Inside Syria: The Backstory of Their Civil War and What the World Can Expect (28 page)

Syria's location also came into play with plans to build a new natural-gas pipeline. Qatar wanted to construct a pipeline from its gas fields, through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, and ultimately to Turkey. It would have provided a new source of energy for Europe and potentially competed with Russia's gas exports. Assad refused to sign the deal in 2009, and instead in 2012, inked an agreement with Iran for a different pipeline.
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It would cost $10 billion and carry Iranian gas through Iraq, Syria, and possibly Lebanon.
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Although the civil war has made construction impossible, the Obama administration and its Middle Eastern allies were not pleased that Iran would have a potentially new and lucrative source of income.
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US leaders had plenty of reasons to get rid of Assad, given his alliance with Iran and hostility to US corporate interests. But when the uprising started, the Obama administration denounced Assad's repression but did little else. Like the Israelis, US leaders preferred the devil they knew. The United States feared militant Islamists would seize power and pose an even greater danger than Assad. After all, in the name of Islam, militants had tried to shoot up the US embassy in Damascus in September 2006.
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But as the uprising continued for months, the administration calculated that Assad would be overthrown soon or at least significantly weakened. As with Libya, the United States opportunistically shifted strategy and threw its support to the opposition. In August 2011 Obama made it official by famously declaring, “The time has come for President Assad to step aside.”
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The administration debated whether to create a no-fly zone in which the US Air Force would guarantee protection to civilians in an area near the Turkish border. Some exiled Syrians favored such outside military intervention. But most opposed it, according to the leaders I met. I interviewed Ahmad Bakdouness, the civil-society activist we met in
chapter 1
. Referring to exiled leaders, he told me, “He who has not suffered cannot speak. They can say whatever they want, but not many people agree with them. I oppose the Libyan model. Even with a no-fly zone, we would still be weak.”
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Leen, another civil-society activist we met previously, admitted that some rebels were so desperate that they favored foreign military intervention. But she and her friends had closely watched Western interference in Libya and Iraq. “Libya will have a new dictator,” she said. “We don't want another dictator with American backing.”
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But the opinions of civil-society activists mattered little in Washington's corridors of power.

The Washington debate on Syria revolved around tactics, not goals. Everyone agreed the United States should help overthrow Assad and install a pro-US regime in Damascus. They just couldn't agree on how to do it. Hawks argued that Obama was weak and indecisive. He should have armed moderate rebels sooner and set up a no-fly zone. Doves argued that Obama's policies made sense given difficult conditions on the ground. The administration was arming moderate rebels and had forced Assad to dismantle his chemical weapons.

Some Americans believe that the military industrial complex drags us into war. Under this theory, arms manufacturers consort with generals to start wars and make profits. The military are high-flying hawks advocating war while the State Department diplomats coo for peace like doves. In reality, the military is often the most cautious. The Pentagon flatly opposed establishing a no-fly zone or any other ongoing military
presence in Syria. General Martin E. Dempsy, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said creating an effective no-fly zone would require as many as seventy thousand American troops because of Syria's “sophisticated antiaircraft system.” He argued that such massive deployment was needed to permanently ground Syria's air force and to prevent retaliatory attacks on US forces. The generals understood that bombing Syria, short of a full-scale invasion, would have limited impact without reliable US allies on the ground. Dempsy realized the United States had no such support. “The side we choose must be ready to promote their interest and ours when the balance shifts in their favor,” he said. “Today they are not.”
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The military's reluctance to bomb Syria stemmed from its experience during the Vietnam War. The United States had overwhelming military superiority in Indochina but lost the war because the US Army had no reliable allies on the ground and had lost support at home. The US Army had tried to create a South Vietnamese military force capable of fighting the enemy, but it quickly fell apart as US troops withdrew toward the end of the war. The United States managed to repeat the mistake in Afghanistan and Iraq. Of course the military is prepared to go to war; its leaders just want to make sure that strong Syrian allies “promote” American interests, as General Dempsy so aptly said.

The State Department and the CIA advocated a different set of tactics. They argued for “limited” military action very early in the war. In their view, arming rebels and/or creating a no-fly zone could win the war without significant US casualties or cost. The civilians at State are always enamored of quickie military solutions that never quite work out. CIA director David Patraeus and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton favored increased training of rebel militias. Clinton said the United States should get “skin in the game.”
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Obama was cautious about the plan, given the disastrous Libyan intervention. He was well aware of “mission creep,” whereby limited military action expands and the United States is drawn deeper into the struggle to avoid losing. But by the end of 2013 hawks and doves within the administration reached a consensus: they would step up arms and training of rebels while holding off on direct US intervention.

The administration debated whether to have the Defense Department openly do the arming and training. Some White House officials pointed out that publicly supporting Assad's overthrow violated international law. The United States could have simply canceled this illegal program. Instead the administration kept the CIA in charge of the covert program and could thus claim not to be officially involved in attacking a sovereign state.
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Some conservative Democrats and Republicans advocated for more-aggressive military intervention. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) called for creating a no-fly zone. Two right-wing analysts sketched out such a plan in a
Wall Street Journal
opinion essay. Jack Keane is a former vice chief of staff of the US Army, and Danielle Pletka is an analyst with the conservative American Enterprise Institute. They argued for limited attacks to ground Assad's air force, which might then expand to a no-fly zone. “Outfit moderate rebel units vetted by the CIA with man-portable [shoulder fired] antiaircraft missiles,” they wrote. “If American forces use standoff cruise missiles and B-2 stealth bombers for these strikes, they will be out of the enemy's reach.” They admit that airfields can be repaired. “These operations would need to be sustained for a period of time to preclude repairs.”
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Such limited military engagements sound good in Washington because no Americans are likely to die and the bloated defense budget will hardly miss the billions it will cost to execute. Aside from the immorality of waging war in which civilians will inevitably die, the plan won't work. In Libya a similar scheme took seven months to depose Kaddafi, only to leave the country in the hands of warring militias.

