Syria: Obama is in a room full of smoke with no exit door

The clock was ticking, yet 30 minutes after US President Obama was due to address his country on the decision to strike Syria from the Rose Garden more than ten days ago, there was no sign of him. The delay only underlined the hesitation that marked the US President’s actions even as he decided to pull back from certain strikes on Syria to going to the US Congress for a vote when it reconvenes today. Obama doesn’t need the vote, and the small possibility of losing as David Cameron did in the British Parliament, makes this one of the biggest gambles a US President has taken on policy-making. “Here’s my question for every member of Congress and every member of the global community,” the US President challenged,“What message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of children to death in plain sight and pay no price?” The open-ended question is not as much a throwing of the gauntlet, as it is a sign Obama hoped that his colleagues in Congress could make the call on what to do instead. But unfortunately, President Obama has already painted himself into a corner — in a room full of smoke with no signs of a safe exit door. Let’s take a look at the US’s case for action on Syria after the reported chemical attack of 21 August, and analyse why President Obama may actually want to be second-guessed. To begin with, the “high confidence” touted by US Secretary of State John Kerry, that Syrian President Assad had carried out the attacks, is based on its Intelligence report, highlights of which the State department made available. According to the report, satellite movements, artillery reports, and the images on video all lead to the conclusion that the Syrian regime had targeted the Damascus suburb of Ghouta with chemical weapons. [caption id=“attachment_1094571” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] The corner that President Obama has painted himself into with that ‘red-line’, that he now distances himself from, is a lonely one. Reuters[/caption] Yet the report itself says that the chemical-laden rockets had been fired from “regime controlled territory”, not identifying the Assad Army brigade that may have been responsible for “the deaths of 1,429 people, among them 426 children.” The French intelligence reports, based casualty figures on “methodical, technical analysis of 47 original video tapes,” putting the figure at 281, saying non-governmental assessments were higher. The British intelligence report, that failed to help PM Cameron win his parliament vote, put fatalities at 350, conceding only “some intelligence to suggest regime culpability in this attack”. The differing casualty figures are puzzling, and it is extremely clear that the strongest case they all make to blame Assad is that “no one else had the capability to do it”. Hardly the stuff of a water-tight case. The US administration can also not use public pressure as reason to act in contravention of the UN Security Council’s mandate. In fact public opinion is clearly to the contrary. In a poll of three European countries — UK, France and Germany, conducted by Comres for CNN, only 23% of participants backed strikes on Syria, even less than the 26% that voted to “do nothing” at all as an option. In the US, an ABC/Washington Post poll found 59% opposed the US’s strikes plan, while only 36% supported it. Even the Arab league countries, that the US often cites, voted this week that action against Syria must be UN-mandated. Even so, doesn’t the US have the “moral imperative” to act? After all, the founding slogan of the United Nations “Never Again”, should have been the guiding principle to act against a nerve-gas attack on civilians in Syria. Yet it is hardly a principle the US can use convincingly, as many point to US actions in the Iraqi town of Fallujah in 2004, where US airplanes with British help allegedly bombed insurgents and civilians with White Phosphorus, or the CIA report declassified last month that shows US Intelligence knew about and even assisted Saddam Hussein to use Sarin and nerve gases on Iranian targets on the “Al Basrah” front in 1984. Further back in history is the troubling legacy of the use of millions of gallons of Agent Orange in Vietnam, along with the use of Napalm that left half a million dead between 1962-1971. Equally troubling is the idea that Al-Qaeda linked groups that dominate Syria’s rebels, who have a record of atrocities, have also allegedly acquired chemical weapons, and the US’s strikes will strengthen them. President Obama then must hope that the strikes that he plans to carry out on Syria will in some way improve the situation for the civilians of a country with 100,000 dead and two million refugees. Even if Assad’s forces were to take a blow from such strikes, those US’s aims could be achieved. Yet the lead time Syria has already been given may mean that Assad has moved his vital stocks and prepared for the strikes when they do come, while surgical strikes won’t change the situation for ordinary Syrians. “Let’s remember the purpose of the strikes won’t be to start a war,” emphasized France’s Ambassador to India, Francois Richier to CNN-IBN this week, “It is to punish Syria for chemical warfare. There is no regime-change agenda.” If Assad and his forces are indeed guilty of what they are accused of, a limited set of punitive strikes would hardly deter them. As a result, the best Obama can hope to do is degrade Assad’s capabilities — but the worst is to embolden him further. The option of not acting, regardless of what Congress says, seems remote. In an interview to CNN last week US House Intel Chairman Mike Rogers put it starkly. “When the President called for a red-line (over the use of chemical weapons), the full credibility of the United States was put on the line. ” The corner that President Obama has painted himself into with that ‘red-line’, that he now distances himself from, is a lonely one. As he prepares for that no doubt compelling speech he will make at the US Congress next week on striking Syria despite the world’s disapproval, the US President must remember words from his own acceptance speech of the Nobel peace prize in 2009. “America cannot insist that others follow the rules of the road if we refuse to follow them ourselves. For when we don’t, our action can appear arbitrary, and undercut the legitimacy of future intervention — no matter how justified. This becomes particularly important when the purpose of military action extends beyond self defense or the defense of one nation against an aggressor.”