What the hell is Obama doing suddenly involving himself in Syria? Ok, he backed himself into an unwise corner with his red line on chemical weapons, so I guess someone managed to convince him finally that it really wasn't a good idea for the president of the United States to be making hollow threats - maybe that someone was Bill Clinton - whatever, regardless - what the hell is he doing here?
Ok, I've said all along that I'm not sure it's possible to actually make a 'right' call on Syria - from the beginning all options have had fairly significant downsides, so picking your poison was a tricky business for sure - but let's be clear I also said that Obama made this quandary much more problematic by setting a false standard with his incoherent foolishness in Libya - so ok, fine, regardless of that - why get involved now? Iran, Russia, Hezbollah and much more quietly the Shiite ruling class in Iraq have made it clear they intend to carry Assad to victory come hell or high water, so in getting involved now you're getting involved against them - if your efforts start to turn the tide against Assad that amounts to a significant challenge to them and they'll have to respond - alternatively, if your efforts fail the damage to your prestige and the lift to theirs is that much greater. Quite a sticky wicket, seems to me.
Then there's the problem of who or what exactly are you jumping in now to support or defend? The extremists are running the show, they're embedded, they're baked in - they're our allies here? To what end? The only chance you had to control the outcome here - and by control I mean keep noxious Islamists from taking charge and forestalling the coming of the slaughter of regime supporters, which will likely include the Christian and Kurdish minorities and not just Alawites, when Assad falls - the only chance you had to suppress these outcomes was to get in early - now it's impossible, now your only chance would come from going in big which quite obviously with Obama calling the shots will not be an option on the table - and quite frankly probably wouldn't be an option regardless of Obama's lead from behind mentality - but, still, at this point going in big is the only way you could influence outcomes that wouldn't come back to haunt us down the road. The most we're gonna see here I imagine will be giving some intel and superior weaponry to the rebels and then possibly protecting an enclave, a sanctuary somewhere with a no fly zone - talk of a no fly over all of Syria I think is fantasy, I'd be shocked if we saw that - that would be a major enterprise, you'd have to wage a penetrative air war against Syrian defences for several weeks, taking out AA systems, taking out command and control nodes - you're not gonna see that - possibly we drop some cruise missiles on some runways - but I don't see an expansive no fly zone being in the cards.
To me this is just further confirmation that Obama is simply not qualified to be chief executive - he's a charming yet somewhat machiavellian ideologue who had very little relevant experience but was given the job anyway because uber liberals and the egregiously naive in general got all giddy over the notion of having a black president - take him away from the campaign trail and the teleprompter where he does indeed have some skills - but that's pretty much what you'd expect from a guy whose chief political attribute is being a charming ideologue beloved by the media - take him away from that context and he quite simply doesn't seem to have a clue. He sure as hell ain't a leader - and this vaunted intelligence his acolytes drone on about, I don't see it. He seems more fool than savant to me. He's got a knack for political machinations and as I've said before is a superb liar - but those things don't add up to leadership, certainly not when it comes to a democracy - may be a skill set that serves you well in an autocracy, which as I've said before is a mode of governance he seems best suited for, reflected in his attempts to suppress dissent through manipulation of the media [not to mention the IRS, the DOJ etc etc], which is basically rule number one in the aspiring potentates playbook - but being president of the United States is not a job this guy is well suited for, at least not if we intend on remaining a superpower - his ideas are faulty, his sympathies misguided, his decision making flawed and rather than having the ability or even desire to bridge gaps and divides roiling the electorate he seems intent instead on exacerbating them, possibly because he looks upon anyone who doesn't endorse his point of view by wholly surrendering themselves to the brilliance of his conceits as having irredeemably fallen from grace.
[does this involvement mark the return of Samantha Power and Susan Rice as putative foreign policy mavens pulling Dear Leader's strings? Great - the idiots responsible for Libya return to wreak more havoc upon common sense and strategic coherence - and in the name of what delusional humanitarianism, what misguided multilateralism? Ninety thousand have died so far, this is their motivation? They do realize if we enable a rebel win another ninety thousand will die in retributive slaughter, yes? And maybe many, many more than that if a turn in rebel fortunes sets off a regional war? They do realize that without significant American boots on the ground the people we will be bringing to power will at best look like a more regressive, more corrupt, more incompetent version of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and at worse like the Taliban in the full rut of glorious jihad?
But let's play devil's advocate here - maybe a constrained no fly zone could be a precursor to breaking the country up - settle the insurgents in a viable province and then sue for a truce based on splitting the country in two - would that make any sense? I don't know the demographics in Syria well enough to even guess at whether some kind of partition is possible or, if possible, maintainable - but even if it were feasible sounds like it would be a huge undertaking that would constantly be under threat from sectarian and political forces pulling any tentative agreement apart - sounds like the sort of thing that would start off with good intentions but quickly fall into chaos]
[over at Foreign Policy Dan Drezner wants to make argument that Obama is playing the 'realist' card by jumping into Syria now - ie keep Iran et al involved in a draining civil war etc etc - these Obamaphiles, man, they just never cease in trying to think up clever conceits that putatively rationalise away Dear Leader's incompetence - usually the argument amounts to: if ya don't have a Phd from an Ivy League school y'all too stupid to comprehend Dear Leader's genius - this little routine was mildly amusing for a while during the first term, it is now nothing but tawdry and embarrassing.
There are no doubt many reasons why Drezner's claim is absurd, not least of which is I'm supposed to believe that uber progressive Obama has magically managed to turn himself into Kissinger and as such is willing to callously perpetuate an atrocity producing civil war merely to ostensibly drain Iran of energy or funds or whatever and all this despite the fact that his key advisors are all people who would never be caught dead pursuing a strategy like this - that's reason enough to laugh at the absurdity of Drezner's claim - and I can think of many others - as in, for this strategy to work, wouldn't you need this 'manufactured' civil war to go on undecided for quite some time? I mean, the way the prolonged violence is drawing in all kinds of unsavory extremists to the rebels and radicalizing all and sundry you certainly don't want them winning because of the abominations that would follow such a thing - but then of course you don't want Iran to 'win' either - so basically pursuing such a 'realist' strategy would involve having an uber progressive, anti-war liberal president secretly keeping a ruinous, atrocity producing civil war going ad infinitum as it were for the dubious purpose of draining Iran of resources. Yeah, right.
But the main reason why this realist argument is absurd is because it would amount to playing very fast and loose with Israel's security - you would not and could not pursue a strategy like this without first getting Israel's approval - and why the hell would they ever do that? They've been hyper cynical of the Arab Spring from the beginning - they saw clearly the very dangerous forces it was allowing to come to the fore - I'm not sure if they wanted Assad to prevail always, they may have been ambivalent at first - but I have no doubt that now as things stand they'd much prefer the devil they know than whatever evil lurks in the shadows and are deeply worried about this civil war getting stretched out and someone or something - Hezbollah - dragging them into it as a tactical ploy. Sorry Mr Dresner, but you and your buddies in the liberal academy are just gonna have to simply accept the fact that the dream you dreamed in 2008 was bogus and full of shit]
