INVITING IRAN TO PISS ON OUR TENT

Here is one of the cruelest facts of life:  You only get to make peace with your enemies.

Here’s another:  Peace means an end to organized violence.  You do not have peace while the perpetrators of organized violence are not restrained (see Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Mali etc etc etc).

This, in a nutshell, is what is wrong with America’s insistence on excluding Iran for the negotiations to bring peace to Syria ongoing in Montreux.

As Ian Black reported in The Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/21/us-russian-co-operation-key-hope-progess-syria-peace-talks

“The Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, stated on his website his belief that the talks have little hope of success. ‘Because of the lack of influential players in the meeting, I doubt about the Geneva II meeting's success in fighting against terrorism ... and its ability to resolve the Syria crisis,’ Rouhani said. ‘The Geneva II meeting has already failed.’” 

So long as Iran continues to supply fighters (some Iranians, but many more Hizbullah warriors from Lebanon) in support of Syria’s criminal President Bashar al-Assad, there will not be peace.  Excluding the Iranians from the peace talks does guarantee their failure, since it all but takes away any reason for Teheran to restrain either Assad or Hizbullah.

America offers 2 quasi-rationales for the exclusion: (1) the Iranians have not committed in advance to the goal of the conference, the transitioning out of power of President al-Assad and his government, and (2) the presence of the Iranians would trigger a boycott by our favorite rebel group, the Syrian National Coalition (SNC).

Both points have their flaws: (1)  the Iranian position is more or less the same as the Russian position, but the Russians have not been booted from the talks, rather their participation is considered one of the keys to any potential success; and, (2) the SNC by itself can contribute to peace, but cannot come close to assuring it, as it remains out-gunned and out-organized by the rest of the rebel movement, the radical Islamist forces, many allied to Al Qaeda, who have rejected the talks from the moment they were proposed.     

Negotiations only succeed when all the controlling stakeholders can derive some benefit from them.  Excluding a necessary stakeholder to keep a less crucial one on board makes no sense.  Our rebels need and benefit from peace too much to pull out, no matter what they threaten.

So, who are the stakeholders here?  (1) The wretched Syrian government and its 1%ers, the Assad family and its closest associates; (2)  The Syrian rebel forces; (3) The Syrian people, most of them bullied by, but not loyal to any of the contending forces; (4) Assad’s regional supporters, almost all of them Shi’ites, of whom Iran and Hizbullah are the most important; (5) Assad’s regional opponents, almost all of them Sunnis, of whom Saudi Arabia and Qatar are the biggest funders of the rebels; (6) global kibitzers like Russia, the United States and its allies in Western Europe.

What benefits might convince each of the stakeholders to make and sustain peace? 

(1) For Assad and the other beasts of his herd the prime benefit of agreeing to peace and giving up power would be that they will not only be allowed to live, they might be guaranteed immunity from prosecution, judgment, incarceration and loss of all their worldly goods. As if this opportunity were not enough in itself, the Washington Post editorial board says it might seem more valuable were it more aggressively threatened by the Obama White House.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/on-syria-obama-administration-is-leading-to-failure/2014/01/22/90b040b2-8390-11e3-9dd4-e7278db80d86_story.html?tid=up_next

More on this exercise in facile fatuity later.

(2)  The benefits for the anti-Assad forces are both obvious and, alas, fatally incomplete.  “Peace” declared in Switzerland will not become peace in Syria until the SNC’s fellow rebels, their Islamist rivals in rebellion, are subdued, and, as events in Iraq next door daily illustrate, subduing the jihadis will be hard to do.  But like including the Iranians, subduing the Islamists is not a choice, but a necessity to peace.

(3)  Making “peace” pay real-life dividends for the Syrian people will demand not just freeing them from Assad’s homegrown tyranny and the equally overbearing, mostly foreign, Fundamentalist threat, but freeing themselves from their ruinous addiction to sectarian conflict.  Syria’s majority Sunnis must convince their opponents in the Alawite, Shi’ite, Christian and Maronite communities that they are willing to live civilly, even harmoniously, alongside them, that bygones from this brutal war will indeed be bygones.  In many ways this is a more complex, maybe even more difficult task than defeating the Islamists.  But again, necessary.

(4)  The promise of a Levant ruled by law, and based on inter-communal co-operation would relieve Assad’s allies, Iran and Hizbullah of a conflict that has grown ruinous in blood and treasure.  It also might lead to a future in which both the Iranian government and Hizbullah’s leadership could use their strengths of political and social organization to grant their peoples infinitely better lives, safe from foreign threats or local violence. 

