P.M. Carpenter

One pissed-off but cautious president

Sometime overnight the ghost of David Cameron's (presumed) blunder visited the White House and whispered, "Follow me."

If Obama lacked religion before, he's surely got it now. There is a God, and He gave up his only British prime minister to save the American president's ass. Proof of modern miracles; that and the miraculous fact that David Cameron is, after all, good for something.

So to Congress our intervention goes, where it's likely to meet a squishy afterlife. Obama's punt will be savaged by Congress' McCains and Grahams, of course, but what the hell. It's what they do. The important thing is that Congress is where difficult decisions go to die, and Obama just kicked this one up the Capitol steps. Good for him, and I mean that.

What I found remarkable, however--quite aside from the chief executive's suddenly discovered Whiggism--was Obama's unconcealed fury at the present "international system." Look, he bellowed in so many words, we either mean this lovely crap about "norms"--or we don't. Let's make up our minds. If we do, then let us unite in action, and if we don't, well, then at least the U.S. will know what hand it's been dealt; and it can proceed accordingly--which, one assumes, would be in alignment with another international system, of every man for himself.

***

I should add ...

We'll have to see how this plays out, but for now it appears that Obama unstuck himself from what seemed like a hopelessly stuck position, which indeed seemed stuck only because of the Obama administration's repeated vows to see its way through to a punitive strike, no matter what. How the administration's reverse course plays out politically over the next few days and weeks? Who the hell knows.

As for John Kerry, he must be fuming--somewhere, out in the cold, where he was left--having twice made to the world a passionate case for absolutely inescapable action. How humiliating this must be for him. And I mean that, too.

Way out, on a limb, in a corner, in the dark

After Prime Minister Cameron's "bungled" and "embarrassing" misfortune in Parliament--and those descriptions come from his friends in the White House--President Obama "is left to cope with miscalculations on both sides of the Atlantic," writes David Sanger unsympathetically about the president's Syrian pickle. "If he goes ahead with the strike -- which seems all but inevitable ... -- he will look more isolated than any president in recent memory entering a conflict."

Indeed this entire affair is beginning to read like a Gothic horror story inside a Greek tragedy. The gods are fickle, and they'll screw you every time. And in this case, Obama's case, they've done so less over his infamous "red line" usage (or so my entrail-reading tells me) than his inclusion beside it of a certain possessive pronoun: If "we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons ... that would change my calculus. That would change my equation."

The "we" could have translated into the "world community," which is in fact how State Secretary John Kerry repeatedly translated it yesterday, even if his upshot, in further fact, meant only the United States. Still, the obfuscation was there, it was available, it was a plausible out from lone interventionism. Whoa, by "we" I meant every nation of decency and good conscience, Obama could have explained later; but he had saddled himself, by my calculus, with his equation. He was on the hook--and now abstract credibility is driving a potentially catastrophic event.

I readily confess not only the thinness, but the present uselessness, of this reed. Peace by pronoun-clarification would have been quite unlikely, and in any case Obama did add multiple my's, and there's no way around it. He's stuck, we're stuck, and a yet-unknown number of killed-by-credibility Syrians are stuck with the mad, inexorable fallout of a possessive pronoun. 

John Kerry and the collective "we"

In his passionate afternoon statement on behalf of intervention into Syria, Secretary of State Kerry just delivered a towering argument for U.S. isolationism.  

Yes we're tired of war, he said, but "fatigue does not absolve us of responsibility," he continued, and by "us" he was including the world. "We, collectively," he emphasized--"What are we and the world going to do" about Syria's violation of the warrior's code? Since the Great War there's existed a "clear red line for the international community" when it comes to the use of chemical weapons, hence now we must ask, "What will we do?" when that line has been crossed.

The world must respond, answered Kerry, who went on to itemize the nations and regional organizations doing so.

With words. Other statements. Paper. That's been the global community's reaction to Syria's most heinous, unthinkable war crime. There are no regional troops amassing on Syria's borders, there are no (American-made) tanks cranking up, no (American-made) fighter jets purring and no (American-made) bombs being affixed. When it comes to actual action, virtually all the world's players are inexpressibly reserved.

And why not? Who can blame them? For alas there's one other player who's always willing to be left holding the bag and paying the bloody check.

And yet someday we--the singular we--may take Mr. Kerry at his word, and we'll quite agree: You know what, world? Either get off your ass and help, or we're staying home and you're on your own. These are a collective problems which can only, and in every case, be solved collectively.

We already tried some semblance of that approach in the post-Great War era of the 1902s and 30s, and things didn't work out so well. But it could again hold electoral appeal--and while those particular Paulian voices touting it frighten me all to hell, John Kerry may have just boosted their cause.

