Syrian Ironies

by Victor Davis Hanson

National Review Online

The more Bashar Assad butchers Syrian dissidents, the more the world community expresses outrage — while it does little to stop the bloodletting. Why?

Ironies on top of ironies

1. The politics of intervention. Republicans might seem the most likely to push for an American bombing campaign against Bashar Assad. Some conservatives, in fact, are doing so. But most are silent — and for understandable reasons. Between 2005 and 2009, most liberals made the case that American intervention against an Arab dictator in the Middle East was intrinsically unwise. This liberal chorus included the likes of Hillary Clinton, who as senator had voted to authorize the use of force against Saddam Hussein. Barack Obama in 2007 started his presidential bid to the left of Senator Clinton, outlining a plan for near-immediate withdrawal from Iraq, while continuing his concerted attack on almost all the Bush-Cheney anti-terrorism protocols.

Republicans were relieved that Obama, once president, suddenly dropped almost all the demagogic criticism that had fueled his successful campaign and embraced the Bush-Cheney policies against terrorists. But they were not relieved enough to overlook the hypocrisy — and the prior damage done by Obama and others, whose rhetoric was revealed as more partisan than reflective of any principled positions against Guantanamo, renditions, tribunals, preventive detention, and troops in Iraq.

All the old left-wing anti-war charges — e.g., that neocons were getting us into a proxy war on Israel’s behalf, or that oil was always a catalyst for any US action in the Middle East — might now equally apply to Syria — a regime that has killed far fewer than the million butchered by Saddam Hussein. In other words, many of those pondering preemptive action against Syria seem to be doing so on the basis that Nobel Peace Laureate Obama, and not George Bush, would be carrying it out. If Bush were calling for tough action against Bashar Assad, we would hear accusations of everything from Halliburton conspiracies to Wag the Dog politics.

2. Bad, worse, or the worst? Other than Iran, Syria has been America’s most vehement enemy over the last decade. It sent jihadists into Iraq to kill Americans, and harbored al-Qaeda terrorists on its own soil. It tried to obtain a nuclear weapon until Israel bombed its nascent enrichment facilities. It was a partner with Hezbollah and Iran in destroying Lebanon and murdering former prime minister Rafiq Hariri.

Nonetheless, in January 2009 the Obama administration loudly announced a Syrian reset policy, as if the previous estrangement were due more to George Bush than to Bashar Assad. Indeed, during the 2008 campaign, informal Obama advisers traveled to Syria to talk of a new relationship, and the Assad regime was openly banking on an Obama victory. John Kerry frequented Damascus and assured us that his talks with Bashar Assad would lead to an Obama-Assad breakthrough (e.g., “Our latest conversation gave me a much greater sense that Assad is willing to do the things that he needs to do in order to change his relationship with the United States”).

Soon after Obama’s inauguration, he appointed a new ambassador to Syria, the first since President Bush withdrew our ambassador in 2005. Secretary of State Clinton dubbed Assad a “reformer.” Mrs. Assad suddenly morphed into a chic Westernized first lady, a Middle Eastern Jackie Kennedy. Obama’s special envoy George Mitchell was the highest-ranking US official to visit Damascus in a decade. Bashar Assad warmed to the Obama outreach (“We have the impression that this administration will be different, and we have seen the signals”). Assad expressed his thanks for Obama’s initial pressure on Israel and invited the US to his Damascus “summit” on the Middle East, where there might be grand talk of a new American thaw with Iran, daylight between the United States and Israel, and closer ties to Damascus.

So we are confused: Is Assad’s current murdering out of character, or true to the odious nature that had won him ostracism from the Bush administration? Which is he — a demonized victim of Bush paranoia, a sincere reformer, or a sudden mass murderer? Until this confused administration gets its own narrative straight, most of us will have to keep silent and watch.

3. Libya is no model. The Obama administration took out Moammar Qaddafi without the loss of a single American life. Why, then, is Libya not a model for Syria?

We established a new “lead from behind” strategy against Libya, showcasing the French and British while downplaying our own role. But what happens if there is no one now willing to be led from behind — as is apparently true with regard to Syria, where there would predictably be some losses on the allied side, unlike during the air war in Libya? What locomotives are there that we, the caboose, are to push ahead?

Obama bragged of obtaining UN resolutions against Libya — but he almost immediately exceeded their authorizations to enforce a no-fly zone and offer humanitarian aid, by ordering bombing in support of the Libyan insurrectionists. Libya, then, offers no UN multilateral model, but unfortunately just the opposite: China and Russia now do not trust any American-sponsored UN resolutions and therefore oppose them against Syria (and Iran), warning that they are not going to be had again. Nor is the US Congress on board. Consulting the UN but not Congress when contemplating bombing Libya was not a paradigm that will win congressional support against Syria.

It is almost impossible to think of anything worse than the Qaddafi regime. But if the post bellum killing and torture — much of it racially inspired, as we see from videos of black Africans put into zoo-like cages by our erstwhile allies — continues, Libya may get there yet. British graves in Benghazi had survived 70 years of monarchs, tyrants, and Moammar Qaddafi, but they could not withstand a few months of the Arab Spring.

No one wants US troops on the ground any more anywhere in the Middle East — and yet only US troops on the ground offer any hope that a new government might be some improvement over what we removed. In short, Libya is no blueprint for future US action — against Syria or anyone else.

The final irony?

The Obama State Department is quietly briefing US officials and foreign governments that Syria not only has sizable stores of biological and chemical weapons, but also may be likely in fact to use both in extremis — an apparent attempt to help justify the possibility of some sort of aerial intervention or other preemptive attack. This is the liberal mirror image of the Bush administration’s 2002–03 worries about Saddam’s Iraq.

Actually, there is a final, final irony. If that intelligence is true, and if the Assad regime in fact has such enormous WMD stores, where might at least some of these weapons have come from?