8 Reasons Not to Go to War in Syria
Is the U.S. on the march to war in Syria? Over the past week, the stage has been set for yet another military intervention in the Middle East. Calls for U.S. action in Syria have grown louder following reports of a chemical weapon attack in Damascus said to have been carried out with the knowledge and approval of President Bassar al-Assad’s regime. In the past few days, hawkish rhetoric has grown increasingly aggressive, and additional reports today indicate that the U.S. is no longer seeking approval from UN or NATO allies for a strike. But the case for action in Syria is thin—and there are plenty of reasons to avoid becoming mired into another Middle East conflict. Here are eight reasons to avoid war in Syria:
1. If the rebels win, it’s bad news for the U.S. Assad is no friend to the U.S. But neither are the rebel groups leading the charge against the Syrian dictator. Indeed, many of the rebel factions have strong ties to Al-Qeada. If the rebels successfully oust Assad, it’s entirely possible that they will attempt to set up a new regime that is intensely hostile to the United States. Intervention on the side of the rebels would also complicate America's already-fraught relationship with Russia, which is close with the Assad regime.
2. If Assad wins, it’s bad news for the U.S. Especially if the U.S. is seen to have openly sided with the rebels. A win for Assad is a win for anti-American forces Iran, which would see its influence in the region strengthened. It’s also a win for Hezbollah, which is closely linked with Iranian extremists. With no good option, then, the U.S. is better off staying out of the conflict entirely.
3. It’s far from certain that any "limited" actions would actually be effective. Most of the talk right now revolves around the possibility of limited cruise missile strikes and/or no-fly zone enforcement. But as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey told NPR last month, the possible results of enforcing a no-fly zone could "include the loss of U.S. aircraft, which would require us to insert personnel recovery forces. It may also fail to reduce the violence or shift the momentum because the regime relies overwhelmingly on surface fires -- mortars, artillery, and missiles." The same goes for targeted strikes. Here’s how Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies explained it to the L.A. Times: “Can you do damage with cruise missiles? Yes,” he said. “Can you stop them from having chemical weapons capability? I would think the answer would be no. Should you limit yourself to just a kind of incremental retaliation? That doesn’t serve any strategic purpose. It doesn’t protect the Syrian people, it doesn’t push Assad out.”
4. It’s hard to keep limited actions limited. As Chairman Dempsey further cautioned, "Once we take action, we should be prepared for what comes next. Deeper involvement is hard to avoid." And then what?
5. There’s no endgame. Not in Syria, where there seems to be no plan beyond a limited initial strike. And not in the region or the world, where the U.S. would be all but committing itself to opposing, through military force, chemical weapons regimes across the world. The problem is that there's no clearly stated long-term objective — perhaps because no obvious long-term objective is achievable. Given that strikes are unlikely to completely eliminate Assad's chemical weapons capabilities or end Assad's capacity to slaughter through more conventional means, it's not clear what they would be for. Which means there would almost certainly be pressure to give them meaning by increasing America's commitment to the conflict.
6. The chemical weapons “red line” was already crossed. Roughly a year ago, President Obama said that the use of chemical weapons by Assad against his own people would constitute a “red line” that would change how the White House views the Syrian conflict. Talk of strikes has increased following reports of a chemical weapons attack in Damascus last week said to have killed hundreds. But American officials already believe that Assad has used chemical weapons on a somewhat smaller scale over the past year. The latest attack appears to be larger than previous chemical strikes, but that's a murky distinction. The red line, in other words, looks more like a gray area.
7. It won’t be easy. Reliable GOP hawk John McCain has said that strikes could be carried out “easily” and “would not put a single [American] life at risk.” Moreover, he said, a strikes could be carried out in just a couple of days. But the big lesson of so many U.S. military interventions is that they are rarely as easy, quick, or costless as backers promise. As George Friedman of the global intelligence firm Statfor wrote recently, “Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya have driven home the principle that deposing one regime means living with an imperfect successor. In those cases, changing the regime wound up rapidly entangling the United States in civil wars, the outcomes of which have not been worth the price.”
8. The public opposes military intervention by a wide margin—even if chemical weapons have been used. The American public has grown tired of war, and doesn’t want to get embroiled in yet another complex civil conflict. According to a Reuters poll released over the weekend, some 60 percent of the public opposes military intervention in Syria’s civil war, while just 9 percent support it. Support for intervention is still extremely low if it’s established that Syria used chemical weapons, with just 25 percent saying they would support action of Assad used chemical weapons on civilians.
http://reason.com/blog/2013/08/27/8-reasons-not-to-go-to-war-in-syria
Quite an alliance! Was it not the Three Musketeers who shouted “All for one and one for all” each time they sought combat? This really should be the new battle cry if – or when – the statesmen of the Western world go to war against Bashar al-Assad.
The men who destroyed so many thousands on 9/11 will then be fighting alongside the very nation whose innocents they so cruelly murdered almost exactly 12 years ago. Quite an achievement for Obama, Cameron, Hollande and the rest of the miniature warlords.
This, of course, will not be trumpeted by the Pentagon or the White House – nor, I suppose, by al-Qa’ida – though they are both trying to destroy Bashar. So are the Nusra front, one of al-Qa’ida’s affiliates. But it does raise some interesting possibilities.
Maybe the Americans should ask al-Qa’ida for intelligence help – after all, this is the group with “boots on the ground”, something the Americans have no interest in doing. And maybe al-Qa’ida could offer some target information facilities to the country which usually claims that the supporters of al-Qa’ida, rather than the Syrians, are the most wanted men in the world.
