Here we go:
[More than 100 U.S. Marines] were flown by helicopter to the base at Tanf — a small town near Syria’s borders with Iraq and Jordan. The base is used by U.S. special forces to train Syrian fighters who are confronting Islamic State militants.
Moscow has sent messages to the U.S. in recent days, warning that Russian military and Syrian government units were planning an attack on what they refer to as terrorists near Tanf, U.S. officials said. ...
U.S. military officials bluntly warned Russian and Syria not to go forward with an attack within a 35-mile-wide security zone that the U.S. maintains around Tanf, a key strategic outpost.
And in the northwest, we have a problem:
President Bashar al-Assad has approved a gas attack in the Idlib province, which is the country’s last rebel stronghold, a report on Sunday said.
Reports of Assad's approval comes about a week after President Trump warned the strongman and his allies not to “recklessly attack” the province. Trump called any gas attack a potential “grave humanitarian mistake.”
I thought that there was a lot of posturing over chemical use, thinking that we are vowing to attack Syria if they use them and Russia is vowing to defend Syria, indicating Assad won't use gas and America and Russia can each claim their warnings worked. Am I wrong?
Remember that the horror regarding chemical weapons is a Western thing and countries not involved in the Western Front in World War I don't share that revulsion.
And even though the Syrian foreign minister said Syria has plenty of ways to kill civilians without using chemical weapons, if Syria uses chemical weapons it shows a willingness to court a one-off American-led retaliation for using chemical weapons to really rub the defeat into the rebels and perhaps terrorize them into just giving up rather than resort to insurgency after their territorial grip is ended.
And German participation might just highlight the symbolic nature of the retaliation. Rather than demonstrating that the West is serious about preventing the use of chemical weapons if Germany is willing to join the strike, pacifist Germany's participation might merely highlight that the military response will not be serious because there is no way Germany will engage in a war over the issue.
It is tough to deter Assad in the northwest and around Tanf given that we decided that the follow-up mission to defeating ISIL in Syria isn't to defeat Assad, but to pray for peace in Syria, in practice.
And there is certainly a risk in this end stage to the Syrian multi-war that American and Russian forces could directly clash, by design or accident.
All I know is that I'm so glad we didn't "further militarize" the Syrian conflict back in 2012 by helping rebels defeat Assad early in the war when Assad was weakest, Russia and Iran were minor players, IsSIL was non-existent, and jihadis didn't dominate the rebellion. Otherwise things might have gotten seriously bad, eh?
Have a super sparkly day.