Tony Blare

The Monkey Cage has a splendid analysis of David Cameron's "doom" yesterday, which political scientist Stephen Dyson attributes in good part to "the long shadow cast by the dominant figure in modern British politics": former prime minister Tony Blair, of unnostalgic Iraq war fame.

Mr. Blair, it seems, chose an impeccably inopportune time--two days prior to Parliament's vote--to go blathering in the Times that "the forces that made those interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan so difficult are of course the very forces at the heart of the [Syrian] storm today," and, uncontent with editorializing restraint, Blair added, "They have to be defeated ... however long it takes."

Notes Dyson: "These comments reminded British legislators and the public of the Iraq controversies at the worst possible time for the current prime minister."

It difficult to imagine that Blair's words were in any way a deciding factor, but they sure didn't help. And for that, Tony, the British people thank you.

An allied casualty

Could it be that Prime Minister David Cameron merely followed in the tactically stumbling footsteps of American conservatism, which is to say, he, just like John Boehner and Eric Cantor, never quite learned how to count? BBC News reports that yesterday's "defeat comes as a potential blow to the authority of Mr Cameron":

[He] had already watered down a government motion proposing military action....

The BBC's political editor Nick Robinson said the prime minister had now lost control of his own foreign and defence policy, and as a result he will cut a diminished figure on the international stage.

The much larger upside for the average Brit, however, is that the reigning coalition days of their "diminished" and possibly innumerate prime minister--whose grasp of macroeconomics is unquestionably defective, and domestically destructive--could be numbered. 

"Military analysis": 5>4

As we move from the debate to the deployment stage of our Syrian adventure, it is well that we school ourselves in the high art of military tactics, so that we can follow the action and move pins on the map with knowing moxie, just like the brassy boys. To this end we've the NY Times' top story this morning, "Aim of U.S. Attack," under the intimidating heading of Military Analysis. But, fear not the esoteric.

For instance the story notes that the U.S. Navy currently has four destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean, adding:

A fifth destroyer, the Stout, has been assigned to relieve one of the destroyers. But keeping all five on station would increase the Navy’s striking power.

Got that?

And, there's this, which is even more advanced:

Christopher Harmer, a former American naval officer..., said that cruise missile attacks could have a major effect on Mr. Assad’s forces if they were concentrated on destroying his warplanes and the airfields he has used to receive arms from Iran.

Yes, the Times is actually allowed to print such classified equations.  

The Analysis ends, appropriately enough, with some real post-graduate stuff:

"If deterrence is to be restored, we need to do more than Assad has anticipated and destroy assets he really values," said Franklin C. Miller, a former Pentagon official.

That, I should add, is a rather recent refinement of U.S. military strategy and tactics and geopolitical theory. About a decade ago, in another adventure, we did far more than the actual enemy anticipated--by bombing and destroying the assets of the wrong country, little valued by said enemy.

At any rate, the really big post-graduate question hangs in the sulphurous air: Will U.S. missile strikes "deter"--or ignite? 

It just gets weirder ... and weirder

There goes Britain.

"It’s clear to me that the British parliament and the British people do not wish to see military action," said P.M. David Cameron after today's humiliating vote. "I get that, and I will act accordingly."

How insufferably democratic of him.

We suffer not from that problem here, however, what with our imperial presidency. "President Obama is prepared to move ahead with a limited military strike on Syria," reports the NY Times, "even with a rejection of such action by Britain’s Parliament, an increasingly restive Congress, and lacking an endorsement from the United Nations Security Council." That would be the president who props what little doctrine he has--which is a good thing--on a foundation of multilateralism. But, make that past tense.  

And then, once again, there's this, from the same NYT story:

[U.S.] intelligence does not tie Mr. Assad directly to the attack ... but the administration believes that it has enough evidence to carry out a limited strike that would deter the Syrian government from using these weapons again.

So we're about to pound Assad for a war crime to which we can't tie him, so that he won't repeat the crime he perhaps never committed.

You know what? The Iraq invasion is beginning to sound logical compared to this.

Invitation to a nightmare

I say fuck Occam's Razor as to the Why of this thing--"an attack on Syria to punish it for using chemical weapons"--for we should mightily tremble instead with the How of Murphy's Law, "the true worst case of a Syria attack":

The U.S. and its allies attack Damascus. Damascus retaliates against Israel, which vowed again this week to "defend itself." Israel and Syria break into open hostilities. Syria’s sponsor, Iran, steps up its attacks on Israel through its proxies and allies in the region. And Washington, despite its onetime goal of a "limited" intervention, finds itself in a living nightmare.

At that point, perhaps 50,000 or even 500,000 deaths later, it would do no good for the Toma-hawks to indignantly remind us that Assad started it. (Besides, by the administration's own admission, we don't even know that.) The additional dead would simply, and quite definitely, be dead; some gassed, maybe, and no doubt many blown to pieces by cluster bombs, some cut to pieces by .50 caliber machine guns, some burned beyond recognition by aerial firepower, most of them women and children--and all of them Dead by Rescue, in our battle against Moral Obscenities.