There will be some ironies, of course. While the Americans drone al-Qa’ida to death in Yemen and Pakistan – along, of course, with the usual flock of civilians – they will be giving them, with the help of Messrs Cameron, Hollande and the other Little General-politicians, material assistance in Syria by hitting al-Qa’ida’s enemies. Indeed, you can bet your bottom dollar that the one target the Americans will not strike in Syria will be al-Qa’ida or the Nusra front.
And our own Prime Minister will applaud whatever the Americans do, thus allying himself with al-Qa’ida, whose London bombings may have slipped his mind. Perhaps – since there is no institutional memory left among modern governments – Cameron has forgotten how similar are the sentiments being uttered by Obama and himself to those uttered by Bush and Blair a decade ago, the same bland assurances, uttered with such self-confidence but without quite enough evidence to make it stick.
In Iraq, we went to war on the basis of lies originally uttered by fakers and conmen. Now it’s war by YouTube. This doesn’t mean that the terrible images of the gassed and dying Syrian civilians are false. It does mean that any evidence to the contrary is going to have to be suppressed. For example, no-one is going to be interested in persistent reports in Beirut that three Hezbollah members – fighting alongside government troops in Damascus – were apparently struck down by the same gas on the same day, supposedly in tunnels. They are now said to be undergoing treatment in a Beirut hospital. So if Syrian government forces used gas, how come Hezbollah men might have been stricken too? Blowback?
And while we’re talking about institutional memory, hands up which of our jolly statesmen know what happened last time the Americans took on the Syrian government army? I bet they can’t remember. Well it happened in Lebanon when the US Air Force decided to bomb Syrian missiles in the Bekaa Valley on 4 December 1983. I recall this very well because I was here in Lebanon. An American A-6 fighter bomber was hit by a Syrian Strela missile – Russian made, naturally – and crash-landed in the Bekaa; its pilot, Mark Lange, was killed, its co-pilot, Robert Goodman, taken prisoner and freighted off to jail in Damascus. Jesse Jackson had to travel to Syria to get him back after almost a month amid many clichés about “ending the cycle of violence”. Another American plane – this time an A-7 – was also hit by Syrian fire but the pilot managed to eject over the Mediterranean where he was plucked from the water by a Lebanese fishing boat. His plane was also destroyed.
Sure, we are told that it will be a short strike on Syria, in and out, a couple of days. That’s what Obama likes to think. But think Iran. Think Hezbollah. I rather suspect – if Obama does go ahead – that this one will run and run.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/does-obama-know-hes-fighting-on-alqaidas-side-8786680.html
Al Qaeda-Affiliated Group Claims Responsibility for Rocket Attack on Israel
Organization also claimed Israel working with Hezbollah to defeat Syrian rebels
The Abdullah Azzam Brigades, named after Osama bin Laden’s mentor, released a statement in Arabic late Monday claiming official ownership of the four rockets launched into Israeli territory on Thursday of last week.
“This operation comes within the series of our jihadi work directed at the Jews,” read a translation the terrorist group’s statement, which was accompanied by several tweets from group member Sirajuddin Zureiqat, who posted photos of the rockets shot into northern Israel.
Zureiqat—whose Twitter bio read, “Mujahid for the sake of Allah, I ask Allah to accept” —tweeted out two time-stampedphotos on Tuesday of the rockets that he claims landed in two Israeli cities.
The Abdullah Azzam Brigades alleged that the Jewish state is secretly working with the terror group Hezbollah to fight against Syrian rebels.
This accusation is a sign that Syria’s civil war continues to fracture various jihadi groups along religious-ethnic lines.
“Israel, Iran, and Hezbollah maintain ‘a strategic alliance in the region and common interests,’” the statement read, according to the Long War Journal.
These unlikely partners are working together to destroy the Syrian rebellion and prop up President Bashar al Assad, the terror group claimed.
The three nations have undermined the rebels through actions that “are extremely flagrant and some of which are managed in secrecy,” according to the group’s statement.
“The Jews along with Western states are providing ‘cover’ to the Assad regime and have given Hezbollah a ‘green light’ to fight in Syria with the hopes of preserving Israel’s security,” the Journal reported.
The Aug. 22 attack on Israel caused damage but no casualties and prompted a fierce response from the Israeli Air Force, which struck a “terror site located between Beirut and Sidon,” according to a statement by the Israeli military.
Militant Zureigat stated in a tweet after the attack that the group’s rockets can travel “more than 40km, meaning that the responsibility of Iran’s party [Hezbollah] in guarding the Jews will become a difficult mission.”
Israel said that it held Lebanon officially responsible for the terror group’s attack.
The Azzam Brigades, which is a U.S.-designated terror group, went on to criticize Hezbollah directly and promise religious recompense for its actions on behalf of Assad, who has been primarily supported from Iran.
Hezbollah’s military action will bring it “closer to the fire of the mujahideen and more exposed in front of them,” according to the statement.
The terror group, which has attacked Israel in the past, added that the city of Haifa “should be adorned with its fanciest coffins to receive our rockets.”
Syria’s civil war has created a schism between Iran and major terror groups, experts said.
“Numerous jihadi groups have denounced Iranian and Hezbollah involvement in the Syrian civil war,” David Barnett, a research associate at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Free Beacon. “This includes the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, which openly supports the uprising against Assad.”
In fact, many of the Abdullah Azzam’s recent statements “denounce Iranian and Hezbollah involvement in the Syria conflict, but the group remains hostile to Israel, too,” Barnett said. “In one instance, the group offered to help jihadists in the Palestinian territories in addition to pledging to continue attacks against Israel.”
The al Qaeda group’s founder, Saleh al Qarawi, opened up about terrorism in an interview flagged by the Long War Journal.
The Abdullah Azzam Brigades “are not confined to Lebanon but there are targets that our fires will reach Allah‐willing in the near future,” Qarawi said in the interview. “The Brigades are formed of a number of groups that are spread in numerous places.”
