Pat Allen: The View from Right Field

So What Do We Do About Syria? – A Follow-Up

I am still concerned about Syria and what some people are urging us to do.  Doing something in Syria would not be easy.  It would be much harder than Libya, and look how long that took.  It is hard to believe something could be done in Syria without ground troops.  Finding enough ground troops, from us and our allies, wouldn’t be easy with Afghanistan going on and with threats from Iran and North Korea.

In the case of Libya, the Obama administration did not act until both the Arab League and the United Nations Security Council passed resolutions.  While the Arab League is acting in the case of Syria, the Security Council has not done so because of vetoes by Russia and China.

But there is one other possibility that could open the doors legally to US action in Syria – and which might just about require us to go into Syria.  I have not seen this raised in the US media (though I could have missed it), but I did read it in a London paper.

Syria has already shot at Syrian refugees in Turkey.  I believe the firing has injured Turkish nationals, too.  If Syria really attacks into Turkey or people in Turkey, Turkey could raise Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, which provides:

“The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”

I understand this language talks about attacks “in Europe or North America” and “maintain[ing] the security of the North Atlantic area.”  However, the only time Article 5 has been invoked, the result was NATO attacks against Afghanistan.  It was right after 9/11, and it was the United States who invoked Article 5.

If Syria really attacks Turkey and Turkey invokes Article 5, would we respond?  There would, I believe, be an arguable legal basis for doing so.  But what about other reasons?  Well, Turkey suffered over 3,000 casualties fighting with us in Korea.  (After South Korea and the United States, only the United Kingdom suffered more casualties than Turkey.)  Turkey was a very important ally for the United States and NATO during the Cold War.

What would we do?  I don’t know, but the NATO Treaty does raise an issue that needs to be thought about.  It’s not easy.

So What Do We Do About Syria?

Unfortunately, I’m not sure there is much we can do about Syria.

First, it is not surprising that Kofi Annan’s peace plan is not working.  Actually, as The Washington Post noted in an editorial on Monday, the idea that Mr. Annan’s peace plan would work was naïve – in the extreme.  Syria negotiates to stall, and Bashar al-Assad is an expert at it.  It was so obvious that the effort was going to fail that I don’t fully understand why people are so upset it failed – or why they wasted their time on pursing it.  Maybe the plan had to be tried before other, better, things could be done.  That would be just about the only excuse.

The Washington Post, and others, are calling for the United States and NATO to get involved, a la Libya.  It’s a nice thought, but we can’t do it.  Iran and North Korea are more important – and we are still in Afghanistan, even if the Administration seems to have already checked out mentally.  The Syrian government is bad, but mostly to its own people.  Iran and North Korea, on the other hand, have the potential to be dangerous to the whole world.  And besides, North Korea is much worse to its people than Syria is to its.  And if Syria, why not the Congo or Mali?  (There is a revolt going on in Mali that seems to have started when mercenaries from Mali that Gadhafi hired were sent home after Gadhafi was overthrown.  How’s that for an unintended consequence?)

Realistically, all we can do in Syria to continue to impose sanctions and try to isolate its leadership, though without Russia’s and China’s help I am not sure how much good that will do.

One other thought:  I hope all those people saying the United States needs to “do” something in Syria are also telling the Obama administration that it needs to reverse its planned cutbacks in Defense Department spending.  Because I don’t know how we are going to do all the “somethings” that people want us to do without the troops and weapons to do them.

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Update (4/12/12 12:35 pm): It appears that the ceasefire in Syria is taking effect to some extent.  Shooting has quieted down, but the Syrian army has not withdrawn from certain locations as I guess it is supposed to.  In any case, my prediction is that the ceasefire will only last as long as Bashar al-Assad thinks it is to his benefit to have it last.  If the opposition appears to be gaining from the cease-fire, President Assad will claim the protesters have violated some aspect of the agreement and will start shooting again.

Also, I still say that the United States is not in a position to commit its military to doing anything in Syria.  Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea are more important.

Liberals Celebrate Success in Libya – But Will They Like the Precedent They Have Created?

