Tag Archives: Syria

Wanted it bad, got it bad

Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, announced a deal last weekend that is supposed to make the Syrian problem go away.  Er, that is, make Bashir Assad’s chemical weapons go away.  Or at least disappear President Obama’s immediate political problem with breached red-lines and an America with no appetite for war with Syria in response.

The bottom line: Ain’t gonna happen.  The only question is:  Will this deal actually make things worse in any, or all, of those respects?

The old axiom, “you want it bad, you’ll get it bad,” applied to the three-days of fevered bilateral negotiations in Geneva that produced the so-called “plan” for international control and dismantling of the entire Syrian chemical arsenal.  President Obama and his top diplomat understood this Russian-supplied lifeline to be the only hope for extricating them from the disastrous debacle their feckless Syria policy had become.The best that can be hoped for from this deal is that it will reduce somewhat, Assad’s stockpile of chemical arms.  But it is national security fraud – something Team Obama has perpetrated serially since it came to office – to tell the American people the Kerry-Lavrov plan will actually eliminate it.  And the costs for even trying are likely to be far higher than we are being told.

Consider the following facts of life:

  • Dealing with toxic nerve agents, mustard gas and other lethal chemical weapons and the munitions they go in – even storing them, let alone moving and disposing of them – is a very hazardous business under the best of circumstances.  Needless to say, a civil war in which both sides are interested in having access to such weapons of mass destruction is not such an environment.  Already, there is talk about having to put somebody’s “boots on the ground” to secure whatever stocks are declared.  That is a formula for getting such foreign troops (ours?) killed when hostiles target the weapons they are protecting and/or embroiled as combatants in Syria’s civil war.
  • Not surprisingly, there are host of practical issues that likely will further undermine, if not absolutely doom, this deal.   They will help determine how expensive, complex and perhaps ultimately futile the Kerry-Lavrov disarmament scheme will be.  For example, are all the weapons supposed to be destroyed in place by next June – an undertaking involving the construction of specialized incinerators whose operation in this country has proven to be exceedingly time-consuming, costly and hazardous?  Who is going to pay for constructing such facilities and keep them from being targeted in the ongoing civil war?
  • Alternatively, are Assad’s weapons to be shipped out of Syria by then and if so, to where?  Russia?  Great idea.  Ditto places like Saudi Arabia or Turkey.  How about here? Any takers?
  • At its core, even the face value of any such ambitious disarmament plan rests on the accuracy of the inventory of Assad’s chemical arsenal.  What are the chances that we will get full disclosure – let alone by the end of the week?  As recent revelations about how the supposedly cooperative Muammar Qaddafi lied about his chemical stockpile remind us, totalitarian thugs are not trustworthy.  That is especially true of one in the Kremlin.

How this almost certainly will work is that Assad’s inventory will basically track with whatever intelligence assessment we shared with the Russians during last week’s version of “Let’s Make a Deal.”  That’s right:  Kerry’s delegation told Lavrov’s what we thought was there – approximately 1,000 metric tons of chemical weapons and agent.  The Russians, we’re told, affirmed that estimate.  And surely they shared our data with their Syrian client, on whose behalf, lest we forget, they are explicitly working.So if our data understates Assad’s actual stockpile, which is almost surely the case, you have what is known in the intelligence business as the “garbage in, garbage out” phenomenon: inputting erroneous assumptions leads inevitably to faulty conclusions.  In this case, that will likely mean that – even if all the other logistic, security and disposal problems are somehow overcome – at the end of the day, the Syrian regime will still have chemical weapons, and probably biological ones, too.

How could it be otherwise?  The U.S. government has never formally confirmed that Syria received chemical and/or biological weapons of mass destruction (WMD) from Saddam Hussein in the run-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom.  While there are reports that Assad is sending some of them back to Iraq now (among other shell-game style movements of his chemical arsenal among roughly 50 sites in Syria itself), our estimates are sure to be off.  Then, there’s the undeclared help Assad has received from North Korea and Iran in producing and concealing his WMD.