“We rushed to create these groups and announced them because of the urgency of the battle with the Jews and the priority of the initiative at the time and the place, but the rest of the groups are outside Lebanon,” he said.
The group’s ability to continue launching rockets on Israel is a sign that al Qaeda, while dispersed throughout the region, is still well armed and committed to its extremist dogma.
As the situation in Syria spirals out of control following Assad’s reported use of chemical weapons, terror groups of all stripes have amassed in and around the country.
The United States is currently considering military action, leading to concerns that a possible strike will spark a proxy war between Iran, Israel, and the West.
http://freebeacon.com/al-qaeda-affiliated-group-claims-responsibility-for-rocket-attack-on-israel
What exactly is the national interest in Syria?
We understand that President Obama is going to make "an informed decision" (Sec Kerry's words) and very likely bomb Syria.
Don't
you love how this administration wants you to think that President
Obama has been carefully and methodically considering every option?
The administration is acting because Syria violated "the red line" and apparently used chemical weapons on innocent people.
There is also an economic concern and you don't hear that anywhere. This is the story, according to CNBC:
"Oil prices spiked above $108 a barrel amid worries that potential military action in the Middle East could disrupt oil production.
John Kilduff of Again Capital said that Syria's location was vital, even though it is not a major oil exporter.
"It's clearly become a proxy war for almost the whole region," said Kilduff. "What's happening is you have Egypt and Syria that are not oil producers...
You have a tight market and two significant flash points,and it keeps getting undermined by things like the problems with the Libyan oil, the lack of Iranian oil.""
I'm
not surprised that a military action would upset the oil markets. In
fact, I'd expect the US to make sure that "oil routes" are open and oil
is flowing.
I'm surprised
that the left is not talking about it, like they did with Iraq. Don't
you remember when the left said that Iraq was all about oil and the Bush family oil interests?
Where
are the marches now that we are bombing Syria without Congressional
action and protecting "the oil routes," such as The Suez Canal?
Obama has painted himself into a corner
Not only is there no outcome of an attack on Syria that would benefit the United States, President Obama has already denied he has the authority to take such action. It takes ineptitude of historic dimension to fashion such a no-win situation in world politics.President Obama has already said a president can't take military action without congressional approval, and Vice President Biden has stated that it would be grounds for impeachment. During the 2007 presidential campaign, then-Senator Obama stated to the Boston Globe:
The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.
As Commander-in-Chief, the President does have a duty to protect and defend the United States. In instances of self-defense, the President would be within his constitutional authority to act before advising Congress or seeking its consent.
There is no real wiggle room here, in the words "actual" and "imminent." There is no credible claim to any threat to the US. Secretary Kerry's speech yesterday was full of moral posturing but no claims of threat.
There is no shortage of people willing to remind Obama of his self-proclaimed obligation to seek congressional approval for action against Syria. More than a score of members of Congress have already done so. And on his left flank, Obama faces the pacifist and anti-imperialist wings of his base, already enraged over the NSA abuses. They made the same claims against Bush, so have their ammo stockpiled, to use a metaphor painful to them.
Even worse, if anyone still takes Joe Biden seriously as a non-buffoon, he claimed that such action would be grounds for impeachment.
It is precisely because the consequences of war - intended or otherwise - can be so profound and complicated that our Founding Fathers vested in Congress, not the President, the power to initiate war, except to repel an imminent attack on the United States or its citizens. They reasoned that requiring the President to come to Congress first would slow things down... allow for more careful decision making before sending Americans to fight and die... and ensure broader public support.
The Founding Fathers were, as in most things, profoundly right. That's why I want to be very clear: if the President takes us to war with Iran without Congressional approval, I will call for his impeachment.
I do not say this lightly or to be provocative. I am dead serious. I have chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee. I still teach constitutional law. I've consulted with some of our leading constitutional scholars. The Constitution is clear. And so am I.
President Obama's presidency is in free-fall. He is antagonizing parts of his base as he embarks on action that has no upside and many downside risks. What if Russia, China, and/or Iran take retaliatory action? They have their own internal political considerations, as well as the goal of reducing American influence, at which they are so far succeeding quite noticeably. Do any of them think that Obama would be able to escalate back?
My colleague Rick Moran notes (with some justice) that "both sides do it all they time. They're all hypocrites" when it comes to assertions of presidential or congressional prerogatives. But even if you grant that, President Obama has managed an extraordinary feat. The art of strategy consists in part of being able to look ahead 2 or 3 moves on the chessboard, and pick actions that leave more satisfactory options than Obama has structured for himself (and for our nation).
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/08/obama_has_painted_himself_into_a_corner.html#ixzz2dH9dLpJl
Loose Lips on Syria
U.S. leaks tell Assad he can relax. The bombing will be brief and limited.
An American military attack on Syria could begin as early as Thursday and will involve three days of missile strikes, according to "senior U.S. officials" talking to NBC News. The Washington Post has the bombing at "no more than two days," though long-range bombers could "possibly" join the missiles. "Factors weighing into the timing of any action include a desire to get it done before the president leaves for Russia next week," reports CNN, citing a "senior administration official."The New York Times, quoting a Pentagon official, adds that "the initial target list has fewer than 50 sites, including air bases where Syria's Russian-made attack helicopters are deployed." The Times adds that "like several other military officials contacted for this report, the official agreed to discuss planning options only on condition of anonymity."
Thus do the legal and moral requirements of secret military operations lose out in this Administration to the imperatives of in-the-know spin and political gestures.