E. J. Dionne says this, in light of the Libyan rebels’ successes:

“It's remarkable how reluctant Obama's opponents are to acknowledge that despite all the predictions that his policy of limited engagement could never work, it actually did. …

Yet no good Obama deed goes unpunished. In the midst of the bracing news, Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham issued a statement saying, well, too bad that Obama got it wrong. …

Less than six months and no American casualties were obviously not good enough. Should we have done this the way we did things in Iraq? …

Obama used the greater freedom he has in foreign policy to define the middle ground in the Libyan case on his own terms. ‘It's true that America cannot use our military wherever repression occurs,’ Obama said in March. ‘But that cannot be an argument for never acting on behalf of what's right.’

That made a lot of sense.”

Of course, Mr. Dionne does not mention that President Obama originally said that what we were doing in Libya would take days, not weeks.  Also, he doesn’t mention that NATO almost didn’t get the job done, and that then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates felt obligated to give NATO a tongue lashing for how poorly they were performing just before he left office in July.*  Nor does Mr. Dionne explain how what NATO was doing at the end of its operations:

“NATO and its allies helped Libya’s rebels mount an aggressive ‘pincer’ strategy in recent weeks, providing intelligence, advice and stepped-up airstrikes that helped push Moammar Gaddafi’s forces toward collapse in Tripoli …”

fits with the original mandate from the United Nations, which was to protect Libyan civilians.

But Colonel Gaddafi is gone, which is a success.  Still, I think Mr. Dionne may want to be careful about celebrating the success of President Obama’s policy too much, especially given the way the President and his legal advisers handled the question of his compliance with the War Powers Resolution.  Before President Obama, presidents would claim that the War Powers Resolution was an unconstitutional limitation on presidential power, but they would basically comply with it.

President Obama’s legal advisers (or, rather, some of President Obama’s legal advisers**) came up with a different approach.  They said that the War Powers Resolution was constitutional, but President Obama didn’t have to comply with it because what we were doing in Libya did not rise to the level of “hostilities”.  And if you are not involved in hostilities, the War Powers Resolution doesn’t apply.

Harold H. Koh, Legal Adviser of the State Department, gave four reasons why the U.S. was not involved in “hostilities” in Libya:

“‘ground troops and significant non-air forces have not been involved, the lack of American casualties or a significant threat of them, a limited risk of escalation, and the limited use of military means’”***

Here is where Mr. Dionne needs to be careful with his celebrating.  Because with this theory, President Obama has created a loophole in the War Powers Resolution that is big enough to drive a truck through.  And with the increased use and capabilities of things like drones and unmanned smart weapons (and all the other things that we don’t even know about yet), it won’t be long until the loophole is big enough for a four-lane highway.

Once that has happened, I wonder how Mr. Dionne will feel when the President using that loophole and driving on that highway is less of a Barack Obama and more of a George W. Bush or – worse yet, in Mr. Dionne’s view – a Dick Cheney.

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* “On target: Robert Gates’s parting shot exposes Europe’s military failings,” The Economist, June 16, 2011.

** Lawyers at both the Pentagon and the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel disagreed with Mr. Koh’s interpretation.

*** Jennifer Steinhauer, “Obama Adviser Defends Libya Policy to Senate,” The New York Times, June 28, 2011.

United States May Tell al-Assad To Go

According to CNN, “the United States is moving toward issuing an explicit call for [Syrian President Bashir] al-Assad to step down ….” 

But don’t worry, we’re not rushing into this.  “[T]he question of whether to call for al-Assad to leave office has been under discussion over the past few weeks.”  Also, we’re not going to announce anything until “after U.S. officials consult with the [UN] Security Council ….”  

In any case, I am sure President al-Assad is very worried that the United States might call for him to leave office.  After all, look how quickly Moammar Gaddafi left Libya after President Obama told him to go back in the middle of March.

Libya

Two comments on Libya:  First, the House of Representatives has, in effect, split the difference on Libya:

“The House of Representatives refused to either endorse or curtail U.S. involvement in Libya, delivering a mixed message Friday that put deep divisions surrounding the issue on full display.

By an overwhelming margin [295-123], lawmakers refused to sanction U.S. participation in a NATO campaign of air strikes in the North African country, a vote that amounted to a rare, bipartisan rebuke of a president's foreign policy during an active military conflict.

Minutes later, however, a Republican-led effort to try to curb financial support for U.S. involvement also failed [238-180]. A majority of Democrats and a group of Republicans rejected the bill to cut funding for combat activities – surprising GOP leaders, who tailored the bill at last minute to suit the rank-and-file.

Both measures were largely symbolic. The first measure, which would have given authorization to U.S. involvement, was not expected to pass the Republican-led House ….

