Obama's Syrian Policy and Bush's Iraqi Problem

When the last Syrian dies, Barack Obama will finally determine if what happened in Syria was caused by the use of chemical weapons or by choking while eating quince. This is not an exaggeration, but a measure of the contradictory position that the White House has taken on this subject. It can be said that if the Syrian regime is up to its own ears in the blood of Syrians, then Obama is beyond his ears in Bush’s Iraqi problem!

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was not quick enough to ridicule Obama’s “red line” on Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons as “written in invisible ink.” This illustrates the hesitation that marks the White House’s position on this issue. Therefore, I have asked Foreign Policy magazine, “How can we depend on this red line to deal with a criminal regime that outwardly practices mass murder?”

It was completely clear two years ago that Obama had painted a red line on intervening in the Syrian crisis before he was forced to draw one for Assad. This happened before the Syrian regime had reached the point of using airplanes, Scud missiles and chemical weapons, which the U.K. and Turkey have confirmed. It was clear that the man who made it to the White House two times on the slogan of “change” signaled a departure from the heavy-handed legacy of George W. Bush in Iraq and Afghanistan. Therefore, Obama does not have the audacity to plunge the country into a new war that would destroy all of his political ambitions and add to the economic crisis, or the “economic recession,” that the U.S. economy faces!

In order to understand the underlying reasons behind Obama’s contradictory statements concerning the Syrian crisis, it is necessary to read the article that the bi-monthly magazine Rolling Stone published on vice president Joe Biden. This article connects the strong caution that dominates current U.S. policy on the Syrian crisis to the errors committed during the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq. As Biden states in the article, “We don’t want to blow it like the last administration did in Iraq, saying ‘weapons of mass destruction.’”

Although the White House has repeatedly warned the Syrian regime about the use of chemical weapons, Obama has always found that “there is evidence of the use of chemical weapons, but there needs to be further investigation so that there is a clear, corroborated and credible basis for the decisions that we need to make.” Even when evidence in the form of soil and blood samples reached Ankara and London, proving that chemical weapons had been used, Washington surprisingly and frustratingly commented, “we believe it’s necessary to continue to investigate to corroborate that information and to have a strong, firm, evidentiary basis for the way in which we consult our friends and allies in the international community on this issue and the way in which the president will ultimately make decisions.”

All of this talk is draining, but the truth of the matter is evident in Biden’s words, “we know we can fix that, if we’re willing to spend a trillion dollars and 160,000 troops and 6,000 dead, but that we cannot do.” In this quote, Biden is referring to the monetary and human cost for the U.S. of the war in Iraq.

The reality is that in November, Obama discussed the problem of chemical weapons and the red line with British Prime Minister David Cameron. However, Obama did not hesitate to frankly inform Cameron that he has no appetite for discussing red lines that can be translated into facts on the ground. Obama summarized his position by saying, “I was not re-elected to start a new war.”* This expression of hesitation is what the Syrian opposition ridiculed the other day as “the American green light that encouraged Assad to use chemical weapons.”

Two weeks ago, pressure from Republicans forced the White House to reveal a message demonstrating that U.S. intelligence agencies “assess with varying degrees of confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically the chemical agent sarin.” In addition, the White House is content with inviting Assad to allow U.N. investigators to enter Syria and determine who has used these weapons. This has led to a vicious campaign against Obama behind his back that “deals with the red line in a way that places American prestige at stake and forces it to act.”** However, that does not change the policy of disregarding or turning a blind eye that Obama has followed for two years on the Syrian crisis, which has now transformed into a humanitarian catastrophe threatening the entire region.

Perhaps the best description of Obama’s disastrous policy on the Syrian tragedy comes from the following statement by Anne-Marie Slaughter, adviser to former President Bill Clinton: “Obama’s verbal trickery on the matter of Syria resembles the language of evasion Clinton used in Rwanda when America failed to intervene in order to stop genocide.”***

*Editor’s Note: Although correctly translated, this quote could not be verified.

**Editor’s Note: Although correctly translated, this quote could not be verified.

***Translator’s Note: The Slaughter quote could have been adapted from the following op-ed published in the Washington Post: “The Clinton administration did not want to acknowledge that genocide was taking place in Rwanda because the United States would have been legally bound by the Genocide Convention of 1948 to intervene to stop the killing. The reason the Obama administration does not want to recognize that chemical weapons are being used in Syria is because Obama warned the Syrian regime clearly and sharply in August against using such weapons.”