What’s
Wrong Today:
What
should we do when our President wants war but says, “there are no good options”?
From Esquire’s Charlie Pierce:
I do not want to believe that American policy is to weaken Assad but somehow
not weaken him enough so that the rebels — whom we do not trust and, frankly,
do not know — can actually overthrow him. I do not want to believe that the
policy is to let Syria bleed itself white. I do not want to believe this
because I remember when Henry Kissinger, that sociopath, actually adopted that
policy during the Iran-Iraq War. We armed both sides to keep them at each other
so that neither one would win. Thousands of people who were not us got
slaughtered meaninglessly. I do not want to believe that American policy in
Syria is within miles of that kind of lycanthropic realpolitik. I’d
prefer to believe we just don’t know what in the hell to do.
Stars and Stripes, the newspaper of the US Army, reports
on the analysis of Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Zenko
has studied the results of “limited use of force” like what Mr. Obama is
considering in Syria. He has counted 36 such operations since 1991, which have
had varying levels of success. He says these operations typically use “stand-off”
weapons like cruise missiles or drones that put few if any service members at
direct risk.
Yet
the operations are not as effective as imagined, Zenko argues. In the 36
incidents he counts, military
objectives were achieved little more than half the time, he said, while the
political goals were realized in only 6 % of the attacks.
If
political goals are achieved in a mere 6% of the attacks, then Tomahawk
diplomacy in the form of a cruise missile attack against Syria without a realistic plan to achieve a
desired political goal might make some people feel good but will not do us any good. It may backfire into undesired and unintended
consequences that could do us harm.
If
you can’t raise the bridge, lower the river. No good option means that it’s
time to get out of the box and try something different.
The
Wrongologist suggests making Assad an offer he can’t refuse.
Let’s
accept that Assad’s regime committed the crime. Let’s further postulate that by
now, Mr. Assad knows who gave the order to arm the rockets with CW, and who
gave the orders to fire those weapons at civilian populations in the Damascus
suburb of Eastern Ghouta.
John
Kerry, Prince of Ketchup, seems to have detailed knowledge of the inner
communications of the Assad regime on the night of the attack and the regime’s
internal discussions about the event. If we know, then Assad knows. The
proposal is:
Tell Mr. Assad to publicly execute
the members of his government and military who bear direct responsibility for
the CW attack.
Give
Mr. Assad 10 days to conduct the executions and to make a statement about how
he will not tolerate further CW attacks.
Should
he fail to comply? Take out Mr. Assad. With Tomahawk missiles, or otherwise. Hit
all the targets that leave Mr. Obama with “no good options”. Hit them twice so Assad’s chances of winning the civil war are degraded. Tell Mr. Assad that this is
what we will do if he fails to execute the perpetrators of CW on his own
people.
This
will help America’s credibility. It gives Syrians more time to get out of harm’s
way if he does not. It gives Assad a way to preserve the status-quo in his
civil war.
It
avoids an attack that ultimately pleases al-Qaeda and Israel while angering the
rest of the Middle East.
What
do you think?
For me, I just wish at some point a president would do the unthinkable, which is to tell the world, sorry, we no longer believe it is our role to police the world.