Thursday, July 12, 2012
Send in the CIA! Wait, what is the goal again?
Reuel Marc Gerecht's op-ed in the WSJ advocates muscular covert aid to the Syrian rebels to overthrow Assad: "...there is an alternative that could crack the Assad regime: a muscular
CIA operation launched from Turkey, Jordan and even Iraqi Kurdistan. The
trick for Washington is to go in big, deploying enough case officers
and delivering paralyzing weaponry to the rebels as rapidly as possible."
Gerecht rhetorically asks whether the president really wants Assad to fall, positing that the administration is hamstrung by fear of an interventionist slippery slope, re-election concerns, and anxiety over appearing too meddling. Gerecht argues that this dithering hampers U.S. efforts to topple Assad.
What Gerecht overlooks is the key policy question, which is: what would follow the fall of Assad? Based upon Obama's handling of Libya, I'd expect this question is prominent in his mind as he looks at Syria.
There are any number of tools that Obama has at his disposal. Syria has a better air defense system than Libya and the nature of the regime's control is different, but the U.S. military still possesses significant capability advantages. But these are all tools. Presumably there are multiple U.S. goals, with the most proximate goal being for the violence to stop and the ultimate goal being for Syria to be a stable democratic state that was no longer aligned with Iran. The key policy question is what comes after Assad? It is a hard question and pouring weapons into Syria doesn't magically answer it anymore than dropping thousands of tons of bombs does.
Gerecht rhetorically asks whether the president really wants Assad to fall, positing that the administration is hamstrung by fear of an interventionist slippery slope, re-election concerns, and anxiety over appearing too meddling. Gerecht argues that this dithering hampers U.S. efforts to topple Assad.
What Gerecht overlooks is the key policy question, which is: what would follow the fall of Assad? Based upon Obama's handling of Libya, I'd expect this question is prominent in his mind as he looks at Syria.
There are any number of tools that Obama has at his disposal. Syria has a better air defense system than Libya and the nature of the regime's control is different, but the U.S. military still possesses significant capability advantages. But these are all tools. Presumably there are multiple U.S. goals, with the most proximate goal being for the violence to stop and the ultimate goal being for Syria to be a stable democratic state that was no longer aligned with Iran. The key policy question is what comes after Assad? It is a hard question and pouring weapons into Syria doesn't magically answer it anymore than dropping thousands of tons of bombs does.
# posted by Wiggins @ 5:22 PM 