The above scenario is among the more unlikely scenarios. Yet the question remains: Are we actually willing to take that chance?

On gutlessness

Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio, speaking to Politico about the congressional tradition of evading accountability in general, and specifically on Syria: "Most members of Congress of both parties would prefer to sit it out. If the president does well, they can say, 'Gee we were there with him.' If the president doesn’t do well, they can say, 'We were against it.'"

Makes you proud, doesn't it? Representative democracy? Voices of The People and all that? They, and only they, with the constitutional authority to declare war--quivering and hiding under their taxpayer-provided desks?  

At least in the run-up to our last "just war"--the second big and global one--congressional battle lines were well formed. There were plainspoken interventionists and unashamed isolationists and the ambivalence between was as thin as the opinionated shouting was deafening. The historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. recalled it being the "most savage political debate in my lifetime," outsavaging even Vietnam.

Today? Literally today? Half of it will be consumed by incumbents' fundraising calls, the other half consulting with smooth-talking media experts who school others in the art of rhetorical evasion and political unaccountability.

And these are the boys and girls who are about to guide us through the Fiscal War of '13. Holy freakin' shit.

"Thick with caveats"

Breathtaking.

A report by the Office of the Director for National Intelligence outlining ... evidence against Syria is thick with caveats. It builds a case that Assad's forces are most likely responsible while outlining gaps in the U.S. intelligence picture....

In addition, an intercept of Syrian military officials discussing the strike was among low-level staff, with no direct evidence tying the attack back to an Assad insider or even a senior Syrian commander, the officials said.

So while Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday that links between the attack and the Assad government are "undeniable," U.S. intelligence officials are not so certain that the suspected chemical attack was carried out on Assad's orders, or even completely sure it was carried out by government forces.

I'm not sure what to say. The Associated Press report is that stunning. The intelligence document is essentially a brief against a U.S. missile strike, yet the White House by all appearances is staying with its "full-steam-ahead approach," as the AP characterizes it. And "State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said it didn't really matter whether the administration knew ... details with total certainty."

We're talking about missile strikes that will themselves invite Syrian or Syria-allied retaliation on quite possibly a global scale, and quite possibly bring the brutal deaths of innocent thousands more, which would certainly compel our re-retaliation, and so on--but the "details" underlying these immense risks aren't really important?

It's been 10 years, almost to the month, since I was this dumbfounded.

Cameron's--not Assad's--peculiar logic

In Britain's parliamentary debate (live on C-Span2) on the Syria crisis, an opposition MP asked P.M. David Cameron about the puzzling logic behind Assad's ordering of a large-scale chemical attack. Would the P.M. please explain?

Cameron was plenty ready to do so, although his prepared response was, at best, an odd one.

Assad, said Cameron, had committed 14 separate acts of small-scale chemical-weapon assaults, to which the civilized world reacted indifferently. This is true. 

"As long as they keep [the] body count at a certain level, we won't do anything," an American intelligence official told Foreign Policy earlier this week.

"This week" was last week, and the intelligence official's admission appeared in print two days before the massive assault. Our "red line" was never straight and it certainly wasn't bold; it contained permissible breaches.

But, Cameron continued, Assad, having committed his series of small-scale assaults with impunity, concluded that the West's indifference would endure in the face of a large-scale assault--even though (and this part Cameron omitted) American intelligence officials were publicly broadcasting their indifference only to low body counts. In other words, Assad had every incentive to persist in the severely contained tactics of chemical attacks, and every logical reason to avoid deploying a major one.  

That Assad is supremely logical is as incontrovertible as the fact of his bloodthirsty despotism. He knows a Syrian stalemate is in the West's best interests, he knows we never wanted to intervene, and he always knew a large-scale chemical-weapons assault would be a stupid, supremely illogical invitation on his part.

The attack points to--it suggests--somebody Syrian having gone rogue. Cameron's argument in parliament just doesn't add up.

Obama vs. Mearscheimer

Last night's "PBS Newshour" was absolutely fascinating. It pitted a U.S. president burdened with immense political problems unmasked by verbal contortions against an international relations professor trying his best to unburden the president with blunt, straightforward assessments of global realism. Yet the unburdening process was too late; the president had already backed himself inescapably into a self-contrived trap.

Note the president's verbal tic: 

[Our calculations have] to do with not only international norms but also America’s core self-interest. We’ve got a situation in which you’ve got a well-established international norm against the use of chemical weapons....

[The international norm against the use of chemical weapons needs to be kept in place....

[W]e do have to make sure that when countries break international norms on weapons like chemical weapons that could threaten us, that they are held accountable....

[B]y using chemical weapons on a large scale against your own people ... you are ... breaking international norms....