It's always possible that all of this leaking about when, how and for how long the U.S. will attack Syria is an elaborate head-fake, like Patton's ghost army on the eve of D-Day, poised for the assault on Calais. But based on this Administration's past behavior, such as the leaked bin Laden raid details, chances are most of this really is the war plan.
Which makes us wonder why the Administration even bothers to pursue the likes of Edward Snowden when it is giving away its plan of attack to anyone in Damascus with an Internet connection. The answer, it seems, is that the attack in Syria isn't really about damaging the Bashar Assad regime's capacity to murder its own people, much less about ending the Assad regime for good.
"I want to make clear that the options that we are considering are not about regime change," White House spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday. Translation: We're not coming for you, Bashar, so don't worry. And by the way, you might want to fly those attack choppers off base, at least until next week.
So what is the purpose of a U.S. attack? Mr. Carney elaborated that it's "about responding to [a] clear violation of an international standard that prohibits the use of chemical weapons." He added that the U.S. had a national security interest that Assad's use of chemical weapons "not go unanswered." This is another way of saying that the attacks are primarily about making a political statement, and vindicating President Obama's ill-considered promise of "consequences," rather than materially degrading Assad's ability to continue to wage war against his own people.
It should go without saying that the principal purpose of a military strike is to have a military effect. Political statements can always be delivered politically, and U.S. airmen should not be put in harm's way to deliver what amounts to an extremely loud diplomatic demarche. That's especially so with a "do something" strike that is, in fact, deliberately calibrated to do very little.
We wrote Tuesday that there is likely to be no good outcome in Syria until Assad and his regime are gone. Military strikes that advance that goal—either by targeting Assad directly or crippling his army's ability to fight—deserve the support of the American people and our international partners. That's not what this Administration seems to have in mind.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324591204579039011328308776.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
The WMD Excuse, Again
Be skeptical of the administration’s claims on Syria.
When it comes to reports of civilian deaths from chemical weapons in opposition-occupied Syrian towns, the Obama White House suddenly claims to be as certain of its own intelligence as the Bush White House was about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction in October 2002. But it is much easier to rush into war, without congressional or popular approval, than it is to get out.There was far more humility at the Obama White House the last time similar atrocities led the usual suspects to urge the U.S. to become militarily entangled in Syria. Complaining that “Mr. Obama made no response to a previous claim of chemical-weapons use,” a recent editorial in The Economist concludes that “America’s credibility depends on intervening.” Today, President Obama evidently agrees. But intervening cannot avoid taking sides — helping some favored group of thugs to either seize or retain control of the government (meaning the treasury, army, and police). So, which side is the U.S. supposed to take and why?
The previous claim of chemical-weapons attacks, which The Economist now accuses President Obama of neglecting, occurred in Aleppo on March 13 and 19. One of the four U.N. investigators, Carla Del Ponte, then said the commission had found some evidence only that anti-government rebels may have used chemical weapons, not the government. Even aside from who used which chemicals, there were other war crimes going on in that rebel-occupied area, including an illegal siege, executions, kidnapping, rape, and torture. As the June “Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic” explains, “Since July 2012, anti-Government armed groups in Aleppo have surrounded Nubul and Zahra, blocking food, fuel, and medical supplies to 70,000 residents. As the siege tightened in recent months, the population, especially women and children, began to suffer malnutrition. The wounded and sick cannot receive medical treatment. Persons attempting to leave the villages are often kidnapped, held for ransom, or killed. . . . Torture has been documented in detention facilities run by the Judicial Council and the Shari’a Board in Aleppo.”
War crimes and moral obscenities abound on both sides of the Syrian civil war, with thousands of civilians dead and many more displaced. Ruthless people are involved, with Iran on the Assad government’s side and al-Qaeda among the opposition. As for chemical warfare, the U.N. commission concluded in June that “it has not been possible, on the evidence available, to determine the precise chemical agents used, their delivery systems or the perpetrator” [emphasis added]: “Conclusive findings . . . may be reached only after testing samples taken directly from victims or the site of the alleged attack.”
Four days after the latest claim of a chemical attack, the reprehensible Assad government agreed to let U.N. investigators gather the evidence required to determine what sorts of chemicals were used, how they were delivered, and by whom. Without such an investigation, the general public has little information other than dreadful YouTube videos posted by rebels and activists from the Eastern Ghouta region. Get beyond initial revulsion, though, and it becomes clear that those videos provide extremely ambiguous clues about “the precise chemical agents used, their delivery systems or the perpetrator.”
As the New York Times reported, “visual evidence uploaded to YouTube makes it clear that a large number of civilians were killed on Wednesday, including women, children and the elderly. What remained unclear was how they died, and whether they were victims of a conventional chemical agent, like sarin or mustard gas, or if their deaths might have been caused by the use of a weaker agent in a confined space. Video shared online shows graphic images of dozens of dead people, including women and a large number of young children, including babies in diapers, most of whom were said to have suffocated.” Note that suffocation is not a primary symptom of sarin (which causes convulsions and vomiting) or mustard (which causes blistering). Suffocation instead points to “a weaker agent in a confined space,” such as a toxic industrial chemical or chlorine, perhaps in schools or buses. The conspicuous absence of vomit on the floors or clothing makes sarin or any other nerve gas an extremely unlikely culprit.
