Obama Ignores UN: Poised to Attack Syrian Regime

Author: Joseph A. Klein
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I am George Zimmerman

There is no good outcome that can be expected to emerge from the Syrian conflict

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The United Nations Chemical Weapons Team led by Swedish Professor Sellstrom has decided for security reasons to postpone until at least tomorrow any further visits to the locations of the most recent alleged chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs on August 21st.

It came under sniper fire yesterday as it tried to enter the affected area, but team members were able to take some samples, visit two hospitals and interview survivors, eyewitnesses and doctors in the western district of Muadhamiya.

In a statement, the UN Secretary General’s Spokesperson Office said the following: 

“Following yesterday’s attack on the UN convoy, a comprehensive assessment determined that the visit should be postponed by one day in order to improve preparedness and safety for the team.  Considering the complexities of the site, confirmation of access has not been obtained but is expected later today.”

Secretary of State John Kerry, meanwhile, all but declared the UN expert team’s investigation irrelevant. He claimed during a news briefing yesterday, without citing any concrete evidence, that the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons in the August 21st attack against opposition strongholds is now “undeniable.” He dismissed out of hand the distinct possibility that Islamist elements of the opposition forces, which include al Qaeda affiliates, could have launched the chemical weapons attack themselves with weapons they were able to seize, and staged it to look like an attack by the Syrian government. Black and white, pre-determined assumptions are driving Obama administration policy, not hard evidence.

Accordingly, the Obama administration, under increasing pressure from the United Kingdom, France, Turkey, and hawkish members of Congress to take military action, is poised to launch a missile strike against the Assad regime. According to Reuters, “Western powers told the Syrian opposition to expect a strike against President Bashar al-Assad’s forces within days.”

Obama has backed himself into a corner by declaring a red line last year on the use of chemical weapons and doing nothing about it until now. The problem is that Obama has no clear strategy in the Middle East to align U.S. interests with the least unfavorable outcome, since we can expect no real positive outcome in that part of the world – only a choice between the lesser of two evils.  It is true that even a couple of days of missile attacks that the Obama administration is now contemplating can weaken some of Assad’s military advantage and create some space for the opposition forces to regroup and regain some momentum in the fighting. However, it will have no major strategic effect. And helping the opposition means helping the al Qaeda affiliates and other Sunni jihadist groups that are fighting to replace the Assad regime with an Islamist state. A decisive victory by such Islamist forces would be even worse for the United States than the status quo.

The best we can hope for is to help create the conditions for a stalemate, which draws Iran and Hezbollah even further into the Syrian conflict on one side and al Qaeda and other Sunni jihadists on the other side. It works to our advantage by having these terrorists fight each other to the death, but it will be at the cost of many more innocent lives as well.

Ironically, if Obama does proceed militarily as planned, he will be doing so without the imprimatur of the United Nations Security Council, whose authority under international law to legitimize the use of military force against a member state Obama has stressed in the past. This appearance of double standards by the United States is a problem of Obama’s own making. He has relied too much in the past on the UN’s illusory capacity to deal with certain issues affecting international peace and security on which geopolitical rivalries and colliding national interests prevent a consensus necessary for the Security Council to act. 

The result of Obama’s decision to operate outside the auspices of the UN will be to hand Russia and China cheap propaganda points, as one or both countries will be likely to demand an emergency session of the Security Council to protest what they will no doubt denounce as naked aggression. Any chance for the Geneva II peace conference that Kerry has labored to set up with his Russian counterpart, for the purpose of bringing Syrian government and opposition leaders to the table to negotiate a political solution, will be greatly diminished in the near term.

“Attempts to bypass the Security Council, once again to create artificial groundless excuses for a military intervention in the region are fraught with new suffering in Syria and catastrophic consequences for other countries of the Middle East and North Africa,”—Russian foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in a statement.

There is no good outcome that can be expected to emerge from the Syrian conflict. However, President Obama should at least avoid making things worse, which requires a well thought out strategy for the entire Middle East region that is sorely lacking at present.



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