The second bill, to cut off funding, had virtually no chance of passing the Senate, much less garnering a presidential signature.”

This is probably an acceptable result.  Regardless of how inept the Obama Administration has been in explaining what we are doing in Libya and why we are there, and regardless of the fact that they felt they needed UN Security Council approval but not US Congress approval, I do not favor cutting off funding for the military activities.  It is the Obama administration that messed up here, not our military and not our country.  Even though the Administration says we are not engaged in “hostilities,” I think we are, and I would not cut off funding in that situation.

However, something needed to be so that presidents understand the proper limits on their actions.  Regardless of whether the War Powers Resolution is constitutional or not, presidents need to consult Congress and explain to the American people what they are doing – and why – before they send our troops into situations like Libya, or as soon thereafter as reasonably possible.  The Administration did not do this.

I realize that the failure of the House to authorize the Libya operation might make the U.S. look a little bad, but the Obama administration has to bear at least some responsibility for this vote.  If they are going to largely ignore Congress and, more importantly, the American people, they should expect something like this to happen.

Second, in his address last Wednesday evening, President Obama said this about Libya:

“When innocents are being slaughtered and global security endangered, we don't have to choose between standing idly by or acting on our own. Instead, we must rally international action, which we're doing in Libya, where we do not have a single soldier on the ground, but are supporting allies in protecting the Libyan people and giving them the chance to determine their own destiny.”

A couple of things:  One, global security was not endangered by what was happening in Libya.  Civil war in Libya is bad for Libyans, but it is not endangering global security.

Two, I really don’t understand how the Libyan operation is going to succeed any time soon.  Maybe Colonel Gaddafi will give up.  I hope so – because the NATO forces seem to be having a lot of problems getting the job done.  Part of the problem, obviously, is that the policy goal is to get Colonel Gaddafi out, but the legal remit is just to protect civilians.  It is hard to accomplish the former when you are only supposed to do the latter.

But even without that complication, NATO is having problems.  As Defense Secretary Gates said:

“The mightiest military alliance in history is only 11 weeks into an operation against a poorly armed regime in a sparsely populated country.  Yet many allies are beginning to run short of munitions, requiring the US, once more, to make up the difference.”

According to The Economist:

“The British naval chief says that, if the war drags on beyond the autumn, he will have to take ‘challenging decisions’ about how to deploy his ships. His French counterpart complains that if his only carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, remains off Libya for the rest of the year it will have to be out of service for maintenance throughout 2012. Norway, one of the few stalwarts ready to bomb Colonel Qaddafi’s forces, says its small air force can no longer cope: it will cut back operations now, and cease them altogether on August 1st.”

If this is what President Obama considers a success, then ....  Let’s not go there.  Libya may still turn out the way we want it to, but it will be a success only in result, not in the way it was handled.  And it should not be held out as an example of how to do things in the future.

Libya and the War Powers Act

I have been busy with other things and unable to comment on a fascinating story being played out in Washington as to whether and how, if at all, the 1973 War Powers Resolution (also known as the War Powers Act, which was its name in the Senate version) applies to what we are doing in, or over, or next to Libya.  Under the War Powers Act, presidents are supposed to get Congress’s authorization or approval, within 60 days (or 90 days in some cases) after they send U.S. armed forces into hostilities. 

Presidents since 1973 have objected to the law as an unconstitutional limitation on the president’s power, while at the same time effectively complying with its provisions.  Until now, that is.

The Obama administration is following a different approach to the War Powers Act.  Instead of saying that the law is unconstitutional but sort of complying with it, they accepting that it is constitutional but saying it doesn’t not apply here because, in essence, our forces in and around Libya aren’t involved in “hostilities.”  Amazing.

Let’s catch up on what has been happening in a little more detail.  First, from The New York Times of June 15, 2011:

“In contending that the limited American role did not oblige the administration to ask for authorization under the War Powers Resolution, the [White House] report asserted that ‘U.S. operations do not involve sustained fighting or active exchanges of fire with hostile forces, nor do they involve U.S. ground troops.’ …

‘We are acting lawfully,’ said Harold H. Koh, the State Department legal adviser, who expanded on the administration’s reasoning in a joint interview with the White House counsel, Robert Bauer.

