What's Plan D?

Now, despite the many reasons cited in our declaration of war to go to war with Saddam's Iraq, war opponents insist that only the presence of existing chemical weapons would have justified the war. What? Syria has and is using chemical weapons? Squirrel!

Saddam had used chemical weapons extensively in the 1980s, had advanced programs in the past for nuclear weapons (pre-1991) and biological weapons (even in the mid-1990s) as well as the technical capability to make chemical weapons and missiles do deliver them (even after Desert Storm) and was poised to resume his programs when sanctions faltered. Yet war was unjustified because we did not find post-1991 chemical weapons after we defeated Saddam's regime.

So our president said only Syrian use of chemical weapons would justify our intervention in Syria. It was a "red line," our administration said. Clearly, our administration never thought Assad would actually use chemical weapons.

While chemical usage has not been routine, it has been used:

Britain has joined France in declaring that sarin nerve gas has been used in the Syrian civil war, though it did not go as far as France as to accuse President Bashar al-Assad's regime of deploying the chemical weapon.

It's possible that local commanders used the weapons on their own. Jihadis may have also used them.

So after laying down the marker that only chemical weapons were a cause for war in Iraq (after the fact) and after insisting that Assad must not use them, we do nothing to back the president's red line on chemical use in Syria.

And in the meantime, 80,000 have died by more conventional means of slaughter.

We are building the capacity to do so, of course, in Jordan. But Turkish troubles make their vital help more uncertain. While a foreign adventure might be useful to distract Turks from local disputes, it might just as well keep Turks too inwardly focused to act in Syria.

I'm not happy. Plan A for the administration was to make Assad our friend. We didn't try Plan B to overthrow the Assad regime by supporting rebels when the fighting got going seriously a year and a half ago. We figured we could always break out Plan C to cope with Assad's chemical arsenal apart from dealing with the Assad regime. But now with Turkey's vital role in Plan C in doubt, and Iraq crumbling under the pressure of existing between Syria and Iran, do we have a Plan D?

I hope so. Because Plan W (blaming Bush) just isn't going to cut it any more.