Syria, Obama and Saddam's Ghost

Touching, eloquent and … transparent? Barack Obama’s speech on Tuesday night did not skimp on emotion in trying to convince Americans of the benefits of a strike in Syria. Evoking suffering children, “writhing in pain and going still on a cold hospital floor,” the victims of sarin gas, “foaming at the mouth,” marked a first since the Clinton government’s campaign 15 years earlier against Saddam. Then, in 1998, in the hopes of rallying support for aerial strikes and a reinforcement of sanctions against the regime, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen showed atrocious photos of Kurdish children gassed in 1988 by the Iraqi Army. They had to wait until Sept. 11, with its humiliation and national terror, the illusion of a clear U.S. victory against the Taliban and the immense weapons of mass destruction for Americans to consent to sending their troops to invade a sovereign country, even if it was under a hateful dictator.

This time, Obama is not demanding as much, and, like in Clinton’s campaign, pictures of martyred children shown — rarely — on TV news stations are not enough to move the country to legitimize, in its eyes, the use of force, even if limited.

The president is thus reduced to schizophrenic talk: He praised American exceptionalism — its military strength and protection of universal rights — as much as he reassured by promising a decisive, contained operation, hand over his heart: a three-day deluge of bombs on the spot, delivered during the superpower’s workday. No one is surprised that a paragon of virtue like Vladimir Putin has found the means to place himself in the vast gray zone separating the two propositions. It does not matter that the threat of American bombardment had visibly opened the door to diplomatic negotiations. Putin stole the spotlight from Barack Obama by vouching for a negotiable solution and United Nations supervision of Syrian chemical weapons, which Assad’s regime has denied for decades.

Putin would have seemed more credible if, in his New York Times editorial that appeared on Sept. 11, he had not accused the Syrian insurgents of having gassed their own side to mobilize foreign support. This twisted view, worthy of conspiracy theories, does not bode well for Russian neutrality during the next U.N. inspection in Syria; it might even spell out a terrible fight. At the first false note, Russia will not cease to complain that the inspections are a simple, hypocritical formality, necessary for American use of force. Russia’s diplomatic zeal will only be a new delaying tactic.

Without a doubt, the current situation evokes the procrastination and sham of the Iraq War, with one exception: The recent use of sarin gas by the Syrian regime and its arsenal of chemical weapons seems provable. David Kay, former head U.S. weapons inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency in Iraq in 1991 and for the Pentagon and CIA in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, seemed to be preaching a diplomatic solution and offering his services every night on American television. I had interviewed him in 2004 after his unsuccessful search for Saddam’s chemical and biological weapons. He was bitter and furious to have discovered what was going on over there — the nonexistence of an Iraqi arsenal and, too late, the Bush administration’s cynical duplicity. This time, if he seems circumspect about the possibility of eventual Syrian inspections, he does not seem to doubt the U.S. government’s good faith.