Naturally, the White House follows my advice:
Mr. Kerry said hair and blood samples from first responders who were helping victims in East Damascus “have tested positive for signatures of sarin.” While it was the first time anyone in the administration had pinpointed the poison, Mr. Kerry did not say how the administration had obtained the evidence. But he said the case against Mr. Assad was “going to build,” and insisted there was no cost to delaying.
“We do not lose anything; we actually gain,” Mr. Kerry said. “And what we gain is the legitimacy of the full-throated response of the Congress of the United States and the president acting together.”
While I still think it’s problematic to escalate our fight against the Assad regime, it was absolutely required that the administration build a stronger case and get some buy-in from Congress before they took military action. They still have work to do, but now they have time to do it.
And, if Congress won’t go along with the plan, then they have an escape hatch that allows them not to start down a dangerous road.
Handed to him by Mossad, because the simple answer is always best.
Yeah, sure, maybe.
But you know what? I’m all for questioning and challenging Sec. Kerry. However, I’m not going to treat the man like he’s Condoleeza Rice, Dick Cheney, or Donald Rumsfeld. I think he deserves a little more credit that having people on the left assume he’s some rightwing neo-con lunatic.
Agreed, completely.
The problem with trusting Kerry is not Kerry, it’s the fog of lies and deception that surrounds the Syrian conflict. All the players are dishonest (at some level), all have agendas.
What I thought, but Sunday Express reports eavesdropping evidence came from UK.
A UN delegation just returned a day or two from Syria with biological samples taken from the victims. These were analyzed in European labs. Now the results are coming out. No Mossad needed just a newspaper.
Davis is a snark king, just so you guys who aren’t familiar with him don’t take it at face value.
After posting this I saw a video clip in which SoS Kerry said these particular results came from first responders who were exposed during the attack. So Mossad may well have been involved after all.
Bottom line though remains the same. The group which did the deed is the group which was capable of doing the deed and which has a history of doing similar deeds: The Assad dynasty.
The rebels claim in social media they ‘smuggled’ some survivors out of Syria specifically to provide samples. The chain of custody issues are not being addressed, I am surprised our proprietor is not raising objections.
Israel’s purposes would be sooooo much better served by a coalition of largely unknown, demonstrably unpredictable, clearly Salafist actors, with links to the most extreme players in the Gulf, and a recrudescence of the Lebanese civil war, than with an Assad regime, no matter how badly distracted, they’ve dealt with for 50 years.
Don’t forget the (31st in production, tied with Australia!) oil, either.
Here’s hoping the Republicans in Congress vote against giving the President the approval to attack, even if they are doing it for the wrong reason.
It should be a fucking requirement for every single politician to take extensive classes in the rise and fall of every single world empire to date.
Idiots and morons run the world. We should stop letting them.
“Here’s hoping the Republicans in Congress vote against giving the President the approval to attack, even if they are doing it for the wrong reason.“
If someone is doing the right thing, don’t question his motives, shut up and let him keep doing it.
Sheesh, why must the public wring this out with skepticism? Now they have to come clean on the provenance of the evidence, the independence of the testers, and so on. Dribbling out information fosters more skepticism and reduces credibility about assertions that would previously be taken on trust.
When I say that secrecy is corrosive of democracy, this one, but not the only, symptom.
it’s quite possible they are waiting on results too, this did just happen a couple weeks ago
Pretending to absolute knowledge that they don’t have or that is untrue is what destroys credibility. The US is going to have to back out of the policeman of last resort role. We no longer have the resources for it, and we never did it very well anyway.
Well, as we so far have had no actual fight against the Assad regime, we’re hardly “escalating” it.
But this is a great move that really throws a hammer into the gears of the Imperial Presidency.
We’ve lobbed cruise missiles into lots of countries since Reagan started it by bombing Libya back in 1986. No congressional approval. Clinton lobbed cruise missiles into Baghdad three times (to retaliate for the assassination attempt on Bush the Larger in 93, to defend our no-fly zones in 96, and to punish Saddam for not complying with chemical weapons inspections in 98). He also lobbed ’em into Sudan and Afghanistan in 98, and into Bosnia and Kosovo, and sent troops into Somalia and Haiti. (http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/crash-course-a-guide-to-30-years-of-us-military-strikes-against-ot
her-nations.php?ref=fpb)
And that’s just Clinton. All the presidents have done it. All without Congressional approval.
Now that precedent has been challenged. Great politics for Obama in the moment, but even better for the future.
