Way Too Little, Way Too Late

Now that the infamous “red line” has been crossed – the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons on civilians, President Obama has decided that the United States should supply arms to the Syrian rebels. As I noted to friends yesterday, we seem to have a talent for finding the deepest part of the quicksand and stepping in it – or to be more accurate, sticking our toe in it to see if we can avoid getting sucked in.

All this is still officially pretty vague. According to reports, though, the arms we will supply to the Syrian rebels aren’t necessarily the ones they want: heavy weapons or those to shoot down aircraft.  Senator John McCain, long a hawk on this issue, believes we have to do more, including enforcing a no-fly zone.

The Assad regime has used chemical weapons on four separate occasions, according to our intelligence, killing up to 150 people. That’s awful. But it begs the question of why we didn’t care about the 100,000 or so others who have already died by more conventional means. As if the earlier atrocities committed by the regime were somehow acceptable.

So what is our goal here? Do we want to help the Syrian rebels win, or not? Will these measures really level the playing field? Continuing that analogy, leveling the playing field, at this stage, doesn’t stop the game, and if there is a winner, there’s little likelihood it’s going to be our friend.

I think our real objective should be – or should have been – knocking out or securing the chemical weapons to prevent their use – though perhaps they’ve been scattered to the point where we can’t get to them now.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda. If we’re going to change the balance in Syria, there has to be a commitment to do it. I still contend there was a point at which we could have intervened in this conflict early on and accomplished something without having to really go to war. But at this moment, Americans don’t have the stomach for the measures that seem necessary. It’s just too late to play catch-up.