There is a reason why there is an international norm against chemical weapons.

The professor responded:

The Arab League has not sanctioned an attack. You can't get Security Council approval.... [I]f we do go to war, it will not be a legal war. This is why President Obama talked about norms ad nauseam in his comments and didn't talk about international law, because he knows he can't do this legally.

He added a startlingly unconventional view: 

I would like to point out that all of this discourse about chemical weapons being so special is, I think, wrong.... [C]hemical weapons are not weapons of mass destruction, like nuclear weapons are. The reason that chemical weapons were not used in World War II wasn't because someone like Adolf Hitler was above using them for moral reasons. They weren't used because they have very little military utility. Anybody who has been in the Army knows that chemical weapons just don't buy you much on the battlefield. And, in fact, the United States used nuclear weapons in World War II. So the norms could not have been very powerful in that war.

He then went for the logical kill ...

But the fact is that the United States has no vested interest in what is going on in Syria. This is not a strategically important country. It's deeply regrettable that people are being killed. It's deeply regrettable that's there's a civil war going on, but it's not the United States' responsibility to get into the middle of it, because every time we do this, we end up in a situation like Afghanistan, a situation like Iraq.

... the coup de grace of which was imbued with the most undeniably troublesome fact of all:

When President Obama was asked what this strike is likely to accomplish, he basically had no good answer to that question.

I have one: Our action will accomplish a reaction.

The hawks, as hawks are wont to do, are treating the situation as though no Syrian (or Iranian or Russian) countermove will be in the offing. We move, Assad is severely chastened, and that's that.

And if you believe that ...

Some proof but no clarity

The Cable notes that U.S. intercepts of phone exchanges between a "panicked" Syrian official and a "chemical weapons unit" in the wake of the East Ghouta slaughter of about 400 innocents raise "questions about culpability for the chemical massacre, even as it answers others: Was the attack on Aug. 21 the work of a Syrian officer overstepping his bounds? Or was the strike explicitly directed by senior members of the Assad regime?"

Assuming the former is true--that it was the reckless work of a lone Syrian officer--and also assuming that such individual recklessness warrants U.S. retaliation, the East Ghouta massacre raises yet another question. In the wake of the My Lai massacre, which took the lives of about 400 Vietnamese innocents and was ordered by one William Calley, a U.S. Army 2nd lieutenant, would the Warsaw Pact have been justified in bombing San Diego's naval base as a retaliatory act? 

"The most dangerous Negro of the future"

David Corn recalls the sordid history of J. Edgar Hoover's magnificent obsession with the "communist" Martin Luther King Jr. In doing so he quotes an FBI official whose post-Dream-speech jeremiad in memo form now seems almost comical: "We must mark [MLK] now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro, and national security."

Yes, not only were our virtuous white women still in unspeakable peril from the now-pink black hordes, our very national security lay in mortal conflict with color-blind character assessments and decent standards of living for all. 

Such bottomless ignorance seems historically distant, but it's not. For sure, the right advocates color-blind assessments for, say, college admissions. Yet in throwing up "free-market" obstacles to liveable wages it in effect is advocating the status quo ante; impoverished blacks are as doomed to ill education and social immobility as are the right-winging crackers who, by strangulating government, self-injuriously rejoice in keeping uppity blacks down. 

And 50 years later, the right seems pretty damned effective--which is why the FBI official's panicky memo still comes up short in the comedy department.    

An unoffensive offensive

Washington Post foreign-affairs writer Max Fisher attempts to decipher the Obama administration's cryptic balance:

[W]hat the Obama administration appears to want is a limited, finite series of strikes that will be carefully calibrated to send a message and cause the just-right amount of pain. It wants to set Assad back but it doesn’t want to cause death and mayhem. So the most likely option is probably to destroy a bunch of government or military infrastructure--much of which will probably be empty.

It is militarily axiomatic, however, that effective intervention/retaliation means death and mayhem. Boutique bombing may have its advocates, but they are few in numbers and historically sparse in results. I have no idea how "just the right amount of pain" translates into any real pain if the slap fails to sting.   

Hence the martial concept of overwhelming force. If you're going to impose yourself in someone else's war, go big, and go for finality--a conceptual commitment steeped in the laudable corollary of prior restraint. Is your intervention worth it? Are you willing to go all the way? Have you the resources, the domestic support, the determination, a dependable in-country ally, a compelling national-interest casus belli, as well as the strategic capability to finish it? If you answer no to any of these questions, then, as the cavalry would say, hold your horses.    

Unlike the United States, the Assad regime is fighting for self-preservation--and there's no human drive more primal or potentially savage than that. What will bombing some of Assad's empty government buildings and cratering an airstrip or two accomplish? From our strategic vantage point, nothing. Yet to Assad--and his allies--a slap is still a slap. And interventionist slaps don't generally go unanswered.