Putin
didn't save Obama, He. Beat. Him: With the Russian proposal on Syrian
chemical weapons, the United States is being escorted out of the Middle East.
By
Lee Smith
Maybe
Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin really did discuss the idea of putting Syrian chemical
weapons under international control last week on the sidelines of the G20
conference. Putin sure doesn’t care that Obama’s taking credit for the
proposal, or that the administration is posturing like a Mob enforcer.
“The only reason why we are seeing this proposal,” said White
House spokesman Jay Carney, “is because of the U.S. threat of military action.”
Right,
Putin is laughing to himself. Whatever. If Obama wants to sell it like a
Christmas miracle on Pennsylvania Avenue that’s fine with Putin, because Putin
won.
Reset
with Russia was originally a strategic priority for the Obama administration
because it saw Moscow as the key to getting Iran to come to the negotiating
table. Putin, from the White House’s perspective, was destined for the role of
junior partner. Now Putin has turned “Reset” upside down. By helping Obama out
of a jam with Syria, Putin has made himself the senior partner to whom the
White House is now beholden. Accordingly, when Putin proposes the same sort of
deal with Iran, with Russia having established its bona fides as an
interlocutor for Syria, Obama is almost certain to jump at it.
What’s
unclear is whether Obama understands that his foreign policy legacy will be to
have ruined the American position in the Middle East, our patrimony of the last
seven decades. If the 1979 takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran signaled
weakness, the Russian deal screams surrender. The real surprise is that it’s
not Iran kicking the United States out of the region under Obama’s watch, but
Putin.
The
Syrian government has accepted the
proposal because they understand it is an empty formalism. As everyone
knows, as even all but the most obtuse White House officials must also
understand, Assad will not give up his unconventional arsenal because he
cannot. The use of chemical weapons in a Damascus suburb August 21 is evidence
that, contrary to the regime’s narrative, Assad and his allies are not routing
the rebels. The district that was targeted is a strategically significant node
that, among other things, is close to the Dumayr airstrip where the regime is supplied
with direct flights from Iran. The rebels had held the territory for over a
year, thwarting repeated attempts by Assad’s forces to retake it. Presumably,
Assad calculated that given the importance of the area it was worth testing
Obama’s red line to take it. Without chemical weapons, Assad fears he may
lose the war.
But
what’s even more terrifying for Assad is the prospect that he, his family and
friends, regime officials, and indeed the entire Alawite community might lose
their lives. In the event the regime should find itself in such an existential
crisis, plan B is to withdraw from Damascus and head to the coastal mountains
that make up the historical Alawite homeland. The question for Assad then is,
how to ensure the safety of that retreat? Further, once there how are the
Alawites to defend their redoubt from a Sunni community galvanized by a shared
vendetta against Assad and his community? From Assad’s perspective, without
chemical weapons the Alawites might fall off the face of the earth.
Who
knows what the Russians told Assad? For God’s sake, just say it’s your
chemical weapons arsenal you’re turning over for safekeeping. Send them
canisters of perfume, or cat urine. The Americans just want a deal, the
president thinks he’s saving face. If the Americans are smart, they’ll let the
whole thing drop and call it a win, but knowing them they’ll come back later
and complain that you’re not keeping your end of the bargain. No problem. We’ll
stall them. And then every time Obama whines it will remind your adversaries
and U.S. allies around the world that the Americans are empty suits, a bunch of
legalistic bureaucrats who are incapable of standing with their friends.
It’s
hard not to be impressed with Putin. A man who up until yesterday seemed merely
crass, has revealed himself to be capable of great subtlety. For years his
method was so transparent, so obvious, his vulgarities intended to appall and
shock the White House. He accused one secretary of state of plotting against
him, and another he calls a liar. He gave Edward Snowden refuge. He dispatches
his thugs to beat up LGBT teenagers. After a while, the administration learned
not to be surprised by anything Putin does. He’s a bully, smitten with his own
macho self-image. That’s all true, but now we see that Putin was testing Obama
and looking for openings.