(5)  Peace in Syria would not guarantee, but would certainly make more possible, both a wider peace and even a stable region.  The blessings of peace in Syria would be constantly communicated to the peoples of the rest of the Arabic-speaking world by vigorous and competitive news media, hopefully growing a regional constituency for rule of law and civility.  The chief bankrollers of the Syrian rebellion, Saudi Arabia and especially Qatar are much happier being merchandising states than militarizing states, and a Mideast without war plays directly to their strengths and interests.  The removal of the semi-Shi’ite Alawites from power in Syria, the retreat of Hizbullah back to Lebanon (and even better, back to more civil, less brutal political competition within Lebanon), and the predictable advantages of Sunni majority power in Syria would more than offset having to play live-and-let-live with the Shi’ite triumphalists in Nouri al-Maliki’s government in Baghdad. Selling out their temporary allies-in-regime change, buying them off, or helping kill them, would not, I’m betting, be a big problem for either the Saudis or the Qataris.

(6)  The reduction in bloodshed, and progress towards stability would be the biggest payoffs from peace for almost everyone, from the Syrian people who would no longer be dodging daily bombs and bullets, to the regional rulers in Riyadh and Doha, and the global powers in Moscow and Washington who could go back to making money and self-congratulatory pronouncements.  Another important benefit, for Putin, Obama, Hollande, Cameron and the royal, military or democratic leaders of the Islamic world from  ending the conflict in Syria would be the opportunity to join forces in eliminating the irreconcilable guerillas.  No one in any of these governments and almost no one in their countries would mourn their demise.  

(7)  What benefits could convince Al Qaeda and its allies to call off their war and seek the true triumph of jihad, personal religious purity and discipline?  Probably, there are none, which is why they rejected the peace talks and why they must be defeated. 

But, let’s be honest here.  Worthy as these goals may be, they simply cannot be realized without Iran’s assent.  One monkey, the old saying goes, can stop the show, and in the Mideast, Teheran is the headquarters of one hellacious combination of peace-stoppers.

The opportunity to improve their chances to be accepted into the community of peace-makers, and allowed to prove through actions that they are a nation worthy of respect and equal economic and political treatment has proved quite alluring to Iran in the context of its nuclear ambitions.  If Teheran can be convinced that similar benefits would accrue to them and their people, and their allies from Beirut to Bahrain, Iran might rehabilitate itself to everyone’s profit.

The diplomatic negotiation which may well have put Iran on a path to nuclear restraint was called Geneva I.  The people who have put together, and then tossed Iran out of, this week’s conference in Montreux call it Geneva II, for the same reason the folks who play football in New Jersey’s Meadowlands call themselves the New York Giants and Jets: marketing.

But as the humorist Finley Peter Dunne wrote, “Politics ain’t beanbag;” and peace-making ain’t football.  Branding the conference in the name of the city where a watch-makers convention (really!) displaced the diplomats to the smaller town an hour’s drive away won’t accomplish anything.  Real give and take, even with our enemies, is the only way to make peace a best-selling product.

Oh, yes, -- I mentioned the WaPo editorialists and their suggestion that Barack Obama can force humanitarian concessions (even the Posties don’t think he can force real peace) “by presenting Mr. Assad with the choice of accepting them or enduring U.S. airstrikes.”

As if bluffing a guy into giving up just one of his still supreme arsenal of weapons means you can bluff him out of power itself.  This is just self-inflating, self-deluding crap. 

For the editorialists who, I’m sure, would also recommend that Obama back up his bluff, if it were called, I have my favorite 3-word question, the one policy-makers and conference table commanders never seem to ask themselves, “And then what?”

Lob a few bombs, kill off a bunch of bad guys, and then…??  Wasn’t that Don Rumsfeld’s prescription for Iraq?  Not even the Post’s own eternal optimists would buy that sack of ignorant shit a second time.  Or would they?

Better to try to find a deal that meets almost everyone’s need to think it got them something good.

 

SYRIA: BITS, PIECES, MORE

Some random thoughts on Syria and related topics. 

Did you see Der Spiegel's report of the Trifecta -- a German listening ship off Syria reportedly picked up a conversation between a top Hizbullah guy, and someone at an Iranian Embassy, talking about how Bashar done it? Perfect or too perfect?

