The Killing in Syria Continues

Yesterday in Syria a few dozen more people were killed by the government for participating in protests in three different cities. Government TV said that the police were stopping thugs from rioting. Word from those in the protests is that peaceful marches were fired on by government snipers. Becasue the Assad regime has blacked out communications of most sorts, no one outside the country knows for sure what happened or how many were killed. We do know, however, that the forces of the Assad regime, the same Assad that Hilary Clinton called a "reformer" a few weeks ago, have been systematically killing opponents. There are even unconfirmed rumors that Iran has supplied snipers to Syria to help in the slaughter. President Obama is still basking in the glow of the bin Laden death, but events in Syria will eventually intrude upon that glow. US national interests are at stake in Syria in a way that is much more important than was the case in Libya. Syria is the only Sunni majority state that is allied with Iran. It is the conduit for missiles and other weapons to Hezbollah. It has been the main conduit for foreign terrorists to infiltrate into Iraq to attack American forces there. It is one of the rejectionist states that borders Israel. It has given safe haven to a number of terrorists over the years. As a result, getting rid of Assad and his Baath regime would dimish Iranian influence in the area, cut off Hezbollah from its arms supplier, force the terror groups to find a new place to hide out and possibly lead to a peacde agreement between Syria and Israel. All of these events would benefit the national interests of the USA.

President Obama will have to interrupt his victory celebrations and campaign fundraising soon to decide how to deal with Assad. It will ring hollow if the US goes back to "leading from behind", in other words doing nothing. We went into Libya to stop Gaddafi from killing his own people, so why would the same rationale not apply in Syria? Obama may make that distinction, but he has to explain to the American people why that is the case. What was the American interest in Libya that is not present in Syria? Was it just a fight over Libyan oil? For all of those years during the Bush administration we heard from the left that Iraq was just a fight for oil, a charge that was vehemently denied by the Bushies. Has Obama now adopted that as his own policy? Clearly, Obama adopted many of the successful Bush policies despite opposing them both before and during the campaign. Is Obama now also adopting the policy that he thinks was behind the Bush effort in Iraq even though it never was?

The sad truth is that Libya has no strategic value aside from its oil. Even that is not that great. Libya gave up its terror ties and WMD programs. That was one of the great successes of the Bush era. Syria is just so much more important. Surely, there are ways that the US can help those who are protesting in Syria without full scale military action. the time has come for Obama to pay attention to this and actually do something!