Did you totally miss the part where Obama authorized heavier weapons for the rebels in Syria. We’re at war with the regime by proxy. How did you miss this?
Easily. I was going by the TPM list I linked to in my comment. Didn’t mention that. However, I hardly see that as “escalation.” We’re not on the ground in Syria and we’re not going to be.
Frankly, I think the Left (of which I normally call myself a member) is going to have to do some serious soul-searching over this whole episode.
I can understand opposing going to war or intervening in a civil war. I also oppose those things, but nobody is proposing doing either of those things.
Allowing chemical weapons to be used against civilians with no consequences whatever, however, that’s something we’re going to look back on with shame.
Flame away.
From June 14th, 2013:
I believe you.
And if Obama were proposing lobbing cruise missiles into Syria in order to help the rebels, then indeed that would be an “escalation.”
However, he’s proposing no such thing. He’s proposing lobbing cruise missiles into Syria, probably to strike their air bases, as retaliation against the regime’s use of chemical weapons against civilians, and act so counter to international law for the past 100 years that even in WW2 no one used them on the battlefield.
Assad cannot be allowed to gas civilians with impunity.
It has nothing to do with helping the rebels, who are essentially a lost cause anyway.
“Assad cannot be allowed to gas civilians with impunity.”
And yet Saddam was not only allowed to use them with impunity, the U.S. government HELPED him use them.
Hypocrisy, anyone?
Assad is lucky that so far the US and UK dossier of his crimes that force us to attack Syria doesn’t include the torture of Maher Arar. But as Saddam discovered, any war crimes committed with the complicity of the US can always be used later by the US if need be.
Not unique:
Except perhaps telling Congress in advance of their vote, that it doesn’t matter.
the House isn’t Congress, but you know that already
Well I guess that means Obamacare is still going to be with us.
Has the administration put forward a draft resolution for Congress to pass or is Congress writing their own? I have seen supposed text from a resolution but no links to the actual document. And the supposed text that I see is troubling. But I’m withholding judgement until I see that it is actually something that is likely to go before Congress.
Ah, here it is:
President Obama’s draft legislation regarding the Syrian conflict
The Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Act of 2003. This is what the Obama administration is basing its national security interest claims on? Really?
This is the worst cobbling together of authorization since Stephen Bradbury. Who wrote the POS draft legislation?
So the matter of credibility of the plan goes to the military plan to deter, disrupt, prevent and degrade the potential for (all of those), future uses of chemical weapons or other weapons of mass destruction. All members of Congress need to vet that plan for practicality. And then keep their traps shut. Operational security of military operations is a valid form of secrecy during the shelf life of the operation.
I’m skeptical of the US military’s capability to do this mission, first of all because it presupposes knowledge of the locations of these asets, and second because of the difficulty of destroying chemical weapons without some sort of controlled access to them. If the US military succeed in accomplishing this mission, it will be in the military history books.
And I am most skeptical of the US military’s ability to accomplish this without killing more Syrians than would likely be killed in future chemical attacks if the US did nothing. That goes to the notion of proportionality, one that was grossly violated by the Bush admnistration’s response to 9/11.
From what I have been hearing there is no plan to go after chemical weapons, in part because the US doesn’t even know where they are. The plan I have been hearing is around command and control centers, transportation infrastructure, etc. I even heard someone being interviewed on the radio who said they would likely go after the Ministry of Defense, which I have passed by many times, and is not far from the middle of Damascus.
I’ve been reading the same things. Which is why we have to watch what the language of the AUMF actually says. All of that attack on command and control seems to me to be a pre-condition of being able to strike the chemical weapons sites at will.
Of course, suppressing command and control also gives the upper hand to whatever rebels can command the opportunity.
The central issue that Obama is basing his potential response on is the future use of chemical weapons and other means of WMD. The question that folks must answer for themselves is does the failure to punish Assad signal to other nations and organizations that chemical weapons’ use does not raise the stakes. Should Isreal and other nations in the region feel more vulnerable if Syria’s actions go unpunished?
Is Asad’s the only government to use chemical weapons? Have any of the others who have used chemical weapons been “punished” for it? Did failure to punish any of those others signal to other nations and organizations that chemical weapons’ use does not raise the stakes?
Did the U.S. ever punish Saddam Hussein for using chemical weapons? No, on the contrary, the United States aided and abetted him in some cases, including against “his own people” to use that tired, worn-out phrase. Did the United States’ aiding and abetting Saddam Hussein in the use of chemical weaponssignal to other nations and organizations that chemical weapons’ use does not raise the stakes? It appears not since the use of chemical weapons does not seem to have increased significantly during that time.