The two senior administration lawyers contended that American forces had not been in ‘hostilities’ at least since early April, when NATO took over the responsibility for the no-fly zone and the United States shifted to primarily a supporting role — providing refueling and surveillance to allied warplanes, although remotely piloted drones operated by the United States periodically fire missiles, too.

They argued that United States forces are at little risk because there are no troops on the ground and Libyan forces are unable to exchange fire with them meaningfully. And they said the military mission was constrained by a United Nations Security Council resolution, which authorized air power for the purpose of defending civilians.

‘We are not saying the president can take the country into war on his own,’ said Mr. Koh, a former Yale Law School dean and outspoken critic of the Bush administration’s expansive theories of executive power. ‘We are not saying the War Powers Resolution is unconstitutional or should be scrapped or that we can refuse to consult Congress. We are saying the limited nature of this particular mission is not the kind of “hostilities” envisioned by the War Powers Resolution.’”

Then, on June 17, 2011, in a story entitled “2 Top Lawyers Lost to Obama in Libya War Policy Debate,” The New York Times reported:

“President Obama rejected the views of top lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department when he decided that he had the legal authority to continue American military participation in the air war in Libya without Congressional authorization, according to officials familiar with internal administration deliberations.

Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon general counsel, and Caroline D. Krass, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, had told the White House that they believed that the United States military’s activities in the NATO-led air war amounted to ‘hostilities.’ Under the War Powers Resolution, that would have required Mr. Obama to terminate or scale back the mission after May 20.

But Mr. Obama decided instead to adopt the legal analysis of several other senior members of his legal team — including the White House counsel, Robert Bauer, and the State Department legal adviser, Harold H. Koh — who argued that the United States military’s activities fell short of ‘hostilities.’ Under that view, Mr. Obama needed no permission from Congress to continue the mission unchanged. …

The administration followed an unusual process in developing its position. Traditionally, the Office of Legal Counsel solicits views from different agencies and then decides what the best interpretation of the law is. The attorney general or the president can overrule its views, but rarely do.

In this case, however, Ms. Krass was asked to submit the Office of Legal Counsel’s thoughts in a less formal way to the White House, along with the views of lawyers at other agencies. After several meetings and phone calls, the rival legal analyses were submitted to Mr. Obama, who is a constitutional lawyer, and he made the decision.”

And then, in The New York Times of June 20, 2011, as to what we have actually been doing in Libya:

“Since the United States handed control of the air war in Libya to NATO in early April, American warplanes have struck at Libyan air defenses about 60 times, and remotely operated drones have fired missiles at Libyan forces about 30 times, according to military officials.

The most recent strike from a piloted United States aircraft was on Saturday, and the most recent strike from an American drone was on Wednesday, the officials said. …

The unclassified portion of material about Libya that the White House sent to Congress last week, for example, said 'American strikes are limited to the suppression of enemy air defense and occasional strikes by unmanned Predator' drones, but included no numbers for such strikes. …

The special anti-radar missiles used to suppress enemy air defenses are usually carried by piloted aircraft, not drones, and the Pentagon has regularly said that American military aircraft have continued to conduct these missions. Still, officials have been reluctant to release the exact numbers of strikes.

Under military doctrine, strikes aimed at suppressing air defenses are typically considered to be defensive actions, not offensive. On the other hand, military doctrine also considers the turning on of air-defense radar in a no-fly zone to be a ‘hostile act.’ It is not clear whether any of the Libyan defenses were made targets because they had turned on such radar.”

Finally, Michael Isikoff noted at Msnbc.com yesterday that Bob Bauer, the lawyer who coordinated the legal review for the President and then defended the Administration’s reasoning, along with Harold Koh of the State Department, in an interview with the press, “left the White House on Friday [i.e., two days after the interview with the press] to return to his law firm (where he will serve as a campaign lawyer for Obama)”.  Wow.

I just don’t understand it.  Why has President Obama been so adamant against getting some kind of Congressional approval?  He got UN Security Council approval.  Why not Congress?  Did he think he couldn’t get it?  Is this some way to be able to claim Libya isn't a war?  Or is this all about the U.S. not leading? 

What would have been the big deal about getting Congress’s sign-off?  In fact, it seems like President Obama has caused himself more problems with Congress by not seeking some kind of approval than he would have if he sought approval.  There are reports that some members of the House are going to try to limit financing for our Libyan operations.*  It would seem to me that such an effort is probably going to get more support now than it would have gotten if the President had involved Congress from the start. 

