{"id":6079,"date":"2013-06-18T23:10:09","date_gmt":"2013-06-18T23:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=6079"},"modified":"2013-06-28T17:36:40","modified_gmt":"2013-06-28T17:36:40","slug":"john-mccains-syria-delusions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/john-mccains-syria-delusions\/","title":{"rendered":"John McCain’s Syria Delusions"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n

FrontPage Magazine<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Following the president\u2019s announcement that we will provide small arms and ammunition to the rebels fighting Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Senator John McCain has intensified his drumbeat for war and demanded even more extensive U.S. involvement, particularly a no-fly zone. But McCain has not indicated any awareness of the risks and complications of such an escalation.<\/b><\/p>\n

McCain\u2019s argument is the typical one made by \u201cresponsibility to protect\u201d\u00a0internationalists like Samantha Power, Obama\u2019s new U.N. ambassador, whom McCain supported despite her record of anti-Israel animus and doubts about America\u2019s worthiness. But we can\u2019t stand by and watch Assad slaughter his people, the interventionists claim. Except we have stood by on numerous occasions, in Congo, Sudan, and Rwanda, to name just a few venues of slaughter. We are standing by right now as Christians in the Middle East are being murdered, assaulted, harassed, and cleansed from lands that have been Christian for two millennia. We are standing by as al-Qaeda in Iraq slaughters its political and sectarian rivals, and we will for sure be standing by in Afghanistan when the Taliban slaughter even more enemies after we depart in 2014.<\/p>\n

The lofty notion of \u201cresponsibility to protect\u201d is a fraud, for the fact is we can\u2019t protect every victim of global violence and oppression. This means that our national interests and security can be the only reasons for an armed intervention.<\/p>\n

Of course, McCain et al. argue that our interests are at risk, and that providing weapons or even a no-fly zone offers little danger to our soldiers. An Assad victory, so the argument goes, will also be a victory for Iran and its proxies like Hezbollah. But Iran\u2019s real achievement will be the possession of nuclear weapons, which will change the geostrategic calculus in the Middle East much more than Assad\u2019s holding on to power. If we\u2019re concerned about Iran, then, we should be focusing on the regime\u2019s nuclear weapons program, which day by day relentlessly progresses to fulfillment. It\u2019s not Iran\u2019s proxies we should worry about, but Iran.<\/p>\n

Nor should the apparent ease with which the U.S.\u2013\u2013excuse me, NATO\u2013\u2013toppled the Gaddafi regime fool us into thinking we can do the same in Syria. The odds of civilian casualties, for example, will be much greater in Syria if we attack Assad\u2019s air defense system. Once the videos of dead children amidst the rubble hit the international media, how long will all those \u201callies\u201d still be in our corner? And what about Assad\u2019s stockpiles of chemical weapons? What if he responds by unleashing them against his enemies? And will Russia simply stand by while we bomb its ally\u2019s assets that it provided to them? Perhaps Putin will decide to send the promised S-300 missiles after all. There are all sorts of risks and contingencies, and unless we have a plan to deal with them that puts all our assets on the table, including ground troops, we could make the situation even worse.<\/p>\n

Equally bad, McCain doesn\u2019t really know to whom he is eager to give sophisticated weapons. Clearly the most effective and dedicated fighters are to some degree Islamist in ideology, ranging from Muslim Brotherhood affiliates to al-Qaeda franchises like the al Nusra front, which has already pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda headman Ayman al-Zawahri. Jihadists from Europe and across the Middle East are streaming to Syria, where they are getting valuable battlefield experience. The so-called \u201cmoderate\u201d Syrian Free Army, the force comprising mostly army defectors, has made it clear they will cooperate with the al-Nusra fighters and anybody else committed to destroying Assad\u2019s regime. Do we really think that if they win, they will then turn their guns on their allies?<\/p>\n

And what makes McCain think that weapons delivered to \u201cvetted\u201d groups\u2013\u2013assuming that there is any way to definitively establish that they are \u201cmoderate\u201d\u2013\u2013 will be kept out of the hands of jihadist gangs that are sworn enemies of the U.S. and Israel? We\u2019ve already suffered blowback in Benghazi from Gaddafi\u2019s looted arsenals in the four coffins of dead Americans. The Syrian rebels have asked for anti-aircraft weapons, as these are necessary for countering Assad\u2019s air superiority. So we\u2019re going to provide weapons that can bring down commercial airliners to committed jihadists? In 1979 we hadn\u2019t yet been sufficiently awakened to the terrorist threat from jihadists, so providing the mujahidin with the means to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan made sense. But we know now the nature of the enemy, and so should be a little more prudent.<\/p>\n

No one pressing for intervention in Syria has confronted the fact that even if defeating Iran and its proxies is critical to our national interests, arming a congeries of different jihadist groups and imposing no-fly zones are not going to accomplish that aim. It will take a much larger, more intrusive force, including troops on the ground, to defeat Assad, secure his chemical weapons arsenals, and marginalize the jihadists. After our experience in Iraq and the failure of political nerve that has kept us from achieving similar aims, good luck reprising that experiment in Syria.<\/p>\n

