{"id":6389,"date":"2013-08-28T14:10:11","date_gmt":"2013-08-28T21:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=6389"},"modified":"2013-08-28T14:18:06","modified_gmt":"2013-08-28T21:18:06","slug":"what-is-the-syria-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/what-is-the-syria-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is the Syria Plan?"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO’s The Corner<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

We are on the verge of a war with Syria. Yet I don\u2019t think the administration has as of yet articulated what its aims are and thus is confused about the means of obtaining them. Is the point of the impending military action to remove Assad, engage his opposition, and foster a consensual society in his place, as if the U.S. can at last do<\/p>\n

what so far the Arab Spring has not? To destroy enough of his assets to allow the insurgents (but who exactly are they?) to rebound somewhat? To establish a new American-enforced global statute that WMD use is not permissible in a way that a Rwanda, Grozny, or the Sudan apparently was? To restore U.S. credibility to ensure that our red lines and deadlines are treated seriously? Simply to punish Assad to show our displeasure for his defiant role in 100,000 deaths? All, some, or none of these aims?<\/p>\n

Without clarity from the administration\u00a0about our intentions, not only will we not have popular support or congressional assent (and, of course, after Libya, formal U.N. approval is not going to be forthcoming for our president and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate), but the administration itself will be confused over what it wants Syria to look like when it is done. At some point soon, let us hope that Obama addresses the nation, outlines U.S. aims and objectives, describes the coalition at our side, and brings the Congress on board.<\/p>\n

Otherwise, the world is getting the impression that American cruise missiles and bombs will fall for a few days largely to show Assad that we mean some sort of business and that our (inopportune) bluster about red lines was really serious, at least in a pre-9\/11 sort of way. And it will\u00a0suspect\u00a0too that rather quickly we will suddenly stop the intervention, declare that it was a success, and in Libya-fashion forget that we ever did anything at all \u2013\u00a0in hopes that the Russians, Chinese, Islamists, and Iranians take us more seriously rather than believe Obama is still as na\u00efve as he was in his open-mic promise to\u00a0Russian president Dmitri Medvedev (\u201cThis is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility\u201d).<\/p>\n

On about three or so reset occasions in the 20th century, the United States lost all sense of deterrence (e.g., 1939\u201341 [in response to WWI]; 1961\u20132 [in response\u00a0to\u00a0a long Cold War], 1979\u201380 [in response to Vietnam), because of either isolationism, misreading of prior American action, or misguided ideas about the nature of war and how to prevent it. And in each case, the restoration of deterrence was costly \u2013\u00a0and terrifying. We are now entering a similarly dangerous period, adrift and confused about both the past and present.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO’s The Corner We are on the verge of a war with Syria. Yet I don\u2019t think the administration has as of yet articulated what its aims are and thus is confused about the means of obtaining them. Is the point of the impending military action to remove Assad, engage his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6390,"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],"tags":[119,1028,1041,1030],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/252px-Question_book-2.svg_.png?fit=252%2C199&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1F3","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":6389,"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":5931,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/hope-for-change-in-syria\/","url_meta":{"origin":6389,"position":1},"title":"Hope for Change in Syria","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 9, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Once again, Obama has proven more of an idealist than an implementer. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Remember when President Obama used to warn Syria\u2019s Bashar al-Assad to stop his mass killing and step down? Moammar Qaddafi\u2019s dictatorship had just collapsed under Western bombing. The murders of Americans\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":6399,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/is-the-war-to-save-face-or-save-lives\/","url_meta":{"origin":6389,"position":2},"title":"Is The War to Save Face or Save Lives?","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 29, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0PJ Media Click here to see the symposium of PJ columnists analyzing the pros and cons of an intervention in Syria. Most of the arguments pro and con for an intervention in Syria have already been made. I think the consensus is that while stopping Assad\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":6389,"position":3},"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":6422,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/counterintuitively-risky\/","url_meta":{"origin":6389,"position":4},"title":"Counterintuitively Risky","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 6, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO's The Corner Ostensibly, even an intervention of the most restricted sort in Syria, given the loud proclamations of the limited nature of cruise-missile attacks, should not pose geostrategic risks anything like costlier major ground operations of the sort we conducted in Afghanistan and Iraq. But\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":6539,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/goodbye-syria-on-to-iran\/","url_meta":{"origin":6389,"position":5},"title":"Goodbye Syria, On to Iran!","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 23, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0PJ Media\u00a0 To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, this is the way Syria ends: Not with a bang, but a whimper. We are back where we started \u2014 lots of people dying \u2014 as the crisis recedes with a high five and a sigh, rather than with America\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Iran"","block_context":{"text":"Iran","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/iran\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6389"}],"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=6389"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6389\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6397,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6389\/revisions\/6397"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}