The
president’s supporters and publicists in the press know how to package Obama’s
weakness. The fear that everyone else in the world smells emanating from him
like a wounded animal is really just humility and modesty—fitting attributes
for the leader of a superpower that needs to make amends for having meddled so
long in the affairs of others. And besides, this talk of strength and weakness
is juvenile—the world is not a schoolyard. And so Obama ignored Putin’s slights
and held his head high. This revealed to Putin Obama’s real liability, his
vanity. Obama always needs to look good. He will embrace defeat so long as he
can still imagine himself a handsome princeling. After pushing Obama around for
five years, now Putin escorts him out of the Middle East. Here, friend, take my
hand. Let me help you to the sidelines.
As
David Samuels wrote last week, Putin’s goal is to replace
the United States as the regional power broker. Sure, Russia is less a state
than a criminal enterprise with lots of energy to sell, while the United States
drives the global economy, but so what? What good are American aircraft
carriers if you don’t have the will to use them? Putin will use anything he has
to win, while Obama is looking for a reason not to fire a few cruise missiles
into the Syrian desert. There is absolutely no chance Obama would risk a
shooting war with Iran.
The
Russian proposal not only saves Obama from having to do something about Syria,
it also, and much more important, shows the way forward with Iran. From the White
House’s point of view, it’s credible threat of force made Syria buckle and will
similarly bring Iran to the negotiating table. Putin has shown his bona fides
as a credible interlocutor with Damascus and will do the same with Iran. Obama
can relax now and imagine that he has finally earned his Nobel Peace Prize and
that that sound he hears is the tide of war receding.
In
fact, it is the sound of American allies around the world—the Poles and Czechs,
the Japanese and the South Koreans, the Saudis, Jordanians and Israelis, among
others—gnashing their teeth. They now see that they are on their own, and that
the word of the United States means nothing.
Russian Parliament Gloats
as Putin Checkmates Obama Over Syria
By
John Nolte
Monday
morning, Secretary of State John Kerry made what an administration official
called a "major goof" with
a never-going-to-happen hypothetical that
suggested Syria could avoid American airstrikes by surrendering their chemical
weapons. Even the State Department walked Kerry's statement back. But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
immediately seized upon Kerry's flub, and now a member of the Russian
parliament is gloating over Putin's checkmate of Obama.
Watching
one administration bungle after another unfurl, Alexi Pushkov , the chairman of
the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee, is publicly mocking Obama. Via
Twitter, Pushkov wrote that
this mess “knocks the ground out from under Obama’s plans for a military
strike.”
Kerry's
flub played right into the Russians hands; and by breaking weak, stepping back
from his own red line, and embracing Kerry's hypothetical proposal during a
round-robin of network interviews Monday night, President Obama chose to repeat
Kerry's mistake. Russian President Vladmir Putin now looks like the world's
peacemaker and Syria can dig in and drag this out forever as the West tries to
figure out how to secure and destroy a thousand tons of chemicals weapons
without putting "boots on the ground" in the middle of a civil war.
The
real win for Syria and Russia, though, is that when this diplomatic quagmire is
all over, Assad remains in power. This, after Obama said he must go.
As
I write this, Assad is already taking advantage of the Putin/Kerry monkey
wrench. For the first time since the talk of America military action began,
today Syria resumed its bombing attacks against the rebels.
From
Obama's off-script red line comment last year to Kerry's off-script second red
line yesterday, the only thing driving American foreign policy regarding Syria
is administration blunders.
Today,
even Israel is laughing at us.
The Full Godwin
Goes Bust
NOT HITLER.
‘Assad is a man of his
word who has been very generous with me. Syria will move; Syria will change as
it embraces a legitimate relationship with the United States. Syria can play a
critical role in bringing peace and stability if it makes the strategic
decision to do so.’
