It seems that the United States is about to engage in a military strike on Syria in response to the repeated usage of chemical weapons by the Assad regime. The nature and tone of the statements from John Kerry and others have moved decidedly towards indicating an attack. The question, though, is what will president Obama decide to do and how will he go about achieving that goal?
First of all, we know that Obama has already ruled out sending any troops to Syria. That means that the remaining options are variants of three things: 1) a symbolic attack on a few targets in Syria to "punish" the Assad regime; 2) a systematic attack on strategic targets to extract a major price from the Assad regime; or 3) a major move towards supporting the rebels who are fighting to bring down Assad. Clearly, the American people right now lean towards staying out of the Syrian conflict. Poll after poll shows this. Of course, Obama has never actually offered any explanation to the American people as to why we should support a military move in Syria. A clear and well reasoned explanation would go a long way towards gaining the support of the people. There is also limited support in Congress for American involvement in Syria. These folks at least are up to speed with what is happening in that conflict. Obama, however, has not tried to convince Congress to support an action. Indeed, he has not even indicated that he will seek Congressional approval before committing American forces. It will be like Libya all over again. The Constitution requires the approval of Congress to go to war, and Obama just ignores that requirement. Let's hope that before acting, Obama gets Congress to agree.
In any event, each of the three alternatives has both pluses and minuses. The symbolic attack risks the least as far as American casualties are concerned. It can be done just with cruise missiles. The problem is that a one off attack will be looked at as a joke in the Middle East. Assad will have used chemical weapons to kill thousands with essentially no cost to his forces. A systematic attack on Syrian targets like Assad's airports and air force would be a crushing blow to the Assad regime. Absent its air power, the Assad forces are unlikely to be able to project force across most of Syria. It will not guarantee victory by the rebels, but it will make clear that Assad had better not use chemical weapons again. A major move to support the rebels is probably more than Obama would be willing to do at this point. Such a move would require us to separate out the al Qaeda affiliated Islamists from the rest of the rebels or else we would be arming our sworn enemies.
My best guess is that we will soon see the following happen: Obama will direct an attack on Syria in the form of cruise missile strikes. He will issue the order without any prior backing from Congress. He will hit a few targets only and then will stop. We will hear in great detail about the "proportional nature" of these attacks. In other words, Obama will act both in an unconstitutional manner and in a wimpy way. I hope I am wrong.
First of all, we know that Obama has already ruled out sending any troops to Syria. That means that the remaining options are variants of three things: 1) a symbolic attack on a few targets in Syria to "punish" the Assad regime; 2) a systematic attack on strategic targets to extract a major price from the Assad regime; or 3) a major move towards supporting the rebels who are fighting to bring down Assad. Clearly, the American people right now lean towards staying out of the Syrian conflict. Poll after poll shows this. Of course, Obama has never actually offered any explanation to the American people as to why we should support a military move in Syria. A clear and well reasoned explanation would go a long way towards gaining the support of the people. There is also limited support in Congress for American involvement in Syria. These folks at least are up to speed with what is happening in that conflict. Obama, however, has not tried to convince Congress to support an action. Indeed, he has not even indicated that he will seek Congressional approval before committing American forces. It will be like Libya all over again. The Constitution requires the approval of Congress to go to war, and Obama just ignores that requirement. Let's hope that before acting, Obama gets Congress to agree.
In any event, each of the three alternatives has both pluses and minuses. The symbolic attack risks the least as far as American casualties are concerned. It can be done just with cruise missiles. The problem is that a one off attack will be looked at as a joke in the Middle East. Assad will have used chemical weapons to kill thousands with essentially no cost to his forces. A systematic attack on Syrian targets like Assad's airports and air force would be a crushing blow to the Assad regime. Absent its air power, the Assad forces are unlikely to be able to project force across most of Syria. It will not guarantee victory by the rebels, but it will make clear that Assad had better not use chemical weapons again. A major move to support the rebels is probably more than Obama would be willing to do at this point. Such a move would require us to separate out the al Qaeda affiliated Islamists from the rest of the rebels or else we would be arming our sworn enemies.
My best guess is that we will soon see the following happen: Obama will direct an attack on Syria in the form of cruise missile strikes. He will issue the order without any prior backing from Congress. He will hit a few targets only and then will stop. We will hear in great detail about the "proportional nature" of these attacks. In other words, Obama will act both in an unconstitutional manner and in a wimpy way. I hope I am wrong.
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