The White House nevertheless claims little doubt about the delivery mechanism (small rockets rather than confined spaces), which is why they have little doubt about the perpetrator. “U.S. spy agencies . . . concluded that the type of rocket used was solely in the possession of regime forces, not the opposition.” That is inconclusive. If U.S. spy agencies actually possess such rockets, not just photos supplied by the opposition, why weren’t the rockets examined to determine the agent used? Since the same rockets are used to deliver conventional explosives, their mere existence (even if discovered at the correct time and place) is insufficient to prove they were filled with illegal chemicals. Moreover, rockets and other weapons from regime forces could have been seized by the opposition in battle, as typical spoils of war.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/356945/wmd-excuse-again-alan-reynolds
President Obama's Iraq, His Other Iraq and His Third Iraq
President Obama has made his entire career off of not being George W. Bush. During his shockingly fast political rise, he differentiated himself by claiming that he had stood alone against the warmongers who wanted to depose Saddam Hussein (never mind that he wasn't in Congress at the time). During the 2008 campaign, he claimed that he wouldn't be the kind of president who would enter America into open-ended conflicts without true American interests at stake. Iraq, he said, was the bad war; Afghanistan was the good war.Well, so much for that.
For a man who sees the war in Iraq as indicative of America's imperialistic adventurism, President Obama sure does enjoy imperialistic adventurism. In Libya, President Obama led the effort to provide al-Qaida-linked rebels with weapons and stop the Muammar Qaddafi regime from using military force to crack down on them. Never mind that Qaddafi posed little or no threat to American interests. "Confronted by (Qaddafi's) brutal repression and a looming humanitarian crisis, I ordered warships into the Mediterranean," Obama declared.
Then, in Egypt, President Obama decided to throw his lot in with the Muslim Brotherhood-led opposition to dictator Hosni Mubarak. Never mind that Mubarak allied with America to ensure at least a measure of stability in the most volatile region on the planet. "Egyptians have made it clear that nothing less than genuine democracy will carry the day," Obama announced.
Finally, in Syria, President Obama has decided to double-down in his support of the al-Qaida-led opposition to the Bashar Assad regime. Never mind that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Assad a "reformer." Never mind that Russia and China oppose action against Assad, and that the Obama administration had announced a new era of international cooperation with both countries.
"Syrian President Bashar al-Assad should heed U.S. warnings to neither use nor move chemical or biological weapons, lest he risk crossing a 'red line' and provoke a U.S. military response," Obama said.
And so now America will likely embark on another episode of swashbuckling Democrat-led interventionism in a part of the world in which America has no friends. At least President Bush went to Congress for authorization to use force in Iraq. President Obama's imperialistic ambitions match his imperial attitude toward the executive office: He needs no Congressional approval, and so he will seek no Congressional approval. In Libya, Obama never bothered to ask Congress to sign off on a no-fly zone; instead, he simply put the military in place, then ignored Congressional deadlines for a cut-off. In Egypt, Obama has avoided declaring the current Egyptian military coup a coup -- and yet Obama is apparently ready to cut off aid regardless, meaning that he wants to avoid any sort of Congressional control over his decision-making.
Now, in Syria, Obama is readying the missiles, despite the fact that just 9 percent of Americans want America to intervene in Syria. Why? Because for Obama, personal pride is at stake. Obama once accused George W. Bush of a petty obsession with Saddam Hussein and Iraq.
But at least America had interests in Iraq ranging from preventing terrorism to quashing threats to American oil flow. America has no such interests in Syria. President Obama is intervening in Syria for one reason: He wants to. He wants to because he set down a "red line" on the use of chemical weapons in Syria; he wants to because he is sick of being seen as a lead-from-behind world ninny; he wants to because he believes that his personal influence trumps the Islamism of the enemies we now fund and arm. Most of all, President Obama wants to intervene in Syria because we have no interests in Syria.
This has become a running theme with Democrat-led wars. American interests in Yugoslavia were non-existent. American interests in Somalia were non-existent. For Democrats, the virtuous war is the war in which America has nothing to gain -- except, of course, glory for the occupant of the White House.
President Bush could rightly be accused of wanting to remake the Middle East in the American image. President Obama wants to make the Middle East over in his own image, unblemished by considerations about America. A new world. A world without American hegemony. And he'll use American force to do it.
http://townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/2013/08/28/president-obamas-iraq-his-other-iraq-and-his-third-iraq-n1676682/page/full
Emerson, Syria, and the Principal Enemy
But no matter the provenance, the import is obvious: Go for the throat or leave your enemy to exact revenge at your peril — and on his own time.
Back in WWII, the United States took Emerson’s advice, going so far as to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki and lay waste to Dresden. But, hey, we won. And Japan and Germany turned into responsible modern democracies.
Lately, not so much. Since Vietnam, and maybe Korea, we are in the era of the “limited response” and the “surgical strike,” loathe to offend our enemies or, worse yet, have someone speak unkindly of us at a UNESCO meeting.
That was why I was especially pleased to read Bret Stephens’ column in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal — “Target Assad.” Stephens does not mince words:
Should President Obama decide to order a military strike against Syria, his main order of business must be to kill Bashar Assad. Also, Bashar’s brother and principal henchman, Maher. Also, everyone else in the Assad family with a claim on political power. Also, all of the political symbols of the Assad family’s power, including all of their official or unofficial residences. The use of chemical weapons against one’s own citizens plumbs depths of barbarity matched in recent history only by Saddam Hussein. A civilized world cannot tolerate it. It must demonstrate that the penalty for it will be acutely personal and inescapably fatal.Right on.
Unfortunately, however, leaks of Obama’s intentions indicate nothing like this direct, morally truthful, and more likely to be effective approach is planned. Instead, we hear only of calibrated pinpricks accompanied by a public pledge that the U.S. is not (Heaven forfend) interested in “regime change,” let alone in the assassination of men who are clearly the mass murderers of their own people (and who knows who else if they had a chance).
Stephens isn’t getting much support for his admittedly “bloody-minded” approach from the right either. Many complain that we will only be playing into the hands of al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood, Assad’s adversaries and certainly not friends of ours.
Well, yes.