  • The larger problem is that all this sharing of information and other revelations about how we detect and monitor chemical weapons movements and dispositions is a field day for our adversaries’ counter-intelligence operations.  Count on them to learn from us and to make it vastly harder for us to know what they are up to in the future.

In short, the present crisis in Syria is not going away.  And the problems arising from previous, fraudulent deals to “rid the world of chemical weapons” are likely to be compounded by this one, not eliminated by Messrs. Kerry and Lavrov – any more than will be the case with all of Bashir Assad’s chemical arms.

A Delusional Disarmament Plan

Last week, Russia and the United States agreed on a “plan” to place Syria’s chemical arsenal under international control.  Unfortunately, it can’t work.

Never mind the inherent problems with moving, let alone dismantling, these deadly weapons.  Ignore the difficulties of finding trained personnel willing on short notice to do such dangerous work – particularly in the middle of a war zone.

One factor alone is sufficient to doom this cockamamie plan: We don’t know the actual size or whereabouts of Bashir Assad’s chemical arsenal.  There’s increasing evidence that he is moving and hiding what he can.  And now that we have told the Russians what we think is there, you can bet Assad will keep whatever has eluded us.

Syria’s chemical genie is not going back into the bottle.  Expecting otherwise is delusional.

Nina Shea: Plight of Christians in Syria

Nina Shea, Director, Center for Religious Freedom and Senior Fellow, The Hudson Institute; former Commissioner, U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom; co-author, Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes are Choking Freedom Worldwide (Oxford University Press, 2011) spoke to the Center for Security Policy’s National Security Group Lunch on Capitol Hill regarding the Plight of Christians in Egypt and Syria

The Giant Whirring Sound

Ross Perot once warned of a “giant sucking sound.”  Today, it might be a giant whirring sound.

You’re hearing the frantic spinning by Team Obama and its partisans about the President’s Syria debacle.  The whir is loudest in Geneva, Switzerland, where Secretary of State John Kerry, his Russian counterpart and their large delegations are discussing if, how and when Bashar Assad’s regime will give up its chemical weapons.

The conversations have gotten off to what is diplomatically called an “inauspicious start.” The reality is worse.  The Russians are predictably being difficult and the task is insuperably hard.  Yet, the Obama folks want us to believe that it was all their idea – not Vladimir Putin’s – and that progress is being made.

If you actually buy that bunk, I have a bridge for sale.

World War III

Last night, President Obama reaffirmed his fairy tale approach to the Syrian civil war. Like Goldilocks, he’s set on the “just right” outcome.  Not a “pin-prick” – he warned “the U.S. military doesn’t do pinpricks.”

But not too much, either.  Rather: an attack he assures us will entail only “modest effort and risk and save children in Syria from being gassed.”

But then he said we’re going to wait for the Russians and Bashir Assad to eliminate Syria’s vast chemical stockpile.

Meantime, doubts about his plan are certain to grow, especially as a new YouTube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-sdO6pwVHQ) goes viral with a spoof of Obama supporters mindlessly crowd-funding his effort to start World War III.

Unfortunately, unlike this funny video, what Obama is doing to make the world more dangerous is no laughing matter.

Syria strike debate splits conservative defense hawks

Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton and the Center for Security Policy’s Frank Gaffney are often described as “uber-hawks” for their support for a forceful projection of American power abroad.

Neither of them would ever be confused with the likes of non-interventionist Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.

Yet, like Paul and his fellow non-interventionists, Gaffney and Bolton have spoken out against targeting the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad with military strikes. So what gives?

A decade ago, foreign policy thinkers on the Right who supported the Iraq War typically had the “neoconservative” label slapped on them. Now, conservatives who oppose action in Syria are seen as part of a growing wave of anti-interventionist sentiment.

In both cases, these labels are overly simplistic in a way that obscures the real nuances in foreign policy thought on the right.