I don’t understand it.  Don’t President Obama, and the Democrats who are supporting his position, realize that their arguments could come back to haunt them when the next George W. Bush is in the White House?  If President Obama can ignore the Office of Legal Counsel, why can’t a Republican?  It’s such an obvious point, I can’t see why they are missing it.  Why is handling this Libyan situation iin this way so important that they are willing to create such a precedent over it?

Two final comments.  First, one of the funnier comments in this whole situation came from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.  According to the June 16 Washington Post:

“One of the few to publicly defend Obama was House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Pelosi said Thursday that she remains convinced that ‘the limited nature of this engagement allows the president to go forward.’

‘I am satisfied that the president has the authority he needs to, and I say that as one very protective of congressional prerogative and very supportive of consultations’ between the executive and legislative branches, Pelosi told reporters at a news conference.”

No, Ms. Pelosi.  Your alleged “protective[ness] of congressional prerogative[s]” in other cases does not show that what President Obama is doing here is okay.  Rather, your support of what President Obama is doing here shows that your alleged “protective[ness] of congressional prerogative[s]” in other cases was based less on principle and more on partisan hackery

Second, a comment of somewhat of a personal nature.  I was surprised to see Harold Koh, the State Department legal advisor, take the position he took.  When Mr. Koh was dean of Yale Law School, Yale and Dean Koh were among the leaders in the fight against the Solomon Amendment.  Back before “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was abolished, some colleges refused to give military recruiters full access to the college placement office on the grounds that the military was discriminating against homosexuals, because of “Don’t Ask, Don’ Tell,” and the colleges could not countenance that.  The Solomon Amendment said that colleges who did this could lose their federal funding.  Yale and Dean Koh, et al., argued that the Solomon Amendment was unconstitutional, and they took their case all the way to the US Supreme Court.  And even after losing 9-0 in the Supreme Court, Dean Koh still said they were going to try to appeal some other way because what the government was forcing them to do was so bad.  To see Mr. Koh take the position he did with respect to what President Obama is doing in Libya after how hard he fought the Bush Administration on the Solomon Amendment is, in the words of Mr. Spock, fascinating.

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* Not something I would agree with, regardless of how badly President Obama has messed this up.

Remember Libya?

Remember Libya?  As we have become a little less involved there, and as other things have become taken over the headlines (to say the least), Libya has slipped off the radar screen – in the United States.  But it’s still news in the Middle East, where it would seem to me it looks like the United States is failing.  Even though President Obama claims our forces are only there to help implement UN Security Council resolution 1973, which calls for the protection of civilians, and not to force Colonel Gaddafi out, President Obama also says that United States policy is that Gaddafi must leave.  I am not sure how the splitting of that hair, i.e., the United States having one policy and its military supposedly implementing another, is playing on the various Arab streets throughout the region.  I am also not sure how many people outside of one of former-Professor Obama’s law school seminars understand how this difference plays out in practice.  I do know I am glad I am not the military commander trying to figure out what this all means in practice – and wondering if I will be brought up before some international court if I get it wrong.

In any case, our policy seems to be a bit of a mess, and I worry whether the decision to go into Libya, and how it was made, might be a portent of more problems in the future.  First, here are some excerpts from an article by Max Hastings, a noted British military historian and writer:

“The western allies are in a fine Libyan pickle. The real mission of the British and French military ‘advisers’ being dispatched to the rebel camp is to explore what the west might do to get out of it. The declared objectives of the national leaderships are much larger than the means available to achieve them. It was because defence chiefs on both sides of the Atlantic foresaw this that they were reluctant to intervene in the first place. …

It is hard to see how regime change can be achieved, and its consequences managed, without committing ground forces, at least in a stabilisation role. …

The result is the allies are still providing enough military support to prevent the rebels’ defeat, but not enough to end the bloodshed or achieve the declared objectives. A senior Nato officer this week told me: ‘I am in despair.’”

Next, an excerpt from an article by David Wood at The Huffington Post:

“The White House wanted the Pentagon to come up with a low-cost regime-change plan for Libya. Ideally, this strategy would have toppled Col. Muammar Gaddafi without bogging the U.S. down in another inconclusive foreign adventure. And by no means could the plan have included young American infantrymen advancing under fire across the sand.