But at this particular moment the Muslim Brotherhood is on the run after a massive defeat in Egypt and al-Qaeda is al-Qaeda — depraved refugees from the year 800. We are going to be dealing with them for a long time, alas, at least until they stop trying to pull us all back into the Middle Ages.
Meanwhile, a decision looms about Syria. Which of the two sides is worse? Is there a principal enemy?
In the case of Syria, it’s clear. The principal enemy is and was that Arab nation’s masters in Iran.
Iran is there watching our every move to see how we will respond to what has now definitively been shown to be a grave chemical weapons attack.
If we don’t deal with this, why should we be expected to lift a finger to prevent a nuclear Iran?
Now I know some think that a nuclear Iran is not such a bad thing, that nuclear armed mullahs (pace their religious fanaticism) would suddenly be realists and behave in a responsible manner with their weapons like good members of the Politburo. Those people may be right, but gambling on such a transformation, given the history of the Islamic Republic, is not a bet I would like to take. The results from losing the bet are way too catastrophic.
These optimistic folks have allies in our credulous friends at the New York Times who have been busy studying the tweets from the new Iranian president Rouhani (“Reading Tweets from Iran”) as if they were holy writ, when they should be paying more attention to Ion Pacepa’s new book on how totalitarianism works — Disinformation.
But never mind. The real issue before us is in the coming days is Syria. Bret Stephens and Ralph Waldo Emerson are right: “If you strike at the king, you must kill him.”
Sadly, however, our president is unlikely to follow their prescription — unless Assad and his brother happen to be playing golf and are struck by an errant ball.
http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2013/08/28/emerson-syria-and-the-principal-enemy/?singlepage=true
The Sap
Obama has perfected the art of speaking reproachfully and carrying little or no stick.
President Barack Obama’s most telling act on the international stage may have come in a meeting in early 2012 in Seoul, South Korea, with Russia’s seat-warming president, Dmitri Medvedev.Before the two got up to leave, President Obama asked — in an exchange caught on an open mic — that Moscow cut him some slack. “This is my last election,” Obama explained. “After my election I have more flexibility.” Medvedev promised to “transmit this information to Vladimir,” referring, of course, to the power behind the throne, Vladimir Putin.
When he received the message, Putin must have chortled at the heartbreaking naïveté of it. Here was the leader of the free world pleading for more time to get along with his Russian friends on the basis of an utterly risible assumption of good will. Here was a believer in the policy of “reset” who still didn’t get that the reset was going nowhere. Here was weakness compounded by delusion.
Putin didn’t care about Obama’s flexibility or inflexibility so much as any opportunity to thwart the United States. Obama said that Syrian president Bashar Assad had to go; Putin worked to make sure he stayed. Obama said that National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden had to return to the United States; Putin granted him asylum. When a few weeks ago Putin related to a group of Russian students that he had told Snowden to stop doing damage to the United States, the students did the only thing appropriate upon hearing such a patently insincere claim — they laughed out loud.
Vladimir Putin surely isn’t the only one in the world who regards the president of the United States with barely disguised contempt. As the Syria crisis burns hotter, President Obama has never looked so feckless. He has perfected the art of speaking reproachfully and carrying little or no stick. The grand theory of his foreign policy coming into office, that more national self-abasement would win us greater international good will and respect, has done the opposite. Adversaries don’t fear us, and allies don’t trust us.
The administration has a knack for believing in the wrong people. “There is a different leader in Syria now,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said of Assad in 2011, touting his reformist credentials. This was just before Assad launched the slaughter of his opponents in good earnest. In response, the administration put its faith in an international peace initiative, led by the redoubtable former U.N. honcho Kofi Annan, that had zero chance of resolving the conflict.
When Assad prepared to use chemical weapons last year, President Obama warned of a fearsome “red line,” with no intention of following up on it. When Assad called his bluff, the president announced that he would provide small arms to the rebels in retaliation, but he hasn’t actually done it yet. Is it any wonder that Bashar Assad would, like Vladimir Putin, think he had taken the measure of the man? Last week, Assad killed hundreds in another chemical-weapons attack.
The sharply worded warning ignored by everyone has become the Obama administration’s characteristic rhetorical trope. Its warning to the military junta in Egypt not to crack down on the Muslim Brotherhood was taken with all the seriousness of its admonitions to Assad to step aside. The Obama administration has responded to the resulting crackdown by suspending some aid to Egypt in secret, at the same time that the Saudis — one of our closest allies — say it doesn’t matter what we do because they will replace whatever aid we cut.
Elsewhere in the region, Iran progresses toward a nuclear weapon, Iraq reverts to civil war, and al-Qaeda gains in Yemen and Somalia. In an essay in Commentary magazine, analyst Elliott Abrams argues that the guiding principle of Obama’s foreign policy is, as he put it in an early speech as a presidential candidate, to end the old “habits” of American international activism and leadership. The new habit, evidently, will be tolerating irrelevance and humiliation.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/356814/sap-rich-lowry
Welfare for the Non-Poor
You may not want to call Medicare or the Export-Import Bank welfare, but fair is fair.
Last week the Cato Institute released a new study that showed that a family collecting welfare benefits from seven common programs could receive more than someone in a minimum-wage job in 35 states, more than someone in a $15-per-hour job in 13 states, and more than someone in a $20-per-hour job in the eight most generous states.The study received considerable attention and aroused appropriate outrage in many quarters. Yet, as upset as we should be by welfare policy that turns the social safety net into a cross between a hammock and flypaper, we should keep in mind that welfare for the poor is only a small part of the modern welfare state, which threatens to crush this country under the accumulated weight of taxes, debt, and dependency.
According to calculations by Greg Mankiw based on data from the Office of Management and Budget, roughly 60 percent of Americans receive more in government benefits than they pay in federal taxes. A Tax Foundation study puts the number even higher, suggesting that, because of policies put in place by President Obama, as many as 70 percent of Americans are now net recipients of government largesse.
