America Is Checkmated <br>In the Middle East War <br>After U-Turn on Syria

For those hoping to ignore the Middle East during Easter and Passover, I am the Grinch who will steal the holiday. Approximately 140,000 people have died in the three years of the horrible imbroglio in Syria. Russia, despite its weakness and the moral bankruptcy of its foreign policy, has reaped a harvest of consistency and single-mindedness.It has entirely and unwaveringly supported the Bashar Al-Assad regime, used its status as a permanent United Nations Security Council member to veto any opposing resolution, and has provided superior weaponry to the Syrian government in its war against the atomized majority of its countrymen. Russia ignores European and American disapproval and does what’s necessary to maintain its Mediterranean naval base at the Syrian port of Tartus, and pretends to continue as a rival to the power of the United States Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean.The conduct of the United States has been much harder to follow and justify. It started with Hillary Clinton infamously referring to Assad as “a reformer.” It then morally supported the dissidents because they were clearly the majority, and because the overthrow of Assad would assure the end of the Iranian pipeline of assistance to Hezbollah and even, up to a point, of Hamas, curtailing the terrible mischief they have inflicted on Lebanon and Israel.But the United States declined to arm the Syrian rebels with the anti-aircraft capability they needed, though such weapons were entirely defensive, for three reasons: The U.S. government was afraid that these weapons would fall into the hands of Sunni extremists; was mesmerized by what it considered to be the more important relationship with Russia (a relationship that has proven to be entirely antagonistic and based on Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s correct calculation that American appeasement could be secured at no cost); and, because the American public, after 10 years, $2-trillion, and more than 50,000 casualties, was averse to any involvement in another Middle Eastern war.The only provocation that could apparently motivate the United States to intervene was Assad using poison gas on his own citizens. When this was done, President Obama announced that he would punish Assad, deployed American warships in a position to fire cruise missiles at the Syrians, and then abdicated the constitutionally assigned position of commander-in-chief to the Congress. When the legislators appeared likely to deny any authority to attack Syria, despite Secretary of State Kerry’s assurance that such action would be “unbelievably small” (and therefore probably not too onerous a deterrent or punishment), Mr. Obama grasped pathetically at Putin’s offered straw of supervision of Syrian surrender of the poison gas stocks to Russia.The U.S. is checkmated — Assad continues as a Soviet and Iranian puppet and his principal opponents are jihadists and terrorist-supporting organizations, and over 2.5 million Syrians (more than 10% of the country’s population), are refugees in a pitiful condition. The United States is complicit, though only through passivity and negligence, in all that has gone wrong, but has no dog in the hunt for advantage.Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia have all sponsored rebel factions in the Syrian civil war. Saudi Arabia is in a regional struggle for influence with Iran, which is in part a Sunni-Shiite intra-Muslim conflict, and does not forget the efforts of the fundamentalist groups in the region to overthrow the Saudi royal family in the 1980s. (The Saudi government is essentially a joint venture between the House of Saud and the Wahhabi establishment, lubricated by vast amounts of Danegeld paid to the propagation of Wahhabi fundamentalist views around the Muslim world).Turkey and Qatar have been less discriminating and the Turks have supported the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and Qatar the local Salafist militias. Both countries are committed to Assad’s downfall but have maintained their relations with Iran. The scheming and conspiring is endless and constant, in all directions and by all sides, as can only happen in the Middle East.Syria has earned Iran’s loyal support because it has continued through thick and thin to be a conduit to Hezbollah. The Iranians have been steady suppliers of weapons, artificially low-price oil, and extensive military training for Assad’s para-militaries and even regular forces.With the United States having done a U-turn retreat, Russia and Iran appear strong enough to keep Assad in office and with authority over more of Syria than anyone else. In general, Assad benefits from greater assistance and a severely divided opposition. The attempts to unite the various Syrian opposition groups have failed, and it is all terribly confused because of murky or obscure differences and terminological subtleties, as in the withdrawal, three months ago, of the Syrian National Council from the Syrian National Coalition. Many of the more moderate forces (great caution should be used in