generalspeaking

Humpty-Dumpty Sat On A Wall

"In the strange period since August 21st, when the poison gas attacks took place, the White House has seemed incapable of strategic thinking. The State Department seems incapable of coherent communication. Everything is upside down; nothing seems to be working as it should."
George Packer, New Yorker magazine

President Obama has been presented with a real head-scratcher. He committed himself to a course of action -- twice -- and the first time hoped his 'red-line' scenario would melt into history, unnoticed. On the second occasion he seemed to hope to himself melt into history unnoticed. Until that is, his nemesis Vladimir Putin, threw him a life-line. A humiliating one, to be certain, and one that might do nothing at all to restore the sorry prospects of his legacy, but worth the effort of embracing, he obviously felt.

No fault of his Secretary of State that their strenuous efforts to capture the belligerent hearts and minds of Americans into another conflict from which they wince at the prospects of flailing about in the sucking swamps of Islamic fervour and tribal antipathies has failed. They cannot be accused of not trying; to evade responsibility at the very same time when they're faced with the necessity to restore credibility. Barack Obama prides himself on not being George W. Bush. He would much prefer not to march to the same drummer that his predecessor succumbed to. And almost any plot that might rescue the situation even one promising to be prolonged, complex and ultimately irresolvable, buys time.

Secretary of State John Kerry's promise of a "very limited, very targeted, short-term" intervention which would be "unbelievably small" seemed too much of a kindergarten tale to be good reading for the public, let alone the U.S. Congress. Someone must have whispered the query "nice, but what would it accomplish? Would it stop Assad in his tracks? Would it ensure that the jihadis would leave for more opportune pastures? Would normalcy be restored in Syria? What IS normalcy in Syria?"

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem was only too happy to agree with Moscow's plan, responding to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's brilliant ploy. Dropping the stolid pretense that Syria has no weapons of mass destruction, never had any chemical weapons depots, that it was the rebels who purloined such weapons from Libyan military depots when no one was guarding them, rescuing the rusty canisters and their contents for use in Damascus.

"We fully support Russia's initiative concerning chemical weapons in Syria and we are ready to co-operate", he exulted. Realizing that the regime had suddenly discovered that it had chemical weapons depots, after all. And if all it took to get the U.S. threat off the back of a government that is wholly focused on destroying its opponents, well then, they'd go for it, heh-heh. Perhaps the thought flashed through their minds that it represents an impossible task.

No inventory, so how'll they ever know what's there and what isn't? Besides which, when the threats of imminent invasion and attack were being bruited about, the military obeyed its most recent orders to move as much of the chemical canisters as they safely could. In the process, sharing them out to their staunch supporters in Lebanon, so that now Hezbollah has its share. And how's the US/UN to know where to look?

Details can be both inconvenient and extremely useful. Depending, right?

So then, all the commotion by the U.S. administration to convince Congressional members to agree to authorize force in Syria was for naught? Not necessarily. The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces still wants the legitimacy that would confer on his decision if it comes to that decision, so that blame, when it invariably rears its head in history, will be apportioned fairly, after all.

With a bare one-third of Americans believing that Obama represents a finer foreign-policy president than George W. Bush, the un-impressiveness of that condition is concerning to the president. To ameliorate that unfortunate impression, should he or should he not. The correct answer continues to elude. There's those miserable statistics of over 100,000 dead Syrians, of millions seeking refuge, of unabated violence and impromptu atrocities.

And what's almost worse is the war-mongering president of Russia co-opting audacity to preach to the American people on their civilizing failures, and the dreadful disappointment of a president whose promise of hope gained him a Nobel Laureate for Peace. President Obama at the very least, has some class. It would never occur to him to write a piece for Pravda, deploring Putin's adventures in Chechnya and Georgia.

Maybe he should?

Labels: Chemical Weapons, Conflict, Russia, Syria, United States

posted by Pieface @ Friday, September 13, 2013