Meanwhile, these could be perilous times for Hizbullah. I wonder if, under cover of our attacks in Syria, we or somebody else will take a few swipes at the Big H. Without outside interference they will continue to dominate and distort life in Lebanon, while pressing an essentially sectarian, completely anti-American agenda (three things not to like). Somebody's money (us, Israel, Qatar, Saudi???) could surely buy a Sunni fighting force to do the dirty work. Of course, that would mean/has already meant "our side" arming Al Qaeda.

Obviously, these are also perilous times for Israel, but salutary, if the threat wakens Israelis to their reality -- they are isolated and surrounded. They gotta make peace, if it's not too late already, and they gotta stop screwing the Palestinians to get it.  President Shimon Peres knows this.  He told me as much 17 years ago.  It’s still true.  But things are getting worse, not better, for Israel.

I hope, pray and believe the American attack on Assad will not unleash some kind of Hizbullah/Syrian/Iranian/Al Qaeda attack on Israel.  But it could.  And among Israel’s many enemies there are both chemical and biological weapons, and munitions to carry them, not to mention tons of conventional missiles, rockets and bombs.  I think, right now, those enemies lack the co-ordination or the will to launch significant attacks on Israel.  But they get closer on both fronts every day, month and year.  Only peace can pre-empt these trend lines from reaching a disastrous conclusion.

I've always thought that Syria was supposed to be a more modern, urban and urbane culture than Iraq, with more of a national concept and a favorable balance between modernist/secular moderation and Islamist fanaticism. Recently, several reporters say, the Sunni nuts – Al Qaeda’s al-Nusra front and others, have the edge. This matters a lot. We can't achieve anything more than destruction without substantial inside support of the sort Iraq was never gonna provide.

If, over the past 2 years of warfare, our intelligence agencies have not identified that Syrian support and solidified it, our mission to turn the tide against Assad, while keeping the rest of the region stable, will fail.  The means, either that Assad will survive at great cost to our national dignity, or that Syria will wind up in the hands of our most fanatic enemies, or -- best case -- simply dominated by a different, hopefully less toxic version of the incumbent Nationalist dictator.

Or we can link to a sufficient fighting force and political leaders who will put Syria on a more civilized path, and our push at the tipping point will have been a masterstroke.  It’s a lot to hope for, and makes one wish we coulda (but never that we shoulda, or woulda) given this whole mess a pass. But, if Der Spiegel’s sources are right, a petulant, murderous rage by Bashar al-Assad has pushed us, and his region, to a very dangerous place.

In Afghanistan, (to finish an earlier thought) we have, despite mighty, costly, and sincere efforts, not accomplished much we believe will last. We have found and developed some steady allies who subscribe to the ideals behind our presence – a free economy, a functioning democracy, and a national concept based on religious and ethnic and tribal tolerance.  This, in spite of our many mistakes, including the reckless killing of civilians and recurrent signs of personal ignorance or disrespect for Afghan people and culture.   

But., the most those supporters can achieve, I fear, is a paralyzing, unchanging, balance of power between sometimes corrupt, sometimes progressive, modernizing urbanites, and radically retrograde, fundamentalist tribalists in the considerable countryside.

And what are in Putin's "plans" for after the Syria attack?

Yesterday's House Foreign Affairs Committee hearings offered yet another awkward airing of John Kerry's indiscreet, mindless babblings.  This from

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/09/04/five_takeaways_syria_intervention_hearings

"'With respect to Arab countries offering to bear costs and to assess, the answer is profoundly yes," Kerry said. "They have. That offer is on the table.  Some of them have said that if the United States is prepared to go do the whole thing the way we've done it previously in other places, they'll carry that cost," Kerry said. "That's how dedicated they are at this. That's not in the cards, and nobody's talking about it, but they're talking in serious ways about getting this done.'

"Kerry also gamely insisted that so many U.S. allies wanted to take part in a potential strike on Syria that the Pentagon couldn't find a role for all of them. That seems unlikely, since Turkey and France are to date the only major powers to publicly express a willingness to use military force against Assad. But Kerry may have an elastic definition of "participation." Albania, he said later in the hearing, was willing to provide political support for a strike. He didn't say anything about Albania being willing to do much else."
 
Not since the "glory days" of Leon Panetta's probably unintentionally hilarious "I'm now the Defense Secretary," tour have so many hi-ranking words ranked so low for logic and mental discipline.  Panetta was 75.  What's Kerry's excuse?

So much to worry about.

 

SYRIA, WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

“Well, this time we’re really mad.” That seems to be gist of the message President Obama has charged Secretary of State John Kerry with giving to the world.

