What’s
Wrong Today:
Mr. Obama
told reporters at his news conference yesterday that despite the American
intelligence assessment last week that there was evidence that chemical weapons
had been used in Syria, the evidence had not yet crossed his “red line” for a
change of American strategy in Syria.
they were used, when they were used, who used them; we don’t have chain of
custody that establishes what exactly happened…And when I am making decisions
about America’s national security and the potential for taking additional
action in response to chemical weapon use, I’ve got to make sure I’ve got the
facts.
If
investigations prove that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons in the
conflict, Mr. Obama said:
rethink the range of options that are available to us.
So, has
Syria crossed the “red line” that warrants US military action? Has it not? The
political establishment in the United States is at odds about it.
From The New York Times:
intelligence agencies now believed, with varying degrees of confidence… that
the Syrian government had used chemical weapons…
Immediately
afterwards, Obama’s Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, said: “Suspicions are
one thing; evidence is another.”
The debate regarding whether the Syrian
government used Sarin is really an argument on whether the US should invade
Syria, since Mr. Obama has stated that use of chemical weapons was a “red line”
that, if crossed, would invoke an American military response.
The usual suspects,
led by Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC), called for US
military intervention in Syria on Sunday’s Face the Nation.
that the non-interventionists said would happen in Syria if we intervened have
happened…The jihadists are on the ascendency, there are chemical weapons
being used and the massacres continue.
Graham
said:
to become a failed state by the end of the year if we don’t intervene…we’re
going to start a war with Iran because Iran’s going to take
our inaction in Syria as meaning we’re not serious about their nuclear
weapons program…The whole region is going to fall into chaos.
I don’t know where Sen. Beavis has been
for the last couple of years, but
Syria is already a failed State. He and his wing-man, Sen. Butt-Head, along
with the rest of the Neo Cons, need to quit trying to get us involved in yet
another Middle East adventure.
The Pentagon estimates it would take
75,000 ground troops just to secure Syria’s chemical weapon stockpile. The troops don’t have to be American,
they might come from Middle Eastern nations, like Jordan or Turkey with some Western
advisors. However, the tanks and aircraft that would first have to quickly
reduce Assad’s conventional forces would have to come from NATO nations and
from the US in particular, since no one else has the capability.
McCain wants the US: To
create a no-fly zone which would entail massive strikes against Assad’s air
defense system, followed by boots on the ground to secure Syria’s chemical
weapons. This would require a ground invasion and post-invasion “occupation”.
This would turn Syria
into Syraq.
Back to
the Sarin: The White House believes the chain of custody
on the blood samples that that tested positive for sarin is
muddled, raising the possibility that the samples could have been tampered with.
Another possibility is that the victims were exposed to the nerve agent in some
way that didn’t involve an attack, for example, being in (or near) a chemical
weapons facility at which the Sarin leaked.
Cheryl Rofer previously wrote: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)
is not a gas. Its boiling point is well above water, at 158
C. As a weapon, it is
dispersed in fine droplets. Think about the greasy mist that settles on your
skin and clothes when you fry bacon. The victims would have a greasy mist of
sarin on their skin and clothes that would be transferred to the people carrying
and treating them. A droplet is enough
to kill. Hazmat-type protective moon
suits are needed to keep those people from being affected.
In the current Syrian
case, was it sarin? There are photos of rescuers and medics and they are not in
hazmat suits. But there are no reports of medics affected by exposure, so maybe
we should take the provenance of these samples with a huge grain of salt.
There is the question
of why Assad would use a weapon of mass destruction in tiny amounts. Foreign Policy
wrote:
would Bashar al-Assad have used chemical weapons on a small scale after
repeated warnings from Barack Obama that any use of chemical weapons would be a
“game-changer” for the United States?
From a military
perspective, it might make sense to use chemical weapons in a trial, but why
would the Syrian regime just put it in one grenade here or on one rocket
launcher? It’s not the way you’d expect a military to act.
Finally, the NYT
quoted Syrian
rebels saying that the chemical weapons attack took place in Syrian government controlled territory
and that 16 Syrian government soldiers died as a result of the attack,
along with 10 civilians plus a hundred more injured.
So, was a Red
Line crossed, or is this a Red Herring, used to lure the US into a policy error?
Since President
Obama has stated that use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government would be
a “game-changer,” anyone who wants
American intervention in the Syrian civil war has a motive to make the case
that their government has used chemical weapons. Faking the evidence is
all too easy.
More than
100,000 people have been killed in Syrian fighting. Their civil war endangers
the peace in surrounding countries, who are also taking in Syrian refugees,
whose lives have also been seriously disrupted. It is already a human
catastrophe. Should the US intervene for a single use of chemical weapons that
injured or killed a dozen or so people? Or a hundred?
Something smells
wrong here. It all seems contrived to rush the US and its allies down a path to
military intervention which would ensnare us in yet another long war and
occupation against Muslim people in the Middle East.
So,
how about the media doing its job this time?
Let’s press the Grahams and McCains
and others who favor intervention for details on what it will look like, how it
will be funded, personnel implicated along with some “what happens if”
questions.
Let’s try to understand the confused
situation on the ground in Syria:
Syrian
Shias, who are only 15% of Syria’s population but who
comprise most of the armed opposition to Assad, are in league with Iran and
Hezbollah.
Syrian
Sunnis, who are 75% of Syria’s population, are backed
by Saudi Arabia and the Cooperation Council for the Arab States
of the Gulf
.
So,
it’s Saudi and the Gulf states vs. Iran, Assad and Hezbollah.
We
have to hope that Jordan (95% Sunni), Lebanon (27% Sunni, 27% Shia) remain
neutral. Jordan was neutral during the Gulf War.
So, should the US take sides in a
religious war?
Imagine
if someone outside the US took sides on an issue between the Evangelicals
(26.3%) the Catholics (23.9%).
In case anyone has forgotten, the
last time we ran down this road in Iraq, we took sides with the Shia (65% of
population).
How has that turned out?
(Tomorrow,
Part II: More about the unclear situation on the ground in Syria)