The military kept insisting that no such option existed. A real regime-change operation, some officers argued, requires ‘boots on the ground.’ That was a cost the White House, given rising domestic pressure to bring the troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq, was unwilling to consider.

In long meetings and email exchanges, arguments over strategic details often led to more serious disagreements, the official told The Huffington Post. The White House thought the Pentagon was disrespecting the president by refusing to propose a politically acceptable action plan, while the Pentagon became furious that White House officials didn't ‘seem to understand what military force can and cannot do,’ the official said.”

In other words, what we are seeing, with respect to the military, is the Obama administration wanting to accomplish “X” while using only “Y” resources because it really wants to do “X”, but it only wants to spend “Y” to do it.  In effect, the Obama administration is telling the military that it wants to do X, it is willing to spend Y, and it is the job of the military to get it done.

But the problem is, what if you cannot do X with just Y resources.  It is sort of like saying, “I want a new BMW, and I am willing to spend $10,000 to get it.  Go buy me one.”  Well, you can’t do it.  Similarly, it may be impossible for the military to accomplish X with only Y resources.

The problem is that the Obama administration doesn’t seem to have a whole lot of people in it who know enough about military matters to understand when they are asking for something that can’t be done.

I certainly understand that the military isn’t perfect.  As I have commented before, the military did a lousy job in Iraq between the initial invasion in 2003 and when General David Petraeus took over in 2007.  It appears that too many of the generals, etc., either didn’t know what we needed to do in Iraq or knew and didn’t want to do it.  Also as I have said before, President Bush gave the military too much leeway for too long.  But just because the military got a lot of things wrong in Iraq doesn’t mean they are wrong now when they tell the president that they can’t accomplish X with just Y resources.

The military has an obligation to present the President with options as to how to accomplish what he wants to do.  But they also have a duty to tell the President when they honestly can’t come up with a way to do what he wants to do with the resources he is willing to give them.  And so far, events in Libya have seemed to show that those in the military who had doubts about what we were trying to accomplish there, given the resources we were willing to devote to it, may have been right.

The question then is what are going to be the effects of this mistake.  How bad will that it be for US interests in the Middle East?  And has the President learned something from this experience or is he going to do the same thing again, trying to do something but not being willing to commit the resources realistically necessary to accomplish it?

Confused About Libya

I am confused.  President Obama joined with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron yesterday to call, again, and very clearly, for Moammar Gaddafi’s removal from power.  In an article published in papers across Europe, the three leaders said:

“Even as we continue our military operations today to protect civilians in Libya, we are determined to look to the future. …

Our duty and our mandate under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973 is to protect civilians, and we are doing that. It is not to remove Qaddafi by force. But it is impossible to imagine a future for Libya with Qaddafi in power. … It is unthinkable that someone who has tried to massacre his own people can play a part in their future government. …

There is a pathway to peace that promises new hope for the people of Libya ….  This needs to begin with a genuine end to violence …. The regime has to pull back from the cities it is besieging …. [S]o long as Qaddafi is in power, NATO must maintain its operations so that civilians remain protected and the pressure on the regime builds. Then a genuine transition from dictatorship to an inclusive constitutional process can really begin …. In order for that transition to succeed, Qaddafi must go and go for good….”

In other words, the U.S., France and Great Britain have declared that they will not stop fighting until Colonel Gaddafi leaves.  U.N. Security Council resolution 1973 may not require Colonel Gaddafi’s removal, but they do.

And yet, Reuters reported yesterday:

“Too little is known about Libya's rebels and they remain too fragmented for the United States to get seriously involved in organizing or training them, let alone arming them, U.S. and European officials say. …

[T]he more the intelligence agencies learn about rebel forces, the more they appear to be hopelessly disorganized and incapable of coalescing in the foreseeable future.

U.S. government experts believe the state of the opposition is so grave that it could take years to organize, arm and train them into a fighting force strong enough to drive Gaddafi from power and set up a working government. …”

I don’t understand.  We say Colonel Gaddafi has to go, but we have nothing to replace him with.  The opposition is so weak, fragmented, and disorganized the United States won’t even try to train them to fight, let alone give them arms.  It could take years for them to be able to defeat Gaddafi’s forces, and who knows where a new government is going to come from.  This makes no sense.

Oh yes, and President Obama still hasn’t sought Congressional approval for the use of our armed forces in Libya.

