America and War on Syria

During his attendance at a meeting of the U.S. Congress, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey disclosed the existence of a comprehensive plan for using military force in Syria. This [disclosure] came in response to pressure from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., one of the Congress members most enthusiastic about war on Syria, to end what he calls the internal war that has been ongoing for two years. Dempsey put the ball in the court of President Obama, whom he considers the highest military leader of the nation, meaning that the plan is ready and subject to execution — he even called it a bold strategy, waiting for a green light from Obama and his administration. This is what the American and global press is circulating widely at the moment.

However, circumstances in the Arab region are going against the American current, which is preventing the execution of an American strike or at least delaying it. The explosive, collapsing security situation in Iraq — bombings, ethnic and sectarian evictions and the political struggles inside a failed political process, which suffers from a lack of trust between blocks and parties — constitutes one cause for postponing the military attack on Syria. That is because, on one hand, the effects of the war will be disastrous based on experience from the criminal [George W.] Bush (democracy in Iraq: the destruction thereof); on the other hand, a systematic Iranian measure aimed at easing the deterioration of military circumstances in Syria, which no longer serve the Syrian regime or favor it on the ground, is occurring in Iraq. (The rulers of Tehran are using the countries around Syria — Iraq, Lebanon and Turkey — to absorb the momentum of the opposition and Free Syrian Army and prevent it from advancing to the capital Damascus and toppling the regime.) An additional reason is the fall of the Islamist regimes in Egypt and Tunisia and the people’s revolutions that overthrew them after their failure to contain the hopes and aspirations of the Arab people in those countries. They had become the object of ridicule for the whole world and a heavy burden upon their peoples, threatening civil war, as was the case in Egypt.

Let’s return to Dempsey’s military plan, the extent of its effectiveness and the audacity of executing it amid strong Russian, Iranian and Chinese opposition — an opposition met by a large amount of Arab and Western support for accelerating the plan’s execution. Reports from the Syrian opposition on the ground say that it faces great difficulty in supplying itself with ammunition, anti-aircraft rockets, tanks, aircraft and other types of military equipment that are important to resolving the conflict militarily. Likewise, it faces delays in Western and American aid. Some [countries] are loitering because they fear that the aid will reach the al-Nusra Front. One thing that contradicts this reasoning is the declaration of war between the al-Nusra Front and the Free Syrian Army, after one of the leaders of the latter was killed.

This shows a variation in perspectives, France and Britain’s hesitation and the oscillation in their stances on providing military and media support to the Free Syrian Army and the opposition. The Geneva II conference only failed to convene because Europe’s stances on America’s oscillating, inconstant and unclear position on how to deal with the opposition, arm it and end its battle with the bloody Assad regime are a cause of confusion.

One of the most prominent reasons for the complexity of America’s position and its inability to execute Dempsey’s plan at this time is the direct intervention of Iran, Hezbollah and sectarian Iraqi militias in the war, aiding the regime against the Free Syrian Army. Another is Russia and China’s refusal of foreign military intervention in Syria.

If that happens, it would means the beginning of a third world war in the region, which the Obama administration does not want at the moment; its options are spread thin, its alliances in the region and the world are weak (e.g. its fragile alliance with France, Britain and Germany), and it is unable to bear the economic cost of war, contrary to what happened in Iraq (where the costs of the invasion were shouldered by the Arab Gulf States).

In summary, we say that at the moment, war on Syria by the Obama administration is fraught with dangers and could overturn America’s empire for good. Therefore, Obama will not embark on another folly like the ones the criminal Bush undertook in Iraq and Afghanistan. The situation in Syria is extremely sensitive and serious; more time is needed to resolve the battle with the regimes of Bashar al-Assad and Tehran. But what is certain is that a Western-American war on Syria and Iran is coming within Dempsey’s plan, even if the wait is long.