And with Arabs stirring against autocracy, does it really hurt to side with opponents of autocrats even if the rebels lose? Or even if we have to fight some of the rebels later? Who can blame Arabs for thinking we like tyrants?
Syria’s blood-soaked tyrant, Bashar al-Assad, is finally right about something. He recently told an Argentine newspaper that he doubts the joint Russian-American peace initiative will stop the bloodshed in his country. Of course it won’t. Syria’s civil war is an existential fight to the death between the Alawite minority that dominates the regime and the revolutionary Sunni Muslim majority that will be smashed if it loses. The peace initiative would merely be a naive waste of time, then, but circumstances might conspire to make it something worse than that: from the proverbial Arab Street’s point of view, by cooperating with Moscow and refusing to back the rebels, Washington appears to support the Assad dictatorship.
After looking away in 2009 when Iranians rose up in the streets, our administration has only itself to blame for Arab views that we are really siding with Iran. Iran got a pass on repression, Syria is getting a pass (from us) on waging war on its people and using gas, Iran is defying us on nukes. Why wouldn't Syrians believe we are really on Assad's side?
It would have been better to have openly sided with Assad's opponents much earlier. As I wrote early on:
I'd rather have the Turks go in to Syria in force to have a chance at ending this problem sooner rather than later. But if the question is simply whether we support the insurgents, the answer is "heck yes."
Does anybody remember that through the Iraq War Assad funneled jihadis into Iraq for al Qaeda where they blew up Iraqi civilians and American and allied troops in suicide bomber attacks? And otherwise supported insurgents fighting us in Anbar and the Sunni Triangle?
We owe Assad payback. Even if the anti-Assad forces don't win we should support the anti-Assad forces. Our enemies should know they don't have a free shot at us, and fear that even if we don't hit them immediately, we'll bide our time and strike when we can.
We still owe Assad payback. Pay him back!
UPDATE: We remain unwilling to kill the king. I'm sure Kerry retains hope of "flipping" Assad when the unpleasantness is over.
Why we won't arm the rebels to defeat Assad is beyond me. We are about 90,000 dead past the issue of "militarizing" the conflict, aren't we? Shouldn't we try to win it? A jihadi victory isn't good. But neither is an Assad win. At least if the rebels win we will have an opportunity to then help friendlier rebels fight the jihadis.
If there are greater worries than whether Assad survives this civil war that are keeping us out, that's a reason for staying our hand. But I've heard no reasons offered on these grounds. Assad should be defeated.
And don't despair at Assad's recent gains. The retreat from eastern Syria and the influx of hundreds of Hezbollah fighters plus tens of thousands of Iranian-organized militias have given Assad the manpower to go on the offensive within his smaller Core Syria stretching from the coast and down to Damascus and points south, including the Israeli border, it seems. Assad is following up the Qusayr victory with ambitions to secure the Noms area and take Aleppo from partial-rebel control:
With fresh momentum from the capture of a strategic town in western Syria, President Bashar Assad's forces have turned their sights to driving rebel fighters from the country's densely populated heartland, including the cities of Homs and Aleppo.
Hezbollah can't afford too many more victories as they spearheaded at Qusayr. In addition to the high loss rate, Hezbollah has to retain enough strength to resist Israel if there is a war between them in Lebanon.
And Aleppo is too large of a city and too far from Assad's core region to really secure even if he can retake it. The rebels could again bleed the Syrian ground forces if Assad sends the militias into the city which Assad's regulars could not capture last year.
If rebel morale holds and they can bleed with irregular warfare and stubborn city defense the ground forces Assad is aggressively using, the momentum will swing back to the rebel side and Assad will then face the choice of abandoning Damascus to retreat to a Rump Alawite state with an inland buffer zone.
But the rebels--especially the non-jihadi majority--need arms and signs of support to keep up the fight. If the rebels can't keep up the fight, we might get the worst of all worlds--an angry Assad in power in a smaller Syria that allows him to base Russian ships and host Iranian bases to operate in Lebanon; a dispirited non-jihadi resistance that fades away; and jihadis in power in the eastern part of Syria beyond Assad's reach where they will have a new sanctuary to destabilize Iraq and Jordan.