But even if Assad is driven out just by airpower and arming rebels, what sort of government does McCain think will arise out of these various Islamist factions? As Barry Rubin\u00a0points out<\/a>, our choice in Syria \u201cwill be one of Sunni anti-Christians, anti-Americans, and anti-Semites rather than Shia anti-Christians, anti-Americans, and anti-Semites.\u201d Whatever it is, it\u2019s not going to be a liberal democracy friendly to us and our interests, if what\u2019s going on in Egypt is any indication. The most likely outcome will be Libya on steroids, with large swaths of the country available for sheltering jihadist camps right next door to Israel and Jordan.<\/p>\n

And so live on the delusions of Middle East \u201cdemocracy\u201d promotion, a consequence of wishful thinking rather than analysis of reality. And so continues the baleful influence of John McCain on our foreign policy. His demonizing of waterboarding helped to eliminate one of the most effective tools for extracting intelligence, with the result that now we have no effective means for gleaning intelligence from captured terrorists. And his na\u00efve faith in the magic powers of \u201cdemocracy\u201d to change a culture steeped in 14 centuries of religious intolerance, supremacism, and violence promises to repeat in Syria the empowerment of jihadist regimes we\u2019re witnessing in Egypt. We\u2019ll be living with the consequences of those delusions for a long time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine Following the president\u2019s announcement that we will provide small arms and ammunition to the rebels fighting Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Senator John McCain has intensified his drumbeat for war and demanded even more extensive U.S. involvement, particularly a no-fly zone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[127,22],"tags":[249,173,211,749,169,883,1041,1016],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1A3","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6074,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/intervention-in-syria-is-a-very-bad-idea\/","url_meta":{"origin":6079,"position":0},"title":"Intervention in Syria Is a Very Bad Idea","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 18, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Syria is turning out to be a sort of Spanish Civil War of our age, with Hezbollah and Iran playing the role of fascist Italy and Germany, and the Islamic nations and jihadists that of Stalin\u2019s Russia, as the moderates disappear and the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Syria"","block_context":{"text":"Syria","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/syria\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":924,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/syrian-ironies\/","url_meta":{"origin":6079,"position":1},"title":"Syrian Ironies","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 9, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The more Bashar Assad butchers Syrian dissidents, the more the world community expresses outrage \u2014 while it does little to stop the bloodletting. Why? Ironies on top of ironies 1.\u00a0The politics of intervention. Republicans might seem the most likely to push for an\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Syria"","block_context":{"text":"Syria","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/syria\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6341,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/egyptians-enraged-by-u-s-outreach-to-muslim-brotherhood\/","url_meta":{"origin":6079,"position":2},"title":"Egyptians Enraged by U.S. Outreach to Muslim Brotherhood","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 13, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim \/\/\u00a0PJ Media In the eyes of tens of millions of Egyptians, Senators John McCain\u2019s and Lindsey Graham\u2019s recent words and deeds in Egypt\u2014which have the \u201cblessing\u201d of President Obama\u2014have unequivocally proven that U.S. leadership is aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood. Egyptian media is awash with stories of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Muslim Brotherhood"","block_context":{"text":"Muslim Brotherhood","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/muslim-brotherhood\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6525,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/syria-postmortem\/","url_meta":{"origin":6079,"position":3},"title":"Syria Postmortem","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 19, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO's The Corner\u00a0 I think the so-called Syrian crisis is working out as most anticipated: 1) In about a year or so Assad and Putin will announce that they \u201cthink\u201d they might have in theory rounded up a lot of the WMD, and will soon make\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Syria"","block_context":{"text":"Syria","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/syria\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":902,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/christians-jihadists-and-the-fate-of-syria\/","url_meta":{"origin":6079,"position":4},"title":"Christians, Jihadists, and the Fate of Syria","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 16, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim Stonegate Institute What is the alternative to Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria? A simple if indirect way to find out is to consider which groups in Syria are especially for or against Assad \u2014 and why. Christian minorities, who, at 10% of the Syrian population, have the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Syria"","block_context":{"text":"Syria","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/syria\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6442,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/syrian-knowns-and-unknowns\/","url_meta":{"origin":6079,"position":5},"title":"Syrian Knowns and Unknowns","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 10, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0PJ Media \u00a0 1)\u00a0Red lines:\u00a0Does anyone believe we would be on the eve of a war with Syria had not Barack Obama on two occasions \u2014 echoed on two others by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton \u2014\u00a0warned Bashar Assad of red lines\u00a0surrounding the use of WMD?\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Syria"","block_context":{"text":"Syria","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/syria\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/syria-war_protestor_9-8-13-2-200x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6079"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6079"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6079\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6152,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6079\/revisions\/6152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}