Most self-identified conservatives backed the overthrow of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. But beneath the surface of this unity, there were real differences between those who had narrower rationale for supporting action focused on American national interests and those who had broader ambitions about building democracy in the Arab world.

In early 2011, as popular uprisings started to spread throughout the Middle East that would become known as the Arab Spring, those differences were exposed.

“Neoconservatives thought the Arab Spring would move the region in a positive direction, whereas the more (national) interest-oriented conservatives believed it might not work out because the conditions weren’t right and because the abstract emphasis on democracy doesn’t necessarily comport with the actual circumstances around the world,” Bolton said.

Bolton, who volunteered for Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign as a high school student, has often been inaccurately described as a neoconservative, despite his skepticism of the idea that democracy promotion should be a pillar of U.S. foreign policy. He said he doesn’t think America has an interest in taking sides militarily in Syria’s ongoing civil war.

A longtime hawk, Gaffney worked in the Defense Department during the Reagan administration and is currently most often associated with being a passionate critic of radical Islam.

He backed the Iraq War, but has been a skeptic of the Arab Spring, which he has viewed as strengthening Islamist forces in the Middle East. He opposed President Obama’s intervention in Libya and has come out strongly against taking military action in Syria.

In a Monday phone conversation, Gaffney said it would be “ill-advised” to risk America’s limited military resources on a civil war that could spread.

Additionally, by changing the momentum on the battlefield, he argued, it would benefit Islamic jihadist elements fighting Assad, including al Qaeda, making it even more likely that they could get their hands on dangerous chemical weapons.

Despite finding himself in agreement with the noninterventionist strain of the Republican Party on military action in Syria, Gaffney cautioned against lumping all opponents of the war together. After all, he would still support military action against Iran’s nuclear program.

“I certainly don’t subscribe to isolationist sympathies, or, for that matter, libertarian nostrums about restricting America to defense of our borders and nothing more, or otherwise recoiling from international leadership,” Gaffney said.

“I’m just of the view, and I think there are lots of us who are, that leadership should be exercised sensibly and not simply because somebody claims we have a responsibility to enforce international norms.”

Bolton also echoed this note of caution. “I think there are neoisolationists in the Republican Party, but I don’t think that’s a good description for everybody who opposes the use of military force in Syria,” he said.

A Win for Russia and Assad

Yesterday’s developments concerning Syria prompt mixed emotions.  On the one hand, the Russian gambit to put Bashir Assad’s chemical weapons under international control effectively checkmates President Obama’s proposal to punish the Syrian dictator for using such arms.  Those who saw this as an ill-advised and dangerous idea – including apparently majorities in both Congress and the public – are relieved that it isn’t going to happen.

On the other hand, neither is Assad’s chemical disarmament. As a practical matter, it’s impossible to find, let alone neutralize, a large, dispersed and covert chemical stockpile in a secretive nation amidst a civil war.  Period.

President Obama may try to spin this as a triumph for his threats of military action.  Whatever one thought of those threats, though, the outcome is a win for Russia and Assad.

Just say no on Syria

Team Obama’s public campaign to embroil the United States in Syria’s civil war has kicked into high gear.  The President’s senior subordinates have been warning incessantly about the costs of inaction, and making preposterous promises about the benefits of conducting a limited attack on Bashir Assad’s regime.

President Obama is throwing himself into the sales pitch, too, with a saturation round of TV appearances Monday night and an address to the nation Tuesday.

Will all this lobbying work?  Will skeptical legislators ignore their constituents – who overwhelmingly recognize the folly of this proposal – and do as the White House and some Republicans demand?  Not if the common sense of most Americans prevails, as common sense tells us our attacking Syria will not make things better.  Rather, it likely will make matters worse, and probably much worse.

Here’s a sanity check on the case being made by the proponents.

The principal argument of advocates of a new authorization for the use of military force principal has two facets:  First, the United States has an international responsibility to act in the face of chemical weapons use.  And second, if we don’t, Assad, Iran and others will employ them with impunity and the mullahs in Tehran will no longer fear our red lines on their nuclear programs.

