By Barry Rubin
HERZLIYA, Israel — I merely transcribe the lead paragraph inSaturday’s (May 7) Washington Post:
“Syrian troops used heavy machine guns and artillery to quell anti-government demonstrations in the key city of Homs on Friday in a sharp escalation of their crackdown against regime opponents, as tens of thousands of Syrians again defied the threat of bullets and tanks to take to the streets around the country.”
The article goes on to report “pitched battles in several neighborhoods” and 24 deaths due to firing into unarmed crowds of peaceful demonstrators.
What does the White House say? It “condemns and deplores” the violence, mass arrests, and human rights violations. It threatens to “adjust” U.S. policy toward Syria and issues sanctions against a handful of those directly involved in the violence. And it talks vaguely of a “strong” response and urges the Syrian dictatorship to make reforms.
This policy is a national disgrace. I have no doubt that the Obama Administration’s behavior toward the uprising in Syria and Iran will in future be strongly condemned. The exquisite sensitivity toward America’s enemies compared to the harsh treatment of its friends must come to an end.
Aside from everything else consider one simple point that is publicly known beyond any question:
Syria’s government has allied itself and helps in every way the Iraqi terrorists who have killed hundreds of Americans. And those terrorists belong to al-Qaida. Remember them? The group until recently headed by Usama bin Laden that carried out the September 11 attacks. This is also the strongest and most significant remaining al-Qaida member group.
There is no excuse for President Obama not to utter six simple words: The Assad dictatorship must go now.
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Did Obama have any choice but to say ‘yes’ to Bin Laden operation?
Military Officer: Mr. President, on the basis of hard work and intelligence-gathering over the last nine years we now know where bin Laden is. We believe we can kill him and get our men out again safely without causing many–if any–civilian casualties. Do we have your approval for the operation?
Obama: Let me think about it.
Obama (sixteen hours later): OK, go ahead.
I know many people will think the above account doesn’t give the president enough credit. But as a corrective to many of the inflated accounts being offered in which the president is receiving–and taking–full credit for the operation, I think it is reasonable.
Moreover, I think there is no way that Obama could have said “no” and was quite aware that if he did not give the go-ahead sooner or later the news would have leaked out and he would have looked very bad indeed. There would have been a huge political cost.
Even if the team had failed to kill or capture bin Ladin, been wiped out, or killed civilians inadvertently, the domestic popular support for getting bin Laden is so great that no one would have faulted Obama for trying. Obama would have been given credit even by his opponents and would have received sympathy for taking a tough decision and feeling remorse for the suffering incurred on others.
This was simply not a difficult or courageous decision to make. And that’s an honest and accurate assessment–not a merely cynical one–even if one contrary to the general conventional wisdom reactions. The president made the right decision but any other outcome was quite unlikely.
It isn’t that Obama hasn’t made some tough or arguably courageous foreign policy decisions–the Afghan policy, the Libyan intervention, not to do more against the Syrian dictatorship, demanding the immediate downfall of the Egyptian regime, etc.–the problem is that all of those decisions were wrong ones.
All of the credit should belong to the career military and intelligence people who gathered the information, made the assessments, put together the operation’s plan–if anything had gone wrong they, not Obama, would have been fired–and risked their lives to make this happen.
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Barry Rubin, who may be read on Pajama’s media, http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/ is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. GLORIA Center site: http://www.gloria-center.org He may be contacted at barry.rubin@sdjewishworld.com.