applying that word anywhere in the Middle East), are now awaiting events, fatigued by ineffective internecine combat.It is hard to figure out who is in the Free Syrian Army, Supreme Military Council, and the Syrian Revolutionaries’ Front and where each ends and the other begins. The Islamic Front, with around 50,000 part-time fighters, seems one of the stronger and more coherent entities and seeks an Islamic state with shariah law. Al-Qaeda’s local affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, is a more disciplined but smaller organization, and has been more careful than most about collateral damage.In regional terms, the reduction of Syria to chaos and the quick defeat of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, where it had been the 900-pound gorilla in the room for 60 years, makes life easier for Israel, a lightening of the horizon mitigated only by the American and international feebleness in response to the Iranian nuclear program. But the takeaway message on Syria is that in all of the circumstances, awful though the Assads were and disreputable and unacceptably motivated though their Iranian and Russian sponsors are, it is not clear that an objectively preferable alternative with a practical chance of success really exists.This seems to be the message of much of the Arab world. There has been little democratic or civic tradition, mainly only despotic regimes relying on military and police force to prevent disintegration promoted by subsets of radical Islam. While it makes a complete mockery of most of George W. Bush’s crusade for democracy and of most of the joyous ululations in the early phases of the Arab Spring, the incapacitation of the Arab powers has reduced the level of exported political mischief in the world, and, one would hope that civil conflict on this scale will eventually cause more sophisticated standards of civic governance to become a widespread ambition.Iran is obviously close to a nuclear capability and if it so arms itself, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt will do the same, and it will probably then be only a matter of time before at least a small nuclear weapon gets into the hands of terrorists and is detonated, when the perpetrators have a reasonable comfort level that they can maintain anonymity. Attacks by another country on Israel are unlikely, as the retaliation would be overwhelming and Israel’s anti-missile defences are so sophisticated, the extent of first-strike damage could not be assumed.What is needed is a general agreement between major countries to keep nuclear weapons out of completely irresponsible hands, as the existing Non-Proliferation Agreement is a Swiss cheese of hypocrisy; and for identification of failed states and intervention in them by international organizations to prevent them turning into breeding grounds for terrorism as Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and Sudan did.Given Russia’s domestic terror problems, amply publicized at the recent winter Olympics, it should be possible to deal with the Kremlin on this issue, but it hasn’t been so far. Largely lost sight of are the facts that there has been some progress in the Muslim world. Iraq, Tunisia, and Libya may be better off than they were before their upheavals. Morocco, Jordan, Turkey, the Emirates, and even in an odd way, Saudi Arabia, some of the other Gulf states, and the eastern Muslims, especially Indonesia and Malaysia, have shown some aptitude for self-governance and economic growth. But for better or worse, almost none of the Muslim world seems susceptible to useful outside intervention, and none of the traditional great or even regional powers seem to have any aptitude to intervene effectively.It does not come naturally to the West to put on the airs of good government given how most countries have been mismanaged recently, but waiting for the Muslim world even to achieve our unsatisfactory levels of responsible public policy could be a very protracted and frustrating process.cbletters@gmail.com. From the National Post.

America Is Checkmated <br>In the Middle East War <br>After U-Turn on Syria

More from the New York Sun

‘Risings’ Tells the Story of How a Mix of Yeats and Bullets Inspired Irish Independence

Ex-Border Patrol Commander Bovino Offers To ‘Handle’ Protests Outside Newark ICE Facility

For Both Reagan and Trump on the Economy and a Nuclear Axis of Evil, Trust but Always Verify

More from the New York Sun

‘Risings’ Tells the Story of How a Mix of Yeats and Bullets Inspired Irish Independence

Ex-Border Patrol Commander Bovino Offers To ‘Handle’ Protests Outside Newark ICE Facility

For Both Reagan and Trump on the Economy and a Nuclear Axis of Evil, Trust but Always Verify

Shake-Up at CBS as ‘60 Minutes’ Executive Producer Tanya Simon Is Fired, Sharyn Alfonsi Ousted

Israel Severs Ties With UN Chief Guterres After the Jewish State’s Inclusion in a Rape Blacklist

Waiting on Justice for 9/11

Spanberger Removes Virginia Tech Rector for Alleged Ethics Violations as She Moves To Reshape University’s Governing Body

Gustav Klimt’s ‘Women’ Serves Up a Refreshing Reminder of Artistic Freedom