In 1965, transfer payments from the federal government were equivalent to less than 10 percent of all wages and salaries paid in the United States. As recently as 2000, that figure was just 21 percent. Today, transfer payments are equivalent to almost 35 percent of all salaries and wages. And these payments are not going just to the poor. In 1979, for example, more than 54 percent of federal transfer payments went to the poorest 20 percent of Americans. Today, less than 40 percent does.
And, if one includes payments to government contractors and salaries of federal employees, roughly 97 million Americans — 31 percent of the population — receive more than half their income from the government.
Therefore, when we criticize the welfare state, we should keep in mind:
Corporate Welfare. The Cato Institute estimates that the federal government spent almost $100 billion on corporate welfare last year. This is not even a question of dubious tax breaks — which it can at least be argued allow people to keep more of their own money, even if they are economically distorting — but rather direct payments and subsidies.
The single largest source of business subsidies is the Department of Agriculture, which provides $25.1 billion in subsidies and payments to farmers. For the most part this money goes not to mom-and-pop farms but to large corporate farms and agribusiness. The Department of Energy follows, with $17.3 billion worth of corporate welfare. These days most of this goes to so-called green-energy companies, but traditional energy interests rake in their share as well.
Let us not forget federal agencies like the Export-Import Bank, which provides taxpayer money to corporations such as Boeing, Halliburton, Mobil, IBM, General Electric, AT&T, Motorola, Lucent Technologies, FedEx, General Motors, Raytheon, United Technologies, and, in its day, Enron. And the Small Business Administration, which chooses winners and losers among small businesses, while also providing a form of corporate welfare to big banks like Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, and U.S. Bancorp.
Welfare for the Elderly. The two largest federal transfer programs are Social Security and Medicare. While many senior citizens object to even calling such programs “entitlements,” let alone welfare, because they paid taxes into the programs throughout their working lives, most will receive back benefits far in excess of what they paid in. For example, an average two-earner couple will pay roughly $150,000 over their lifetimes in Medicare taxes and premiums. But they will receive more than $350,000 in benefits. Yet many of the loudest critics of welfare for the poor are the quickest to object when future Medicare cuts are discussed.
For Social Security as well, those who retired before 2010 are receiving far more in benefits than they paid in taxes. True, those seniors might have done better if they had been allowed to save and invest that money for themselves, but that’s beside the point. The benefits they are receiving today are simply transfer payments from those working today.
And, while Medicaid is often thought of as a program for the poor, almost 20 percent of Medicaid spending is actually for long-term care for the elderly. While these elderly recipients technically qualify as “poor” today, many have simply transferred their assets to their children in order to shift their liabilities to the taxpayers. Indeed, entire industries of lawyers and accountants have sprung up to help the elderly shelter their assets in order to qualify for Medicaid.
Welfare for the Military. National defense is a constitutional responsibility of government, in many ways the first responsibility of government. And no one should forget that it is a dangerous world, and the United States has very real enemies. Nor is this a question of policy disagreement about America’s role in the world, such as whether we should be subsidizing Europe’s defense, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, or intervention in Syria. But many lawmakers have used defense spending as little more than a jobs program, demanding that weapons systems be built even when the Pentagon says those systems are not needed, simply because they are built in the lawmakers’ districts. One of the most flagrant recent examples was Representative Jim Jordan and Senator Rob Portman, both Republicans of Ohio, insisting that the Army spend $3 billion on Abrams M1 tanks for which the generals say they have no use. The tanks are manufactured in Lima, Ohio.
There is no doubt that this country spends a great deal on welfare for the poor. The federal government currently operates 126 separate anti-poverty programs at a cost of $688 billion per year. State and local governments spend an additional $284 billion. And we get far too little for that money — too many Americans remain trapped in poverty for far too long. In fact, welfare spending appears to have little effect on poverty rates.
But if we are going to be fair and honest, we need to be equally outraged by the rest of the welfare state. Fair is fair. And welfare is welfare.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/356910/welfare-non-poor-michael-tanner
Ex-Im Bank Proposes Subsidizing Foreign Competition
Senators: financing deal would damage U.S. mining industry
A May notice from the Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im), the U.S. government’s export credit agency, described plans to subsidize the purchase of Caterpillar mining equipment by Australian company Roy Hill.
The notice proposed $650 million in long-term financing for the deal.
The equipment would go to the Roy Hill iron ore mining project in the Pilbara region of Australia. According to four Democratic senators, U.S. financing for Roy Hill amounts to a taxpayer subsidy for foreign mining competitors.
The result, the senators said in a letter last month to Ex-Im Bank chairman Fred Hochberg, could be higher prices for American consumers and reduced demand for U.S. iron ore, likely leading to American job losses.
“I’m strongly opposed to any action by the Export-Import bank to finance foreign operations that would hurt Minnesota’s iron ore industry,” said Sen. Al Franken (D., Minn.), one of the letter’s signatories, in a statement.
U.S. iron mining takes place primarily in Minnesota and Michigan. Those states’ four Senators—Franken, Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.), Carl Levin (D., Mich.), and Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.)—predicted dire consequences for their states’ economies if Ex-Im approves financing for Roy Hill.
“It is estimated that, over the life of the financing, Roy Hill’s output would displace nearly $600 million of U.S. iron ore exports and would cause a reduction of approximately $1.2 billion in U.S. domestic sales, for a total loss to the U.S. iron ore industry of $1.8 billion,” the letter stated.
Cliffs Natural Resources, an Ohio-based iron mining company, insists that the Roy Hill deal would run counter to the bank’s statutory mission.