After a widely suspected chemical attack on Syrian civilians earlier this summer, almost certainly on orders from their murderous dictator Bashar al-Assad, reportedly killed between 100 and 150 people, The Obama White House said we were pretty steamed, and told Assad we were finally going to start arming his enemies in response. But we did not do so.

Just as we did not do anything to Assad after 2 years of his desperate attempts to hold onto power had produced an estimated 100,000 civilian deaths and more than a million refugees.

But now, Kerry says, things are different: now we know Assad ordered what we know was a chemical weapons attack that we know has killed upwards of 1000 civilians, who like the 100,000 dead who have preceded them are disproportionately women and children.

The proof, journalists have been told, will be found in “sigint,”digital messages with traceable sources and signatures that will establish, it was Bashar and his henchmen who put the poison gas into play.

Could this be the opportunity the Securicrats have been waiting for?  Is this when the surveillance capability which I accept cannot be undone can be used to benefit American security (if it is really being threatened)?  Could just the kind of message mining the NSA says it occasionally, accidentally uses to tap the communications of Americans be used righteously, to protect the innocent (even if they are not Americans) against their oppressors (even if they have never proposed oppressing America)?

If the NSA et al can really produce evidence that will convince reasonable people that the Syrian regime has indeed broken one of the world’s most serious laws and taboos, against using chemical weapons for mass attacks against civilians, that would be an important accomplishment.  And it might even provide a proper predicate for a serious response against those responsible.

But the US Government’s “proof” had better be good. As my brilliant friend George Kenney points out today in Huffington Post: 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-kenney/syria-air-strikes_b_3814293.html

"From the reporting it seems ineluctably clear that chemical weapons were used. That's a tragedy. But it remains far from clear who did it. None of the many insurgent groups are saints; to be honest, with the fighting going against the insurgency in recent months there would be far greater incentives on their side to use chemical weapons, in the hope of triggering western intervention, than there would be on the part of Syrian government forces."

But assuming, the charges against the Assad regime stand up, some hard questions still remain, like why would we respond?  To defend international law? To defend Syrian lives? Or would we be acting to defend our “credibility, “ to make good on President Obama's "red line" warnings?  As today's NY Times editorial puts it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/27/opinion/responding-to-syrian-atrocities.html?hp&_r=0

"Presidents should not make a habit of drawing red lines in public, but if they do, they had best follow through. Many countries (including Iran, which Mr. Obama has often said won’t be permitted to have a nuclear weapon) will be watching."

This sounds a little like Dr. Seuss' Horton Hatches the Egg raised to geo-strategic levels: "I meant what I said, and I said what I meant, and an elephant's faithful 100%."

Yes, it is a good thing for our allies and our enemies to know we are steadfast. But it is a better thing, if what we propose to do makes sense.

So what is that President Obama is considering?

Here is what the NY Times says we can expect:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/27/world/middleeast/syria-assad.html?hp

“a limited military operation — cruise missiles launched from American destroyers in the Mediterranean Sea at military targets in Syria.”

The Washington Post has a bit more detail,

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/kerry-obama-determined-to-hold-syria-accountable-for-using-chemical-weapons/2013/08/26/599450c2-0e70-11e3-8cdd-bcdc09410972_story.html?hpid=z1

adding that “long-range bombers” may also be used for “no more than two days “ to hit “military targets not directly related to Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal.”

Like what? Well, Army Chief of Staff Martin Dempsey told Congress in June, “Potential targets include high-value regime air defense, air, ground, missile, and naval forces as well as the supporting military facilities and command nodes.”

But the Post says the attack under contemplation would be something, “far smaller and designed more to send a message than to cripple Assad’s military and change the balance of forces on the ground.”

Clearly the Times heard the same ideas with slightly different words: “not a sustained air campaign intended to topple Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, or to fundamentally alter the nature of the conflict on the ground.”

So, the American government wants the world to know that making good on the President’s word means sending a message and a punishment to President Assad, but nothing more. Take that! Take your un-toppled self and un-crippled military and carry on. Carry on with an unchanged balance of forces in an unaltered conflict and just restrict yourself to killing without chemicals, the old-fashioned ways.

Huh?

If, as Secretary Kerry said, Assad’s gassing his own people to keep power is a “moral obscenity,” then what is our killing a few of Assad’s soldiers (and almost inevitably, his people,) while keeping the arch-murderer in power and still dominating a majority of Syria’s citizens and territory?

It sounds like that’s America’s objective: to keep things as they are. Show a little might. Kill some Syrian Muslims. Intimidate some Iranian Muslims. But do not change the unrelieved awfulness of Syrian reality today.

