An Analyst
The run-up to US president Obama’s threat to kick Syrian President Assad’s ass has seen the emergence of an interesting mix of ruddy modesty; Orwellian language; mind-boggling alliances of strange bedfellows with a dramatic last minute rescue by Cossack cavalry.
For the most powerful executive in the world, Obama is endearingly modest and quite willing to share credit with global humanity. For example, he voluntarily disclaimed personal ownership of the Syrian violation of so-called red line till he was red in the face. He asserted magnanimously that the red line was a product of and belonged to the international humanity. This was a convenient bit of sophistry to get out of the corner to which Obama had backed himself by threatening to bomb Syria. Little did Obama realize when he stated at a press conference on 12 August 2012 that use of gas by Assad was crossing a red line would come back to haunt him. Even the US president with all his vast assets can’t prepare contingency plan for all scenarios. After all, he’s human. Evidently discretion in words, even for a superpower President, sometimes can be the better part of valour.
But in the best traditions of US exceptionalism (the shining city upon the hill syndrome), Obama unabashedly claimed the unilateral right as sole superpower to deal with the alleged red line violation by firing a nasty shot across Assad’s bow. He hoped to do this in a robust coalition of the willing especially UK, the ever faithful Tonto.
But the Mother of Parliaments in a stunning, if rare, display of autonomy refused to heed the Lone Ranger’s voice by rejecting PM Cameron’s proposal on 26 August to join Washington in bombing Syria.
This really put the cat amongst the pigeons. Socialist Party French President Allonde’s vow that Paris in the spirit of Lafayettean solidarity going back over two centuries–would join US’s projected punitive aerial bombing was not adequate compensation to get Obama off the hook.
He deftly unshackled himself and bought time by throwing the ball into Congress citing the best tradition of consultative democracy– to seek authorization to bomb Syria. That’s when the world was treated to the amazing but bleak spectacle of Orwellian doublespeak and parade of unlikely bedfellows.
Orwellian vocabulary
Testifying before US Senate on 4 September, Secretary of State John Kerry claimed that bombing Syria was not an act of war because there would be no US boots on the ground!
Not all the Senators listened to this novel nonsense in silence. War opponent Kentucky Senator Rand Paul riposted testily: Ask the people on the ships launching the missiles whether they are involved in war or not.
Reportedly there was much amusement at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. The justices there didn’t give Kerry high marks for legal scholarship but did for the Powellian zealotry with which he presented this pioneering doctrine.
Evidently a foggy head is in charge of Foggy Bottom, Kerry’s reference to boots on the ground suggests that no GIs would be sent to Syria. But this is disingenuous sophistry. For US boots are already on the ground. Special Forces, CIA operatives and freelance private contractors provide logistics and training to Free Syrian Army (FSA) dissidents in neighbouring Jordan and inside Syria near the Turkish border. No doubt this is one way of keeping the 60,000 troops of the US Special Operations Command on their toes through on-the-job training.
US consider such clandestine activities kosher on the dubious grounds that it’s defending US national security and freedom worldwide. But when beleaguered Syria receives help from Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, that’s considered very bad and violation of international law. Talk about double standards!
Strange bedfellows
The strangest bedfellow would be al-Qaeda, America’s public enemy number one since 9/11, which is fighting the Assad regime. So if Obama were to attack Syria, then Washington and al-Qaeda would be in the same boat combating a common enemy. This affinity, while purely accidental and coincidental, illustrates that the exigencies and compulsions of international politics breed strange combinations (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact; Reagan’s Iran-Contra Deal).
Another group of antagonistic bedfellows is Saudi Arabia and Israel. Both have expressed support for a US attack: the former through the Arab League and the latter through official statement and AIPAC in Washington. This is one of the few occasions that AIPAC’s lobbying has fallen on deaf ears. Nevertheless, Tel Aviv can’t be entirely displeased with the way things are unfolding in Syria. Another Arab state bites the dust! Soon, it’ll run out of any Arab opponents worth the name.