Former Ambassador Ryan Crocker on the U.S. Role In Iraq’s Future; Plus Lebanon, Syria, More

Ambassador Ryan Crocker spoke at a meeting of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs Monday evening.  His topic was “The U.S. Role in Iraq’s Future.”  In addition to being ambassador to Iraq from 2007 to 2009, Mr. Crocker was ambassador to Lebanon from 1990 to 1993, Kuwait from 1994 to 1997, Syria from 1998 to 2001, and Pakistan from 2004 to 2007, among other positions.

Ambassador Crocker’s speech was fascinating, as were the Q's and A's that followed.  What I am going to do here is to list of some of what Ambassador Crocker said, almost in bullet-point fashion.  Unfortunately, that loses the flow of his speech, but it’s all I can do.  To the extent that I have misstated any of what Ambassador Crocker said, I apologize to both the reader and to Ambassador Crocker.

President Obama has said that, with the ending of our combat role in Iraq, we were turning the page.  Ambassador Crocker said that many Americans have viewed it as closing the book.

Ambassador Crocker said that, in 2007, the United States’ “re-missioning” (his word) of our forces to protect civilians started a virtuous cycle.  The Sunnis thought we had their back, so they went after the forces of Al Qaeda in Iraq.  The Shias noticed what the Sunnis were doing, and they went after extreme elements on their side.

The first round of elections in Iraq was important; the second round was more important.  The losers complained, but then they went home.

Of all of the possible points of failure that could happen in Iraq, the failure of the “rule of law” could be the most likely possibility.  34 judges have been killed so far.  It is a huge challenge.

There is a legacy of fear in Iraq, something that we in the U.S. cannot understand.  The Sunnis are afraid of the future; will they be persecuted like they were in 2006 and 2007?  The Shias are afraid of the past; they worry that the Baath will come back.  And the Kurds are afraid of both the past and the future: Will Baghdad come back like it did?  Ambassador Crocker said they would joke that Prime Minister Maliki saw a Baath behind every bush.  But then you have to realize that, when Mr. Maliki left Iraq in 1979, he left a day ahead of his assassins.

Unlike the United States, with our two oceans and with Mexico and Canada as neighbors, Iraq lives in a rough neighborhood.  Many of its neighbors would like to see a weak Iraq.

The U.S. has a critical role to play in Iraq’s future.  Ambassador Crocker negotiated two agreements with the Iraqis in 2008.  The Status of Forces Agreement provides for all U.S. forces to be gone by the end of 2011.  While neither the Iraqis nor President Obama can (politically) extend this deadline, Ambassador Crocker hopes that there is a way to manage it so some U.S. forces can stay.  He thinks that the American people would be okay with us staying as advisers as long as there are no casualties.  (Like Korea.)

The other agreement was the Strategic Framework Agreement, covering things like trade, agriculture, economic matters, student exchanges, cultural matters, etc.  This needs to be fully implemented.

We need to stay in Iraq because we are the one player that all Iraqis trust.  We are assurance.  You can really see it between the Arabs and the Kurds, but it is also true with other Iraqi groups, too.  The Iraqis have learned to give in to us on things.  They need to learn to give in to each other.  But it will take time.  Ambassador Crocker said that early in his time in Iraq, when major issues were discussed, he had to be in the room to get things agreed to.  By the end of 2008, he would be available by phone, but he did not need to be in the room.  While we can’t play this kind of mediating role forever, he doesn’t think we will be able to get it done by the end of 2011.

The Iraqis, with our help, have come to the point that a stable, sustainable, pluralistic democracy is possible – if we stay involved.

The U.S. needs strategic patience and a willingness to continue to provide resources to help the Iraqis.  It will be fewer resources than we have provided in the past, but we still need to provide some.

Some U.S. forces need to stay in Iraq for a while.  If all of our forces leave Iraq at the end of 2011, Iraq will have no ability to protect itself.  This will be risky, especially vis-à-vis Iran.  Iraq will not be getting things like planes, etc., until 2013 and later.

Ambassador Crocker concluded that while we have turned the page in Iraq, it was only the end of an early chapter in the book.  What happens now will depend in how engaged we will stay, how intelligent we will be.  Ambassador Crocker was (is) very concerned about the effect of the budgetary pressures in Washington on our foreign policy.

