Mac-Coleman

  28 August 2013 –

I Repeat:  Stay Out of the Fight In Syria! 

Why does President Obama insist on focusing his foreign policy on the predictable atrocity of Syria? Nothing in Syria—including the government’s use of poison gas on its enemies—threatens any U.S. strategic interests in the region.  Israel continues to defend itself.  Turkey still controls its borders and its sovereignty.  Oil still flows from Syria’s neighbors to the south and east.  Russia is still our opponent.  Iran still hates us and will continue to influence Shi’ites in the region to support its stance to destroy Israel.  Therefore, the President’s use of the military instrument of national power in Syria is the wrong action at the wrong place and the wrong time.   Consider the following facts. 

Syria’s is a civil war.  On one side, the oppressive Assad government hates the United States and aligns itself with our international opponents, like Iran and Russia.  On the other side, most of the rebel groups also hate the United States; if these rebels are not the brothers of our violent, Islamist enemies, they are at least their first cousins.  This truly is not our fight. 

The time-proven adage for entering another’s civil war is simple:  Pick a side and then do what it takes to win decisively.  Making a point or militarily punishing the Assad regime for its actions, even to the destruction of all remaining chemical weapons, will make no friends among the combatants nor among any of their outside supporters.  Even more important, it will show us to be naïve and weak.  There may be others who may want our help to resolve their problems, but are now afraid of what they would have to endure to get that help.  Let’s stay out of others’ civil wars unless we are prepared to win.    

To destroy the remaining chemical weapons—even if we could do it with drone and missile attacks—will not satisfy the combatants, their supporters, or even those who demand that the U.S. be the world’s policeman.  U.S. military attacks in Syria will change nothing on the ground there.  The combatants will continue to fight.  Our opponents in the region will continue to support their chosen combatants and continue to condemn us in world fora for their own purposes.  Even worse, after such a failure, the President will be strongly tempted to expand the initial objective of punishing the Assad regime.  The President will feel pressure to “do something more” or be thought of as weak, domestically and internationally.   Is such pressure powerful on a president?  Our gradualism without a strategy in Vietnam, our war of opportunity against the wrong enemy at the wrong time in Kosovo, our misreading of the fractured society in Iraq after the initial victory, and even our decision to nation build in Afghanistan after our quick success in destroying terrorist enclaves should tell us that indeed, “doing something more” is a powerful temptation.     

If the President succumbs to attacking Syria in the near future, he owes the American people a public justification for his present and future actions.  He should identify the compelling U.S. interests for military action, lay out a solid strategy to satisfy that interest, and commit to major operational plans to accomplish the strategy.  The U.S. military knows how to clarify a strategy, build the operational plan, and execute it as well as any military force in the history of civilization.  What the U.S. military can’t create, but must have so it can adapt the strategy and operational plans to overcome fog of war, is a clear, compelling reason to commit violence.  Nothing the President has said to date identifies this compelling interest.  A war is at our door with nothing to fight for. 

The President has plenty of time to work something out since he foolishly laid down the red line of chemical weapons use.  President Assad and his advisors realized that President Obama couldn’t make a good case for U.S. intervention; when the situation demanded it, they used chemical weapons.  President Assad deliberately stepped over the red line.  He called President Obama’s bluff.   President Obama doesn’t have winning cards in this hand; but, that doesn’t mean he won’t lose this hand and then play another, and another, and another, to try to recoup his losses.   Professional card players like to play against guys like that.  They are called losers.