The failure to develop a viable rebel coalition and general public opposition at home to another war bolstered factional splits in the Republican Party. Libertarians and isolationists criticized Obama and opposed his plans to bomb Syria after the chemical-weapons incident. They defied their own Republican House and Senate leadership.

Many Libertarians hold a consistent antiwar view when it comes to the Middle East. Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Libertarian Cato
Institute and a former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan. He wrote, “What if the United States helps blow up Syria? Washington will have no control over the outcome. But if the result is increased regional instability, terrorism, and civil conflict, highlighted by brutal revenge killings, murder, and ethnic cleansing of Alawites, and mistreatment of other minorities, the United States government will bear direct responsibility. If Washington intervenes, it will own the result.”
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Right-wing isolationists, on the other hand, used anti-interventionist rhetoric to push a racist and xenophobic agenda. Isolationism has a long history in the United States (see
chapter 3
). Its advocates oppose America getting politically or militarily involved outside the Western Hemisphere. Conservative isolationists opposed US involvement in World War II, thus objectively helping Nazi aggression. Today political commentator Pat Buchanan carries the isolationist banner. He was a speechwriter and adviser to three American presidents, and he twice sought the Republican nomination for president himself.

Buchanan argued against bombing Syria in September 2013 by accusing the military of being in the pay of Arab sheiks. “The Saudis and Gulf Arabs, cash-fat on the $110-a-barrel oil they sell US consumers, will pick up the tab for the Tomahawk missiles,” he wrote in a column. “Has it come to this—US soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen as the mercenaries of sheikhs, sultans, and emirs, Hessians of the New World Order, hired out to do the big-time killing for Saudi and Sunni royals?”
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Buchanan made both a populist and a racist argument. He blamed Arab rulers for what, in fact, is US corporate/military policy. He expressed no concern for the people of Syria who would become victims of US aggression, while fanning racist images of Arab plutocrats. It reminded me of how right-wing populists blamed Jewish bankers for starting World War II. The ultimate in right-wing isolationism sprang from the lips of former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who managed to combine populism, hatred of Obama, and Islamophobia. “Let these radical Islamic countries…where both sides are slaughtering each other as they scream over an
arbitrary red line, ‘Allah Akbar,' I say until we have someone who knows what they're doing, I say let Allah sort it out.”
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Just as Syria has generated conservative anti-interventionists, so, too, has it produced liberal interventionists. Famed
New York Times
columnist Thomas Friedman, for example, is a master at finding liberal justifications for war. He was a leading apologist for the occupation of Iraq until the policy obviously failed.
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And he did it again on Syria. It's worth quoting his views on Syria at length:

I believe that if you want to end the Syrian civil war and tilt Syria onto a democratic path, you need an international force to occupy the entire country, secure the borders, disarm all the militias, and midwife a transition to democracy. It would be staggeringly costly and take a long time with the outcome still not guaranteed…. My view is that anything short of an external force that rebuilds Syria from the bottom up will fail. Since there are no countries volunteering for that role (and I am certainly not nominating the United States), my guess is that the fighting in Syria will continue until the parties get exhausted.”
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Friedman managed to propose an outrageous plan for imperialist occupation and then slip out of it with a rhetorical flourish. Who could occupy Syria for a long time other than the United States or European powers? He made the racist assumption that Syrians and Arabs can develop a decent society only through occupation. Excuse me, Tom, but didn't that argument go out with the death of colonialism?

Some Syrian Americans and progressives made a more sophisticated argument for humanitarian intervention. They are justifiably outraged at the tactics used by the Assad regime. With the full backing of Russia, the Syrian army laid siege to rebel-controlled areas. Food and medicine were kept out. City services such as water and electricity were shut off. As a tactic to isolate the rebels, civilians were left to starve and die of disease. Some on the left have called for humanitarian military intervention. Danny Postel and Nader Hashemi, of the Center
for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver, wrote in a
New York Times
opinion article that if the Assad regime didn't lift the sieges, “an external, international force must be introduced to guarantee the safe passage of food and medicine to starving Syrian civilians…. The sieges must be broken by any means necessary.”
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Postel and Hashemi invoked the UN doctrine of Responsibility to Protect, which they define as “the principle that if a state fails to protect its populations from mass atrocities—or is in fact the perpetrator of such crimes—the international community must step in to protect the victims, with the collective use of force authorized by the [UN] Security Council.” They recognize that Russia would likely veto any such authorization in the security council. Therefore “if a multinational force cannot be assembled, then at least some countries should step up and organize Syria's democratically oriented rebel groups to provide the necessary force on the ground, with air cover from participating nations.” In another article, Postel made clear that he opposes US intervention. He wrote that some countries that might participate included France, Australia, Jordan, and Luxembourg. Without international action “hundreds of thousands of Syrians” will be consigned to starvation, he wrote.
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I have great respect for Postel and Hashemi, who have done important work in support of the Syrian people, and before that, in support of the 2009 popular demonstrations in Iran. But I profoundly disagree with the concept of humanitarian intervention. In the foreword to this book, Noam Chomsky discussed the origins and flaws in the Responsibility to Protect doctrine. What powers have the military capability and political will to spearhead an attack on Syria? We can safely eliminate Luxembourg and Jordan. Australia is too far away. That leaves France as the main protagonist, with possible token support from other countries. France had sent troops to fight in its former colonies in central Africa. France might be willing to attack Syria, also a former colony.