To
borrow the climactic line from “Easy Rider,” “We blew it.” Or, to be fully
accurate, President Obama blew an unprecedented chance to aid Syria’s
then-moderate opposition back in 2011.
We
could have helped end the monstrous Assad regime, gaining good will and
practical advantage in a hopeful new state.
Now
it’s too late. And Obama may be ready to act at last. The result could be
disastrous.
Strategy
isn’t only about doing the right thing, but about doing the right thing at the
right time. Doing what appears to be the “right thing” too late often makes
things worse.
How did
the window for aiding the Syrian rebels close?
As our
president looked away month after month, a hopeful, homespun revolution to
overthrow a dictatorship hardened into a sectarian bloodbath. Unwilling to aid
genuine freedom fighters seeking inclusive government, Obama handed off the
mission to the Saudis and Gulf Arabs.
But the
Gulf Arabs and Saudis don’t want a rule-of-law democracy in Syria that might
give their own people ideas. They need Syria to be another Islamist state
without women’s rights, press freedom or anything resembling tolerance.
So
these repressive states we claim as allies armed hardline jihadi factions,
while wealthy individuals sponsored involvement by terrorist outsiders
(including al Qaeda), giving their governments deniability.
The
result? A brave freedom struggle morphed into a vicious pan-Arab and Iranian
struggle over Syria’s future. This is now
a regional war fought by proxies.
On the
insurgent side, moderates have been marginalized in the military sphere. If
Assad falls, Sunni Islamist gunmen will rule. On the Baathist regime’s side,
Iran is Assad’s key backer and Hezbollah supplies Shia thugs.
Nor is
the insurgency unified. Abhorring the Muslim Brotherhood, the Saudis back
Wahhabi extremists. For their part, the Qataris and others back the Muslim
Brotherhood, with quiet support from the non-Arab Turks.
Now
we’re reduced to choosing between devils: Do we aid an insurgency increasingly
dominated by extremists and outright terrorists, or do we accept the continued
rule of Baathist fascists buttressed by Shia fanatics?
Maybe
it’s time to come to our senses and see that this isn’t our fight. The human
suffering in Syria is appalling, but Arabs are doing this to each other. If the
Saudis, with their impressive US-supplied arsenal, won’t intervene directly,
why should we? If our NATO-partner Turks, with the region’s most-potent
military, won’t stop the butchery, why is doing so our responsibility?
In the
brutal light of Realpolitik, is it a
bad thing to have the last Baathists, Hezbollah, and Salafist fanatics killing
each other? Yes, the suffering’s deplorable. But consider what happened when we
leapt into the endless Afghan civil war.
Do we
have the sophistication to get this right? No.
As for
Israel’s supporters — of which I am one — shouldn’t we recognize that, with
Israel’s mortal enemies busy slaughtering each other, they’re not killing
Israelis? Might it not be useful if Syria remained a Vietnam for fanatical
Islamists, Hezbollah and Arab nationalists alike?
At this
point, is the odious Assad regime faintly preferable to a radical jihadi state?
As someone who long backed the rebels, I have to put this question to myself
honestly.
What
are our security interests? The key
issue is the safety of the regime’s chemical weapons. Our military
contingencies should focus solely on preventing the dissemination of weapons of
mass destruction to fanatics.
Syria’s
complexity is daunting: A major regional struggle for hegemony waged as a proxy
war; a showdown between Sunni and Shia, with minorities trapped in the middle;
a parallel contest between modernizers and fundamentalists; and the bloody
dissolution of the artificial borders imposed by Europeans at the Versailles
peace conference nine decades ago.
This is
a titanic struggle. We have to make
sure we’re not the ultimate losers.
Has
Obama backed himself into a corner with his red-line braggadocio? He suddenly
seems to see 50 shades of red; let’s hope that caution continues: We must be
wary of letting chemical-weapons use lure us into abetting the rise of a
terrorist state in Syria.
If
Arabs will not help their brothers and sisters, why should we? The Syria crisis
is an Arab failure. Let’s not make it
America’s failure, too.
