…is about to slaughter a town in Syria. Isn’t this sort of thing what caused the president to decide to get involved with Libya? Strategically, getting rid of Assad is much more important than getting rid of Moammar whathisname, but strategy has never been this gang’s strong suit.
[Sunday morning update]
Israel seems to be all in favor of removing the chinless one:
Allied with Iran, Mr. Assad has helped supply 55,000 rockets to Hezbollah and 10,000 to Hamas, very likely established a clandestine nuclear arms program and profoundly destabilized the region. The violence he has unleashed on his own people demonstrating for freedoms confirms Israel’s fears that the devil we know in Syria is worse than the devil we don’t.
A regime change in favor on one not so favorable to the Mullahs would be a strategic body blow against both Iran and Hezbollah.
And it looks like the White House is finally getting a clue. But only a partial one. It’s a lot more than just a “humanitarian crisis.”
strategy has never been this gang’s strong suit.
How could that be? They have such a strong grasp of the power of window dressing.
I curious if the Obama apologist, whom routinely tell us how great and nuanced his foreign policy is, are even disturbed either by Obama’s:
1) New wars in Libya and Yemen.
or
2) Lack of interest in Syria which, as Rand points out, has the same human rights concerns as Libya.
It’s just that his overriding goal is: Diminish our influence in this area.
Diminish our influence in this area.
I think that could actually be refined and expanded. For ANY area beyond our borders: Diminish. For any area within: Increase.
You’re a young woman walking the streets of Tehran and you get your brains blown out by a government sniper? We’ll give you advice on curtains. You live in St. Louis and want to replace a light bulb?
Yeah, yeah, lets have a seance to call upon the spirits of the Obama apologists to explain this one.
Yeah, and again yeah, the Obama apologists will hew to the hackneyed Party Line. But let’s not slip into a Party Line of our own, people.
This Syria thing simply doesn’t have a good answer. Yeah, and yet once more yeah, the Opthamologist and so on and so forth. The story I heard (cough, Richard Fernandez, cough) is that George W Bush was begging the Israelis to “finish off” the Chinless One, dunno, was it back in 2006 when Israel went into Lebanon in response to hostage takings and ceaseless rocket attacks?
The deal with Israel is their worry that however bad the Management is in Syria now, who is going to follow? The Assads are what, Alewite, to my understanding a splinter sect of Islam and a way minority religion to the majority in Syria. Yes the Syrian rulers are killers and Jewish person haters and back-door American GI in Iraq blower-uppers, but the fact that the rulers have this religious minority status puts some restrictions on their antics. What happens when you replace them with people with no such restrictions?
So yes, the Obama people are foundering, and yes, the Usual Suspects probably have some Party Line talking points to defend the Obama people, but some problems don’t have simple and easy and obvious-to-the-enlightened solutions, and I don’t think we should get carried away here.
But let’s not slip into a Party Line of our own, people.
This Syria thing simply doesn’t have a good answer.
Ok, Paul, I’ll bite. What’s the good answer for Libya? Just kill Col. Whathisname?
but some problems don’t have simple and easy and obvious-to-the-enlightened solutions
That is false. You clearly haven’t been keeping up here. The solution is Negotiation. Which doesn’t mean giving up the store. It’s related to domestic consumption. And lowering tensions and creating trust.
Curtains.
Try to keep up.
Ok, Paul, I’ll bite. What’s the good answer for Libya? Just kill Col. Whathisname?
OK, I’ll bite back.
There is/was no good answer for Libya either. If I am following a Party Line these days, you can check over by Jerry Pournelle, a man with fine Conservative (maybe not Libertarian), Space Policy, Cold War, and computer tech credentials.
And Ol’ Jerry is channeling Sun Tzu, something to the effect that you want to offer your enemy some manner of honorable surrender because if you demand unconditional surrender and war crimes prosecution of everybody, every little skirmish with a tin-pot dictator becomes an existential fight to the death (for the dictator) and that Has Consequences.
Y’know, we made an example of ol’ Saddam, and the Col. Whosenamewecantspell got religion and laid bare his nuke program, about which we didn’t have a clue that he even had a nuke program, and he came clean about it instead of engaging in those stupid Saddam “You Can’t Touch That” games.
OK, the Libyan dude is a bad hombre, and just because he opened up and disarmed from his atomic ambitions doesn’t make him Pope John Paul II. But a deal is a deal and that he disarmed when he saw the seriousness of our intent, that has to count for something, no? At least a Get Out From the Threat of the Hague Tribunal card?
Because our welching on these kinds of deals Has Consequences. As in every tin pot 3rd worlder with a Khan Doit-U-Self nuke kit will not cut a deal. If the end game is swinging from a rope, ending up in a Dutch jail, or getting JDAMed, these guys will not ever, never give up their nuke ambitions the way Whatshisname did. Ever. Is that what we want?
OK, back to the topic at hand. If I ever ran for high elective office and sat across from Katie Couric to be asked what books I have read that influence my outlook on governance, there is really only one book, and it was written by a guy named Mario Puzo. That’s right, the guide to a Good Foreign (or even Domestic) Policy is in the Canon of Pulp Novels. What would Don Corleone do?
What Don Corleone would do was a lot of things — he would never give an outright no to anyone, but he would stick to his core moral principles, that gambling was OK but prostitution and drugs are imfamata. He would dispense all manners of favors to people, but if he asked a tiny favor of you and refused you, and if your right-hand man discovered you to be a child molester that you really couldn’t go complaining to the cops, you would end up with a horse’s head in your bed.