Internationally, the Syrian dissidents are supported by a coalition of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey – Sunni countries– and the US, a Christian nation– with discreet backing by Israel (Jewish state). Assad is supported by Russia (atheist cum Slav Orthodox), Iran and Hezbollah (both Shias).
So the Syrian conflict has three distinct subsets: a Shia-Sunni angle at the sectarian level; Iran-versus Israel cum Saudi proxy war for regional hegemony; and international struggle between a current hegemon (US) and Russia (past hegemon; future aspirant). Syria is the battleground for these contending powers, who are quite content to fight to the last Syrian, just as Spain was for rivals Nazi Germany and the USSR in the 1930s.
The Saudi call for an attack on Syria, a Muslim country, reveals the sham unity of the Arab League and the fissures within the Ummah. By ironic contrast, it was the Catholic Vatican– sponsors and instigators of the medieval crusades against Islam– that staged a rally for peace and against the Syrian attack on 7 September in Rome attended by about 100,000.
Al-Azhar and Qom’s silence
One wonders why we haven’t heard any pronouncements from Cairo’s Al-Azhar Rector and Qom Ayatollahs. Such silence doesn’t show up the Shia and Sunni clergy in a favourable light, especially when Muslims are killing Muslims.
Obama’s Republican House Speaker John Boehner supported Obama’s decision to bomb Syria. This act was in the best traditions of bipartisan patriotic US jingoism. No doubt Boehner will extract his pound of flesh by opposing Obvama’s domestic agenda, especially on repealing Obama care.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, usually a dove, turned hawk, urging military action. Arizona Republican Senator John McCain came out in full support of Obama, urging tough action against Assad tantamount to regime change. Such belligerent counsel is vintage McCain, whose family has deep military roots and credentials. His father was a four-star admiral and he was a naval aviator who spent six years as Hanoi’s prisoner.
But the biggest obstacle Obama faces is that the US public, even though persuaded that Assad used gas, is tired of war (Iraq blowback syndrome) and has little appetite to attack Syria. This placed him in an unenviable and embarrassing position. But the cavalry from an unexpected source came to his rescue.
Ivan to the rescue
That source is President Vladimir Putin of Russia which on 9 September proposed that Syria place its chemical weapons arsenal under international supervision. Damascus has accepted this. So has the US, as indicated in Obama’s nationwide nighttime speech of 10 September.
So if Obama considers the red line an international undertaking, it’s only logical that the proper place to resolve the crisis arising from Assad’s alleged gas attack should be the UN. The US and Russia working together to defuse the crisis is a replay of sorts of the Cuban missile crisis.
Whether the resolution is swift or tedious, tortuous or benign is a work for diplomats, not warriors. Jaw-jaw is better than war-war. Winston Churchill, the quintessential imperialist never uttered a truer word.
We don’t know what will be Obama’s legacy. But the strong hope that lay behind Stockholm giving him the Nobel Peace Prize in December 2009 has faded, while his global standing has sullied over time by his indubitable but questionable belligerency. He hasn’t closed Guantanamo; prolonged the Afghan war; and dramatically ratcheted up drone strikes that have killed innocent women and children.
There is something undeniably primeval and horrible about seeing pictures of lifeless victims dying from poison gas. But to claim that the image of dead civilians dismembered by explosives is somehow less horrifying and more palatable is vile hypocrisy.
So if Obama wants the killings in Syria both by gas and explosives to stop, a good beginning would be for the US and its allies to stop arming the rebels and work on a power sharing agreement in the UN simultaneously with dealing with Assad’s chemical stocks. In fact, the two issues are umbilically linked. Gas and political settlement go together.
War has been postponed for now. But Obama will not, and probably should not, give up this option. This war if it happens is one of the few in history where the fog before the war is greater than the fog of actual war, even if it were to be of short duration and surgical precision.
Source: Weekly Holiday