- Secretary of State John
Kerry, 16 March 2011
HITLER.
'It was used by Adolf
Hitler to gas millions of Jews; it was used by Saddam Hussein in order to gas
[Iranians and his own people]; and now it has been used by Bashir Assad.
Three people in all of history. And if the United States, knowing it and
knowing that we’ve drawn a line that the world has drawn with us, is unwilling
to stand up and confront that, it is an absolute certainty that gas will
proliferate.'
- Secretary of State John
Kerry, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 3 September 2013
But,
Hitler Assad could...
‘He could turn over every
single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next
week — turn it over, all of it, without delay and allow the full and total
accounting. OF COURSE, HE ISN’T ABOUT
TO DO THAT. IT CAN'T BE DONE.’
- Secretary of State John
Kerry, London, 9 September 2013
Which
was quickly followed by this statement from the State Department:
‘Secretary Kerry was
making a rhetorical argument about the impossibility and unlikelihood of Assad
turning over chemical weapons he has denied he used. His
(Kerry’s) point was that THIS BRUTAL DICTATOR WITH
A HISTORY OF PLAYING FAST AND LOOSE WITH THE FACTS CANNOT BE TRUSTED TO TURN
OVER CHEMICAL WEAPONS, OTHERWISE HE WOULD HAVE DONE SO LONG AGO. That’s
why the world faces this moment.’
So,
naturally, what happens next?
The
Russians jump:
‘We have passed our offer
to (Syrian Foreign Minister Walid) Al-Muallem and hope to receive [a] fast and
positive answer. We call on the Syrian leadership not only agree on a statement
of storage of chemical weapons under international control, but also its
subsequent destruction, as well as about the full accession to the Organization
for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. We will immediately join the work with
Damascus if establishing international control over chemical weapons in that
country helps prevent attacks. There cannot be any deals made with regard to
Russian policy that were concluded behind the Syrian people’s back. That will
not happen.’
- Russian Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov, today
Then,
Syria says:
‘The Syrian Arab Republic
welcomed the RUSSIAN
initiative, based on the concerns of the RUSSIAN
leadership for the lives of our citizens and the security of our
country.’
- Syrian Foreign Minister
Walid al-Muallem, who met with Lavrov in Moscow earlier today
So
does UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon.
And,
then, the Obama administration is forced to respond to the response to Kerry’s Gaffeplomacy:
U.S.
officials say they will take a “hard look” at a
proposal for Syria to surrender its chemical weapons to international control
to avoid a military strike.
State Department
spokeswoman Marie Harf said Monday the U.S.
would consider THE PROPOSAL FLOATED BY FOREIGN MINISTERS IN RUSSIA AND SYRIA with ‘serious skepticism’ because it might be a stalling tactic. She said
Syria had consistently refused to destroy its chemical weapons in the past.
The proposal came
after Secretary of State John Kerry said in London on Monday that Syrian
President Bashar Assad could end the crisis by turning over all his chemical
weapons. Harf said Kerry wasn’t putting
forth a formal proposal.
If
Hitler had agreed not to gas 11 million people, including 6 million Jews, would
the United States have taken a 'hard look' at the proposal? Of course
not.
ONLY AFTER he went full Godwin
and invoked the Nazis.
Old & Busted:
‘It’s the Nazis redux. We
must ACT now! eL3vEnTy!!!111!!!1111′
– Senator Harry Reid, 9
September 2013
New Hotness:
‘Never mind. No
need to rush anything here.’
– Senator Harry Reid, 9
September 2013
If
Assad is Hitler, the Syrian Regime is the 21st century’s version of the Nazis,
and they are both killing the new Jews, then wouldn’t Reid, who accused some
(read: Republicans) of being Isolationists, demand that we remove him from
power and prosecute him for war crimes in The Hague?
Related:
http://tinyurl.com/omg4gfn
No comments:
Post a Comment