The End of Syria as We Know It? Why Obama is Declaring War on Syria
by Franklin Lamb | Beirut
June 16, 2013
The short answer is Iran and Hezbollah according to Congressional sources. “The Syrian army’s victory at al-Qusayr was
more than the administration could accept given that town’s strategic position in the region. Its capture by the Assad
forces has essentially added Syria to Iran’s list of victories starting with Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iraq, as well as its
growing influence in the Gulf.”
Other sources are asserting that Obama actually did not want to invoke direct military aid the rebels fighting to topple
the Assad government or even to make use of American military power in Syria for several reasons. Among these are the
lack of American public support for yet another American war in the Middle East, the fact that there appears to be no
acceptable alternative to the Assad government on the horizon, the position of the US intelligence community and the
State Department and Pentagon that intervention in Syria would potentially turn out very badly for the US and gut what’s
left of its influence in the region. It short, that the US getting involved in Syria could turn out even worse than
Iraq, by intensifying a regional sectarian war without any positive outcome in sight.
Obama was apparently serious earlier about a negotiated diplomatic settlement pre-Qusayr and there were even some
positives signs coming from Damascus, Moscow, and even Tehran John Kerry claimed. But that has changed partly because
Russia and the US have both hardened their demands. Consequently, the Obama administration has now essentially thrown in
the towel on the diplomatic track. This observer was advised by more than one Congressional staffer that Obama’s team
has concluded that the Assad government was not getting their message or taking them seriously and that Assad’s recent
military gains and rising popular support meant that a serious Geneva II initiative was not going to happen.
In addition, Obama has been weakened recently by domestic politics and a number of distractions and potential scandals
not least of which is the disclosures regarding the massive NSA privacy invasion. In addition, the war lobby led by
Senators McClain and Lindsay Graham is still pounding their drums and claim that Obama would be in violation of his oath
of office and by jeopardizing the national security interest of the United States by allowing Iran to essentially own
Syria once Assad quells the uprising.” Both Senators welcomed the chemical weapons assessment. For months they have been
saying that Obama has not been doing enough to help the rebels. “U.S. credibility is on the line,” they said in a joint
statement this week. “Now is not the time to merely take the next incremental step. Now is the time for more decisive
actions,” they said, such as using long-range missiles to degrade Assad’s air power and missile capabilities. Another
neo-con, Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (D-Pa.) said the opposition forces risk defeat without heavier weapons, but he also
warned that may not be enough. “The U.S. should move swiftly to shift the balance on the ground in Syria by considering
grounding the Syrian air force with stand-off weapons and protecting a safe zone in northern Syria with Patriot missiles
in Turkey,” Casey said.
According to some analysts, Obama could alternatively authorize the arming and training of the Syrian opposition in
Jordan without a no-fly zone. That appears unlikely according to this observers Washington interlocutors because the
Pentagon wants to end the Syrian crisis by summers end, the observer was advised “rather than working long term with a
motley bunch of jihadists who we could never trust or rely on. The administration has come to the conclusion apparently
that if they are in for a penny they are in for a pound, meaning would not allow Iran to control Syria and Hezbollah to
pocket Lebanon.”
Secretary of State Kerry had meetings with more than two dozen military specialists on 5/13/13. The Washington Post is
reporting that Kerry believes supplying the rebels with weapons might be too little and too late to actually flip the
balance on the Syrian ground and this calls “for a military strike to paralyze Al-Assad’s military capacities.” A
Pentagon source reported that the USA, France, and Britain are considering a decisive decision to reverse the current
Assad momentum and quickly construct one in favor of the rebels” within a time period not exceeding the end of this
summer.
Shortly after the meetings began, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia quickly returned to Saudi Arabia from his palace at Casa
Blanca, Morocco after receiving a call from his intelligence chief, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan. Bander reportedly had a
representative at the White House during the meetings with President Obama’s team. King Abdullah was reportedly advised
by Kerry to be prepared for a rapid expansion of the growing regional conflict.
What happens between now and the end of summer is likely to be catastrophic for the Syrian public and perhaps Lebanon.
The “chemical weapons-red line” is not taken seriously on Capitol Hill for the reason that the same “inclusive evidence”
of months ago is the same that is suddenly being cited to justify what may become essentially an all-out war against the
Syrian government and anyone who gets in the way. Hand wringing over the loss of 125 lives due to chemical weapons,
whoever did use them, pales in comparison to the more 50,000 additional lives that will be lost in the coming months, a
figure that Pentagon planners and the White House have “budgeted” as the price of toppling the Assad government.
“We are going to see a rapid escalation of the conflict”, a staffer on the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee emailed
this observer: “The president has made a decision to give whatever humanitarian aid, as well as political and diplomatic
support to the opposition that in necessary. Additionally direct support to the (Supreme Military Council), will be
provided and that includes military support.” The staffer quoted the words of Deputy National Security Advisor Ben
Rhodes to the media on 5/13/13 to the same effect.
A part of this “humanitarian assistance” the US is going to established in the coming weeks a “limited, humanitarian
no-fly zone, that will begin along several miles of the Jordanian and Turkish borders in certain military areas into
Syrian territory, and would be set up and presented as a limited bid to train and equip rebel forces and protect
refugees. But in reality, as we saw in Libya a Syrian no fly zone would very likely include all of Syria.
Libya’s no-fly zones made plain that there is no such thing as a “limited zone”. Put briefly, a “no-fly zone” means
essentially a declaration of all-out war. Once the US and its allies start a no fly zone they will expand it and
intensify it as they take countless other military actions to protect its zones until the Syrian government falls. “It’s
breathtaking to contemplate how this in going to end and how Iran and Russia will respond,” one source concluded.
The White House is trying to assuage the few in Congress as well as a majority of the American public that it can be a
limited American involved and that the no-fly zone would not require the destruction of Syrian antiaircraft batteries.
This is more nonsense. During the no-fly zone I witnessed from Libya in the summer of 2011 the US backed it up with all
manner of refueling, electronic jamming, special-ops on the ground and by mid-July a kid peddling his bike was not safe.
Over the 192 days of patrolling the Libyan no-fly zones, NATO countries flew 24,682 sorties including 9,204 bomb strike
sorties. NATO claimed it never missed its target but that was also not true. Hundreds of civilians were killed in Libya
by no-fly zone attack aircraft that either missed their targets and emptied their bomb bays before returning to base
while conducting approximately 48 bombing strikes per day using a variety of bombs and missiles, including more than 350
cruise Tomahawks.
At a Congressional hearing in 2011, then US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates got it right when he explained which
discussing Libya “a no-fly zone begins with an attack to destroy all the air defenses … and then you can fly planes
around the country and not worry about our guys being shot down. But that’s the way it starts.”
According to the accounts published in American media, Obama could alternatively authorize the arming and training of
the Syrian opposition in Jordan without a no-fly zone. That appears unlikely because the Pentagon wants to end the
Syrian crisis by summers end, the observer was advised “rather than working long term with a motley bunch of jihadists
who we could never trust or rely on. The administration has come to the conclusion apparently that if they are in for a
penny they are in for a pound.”
In response to a question from this observer about how he thought event might unfold in this region over the coming
months, a very insightful long-term congressional aid replied: “Well Franklin, maybe someone will pull a rabbit out of
the hat to stop the push for war. But frankly I doubt it. From where I sit I’d wager that Syria as we have known it may
soon be no more. And perhaps some other countries in the region also.”
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Franklin Lamb is doing research in Syria and Lebanon.