As for Israel, Bashshar Al Asad has not retaliated against Israel for its aggressive acts, including bombing deep inside Syria, so it seems unlikely he would use chemical weapons now or in the future. And Syria is not at war with any other state in the region, so would have no reason to use chemical weapons.
Setting aside for the moment the utter bankruptcy of the argument which goes: mistakes were made in the past so let’s keep making them, it is laughable to suggest Saddam Hussein escaped judgement for his actions.
Before anyone claims his sentence had nothing to do with chem weapons know that he was charged with Crimes Against Humanity the list of which includes:
Gassing Kurds in Halabja in 1988
In August 1988, during the Anfal campaign, Iraqi forces attacked the Kurdish town of Halabja with bombs containing a mixture of mustard and nerve gases.
An estimated 5,000 civilians, including women, children and babies, were killed in a single day.
Gen Majid ordered the attack, earning the notorious epithet Chemical Ali.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3320293.stm
So let’s keep it real eh? Enough bankrupt excuses.
Ummmm – that’s not what I am saying. There was also not a single excuse in anything I wrote.
As for Halabja, perhaps you are unaware of how the U.S. contributed to that atrocity, and what happened when some Congress members attempted to prevent further such contributions.
Attacking Syria would be a mistake, not just according to me, but according to a whole slew of U.S. military experts, including no less than the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But hey, if you like the idea, by all means encourage your representatives to vote for it.
Max Blumenthal, Mondoweiss, Dubious Intelligence and Iran Blackmail: How Israel is driving the US to war in Syria
A key part of Blumenthal’s argument is a Ha’aretz piece that is behind a paywall.
Which link it is, Tarheeldem? I can get Haaretz articles,
The one about the meeting with the National Security Council staff during the Israeli visit to DC.
“While I still think it’s problematic to escalate our fight against the Assad regime, it was absolutely required that the administration build a stronger case and get some buy-in from Congress before they took military action. They still have work to do, but now they have time to do it.“
So, even though it’s “problematic” (kind of a weak word, I think) to launch an attack on a sovereign country that is not attacking or threatening to attack the United States (or any other country for that matter), you are happy they are going about it in the “right” way?
An attack on a country that is not attacking or threatening you is called aggression. It is wrong. There is no “right” way to do a wrong thing.
I have little hope that the the Congress will not roll over, but I hope they don’t.
Excellent piece from the International Crisis Group weighing in on analysis and a way forward.
A diplomatic solution involving the US and Iran would be most welcome. But they had me at, “It might discourage future use of chemical weapons by signaling even harsher punishment in the event of recidivism – an important achievement in and of itself.”
One has to acknowledge the argument of the deterrence of a limited military strike, if only to unpack it and tear it down.
But their broader point, and how they specified the value of the political realignment seems to be the real value of the position piece.
I hated Alexander Cockburn, but Patrick is much more readable:
In Syria, it’s a case of all or nothing
If all-out war is not feasible, could peace come by negotiation? Here America and Britain’s stance has been hypocritical, publicly supporting peace talks while offering only surrender terms to the Assad government at a time when it controls most of Syria. This was largely the result of a miscalculation by world leaders in 2011-12 whereby they underestimated the staying power of the Assad government. Its collapse was gleefully predicted, a role for Assad in Syria’s political transition ruled out, while Iran, an important player, was to be excluded. A peace conference so out of keeping with the real balance of power is not going to stop any wars. But bringing Iran in would undermine the US, European and Israeli effort to isolate it over its development of nuclear power. The US would effectively have to recognise Tehran as a regional power, which would infuriate the Israelis and the Gulf monarchies.
Even then, peace would not come easily, if at all. The best interim solution could be a UN-monitored ceasefire as briefly occurred under the Kofi Annan plan in 2012. All sides are dependent on outside backers, and even those who most want to fight need weapons, ammunition and money. Heavy pressure could be put on them to agree to a peace conference and a temporary ceasefire.
This would be a Lebanese-style truce – unsatisfactory but better than full-scale war. A peace conference on this basis could be the political and diplomatic counterpart to the limited US military strike President Obama is contemplating. In practice there has been a stalemate in most of Syria for the last year. If the Syrian army did use poison gas, it shows it does not have the strength to retake even the inner rebel-held suburbs of Damascus. It is better therefore for the battle lines to be frozen under some form of UN supervision. Long-term solutions will only begin to be feasible when Syrians are no longer at the mercy of what Northern Ireland politicians used to call “the politics of the last atrocity”.