But the main thing Don Corleone would do is that we would not say very much. The biggest fault about our President is not what he does or does not do, whom he favors and does not favor, but that he talks and talks and talks and talks. The Libyan Colonel or the Egyptian Air Force pilot should do this and shouldn’t do that and shall do something else.
But just because Mr. Obama has it all wrong doesn’t mean the Right Blogosphere has it all correct. The Right Blogosphere is like Santino (Sonny) — a lot of bluster, big plans of “taking the fight to the enemy”, but a pale imitation of the strategic expertise of the Old Man.
“Strategically, getting rid of Assad is much more important than getting rid of Moammar whathisname”
No, Rand, no. Not only, strategically speaking, getting rid of Assad not more important, it is anti-important, it is way the wrong thing to do. In 2006, the Bush Admin people practically begged the Israelis to do away with him and the Israelis dug in their heals. Are you second-guessing the Israelis on Bad Consequences regarding who comes after Assad?
Going after whathisname was a bad decision from the Obama people for the above-mentioned reasons (how is that “days not weeks” thing working out for you, Mr. President), but going after Mr. Assad would be an even worse decision.
Going after Assad may well be the wrong thing but how does Obama jusify going after Gaddafi and not Assad? What happened to the ‘duty to protect’? Hiller Clinton says the Libiyan rebals are now the legitimate ‘interlocutors’ for the Libiyan people to the international community, meaning the Obama administration now sees the goal of the intervention there as regime change. So, the Obama administration has now covertly adopted all aspects of the Bush foriegn policy. Except that they are incompetant and hypocritical about it.
Hey, how ’bout we all stop egging Obama into more foreign adventures? I’m all for liberty around the world, but it’s clear that Obama is not up to the whole leader-of-the-free-world thing. At the same time, he has shown literally incredible decision-making skills — incredible as in “not credible”….
Wonder if anyone approached Obama and said, “We can go to war with one of these three countries: Syria, Libya, or Yemen.” Then proceeded to break down our interests in each country.
In Yemen we already had an active drone war before the Arab Spring. We are supporting the despot there despite not supporting the one in Egypt. In both countries the protesters gathered in a city square and stayed there 24/7. In one of those countries, the government showed up at 3am with water cannon trucks filled with gasoline instead of water.
They sprayed the tents with gasoline and then lit them on fire. When people ran out, they were shot. There are a lot of gruesome pictures out there from this. Yes, this was Yemen.
Yemen is also home to the American Al Qaeda leader that inspired or helped plan these attacks: the Fort Hood shooter, Times Square Bomber, and the Underwear Bomber. Maybe one or two others I can’t remember off the top of my head.
Out of Syria, Yemen, and Libya, the only place that our national interests intersect with humanitarian concerns, is Yemen. Geographically, Yemen is also in close proximity to several actors that are important strategically, Iran and the Somali Pirates.
Libya was a mistake but not that we are there we should go balls deep and get the job done or get out. The President should also go to congress and seek their approval.
Syria is tricky. There is no guarantee that whatever comes after Assad will be any better. You could say that Syria is worse than Libya in terms of a humanitarian crisis but taking military or kinetic action in either country really doesn’t do anything for us.
The time for action against Syria would have been pre-Iraqi surge.
Sorry Paul, I read your response and it seemed incoherent.
I tend to go with Wodun. Syria has been a problem for the US for a very long time. However, the best rational in a decade for taking action against Syria was when Syria was aiding Iraqi insurgents against the US. At the moment, there is just an advantage of having Assad’s people fighting against him.
I’m still waiting for a good rational for attacking Libya other than protecting the flow of oil to Europe, which already doesn’t seem to care about Libya anymore.
But a deal is a deal and that he disarmed when he saw the seriousness of our intent, that has to count for something, no?
It did.
Because our welching on these kinds of deals Has Consequences.
We didn’t welch on jack shit. It is safe to assume that he was informed early on that if he wanted to avoid the Hague he needed to leave. There were, and probably still are, any number of places he could have gone that would have shielded him, and given him a palace with plenty of room to set up his sex tents. It is illuminating that he has chosen another path. The nature of the current occupants of the White House would seem to have played a role in his decision tree.
Here’s some Obama apologia:
On whether he thinks Obama is “Kissingerian,” Kissinger — who endorsed Republican candidate Sen. John McCain in the 2008 election — said, “My impression of Obama is that he would like to believe that you can sweep the world by the power of ideas and that the ideas alone will dominate the world and that you can ignore the equilibrium part of the equality and that you can do it with rhetoric. … That’s what he’d like to believe.”
But Obama, he said, is also “a good mind. And so he looks at the world and sees what’s actually happening. So when he speaks, he often sounds as if he were in the world of ideas alone. When he acts, he is very conscious of reality. I think he’s basically very close, if I put his actions together, to the objectives that I affirm.”
Obama, he said, may view his remarks as “a private compliment, but he will not want to advertise it.”
From http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/06/12/kissinger.china/
And here’s a Kissinger-like point of view on Syria from the Israeli center:
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/israel-must-toe-the-western-line-on-syria-1.366889
Ugh, Kissinger. I didn’t like him in the 70s, and he hasn’t improved since. Best thing about him was how easily he was caricatured in Dr. Strangelove.
Like father, like son. The “world” did nothing about Hama, it will do nothing now, even though the USA has an army in Iraq.
“George W Bush was begging the Israelis”
Ugh. Be a man George, step and kill you enemies yourself. Too often politicians are Ransom Stoddard with less spine, who can’t even be goaded into action, and aren’t backed up by Tom Doniphon.
” Diminish our influence in this area.”
Good place for a spelling joke: Dhiminnish our influence.
I’m not sayin he does, but if Obama wanted Iran to dominate the Middle East, what would he do different from what he’s already doing?