JAMES TARANTO: THE PRESIDENT’S SHOW OF FARCE
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323324904579044962264410266.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion
“I’ve not made a decision.” That was President Obama‘s very first answer in a Wednesday interview with “PBS NewsHour.”
A day earlier, the Onion anticipated that comment in a story titled “Obama Weighing His Syria Option.” It included this pretend quote from Denis McDonough, the White House chief of staff: “The president recognizes that the situation in Syria is extremely delicate and that the U.S. faces complex consequences regardless of what he chooses; that’s why he’s giving the one option in front of him so much thought. He will not act until he’s confident in the inexorable decision he’s making.”
In the PBS interview, Obama also stressed that the option before him was a minimal one. America will act, he said, “if, in fact, we can take limited, tailored approaches, not getting drawn into a long conflict, not a repetition of, you know, Iraq, which I know a lot of people are worried about.” Politico summed that up with the headline “Obama: Syria Won’t Be Iraq.”
Andy Borowitz, resident satirist at The New Yorker, summed it up with the headline “Obama Promises Syria Strike Will Have No Objective.” Here’s his pretend Obama quote: “Let me be clear. Our goal will not be to effect régime change, or alter the balance of power in Syria, or bring the civil war there to an end. We will simply do something random there for one or two days and then leave.”
See if you can guess which satirist produced this fake quote:
One U.S. official who has been briefed on the options on Syria said he believed the White House would seek a level of intensity “just muscular enough not to get mocked” but not so devastating that it would prompt a response from Syrian allies Iran and Russia.
No doubt most of you recognize a trick question: That is a passage from a Los Angeles Times news report. To be sure, as a tactical matter one always wishes any threat or threatening action to be “muscular enough not to be mocked.” Sometimes that’s all it takes to induce an adversary to back down. But a bluff only works when backed by a credible threat. The Times source’s quote amounts to an announcement that any military action will be purely symbolic. Obama might as well say “Bashar, don’t call my bluff.”
Max Fisher of the Washington Post attempted the other day to make sense of it all, in a blog post titled “Here’s Why Obama Is Giving Up the Element of Surprise in Syria.” Fisher agrees with Borowitz insofar as the administration does not mean to oust Assad or to end or even influence the Syrian civil war. But he maintains there is an objective, albeit a “much more modest” one: “to punish Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad for his suspected use of chemical weapons so that he, and future military leaders, won’t do it again.” Actually that’s two objectives: punishment and deterrence.
Reuters reports that according to an unclassified U.S. intelligence report released today, “a Syrian chemical weapons attack on August 21 killed 1,429 Syrian civilians, including 426 children.” We have no reason to doubt the accuracy of this intelligence, and certainly Bashar Assad is culpable for the actions of his regime. So Assad has in effect been found guilty of 1,429 counts of murder, with the aggravating circumstance that the method he used is widely considered to be particularly atrocious. What is the appropriate punishment?
In most U.S. jurisdictions, including the federal courts, the death penalty would be a possibility. Another dictator who waged chemical warfare on his country’s citizens, Saddam Hussein, was in fact executed in 2006 (although for convictions in a different massacre that did not involve chemical weapons). Even in Europe a crime of this magnitude would surely merit at least a few decades in prison.
Indications are that the Obama administration’s response will be to drop a few bombs, break some stuff, and maybe kill a few bystanders. That comes nowhere near being a just punishment for the crimes alleged.
Nor does it seem likely to prove an effective deterrent. Other dictators will see that they can use chemical weapons without endangering their survival (in both senses of the word). Assad will have tested the resolve of “the world” and found it wanting: Even after using chemical weapons, he will remain in power, with no reason to expect any external response to any further atrocity that doesn’t involve chemical weapons.
One similarity between the Syria effort and the Iraq one is that the U.S. is having trouble enlisting the support of its allies. Notwithstanding Obama’s promises to “restore our moral standing,” he couldn’t even get the British on board: The House of Commons yesterday voted down Prime Minister David Cameron’s motion to support a Syria strike. On the other hand, the New York Times notes that France’s President Francois Hollande “offered strong support.” We hear today’s lunch special at the State Department cafeteria was poisson frites.
The administration’s uncertain approach to Syria has even normally serious writers trying their hand at satire. Politico’s Jim VandeHei imagines a “Saturday Night Live” sketch in which Dick Cheney fantasizes “about Barack Obama handling the pressures of going to war.” The bottom line, of course, is that this is neither daydream nor joke:
The thought bubble closes. Cheney, who became a parody of the excesses of the right wing approach to military power, grins as he thinks of Obama becoming a parody of the liberal approach to military power on Syria.
The skit ends with Cheney grimacing:
“Live from Washington–it’s NOT Saturday Night.”
It’s not very funny, but it’s true that we owe the Obama presidency in substantial part to public exhaustion over Iraq, a war that did have a clear objective and was based in a broad strategic vision. Some argued that vision was flawed, and in retrospect it is possible they were on to something. It’s not clear, however, that blindness is better than flawed vision.
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