I have been writing about the murder campaign by the Assad regime in Syria for the last year and a half. It began small. First, there was just a crackdown on protest marchers by police with clubs. Next came the use of govenment snipers to shoot people at random at the protests. Then, Assad began to move beyond snipers to automatic weapons that sprayed the protesters. When that still did not stop the protests, Assad went to using the Syrian army to take over neighborhoods where the protests were strongest. That led to the first countermeasure by protesters (other than the marches themselves). The Syrian people began to fight back against the army, and many soldiers chose to abandon the army rather than kill their countrymen. Once again, Assad escalated the fighting. The next move by Assad was to bring in artillery and tanks to shell troublesome neighborhoods. Thousands of innocents were killed. Tens of thousands fled, many to Turkey, Jordan or Lebanon. At that point, the opposition gelled into rebel forces. All sorts of ordinary Syrians began fighting against the oppression by Assad. In response, Assad threw in the use of fighter jets and armed helicopters against the rebel positions. Fighting then spread across the entire country. Two of the biggest battlefields are the largest cities of Aleppo and Damascus.
Right now, no one knows which side will prevail. The rebels have the support of the majority of the people and they control large sections of Syria, especially in the northern part of the country. Assad, however, still has the loyalty of the remaining portion of the army as well as support from Iran and Russia. This means that the war is being fought by lightly armed rebels against heavily armed Assad forces who get constant resupply from their foreign benefactors in Teheran and Moscow. The death toll is over 20,000 already. To put this in context, this is about ten times the number of Americans killed in ten years of fighting in Afghanistan.
American policy initially was to ignore the fighting and to side strongly with Assad. Remember when Obama and Clinton called Assad a "reformer" while he was busy having demonstrators killed by snipers? While you may not remember this, you can be sure that the Syrian people do. Then Obama moved away from support for Assad to silence. There were periodic calls for peaceful resolution of the problem, but months and months went by without a condemnation of Assad by the USA. Those who were marching in the streets in Syria were on their own in Obama's view. Later, with much fanfare, Obama had the State Department announce that Assad should step down. That earthshaking moment had no effect in Syria since it did not come until there was a full scale war going on there. Contrary to Obama's own belief in his efficacy, both sides in Syria realized that Obama's words meant nothing. They were just words, nothing more.
We are now at a point where there is clear foreign intervention in Syria. Iran is now sending troops as advisers to the Assad forces. The mullahs have made clear that they will not allow their only Arab ally to fall from power. Russia has protected Assad at the UN, and it has shipped arms and ammunition to resupply the Assad forces. Obama's response has been to talk about the need for humanitarian aid (although none has been actually sent). The Obamacrats also leaked word that Obama had authorized the CIA to help the rebels. This is another of those leaks of a national security secret that are clearly designed to improve the image of Obama. For this one, however, there is not a single shred of evidence that it is true. There has not been any word from Syria that the USA is involved in any way with either side.
Last week, Obama did warn Assad that any use of Syria's chemical weapons stockpile (which is reputed to be the largest in the world) will not be tolerated. In response, Iran warned Obama to stay out of Syria and our president shut up after that. Obama just looked weak. The problem, however, is that all those chemical weapons remain in place for use by Assad if he feels it is necessary. American air power could neutralize essentially all of the chemical weapons with a few days of sorties into Syria, but that is unlikely to be ordered by Obama. Perhaps he is waiting for Assad to first murder tens of thousands with these weapons and then to disperse them into new locations so that the president can tell us that there are too many locations to take them all out with air power.
The sad truth is that there is no end in sight to the slaughter in Syria. It is unlikely to go on for too much longer, but there will still be tens of thousands more Syrians killed. The USA and the West should be condemned for their failure to take any meaningful action. This is not just some internal conflict in an unimportant country. It is a chance to remove the most important ally of Iran in the world. It is a chance to cut the supply lines for the terror groups Hezbollah and Hamas. It was a chance to establish a new Syria, a democratic Syria, a Syria that could be an ally of the new Iraq. That chance is mostly gone now. Inaction by America has allowed al Qaeda forces to get into position as part of the rebel force. Let's hope that when Assad decides to use his chemical weapons (and he will), that his targets are concentrations of al Qaeda forces.
Obama's policies regarding Syria have reduced our options to just that: hoping that Assad uses his weapons of mass destruction on the right enemy. Obama promised hope and change, but who knew that this would be the hope he brought?
No comments:
Post a Comment