“The Bank’s authorizing statute permits the Bank to override a finding of substantial injury if the benefits to the U.S. exporting industry outweigh the costs to the adversely affected U.S. industry,” Cliffs said in a statement detailing the economic consequences of the deal. “That is not the case with this transaction.”
Cliffs said that the U.S. iron ore industry would lose export sales worth nearly $590 million as a result of the deal, more than the $522 million in domestic value-added that the deal is likely to produce.
“An American company such as Cliffs should not be forced to compete with a foreign producer that has received a subsidy from the U.S. Government,” the four Senators said in their letter.
Cliffs’ political action committee has donated a combined $26,000 to the campaigns of Levin, Klobuchar, and Stabenow since 2002, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. It also gave $6,000 to Franken’s 2008 opponent, former Sen. Norm Coleman (R., Minn.).
A spokesman for the Ex-Im Bank declined to comment on the potential deal, saying it is the bank’s policy not to speak publicly about financing proposals until they have been considered by its board.
The spokesman also would not say when the board is expected to take up the Roy Hill proposal. The Duluth News Tribune reported on Monday that the board is expected to consider the proposal “in the next few weeks.”
The Tribune also reported for the first time that the deal would benefit Caterpillar. The company is a frequent beneficiary of Ex-Im financing.
The bank exists to finance foreign purchases of American exports. It has come under fire in recent years from critics who say its financing deals amount to “corporate welfare.”
President Barack Obama held that position during his initial run for the presidency. The bank, Obama said in 2008, is “little more than a fund for corporate welfare.”
Four years later, as he vied for reelection, Obama lauded Congress’ vote to reauthorize the bank so it could “continue upon its extraordinary mission.”
Caterpillar, which is the 42nd largest company in the United States with revenues of $65.9 billion, has received significant financial support from the Ex-Im Bank and enjoys a loan program devoted explicitly to its suppliers.
http://freebeacon.com/senators-attack-proposed-ex-im-loan-to-australian-mining-company/
Emails Prove FBI Could Have Prevented Fort Hood Attack
More evidence is piling up against the FBI when it comes to Nidal Hasan, the Army Major convicted for the mass killing of over a dozen people in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting.First, the New York Times published two emails Hasan provided them, and now Mother Jones is reporting the FBI released emails and other documents that prove they could have prevented the November 5, 2009 attack.
A military panel found Hasan guilty of 13 premeditated murders and 31 premeditated attempted murders. The jury will begin to deliberate the sentence on Wednesday. The verdict was unanimous, which means the death penalty is on the table.
The prosecution wanted to use the emails and documents as evidence of Hasan’s motive, but Judge Col. Tara Osborn threw them out. They include a string of emails between Hasan and Anwar al-Awlaki, in which Hasan said he murdered his fellow soldiers because he wanted to protect al-Qaeda and Taliban soldiers. The FBI intercepted these emails almost a year before the attack. Hasan even wanted to discuss them for his defense, but Osborn dismissed this.
FBI officials always claimed the documents proved little, but they would not allow the Senate's Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to review them. Even without these documents, however, the committee established in their report “A Ticking Timebomb: Counterterrorism Lessons from the U.S. Government’s Failure to Prevent the Fort Hood Attack” that officials had enough evidence to stop Hasan.
It turns out Hasan was brought to the FBI’s attention in December 2008. From Mother Jones:
The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force in San Diego, which was tracking Awlaki, intercepted Hasan's December email, along with another sent in January. A search of the Pentagon's personnel database turned up a man named Nidal Hasan who was on active military duty and was listed as a "Comm Officer" at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC.
Normally, when the FBI unearths this kind of raw intelligence, it issues an Intelligence Information Report (IIR), which is shared with law enforcement agencies and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. (This system was designed to prevent the kind of information bottlenecks that allowed the 9/11 plot to go undetected.) But the San Diego agents misinterpreted the "Comm Officer" label in Hasan's file to mean "communications officer" (in fact, it meant "commissioned officer") and believed that a person in this role might have access to IIRs. To avoid tipping him off, they skipped the report and sent a detailed memo requesting an investigation directly to the Washington, DC, Joint Terrorism Task Force, a multiagency team overseen by the FBI that investigates terrorism cases in the capital. The message noted that Hasan's "contact with [Awlaki] would be of concern if the writer is actually the individual identified above."
The file languished for nearly two months before it was assigned to an agent for the Defense Criminal Investigative Services, who was on the task force. According to a 2011 report on the Fort Hood shootings by the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, DCIS—a law enforcement agency within the Pentagon, which normally deals with fraud and cybercrime among military personnel and contractors—was ill-equipped to tackle a counterterrorism investigation.The FBI did not stop Hasan, and he continued to write al-Awlaki, emailing him more than a dozen times between January and May 2009. The San Diego office found these messages, but the FBI did not link these emails to the one sent in December. The DCIS agent in DC actually delayed his investigation for 90 days and did not start until May 27, 2009 when he went through all the databases to see if Hasan was targeted before. He found Hasan’s personal file was mostly positive, and one psychiatrist said Hasan’s Islamic beliefs could be beneficial to the military.
Based on the personal file and the psychiatrist’s notes, the DCIS agent concluded the contact between Hasan and al-Awalki was for academic research and not terrorism-related. He did not bother to interview Hasan. An FBI agent in San Diego also concluded there was no need to investigate or interview Hasan in June 2009.
Five months later, Hasan opened fire at Fort Hood.
The survivors and victims’ families filed suit against the government because they believe this attack could have been prevented. They testified on Monday and Tuesday, telling the panel how hard it has been for them to cope with losing their loved ones.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/08/27/Emails-Prove-FBI-Could-Have-Prevented-Fort-Hood-Attack
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