Syrian civil war resembles a Gordian knot
Israel carried out two major rounds of airstrikes on Syria in the span of 48 hours in the opening days of May, raising the prospect of a wider war in the Middle East. The second and larger of the two attacks targeted a mountainside military complex that overlooks Damascus, turning the night skies into day, according to witnesses.
Israel claimed it was targeting sophisticated long-range missiles in transit from Iran to its Lebanese allies, the Hezbollah militia. The US quickly pledged full support for Israeli attacks, despite the risks of further inflaming what has become a civil war in Syria, with more than 70,000 people dead and millions more displaced from their homes.
President Obama dispatched Secretary of State John Kerry to Moscow for talks with Russian officials, one of the main international backers for the regime of Bashar Assad.
What, if anything, Secretary Kerry is able to work out with the Russians in terms of international pressure on Syria, and where Israel’s weekend strikes lead in the coming days, are likely to alter the course of US action. In any event, both components are part of a scenario of suddenly expanding pressure on Obama to move decisively on Syria.
Indeed, the pressures are mounting from across the political spectrum in the US. Even before the Israeli airstrikes, there were calls from Republicans such as Sen. John McCain, as well as Democrats like Sen. Dianne Feinstein and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, to pursue military options in response to allegations that Assad’s regime used chemical weapons.
But even US intelligence sources acknowledge there isn’t enough evidence to substantiate those allegations.
Adding to the chorus of pro-war voices, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Obama’s director of policy planning at the State Department from 2009 to 2011 and a well-known proponent of so-called humanitarian intervention, wrote a forceful Washington Post op-ed urging action Obama must realize the tremendous damage he will do to the United States and to his legacy if he fails to act.
Slaughter further asserted that “US credibility is on the line” — a disturbing echo of the argument made for the US to continue its slaughter of Vietnamese civilians years after it was clear that its war was lost.
It’s telling that Slaughter’s focus is on US credibility, not the horrific suffering caused by Assad’s crackdown – and certainly not the democratic aspirations of the Syrian people.
Just a few years ago, John Kerry, as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was a regular visitor to Damascus, seeking to entice Assad into a more market-oriented, investor-friendly economic policy — at a cost of falling wages and rising food prices for working people in Syria.
Even after the regime’s bloody crackdown began in 2011 as rebellion swept through the Arab world, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised Assad as a “reformer.” “There’s a different leader in Syria now,” Clinton said. “Many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer.”
Indeed, the dictatorial character of the Syrian regime was never what bothered Washington. The problem was Syria’s alliance with the former USSR during the Cold War, its rhetorical support for the Palestinians, and its insistence on Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights – Syrian territory occupied by Israel since the 1967 war.
But when Syria signed up with George Bush Sr. for the first US war on Iraq in 1991, Assad’s father, Hafez Assad, was rewarded with the virtual annexation of Lebanon.
The question confronting the Republican hawks, the Democratic dove-hawks and the “humanitarian intervention” hawk-doves is what military steps the US would take if it were to intervene — and what results, intended and unintended, might follow.
One course is for the US to impose a no-fly zone over Syria – as it did in Libya in 2011 – to provide cover for rebel forces that are otherwise vulnerable to Syrian air force strikes. But unlike Libya, military analysts believe Syria has significant anti-aircraft capabilities, which would make patrolling any no-fly zone a genuine risk.
The Israeli airstrikes may have been designed to test precisely this question. Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont was quick to point out in the aftermath that perhaps Syria’s air defense systems are overrated. “The Russian-supplied air defense systems are not as good as said,” Leahy said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “Keep in mind the Israelis are using weapons supplied by us...They have enormous prowess with those weapons.”
Other observers, such as the New York Times’ Bill Keller, call for arming the rebels in addition to a no-fly zone. Keller dismisses the concerns expressed by Obama administration officials that US weapons could fall into the hands of jihadis.
But it’s disingenuous to argue that the US is doing nothing. CIA operatives have been vetting rebel groups to decide which ones should get weapons – and it’s a foregone conclusion that the approved groups don’t include genuine popular and revolutionary forces, which have issued repeated statements that they don’t want the US or other outside powers to dictate Syria’s future.
Even an intervention with no US soldiers ordered into Syria has only minimal support from Americans. And that presents Obama with a scenario he has sought to avoid: Announcing to war-weary Americans yet another Middle East intervention. A new Christian Science Monitor/TIPP poll shows nearly two-thirds of Americans — 62 percent — oppose US intervention in Syria, with only a quarter in favor. Those results are in line with other recent polls gauging the US appetite for military intervention in Syria.
US officials say Washington supports Israel’s strikes because they are aimed at stopping the flow of weapons bound for Hezbollah in Lebanon. But, of course, were Syria to somehow mount an air strike against, say, a US weapons manufacturer to stop the much more substantial shipment of arms to Israel, the Pentagon response would be the annihilation of Syria.
The Iranian-supplied Fateh-100 missiles that Israel supposedly destroyed with its airstrikes are primitive compared to the weaponry the US has pumped into the region through its deals with other regimes.
Russia and China have backed Iran and Syria as a counterweight to US influence in the Middle East. The US attempt to maintain its grip on Iraq after its 2003 invasion unleashed a civil war, and its echoes are now being felt in Syria.
And underlying all this is the two-year-old revolutionary upsurge of Syrians, angry over years of poverty and repression imposed by the authoritarian Assad regime and inspired by the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt and other uprisings of the Arab Spring. Elements of the popular mobilizations that have shaken the regime remain. But they have been increasingly pushed to the margins by the militarization of the conflict-driven most of all by the barbaric violence of the regime.
While the Obama administration would like Assad out of the way, it also fears what would replace him, given the many competing currents within the opposition – above all, the threat of anything representing the popular upsurge. The first choice is to find some former stalwart of the regime with enough credibility to lead in a post-Assad Syria, but who wouldn’t threaten the basic structures of repression.
Yet Assad appears ready to destroy Syria – shelling neighborhoods, universities and the civilian infrastructure – in order to maintain his grip on power. So far, his regime has managed a stalemate with the opposition, at a staggering human cost.