 

Is this because we think, facing reality in a world and particular case of nothing but bad options, that this is all we really can accomplish?  If so, keeping that a “secret,” is another example of “old world thinking.”  Better to explain what we can and cannot do, and why, than simply to leave the globally visible results (the explosions will be seen on all-the-world’s TV, computer and tablet screens) to be interpreted unaided.

 

Our plan of action seems to be all about limiting risk, not in itself a bad thing. But if the limits, using only “stand-off” weapons, whether they be missiles, or drones, of bombers flying high (as in Kosovo and Serbia to keep pilots safe,) exacts a cost in targeting accuracy (as it did in Kosovo and Serbia,) it may not be so well received among the people on the ground or the people watching it all at home. 

The Kosovo precedent was, in a way, great for us – a war with no casualties:  none; no  American lives were lost in the campaign to free Kosovo.  But the idea of risk-free military action is a dangerous one, and to outsiders may seem both brutal and cowardly.  This is already how much of the world already perceives our military strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, America killing “because it can.”

We limit our targeting in both those places, too, and claim “good intelligence,” implied allied consent, and legal justification for everything we do, but much of the world hates us for it.

And wouldn’t you, if some foreign force meted out its brand of justice in our backyards, or even our boondocks? And wouldn’t you hate it even more if what the outsiders called justice were just geo-political posturing to protect its “word,” while changed nothing, while practically guaranteeing, of not enabling future crimes by the oppressor, and future repetitions of violent correction, further wastes of our blood and treasure?

If we choose force, death and destruction, shouldn’t it be to change something, to end, not prolong violent conflict.

Unless we cannot realistically expect to do better. 

So, tell us, if we can use our spy tech to track Assad’s messages, can we also use it to track the man himself?  If we can trace the communications of the Syrian chain of command to prove that carries out war crimes, can we not to target enough significant links in that chain to disassemble it?

Or are we just sticking to the pre-precision warfare rule of law, that killing “leaders” is unacceptable, while killing their forces and their victims is not?

Decapitation and not punishment is what needs to be done to the Assad machine if we mean to effect change.

Playing pattycake for 2 years while Syria has imploded in government-dominated violence has not worked. Quite the contrary, it has ceded the battlefield to forces that see themselves as either enemies of or betrayed by us.  Making our slaps slightly harder will not change the hearts and minds of those now fighting in Syria, nor will it save Syrian lives or stabilize Syria’s neighborhood.

But can America do that?  And if we can’t what can we do and how? If we decimate and thereby bring under control the Syrian government’s war machine (military and internal security), can we then quiet and reorganize a chaotic battleground state overrun by several different fighting forces, some of them unalterably opposed to any peace on American terms.

As Syria’s neighbor Iraq (and Libya and Yemen) eloquently demonstrate, it is much easier to create a state of war than it is to end one. And, make no mistake, after, and in part because of, our own 2 years of passive acceptance, Syria is in an advanced state of war, where every inch of ground is controlled or contested by force.

The disasters in those 3 states (and the continuing troubles in Egypt and Tunisia) show the rule of force must be ended before rule of law can start, and that almost always demands the application of greater force. We say peace, freedom and stability for Syria is our ultimate goal, but what risks will be run for that goal? Stand-off force cannot hold ground.

Almost unheard of these days in Washington, there seems to be a solid consensus, from the White House to the Congress, to the American people, that we want to keep our “commitment” completely risk-free. We do not want to get involved in Syria’s Civil War. Me neither. But, face it; nothing far short of that is likely to work.  And, even one American cruise missile means we are involved.

We may deny it, call it an isolated “punishment,” “surgical” and clean, but that’s not what the world watching the explosions is going to think. They’re going to say, the US is involved in murder, in destruction. And they are going to ask, for what? “Sending a message,” delivering a punishment, sounds a lot like, what were John Kerry’s words? Oh yes, “a moral obscenity.”

No, if we’re going to use the bullet, we’re going to have to bite the bullet. If we’re going to shoot at the beast, we have to kill the beast. If the only way to end war is to use war, we should, and then, with help from allies, with support from local participation, against some very determined foes, we must also be prepared to win the peace. Which, we should acknowledge in front,  is likely to involve a lot of time, a lot of costs, and some serious risks, including if we are honest, (even if for a limited mission over a limited period of time,) somebody’s boots on the ground.

If domestic politics, or the limits of our military strength, forbid that, the White House should say so.  Honesty about the relationship between policy and reality is something every government owes its people.   Bluster or weasel words or half-measures are not likely to work, as domestic politics, much less as foreign relations.