Guest Opinion
The Syrian ‘tragedy'
in our modern world
Assad is using chemical weapons on Syrians, and the U.S. is capable of doing nothing at all
Several weeks ago, the United Nations issued a report confirming that without question the Assad regime in Syria is continuing to use chemical weapons against its domestic rebel adversaries and the populations living near them.
Since that time, further reports of chemical weapons used by Assad around Aleppo have been appearing with regularity.
The United States government immediately responded to the U.N. report with high dudgeon, issuing sharp warnings and appealing to the U.N. Security Council to take appropriate measures against Assad and his forces. Few commented on the bizarre character of this request. But we've been here before, and what's changed is startling indeed.
In August 2012, President Barack Obama stated he had drawn a “red line” that Assad was not to cross, promising to take dramatic, if unspecified, action in Syria if there was confirmation that the Syrian government was using internationally outlawed chemical weapons. That confirmation was not long in coming, and the president began making threatening utterances about bombing Assad's forces. At the very last moment, however, Obama backed off, ostensibly to seek congressional support, which he previously had disdained.
Then, like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, and to much applause, Obama found a way to make any such intervention seem unnecessary. Taking up a Russian hint, he and Secretary of State John Kerry negotiated a solution under which, with Russia's help, all chemical weapons in Assad's arsenal would be eliminated. There were surprisingly few skeptics as Obama then declared a great victory, touting the wisdom of his approach. As recent as July, one supportive national magazine agreed, saying the president's handling of the episode “accomplished everything it set out to do — in fact, it surpassed our expectations.”
The recent news from the U.N. that Assad's chemical weapons program is alive and well, and as deadly as ever, is only the most recent proof that the supposed success was an inimitable failure, in fact pure illusion. Contrary to the rosy assessments, there has been a cascade of bad consequences from Obama's supposed judgment and foresight.
Russia's Vladimir Putin, for example, fresh from having duped the president in Syria, drew the correct conclusion that the American president would remain unwilling to fight, while always seeking comfort instead in illusory compacts that have all failed, often with deadly consequences. Putin then occupied Crimea with his uniform-less soldiers and invaded enough of Ukraine to be sure always to be able to destabilize its politics, not to mention those of the European community. He also intervened in Syria.
Erstwhile American allies in the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, having become convinced of American fecklessness, have chosen to go it alone, or with each other, rather than rely on U.S. support. The Iranians have poured men and materiel into Syria sufficient to keep Assad safe from his rebellious people, while fomenting violence in Gaza, Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere.
And, in the modern world's most frightful calamity, the Syrian people, those who cannot flee to an increasingly hostile EU, have suffered and died in horrifying ways and numbers, often from the very chemical weapons Obama's supposedly bold move had eliminated. So much for “surpass(ing) expectations.”
While this is horrible enough, there is a larger story.
Last spring, White House staffer Benjamin Rhodes explained the entire “red line” episode was not what it seemed. As Rhodes explained in an interview initially praised by the White House and never disavowed, the president's non-action was part of a larger, secret policy, one of currying favor with Iran.
Apparently in pursuit of Obama's policy of rapprochement with the Iranians, the United States had made major changes to its entire Middle East policy. It turned a cold shoulder toward Israel. It turned a blind eye to Iranian meddling in Iraq, as it made common cause with Iranian militias in fighting ISIS. It provided only tepid support for the Syrian rebels in Syria and for the Saudi effort to counter an Iranian intervention in Yemen (while also not trying to moderate it).
It has also tolerated countless aggressive acts by Iran itself against U.S. interests, including the taking of hostages, the harassment of U.S. ships in the straits of Hormuz and the testing and development of ballistic missiles, all in violation of international norms.
And it refrained from taking action against an Iranian-backed Assad.
The avatar of this new policy was the Iran nuclear deal, which the Obama administration pursued at almost any cost and that now appears to have numerous secret protocols easing the publicly announced restrictions on Iran.
Was it worth it? Whatever its long-term effects, it has meant only disaster for the Syrian people who have died in large numbers at Assad's hands. Supported by his unrestrained Russian and Iranian allies, Assad has gone on torturing prisoners, bombing hospitals and starving cities into submission, and has gassed those who still hold out, all amid the science of agreeing to short-lived and meaningless treaties with a U.S. left without viable options.
And so, with more irrefutable proof that Assad is using chemical weapons on Syrian citizens again, what can the Obama administration do? The vain gesture of appealing to the U.N. shows how far we have come. Four years ago, we were in a position to bomb Syria in punishment for its perfidy, perhaps as part of a larger plan to protect ordinary Syrians from Assad and bring about a favorable regime change. Now, we are capable of nothing at all, for fear of hitting the Russian troops and machinery that are keeping the execrable Assad in power, not to mention upsetting the still-recalcitrant Iranians. And, the U.N., where Russia has a veto, predictably has done nothing either.
This is tragedy. In our modern usage, we view any experience with injury and pain as a species of tragedy, and the pain and suffering of the Syrians is undeniable. It would be tragic in our modern sense even were it the result of a mere miscalculation or momentary failure.
The ancients, however, had a more nuanced, and ultimately more terrifying, vision of tragedy. This was that man who was sometimes a tool of his own or a people's destruction, usually when a leader became so infused with hubris as to believe his intelligence could outwit not just everyone else, but the gods themselves, only to find that his too-narrow understanding made happen what he was trying to avoid.
No man, the ancients taught, nor any leader, no matter how astute, could understand matters well enough to be cocksure of his own intelligence and judgment and deaf to the counsel of others more experienced and thoughtful. At a minimum, a healthy skepticism about one's own largest ideas was essential if disaster to oneself and to innocent people was to be avoided.
The most famous of tragic figures, Oedipus, had such hubris, believing he could overcome the gods' prophecies, even while strangely believing in them in the first place. He destroyed himself and brought horror to others. So too our president's unbreakable confidence in his own insular thinking, kept distant from the cautionary advice of others more experienced than himself and applying his own unvetted governing principles of uncertain provenance, has unleashed forces of incredible destructiveness. This has hardly caused him any harm, but the great mass of Syrians who have not been so fortunate are proof of a tragedy all by themselves.
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