Syria Is Threatening To Become Obama’s Rwanda

The U.S. should take responsibility soon and intervene in the Syrian matter, according to America expert Willem Post.

We have seen it before: An American president presents an important internal agenda and is surprised by a foreign crisis. Lyndon Johnson’s socio-economic program, the Great Society, was taken out by the pricey Vietnam War. George W. Bush was transformed from a rural president into an internationalist by Sept. 11, 2001, initiating two wars.

And now a similar development seems to exist in the Obama era, which was labeled “country first” in his second term.

Obama’s foreign policy received the new slogan “leading from behind.” Military intervention in Libya should have been the new blueprint. It was presented by Washington as an action in which the United Nations, the Arab League and countries such as France, Great Britain and Italy took the lead. The United States remained safely in the background.

The actions of these partners and allies were a welcome bonus, but in reality the military input from the Americans in the shape of military planning, air attacks and weapon supplies was decisive. The word “behind” was completely wrong and was especially meant to reassure the literally battle-weary American population. But the United States is certainly the only remaining real military superpower and must thus take responsibility when instability and gross human rights violations occur.

Textbook Example

The Syria affair is a textbook example of this. “America must take the lead in good alliances with others. But it all comes down to America being the indispensable nation that can lead provisionally, also with regard to Syria,” said Leslie Gelb, the patriarch of American foreign commentators, recently in Foreign Policy magazine.*

If President Obama does nothing, tens of thousands of innocent citizens will die. If chemical weapons are used on a large scale, the deceased will be numerous. Unstable countries such as Iraq, but also the now-unstable Jordan, will encounter increasing refugees and further ethnic and religious tensions. Al-Qaida, which hardly had a position of power in Syria when the civil war began, will profit more easily from the social disaster and thus recruit more followers.

We already see “cascade effects.” The local conflict escalates and internationalizes. For Israel, a “sandwich” between “Iranian” Syria and Shiite Hezbollah, supported with weapons by Tehran, is unacceptable, according to the air attacks of this week.

Quick actions are thus offered. The CIA has had two years to identify moderate resistance groups. The Free Syrian Army, which distances itself from radical jihadist rebels, promises to implement civil freedoms after the fall of Assad. Its leader, General Salim Idris, was educated in the West, has extensive contacts with Washington and publicly promises to register all individual weapons supplied by Washington and return them after the conflict. This is something you can work with. The United States and its partners can monitor and agree on verification.

We can now still intervene in Syria. Obama must move on to real weapon support, through which the fall of Bashar al-Assad can be immediately accelerated.

Clinton

Bill Clinton thought that non-intervention in the genocide in Rwanda was one of the biggest blunders of his presidency. Obama and the other NATO allies cannot allow for a second Rwanda. A politician should build rational measures for his decisions, but in a democracy they should also be related to humanitarian considerations.

In 2005, the countries of the U.N. recognized the principle of “the responsibility to protect” (R2P). Human rights should be protected by any means. Eventually, every government, including Washington, has its own responsibility and considerations.

Now that the U.N. Security Council is blocked, in terms of political decision-making, it is noteworthy that Secretary of State John Kerry will try, in the next couple of days, to convince Moscow and Beijing to ultimately drop the Syrian reign.

Agreements can be made concerning, for example, preserving the Russian naval base in Syria. Additionally, China and Russia have no interest in Islamic radicalization. But if there is no diplomatic breakthrough in the short-term, weapons support for the moderate resistance of the Free Syrian Army is the best — or, in any case, the least bad — option.

*Editor’s Note: This quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.