The United Nations, the Left and others hostile to American power have long sought to subordinate it to the dictates of the so-called “international community.”  The doctrine of a “responsibility to protect” (R2P) was tailor-made for this purpose:  It furthers the notion that the use of force is only legitimate when a UN mandate has been provided or, where that’s not possible (due to Russian and/or Chinese vetoes), where some other grounds can be found for invoking an international authority.

More to the point, R2P ensures that the U.S. military’s finite – and currently seriously overstretched – resources will be put to use punishing those whose barbarism violates “international norms,” the enforcement of which becomes defined as a vital American interest.  Consequently, a vote for Obama’s Syria resolution is a vote to legitimate and authorize the transnationalist grab for control of the only armed forces we have, at the expense of our sovereignty and, inevitably, of our security.

As to the possibility that, absent our attack, we will confront more chemical weapons use, it cannot be ruled out.  On the other hand, no one – no one – has explained how “degrading Assad’s capabilities” and “changing the momentum of the battlefield” (as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee resolution demands) will assure greater control of the Syrian dictator’s vast chemical arsenal.  In fact, Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey has testified that the U.S. strike will target the regime’s weapons used to protect that arsenal.

Even in the absence of such a deliberate purpose, we have to assume that either the designated terrorist group allied with Assad (Hezbollah) or the one dominating the opposition (al Qaeda) will gain access to some of these arms.  Consequently, those voting for the President’s resolution have no claim to a higher moral authority than the opponents when it comes to preventing future examples of the horrific incidents captured in videos of Syrian victims that the administration is shamelessly exploiting to buffalo legislators.

Then, there is the ultimate appeal being made to patriots – in and out of the Congress – found in the assertion that not just the President’s credibility, but the nation’s, is on the line. Some Republican legislators and a number of former officials of GOP administrations have embraced this argument.  They warn that the repercussions of defeating Mr. Obama this time will be to damage confidence in America for the duration of his presidency, with potentially devastating effects.

Unfortunately, inordinate damage has already been done to our leadership in the world as a result of nearly five years of what passes for this president’s security policy-making.  That has been the predictable effect of the Obama Doctrine – which I have reduced down to nine words: emboldening our enemies, undermining our allies, diminishing our country.  And, as Norman Podhoretz trenchantly put it in the Wall Street Journal on Monday: “[Obama’s] foreign policy, far from a dismal failure, is a brilliant success as measured by what he intended all along to accomplish….The fundamental transformation he wished to achieve here was to reduce the country’s power and influence.”

As a result, the question before the Congress this week is not whether the United States credibility will be degraded by its repudiation of what is, in fact, more of a Gulf of Tonkin-style blank-check than a restrictive authorization for only a limited military action.  Rather, it is:  Will we be able to measure the marginal additional harm done to our nation’s prestige, power and influence – all ingredients in its credibility – given the damage Mr. Obama has already done to them?

It was predictable, and predicted, that the whirlwind Barack Obama has sown, would be reaped eventually.  That moment may be at hand.  Thanks in no small measure to the decisions taken to date – including those that have hollowed out our military, reduced our presence and power-projection capabilities and contributed to the metastasizing of, among other threats, the Islamist cancer – there are no good options in Syria.  Unfortunately, the worst of them at the moment appears to be our going to war there, and Congress should decline to do so.

Common Sense

Team Obama’s public campaign to embroil the United States in Syria’s civil war has kicked into high gear.  The President’s senior subordinates have been warning incessantly about the costs of inaction, and making preposterous promises about the benefits of conducting a limited attack on Bashir Assad’s regime.

This week, President Obama will do so, too, with a saturation round of TV appearances tonight and an address to the nation tomorrow.

Will all this lobbying work?  Will skeptical legislators ignore their constituents – who overwhelmingly recognize the folly of this proposal – and do as the White House and some Republicans demand?  Not if the common sense of most Americans prevails, as common sense tells us our attacking Syria will not make things better.  Rather, it likely will make matters worse, and probably much worse.