Notes of
Concern…
…Jackson Blair
Revisiting Intervention
I rarely do a follow up to a column. Today I am doing so.
By sending what has historically been a presidential
decision on to the Congress, the decision on whether to intervene in the Syrian
civil war, the president has placed in jeopardy presidential prerogative to act
quickly and then inform Congress, which has been the way we have operated for
all of my lifetime, and he has placed congressmen in the cross hairs of public
opinion.
Both of these are very serious indeed.
By the time this column is in print, the decision on whether
to intervene in Syria may well be made. Here are the possibilities:
The president receives support from both houses of Congress
and chooses to act, or not.
The president receives support from one house of Congress
and chooses to act, or not.
The president receives no support from Congress and chooses
to act, or not.
None of the three could be described as a “win” for the
president or the nation.
In taking this course, the president has provided to the
Syrian regime weeks of opportunity to move gasses around and hide them in
highly populated civilian areas, to rearrange his military to counter a strike
the details of which have been played out in advance in the press. And while
the president and Congress dance awkwardly together, the president has provided
both the Russians and the Chinese the opportunity to send warships to the area,
greatly increasing the possibility of a wider conflict.
I want to cut to the chase here.
I have seen the videos of men, women and children writhing
on the floor as a result of the Syrian government’s chemical attack on them. My
heart aches for these people.
I have also seen the front page New York Times picture of
Syrian rebels standing over kneeling prisoners of war that they then
systematically murdered.
My friends, this is a civil war in which one of these two
groups of thugs, the current Syrian government or the rebel forces, will
ultimately prevail.
This is a civil war like many that have been fought across
the world over the last many decades.
We do not have a “horse” in this race and I would hate to
have to pick either one of them. I would not spend one dime of our treasure,
human or economic, to help either of these groups. They are completely opposed
to any sort of human rights and we have no business getting involved with
either.
We did not like Hosni Mubarak. We helped Egypt overthrow
him. In return we got the Muslim Brotherhood, a much worse group of thugs. Our
national interest was in no way served.
We did not like Khadafy. We helped Libya overthrow him. In
return we got murderers, torturers, and a government that hates the U.S. Our
national interest was in no way served.
The list goes on and it is not my goal to engage in a
history lesson here. It is my goal to say that we cannot be led by emotion in
these important national decisions. We need to be smart. We need to be
strategic. And most of all, we need to look beyond each decision to the multiple
decisions that will come down the road. We need to be certain we know what
those possibilities are and that we are ready to stay the course.
Americans in huge numbers oppose Syrian intervention if we
are to believe the polls.
Military commanders and strategists cannot believe the
manner in which we have approached the planning, advising the enemy well in
advance of our plans and permitting the enemy to be better prepared to both
repel American efforts and plan for terrorist responses.
Make no mistake, if we bomb Syria there will be reprisals
against American embassies, American tourists, American interests, and we will
lose American treasure.
The president may well honor his commitment to “no boots on
the ground” but that will not translate into “no loss of American life.”
I do not want the Syrian government to prevail.
I do not want the Syrian rebels to prevail.
I do not see a happy outcome in any way in Syria.
What is really going on here today is that our president
made some missteps and some misstatements and is trying to find a way to come
out of this situation a winner.
My advice to the president: take your licks and move on.
Focus your final three years on domestic programs that can relieve the burdens
faced by American citizens.
We must not compound this problem by taking unilateral
action in a part of the world that has delivered defeat to us in so many ways
over such a long period of time.
