What ‘s
Wrong Today:
Sen.
John McCain (R-AZ) visited Syria over the Memorial Day weekend. According to
the The Daily
Beast, he made the
trip from Turkey into Syria alongside Gen. Salam Idris, who leads the Supreme Military
Council of the Free Syrian Army and accompanied McCain as they met with rebel
leaders from throughout the country.
Idris told
the Daily Beast:
visit of Senator McCain to Syria is very important and very useful especially
at this time…We need American help to have change on the ground; we are now
in a very critical situation.
McCain on Twitter:
visit with brave fighters in #Syria who are risking their lives for freedom and
need our help.
Remember John McCain strolling through a Baghdad market in a
bulletproof vest accompanied by one hundred soldiers, three
Blackhawks, and two Apache Gunships? Well,
he’s now become a Syrian expert.
Meanwhile,
the Masters of War are building the global case that the Assad regime must
go as soon as possible. There was the sarin gas use, possibly against the
rebels, or possibly by the rebels.
France
worked to get the European Union to
lift its ban on sending weapons to the Syrian theater of the global war
on chaos. They succeeded last night.
In
response, yesterday’s news brought
this headline:
That means
sending S-300 Air Defense Missiles to Syria. The S-300 is a powerful weapon
with a range of up to 125 miles and the capability to track down and strike
multiple targets simultaneously. The weapon would be a quantum leap in Syria’s
air defense capability, particularly against Israel’s recent bombing runs, or
the McCain desire to establish a “no-fly” zone.
CBS reported that Deputy
Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that Moscow isn’t going to abandon the
deal despite strong Western and Israeli criticism. He states the air defense
weapons can’t be used in the civil war against the opposition, which doesn’t
have aircraft. Ryabkov said:
such steps to a large extent help restrain some ‘hot heads’ considering a
scenario to give an international dimension to this conflict
Ryabkov also accused
the EU of ‘throwing fuel on the fire’ by letting its own arms embargo on Syria’s
rebels expire.
Further
complicating the conflict is Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah’s decision to support
Assad militarily, which was formally announced Saturday. Hassan Nasrallah’s announcement
that it will use Hezbollah’s military power on the side of the Syrian
government brings a new dimension to the fight. It is likely that Hezbollah’s role is to control the supply
lines to and from Syria, not to fight rebels on the ground.
This is
turning into a bigger mess than anyone imagined it would be. Are we again
heading toward the inevitable?
The key
global actors (Russia, US) continue to circle each other regarding what to do
in Syria. There are a few assumptions that are seen as universal truths:
- The regime will be
eventually be deposed of by freedom-loving Syrians
- International intervention
in Syria is inevitable: Sooner or later the free world will be forced to take
action to save the country’s civilian population
- “Assad must go” has
been the US viewpoint until Kerry met with Russia earlier in the month, when we
modified that position
Really? Is any of this true? McCain and
the other Masters of War have a learning disability. Think of all the data we
have on Islam, Muslim groups and the tribal cultures in the Middle East,
including data presented here,
here
and here
by the Wrongologist.
Dexter Filkins in
the New Yorker
underscored the complexity and potential pitfalls of arming a rebellion that is
fractured and potentially extreme in nature. In recent months, with urging from
the US and its allies, a large number of the estimated 70,000 rebel fighters
have been brought together under a joint military command, a coalition of 30
armed groups, which American officials imagine as a nascent national army.
Still, Filkins
reports that Mr. Obama has little
confidence in the rebels, arguing that they are ideologically
fractured, that the rebellion lacks a coherent structure, and that individual
groups would be impossible to control and would probably fight each other. Some
of the guns, he believes, will ultimately make their way to Islamist groups.
According
to The
NYT in April, the overwhelming majority of the rebels are fighting for an
Sharia-based Islamic republic.
Moreover,
citizens of most of Syria’s neighbors, especially Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan are
now fighting in Syria, acquiring skills that their home countries fear will be
turned against them when they return. And the problem isn’t confined to Arab
countries: Hundreds of European
Muslims are also fighting in Syria, where they are being further radicalized
and learning military skills that will make them serious terror risks when they
return.
So why is
Russia so solid in their support of Assad? There has been a parade of senior
diplomats to Moscow, seeking to find common ground in the Syria crisis. First,
US Secretary of State John Kerry, then British Prime Minister David Cameron,
next Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and most recently, UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
These
leaders see Russia as the key to resolving the Syria quandary.
But to get
Russia to cooperate on any stabilization plan, the United States and its allies
will have to understand Russia’s significant interests in the Mediterranean
region.
What are Russia’s strategic interests?
Syria buys Russian arms,
maintains the sole Russian naval base in the Mediterranean (in the Syrian port
city of Tartus), has energy development deals with Russia in both oil and
natural gas, and is closely allied with Iran, a major Russian arms customer.
Iran is also a big customer for Russian natural gas. From Reuters:
when most of its ports freeze and are not accessible, Russia’s warm Black Sea
port is the country’s lifeline and critical to its oil export business. Thus,
Moscow’s ability to keep the Mediterranean open to…Russian shipping and naval
activity is a top policy priority.
We
should have great respect for McCain’s Vietnam service and imprisonment.
However, McCain and his ilk believe America’s Exceptionalism will trump local
culture, beat back factionalism and create democratic societies through sheer
force of military will.
That isn’t America anymore, if it ever was America. We were wounded by the
neo-con wars started by Mr. Bush and continued by Mr. Obama. Fighting the wrong
wars at the wrong time in the Middle East has been our financial and military
undoing.
We
do not presently have the financial resources or military readiness to conduct
another long war in the Middle East. Our priorities should be elsewhere. We have
played the game wrong from the planning phase, we can’t control the situation,
we do not even truly understand it.
We need to take a longer view on the global political environment and take the time to restore
our financial and military might.
Hang
up your spurs John.
We will never learn. In all of our history before WW2, we understood that we could not really control the world.
Although we “won” ww2, it took every able man and woman, and all the brits and russians too… (all all our cash) and then, we only really won western europe. eastern europe and east asia emerged from the war needing decades and more war to sort it all out.
our peace effort in Bosnia was an incomplete success AT BEST.
Our efforts to make peace between Egypt and Israel are at an end.
It is really too bad for all the folks who will die, but we will only make things worse.
McCain may be a war hero, but intellectually, he’s like a jock – he was a mediocre pilot and has no understanding of world history.
@ Terry: There
is no side that we can back that would advance our country’s
interests. Even an attempt to enforce a truce thru a UN police force would simply cause all sides
to see the West as the Christian Crusading Enemy.
It’s hard to watch the
human devastation in the civil war, but this is a lose-lose situation for us. Nothing except a neo-con wet dream could justify US
intervention. Unfortunately, there is plenty of THAT going around in
Washington.