The author starts out poorly:
Opponents of a war in Syria are looking wise.
Efforts to destroy the country's chemical weapons just might work. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons declared last week that "Syria had met the Nov. 1 deadline to destroy or render inoperable all chemical weapon production facilities," according to the Associated Press. If you believe war should be a last resort, this progress is decisive as long as it lasts. Salutary changes are happening without the United States having to invest any lives or treasure.
But another reason to avoid intervening in Syria is the stunning hubris of the course some hawks are proposing. Take Michael Totten's World Affairs article, "No Exit: Why the U.S. Can't Leave the Middle East." Its author is perfectly aware of U.S. failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the unintended consequences of our intervention in Libya, but if he's learned the right lessons from them I can't see how.
What he proposes is fighting two consecutive wars in Syria. First, we would ally with the Islamists against the government. Then once the government fell, we would fight the extremist element among the rebels. Only then would our goals be met.
Where to begin?
Opponents of a war in Syria are looking wise because the chemical weapons agreement is--so early--working? When that agreement is shielding Assad's forces as they fight the war?
In what world can you say that "opponents of a war in Syria" are achieving their supposed objective when a war is raging in Syria in the background of that supposedly brilliant agreement that just might work? That's wise?
Oh sure, he really means American intervention in the war already raging, you say. Well, he should say that rather than pretend that lack of American intervention means there is no war.
But then the author implies something quite different than what I want and what Totten wants--American support for rebels to overthrow the Assad regime. By saying Totten proposes "fighting two consecutive wars in Syria," the author implies that the objective is American troops on the ground to smash Assad and then fight the jihadis.
What Totten says is the totally unremarkable notion that if we don't try to help a side acceptable to us win, the odds are a side unacceptable to us will win.
We don't want Assad to win. We don't want jihadis to win. If we do nothing to help the non-jihadi rebels win while Iran helps Assad and international Islamist networks support the jihadi rebels, one of those two bad alternative will win.
Perhaps both bad elements will win, with jihadis running large chunks of Syria while Assad retreats to a core Syria of the Alawite homeland down to Damascus.
Funny enough, that WMD deal that author praises might make that outcome more likely.
Or do you actually hope that the Assad-Iran forces will fight to the mutual death with the jihadis and leave the non-jihadis the last men standing?
The only choice we have if we want to pursue our interests rather than look for ways to avoid action is to beat both Assad and the jihadis.
If we have to beat one at a time, we can hardly help Assad defeat the rebels first (although our WMD deal the author praises prematurely seems effectively to be just that) and then help surviving non-jihadi rebels beat Assad.
Or do you think we can convince Assad to only target jihadis right now? I can see it now: Secretary Kerry persuades Assad that it would be in the best interests of Syria if Assad at least accepts that the victory of non-jihadi rebels is the second best outcome after Assad's survival!
No, the only way to achieve both our objectives is to strengthen the non-jihadi rebels so that when they topple Assad, they are strong enough to defeat the jihadis in the next phase.
Remember, if Sunni rebels defeat Assad, a lot (not all) of the religious motivation that leads many Sunni jihadis to volunteer for war in Syria--fighting the non-Sunni Alawites--will be gone.
And if we spend our time mapping the human and physical terrain of the jihadis as the rebellion works, we'll be able to help the more reasonable rebels win that second fight.
Remember, this sequential focus does not imply American direct intervention in the fight. There are lots of rebels and if we train and arm them (and give them intelligence and advice), the rebels can defeat Assad's depleted and exhausted forces without American troops on the ground or American planes and missiles pounding Assad's forces. And then fight the foreign jihadi invaders, too.
Let me add that I have to question the author's analytical abilities when he prefaces his preference to not try to influence events in Syria because of our "failures" in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya.
Failures? You can argue that Iraq was not worth the cost, but we did defeat Saddam, defeat the Iranian- and Syrian-supported insurgents and terrorists, and leave Iraq with a functioning democracy. We've had problems since we needlessly left Iraq to its own devices, but that isn't a failure of the war but a failure of the post-war.
And in Afghanistan, we have succeeded so far and can defend those gains if we continue to back our allies and friends in Afghanistan.
As for Libya, it is messy, but our intervention did end Khadaffi's regime. I wasn't a backer of the decision to intervene there (I thought we had better things to do), but I'm not going to deny that we won (even if I think we got a bit lucky there given the shaky nature of the NATO alliance).
So prefacing an argument against intervening in Syria by citing three of our victories isn't going to persuade me.
Look, there is no such thing as a final victory in foreign policy. We won in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. That doesn't mean our enemies give up forever in those places. So we have to keep winning those struggles in new phases with new means.
And just because we can already see a new struggle in Syria after we achieve the fall of Assad doesn't mean that it is foolish to seek the fall of Assad.
Is it really dumb to help rebels (who will include jihadis who we won't support) defeat Assad and then help the winning non-jihadi rebels defeat their jihadi brother rebels?
Perhaps as dumb as helping the Soviet Union defeat Nazi Germany and then arming West Germany to resist the Soviet Union in a long Cold War. Add in Italy and Japan in that anti-Soviet effort, to round out the difficulty of that two-step intervention in Europe and Asia.
Or, if you want an example closer to addressing the scorn the author heaps on helping Syrian rebels overthrow Assad and then fighting rebels--and he neglects that we would help non-jihadi rebels and then help fight the jihadi rebels--consider that in Iraq we fought Sunni Arabs from the overthrow of their patron Saddam through several years of vicious counter-insurgency campaigns until those very Sunni Arabs switched sides to fight with us against jihadi al Qaeda terrorists!
Just because a task is complicated and hard doesn't mean it isn't the best course available.
