is that there isn’t enough balanced information about who makes up the rebel forces. There’s a lot of media coverage now on those rebels who torture and murder prisoners in the most horrific ways, which has created an idea that all the rebels are vicious thugs who don’t deserve any assistance at all from the West. Either that or they're completely dominated now by Al Qaeda.

Whatever the truth is, they've been fighting a losing battle from the start in their attempts to convince the West that they need help. A lot of Westerners believe the Middle East is an uncivilised region, lagging hundreds of years behind the West. They quote treatment of women, the enormous wealth in the hands of the few, and undemocratic governments.

Memories are so short when it’s convenient. Has everybody forgotten that Egypt had the world’s first ever peaceful revolution? And a closer look at the West reveals shocking gender inequalities, increasing seemingly senseless violence, phenomenal wealth in the hands of the few and, in the US, a US Congress that may have been elected but is, if not ruled, at least highly influenced by the military industrial complex. Racism, religious intolerance, religious fundamentalism and white collar crime are rampant as is child pornography. 

People are sinking below the poverty line and those who could help turn their heads away. In fact, in the West that event is so common that we even have a cliché for it. When times are difficult you find out who your friends are.  

It’s not such a civilized picture after all. And yet we cling to the idea that we’re ahead somehow of the Middle East. Well, the reality is we may be in some ways, but in others it’s the same play, just different props and costumes and a different stage. And truth is, when we compare the two, we take the best of the West and the worst of the Middle East. 

So in reality none of that has anything to do with whether Syrian rebels should get Western assistance or not.  

International relationships don't provide much help either. They're so complicated; and we don’t know the half of it; information is probably more often than not fed to the public on a need to know basis, filtered through a radically biased media, either deliberately distorted or simply misinterpreted. 

The permutations of what could happen as a result of different actions by different countries are countless. Imagine this: if President Obama got support from Congress to go ahead with a limited military strike against Assad for using chemic weapons on his own people, it would, oddly put the US in Al Qaeda’s good books, which maybe wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Particularly since Putin’s refusal to back the intervention would put Russia in Al Qaeda’s bad books.  Maybe then Al Qaeda would turn their attention away from the US and focus it on Russia. Which would put Putin out of power.

It's a stretch, I know. But trying to come up with a perfectly sensible and unassailable social or political rationale for intervention or not is pretty much impossible. So in the end it's down to humanity and not setting a very dangerous precedent by letting a maniac massacre his people with impunity and play with chemical weapons and get away with it. And those two arguments are pretty unassailable, I think, no matter which way you look at them.  

I wish there was another way, though. But is it possible to stop a violent man with peaceful means?

A Sober Barack Obama Wants Action Against Bashar-Al Assad's Use of Chemical Weapons

The war in Syria rages on, with media reporting contradictory stories that masquerade as the truth about what’s really happening. The war in the US rages on; a war of words, emotions and opinions that verge on ludicrous conspiracy theories. Did Bashar-Al Assad use nerve as in an attack on Damascus that left more than 1400 dead, over 400 of them children, or was it the rebels killing their own in a Machiavellian plot to make Assad look bad?

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said the attack was an offense and even a crime against humanity and that if the West did nothing Assad could take that as permission to repeat the offense. David Cameron wanted to do something but British MP’s voted him off the stage, although that was before the UN report was released.

Russia and China of course refuse to get involved, and Barack Obama has been fighting a losing battle with Congress and with many US citizens, to take some kind of action. He has repeatedly said that he would wait until he received the UN report and that he was not considering troops on the ground or any kind of action that would lead to long term involvement in Syria’s civil war, but the press continues to use the most dramatic headlines possible, and whatever it is that has underpinned opposition to Obama in the US since he first got elected is feeding off the drama.

It’s par for the course that conservatives in the US don’t listen to his actual words, and conveniently ignore the reality of his actions, just as it’s predictable that they will accuse him of having no backbone no matter what he does.

But the latest is that he’s being compared to GW Bush on the eve of the Iraq war, which is so far from the truth that if it wasn’t tragic it would be laughable. Bush’s intention was clear from the start. Justification for the Iraq war, where there was none, was fabricated on the flimsiest of excuses. Well, patent lies, actually. The US military industrial complex profited immensely as people on both sides got slaughtered. By the time the truth was obvious to Americans it was too late. Not for the military industrial complex of course.

Barack Obama has no intention of creating a war as GW Bush did. He has no intention of indiscriminately involving the US in Syria’s complex civil war. He has openly refused to do so up to this point, and gotten little recognition for it.

But he once said, when criticized for attempting to work with Congress, that he knows perfectly well how to draw a line in the sand, and that when he does he doesn’t back down. He spoke to the press on Friday, having seen the UN assessment which categorically states that Assad used sarin in the Damascus attack. The following is taken from the text of Obama's speech, transcribed by Federal News Service:  

“…This kind of attack threatens our national security interests by violating well-established international norms against the use of chemical weapons, by further threatening friends and allies of ours in the region like Israel and Turkey and Jordan, and it increases the risk that chemical weapons will be used in the future and fall into the hands of terrorists who might use them against us. So I have said before, and I meant what I said, that the world has an obligation to make sure that we maintain the norm against the use of chemical weapons.”

“…But again, I repeat, we’re not considering any open-ended commitment. We’re not considering any boots-on-the-ground approach. What we will do is consider options that meet the narrow concern around chemical weapons, understanding that there is not going to be a solely military solution to the underlying conflict and tragedy that’s taking place in Syria [my italics]. And I will continue to consult closely with Congress. In addition to the release of the unclassified documents, we are providing a classified briefing to congressional staffs today, and we’ll offer that same classified briefing to members of Congress as well as our international partners. And I will continue to provide updates to the American people as we get more information.”

For this he’s recently been accused of trying to save face. I guess when you don’t want to see the truth of a man you won’t see it no matter what. Obama hasn’t said yet what action the US should take. But he’s being blasted from all sides as if he had openly and aggressively declared war and said let’s kill the bastards. Frankly, the idea that nerve gas can be used indiscriminately by a lunatic like Assad and get away with it unnerves me. But what’s more unnerving is how many people in the West are quite happy to let him get away with it because it’s not on their doorstep. Yet. And maybe because it’s about Middle Easterns.

A lot of the comments left on recent New York Times articles about Obama’s desire to take some kind of action have been of the nature “let the Syrians kill each other, they’re all violent criminals anyway”.

So much for global humanity. The callousness of conservative Americans is nauseating. They’ve forgotten – as they forget anything that contradicts their current fantastical theory, whatever it is – that the original rebels didn’t initially commit the atrocities; they just fought for their freedom. It was when they got utterly desperate and particularly when foreign, fundamentalist elements came in to support them, that atrocities started being committed on both sides.

What conservatives in the West are too short-sighted to see is that if Assad has stockpiles of chemical weapons and he uses them and nobody in the West takes him to task, a precedent has been set. And if – or maybe I should say when - fundamentalists get hold of them, hallo international terror all over again but on a much bigger and more horrifying scale than ever before. If Obama doesn’t take action now – moderate action, as he’s proposing - what will they say then? If they’re alive to say anything at all.