A comment:  When Ambassador Crocker was making his comment about staying engaged in Iraq, I thought of a comment that was made recently on one of my posts on Libya: “Where is Charlie Wilson when we need him!!!”  This comment may be even more appropriate here.  The movie, “Charlie Wilson’s War,” ended with the Russians defeated, and Charlie Wilson pushing for money in Congress for schools and other non-military aid for Afghanistan.  But Congress didn’t care anymore.  The Russians were gone, and we lost interest.  We didn’t stay involved.  And look at what happened.  We need to avoid forfeiting all that has been accomplished in Iraq so far because we lose interest and won’t stay involved.

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Ambassador Crocker noted that the President of Iraq was invited to Kuwait for the recent twentieth anniversary celebration of the liberation of Kuwait.  When Ambassador Crocker saw him there, he said he was surprised to see him.  The President of Iraq said he had been surprised to be invited and that when the invitation came, he accepted it before Kuwait could realize they made a mistake.

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Ambassador Crocker said that if you want to see how things are breaking in Lebanon, watch Whalid Jumblatt, the leader of the Druze.  If he is talking about the West and NATO, etc., that is a good sign.  If he is spending time in Damascus, that is not good.  Lately, he has been doing the latter.

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The United States can take some credit for the military stepping aside in Egypt and Tunisia.

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The Saudis view the Shias like the mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, viewed Blacks in 1952.

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The most significant historical moment in Syrian history, or at least recent Syrian history, was February of 1982, when Hafez al-Assad used three divisions to bombard the town of Hama and the Muslim Brotherhood members located there.  The attacks not only eliminated the Muslim Brotherhood but also thousands of civilians.  The bad blood between Assad’s Alawi sect and the Sunnis continues to today.  In Syria, February 1982 is always just the day before yesterday.

There is the potential for a vicious civil war in Syria.  Certain military units have been organized specifically as regime protection units.  They would not expect to survive an overthrow of Bashar al-Assad.  Some might think that a civil war in Syria would be good.  But a Sunni-majority government dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood could be very bad for Israel.

Also, the current regime might, in a last ditch attempt to survive, start a war with Israel and them argue that anybody who opposed the government was a friend of Israel’s.

A comment:  Consider Argentina’s invading the Falklands in 1982 in an attempt to rally the country and maintain its own survival.

Syria is the wildest card in a whole pack of wild cards in the Middle East.

How to Avoid U.S. Intervention: A Primer for Dictators of the World

In looking at President Obama’s explanations for why we are in (or at least above) Libya, several things seem to be very important (this is from the President’s Saturday radio broadcast): 

“As Commander in Chief, I face no greater decision than sending our military men and women into harm’s way.  And the United States should not—and cannot—intervene every time there’s a crisis somewhere in the world.

But I firmly believe that when innocent people are being brutalized; when someone like Qaddafi threatens a bloodbath that could destabilize an entire region; and when the international community is prepared to come together to save many thousands of lives—then it’s in our national interest to act.  And it’s our responsibility.  This is one of those times.”

So what we have here are three things: (i) innocent people being brutalized; (ii) potential to destabilize a whole region; and (iii) international community coming together.

This is important for Americans because it tells us when President Obama may be sending our troops out to fight again.  It is important to know this because, based on what happened in Libya, if timing is tight, President Obama will wait for UN Security Council approval (see point (iii) above), but not U.S. Congress approval.

These standards are probably even more important to other countries, though, because it tells them what they need to do to avoid U.S. intervention.

Obviously, you can avoid U.S. intervention if you don’t brutalize innocent people, but a lot of countries can’t avoid doing that, so they need to look at points (ii) and (iii).  For some countries, point (ii) answers the problem for them.  If you are not important or are not in an important area, you can get away with most anything you want to.  That pretty much covers all of Africa, except the Arab countries along the Mediterranean – and Somalia because of how close it is to world shipping lanes.

But what if you are in an important area and you still want to brutalize innocent people – because, for example, you have to do that to stay in power?  What do you do?

For what we have seen in the case of Libya, two things seemed important to President Obama’s decision to bomb:  The United Nations Security Council resolution and the Arab League resolution before that, which was, apparently, important to getting the Security Council to act.

The importance of the Arab League resolution tells dictators that they need to be friendly, or at least not too unfriendly, to their follow dictators.  You can be a jerk of a ruler but don’t be a jerk to the autocrats running your neighboring countries.  Be friendly to at least a few of the other dictators in the area so they won’t call for your removal.  I mean, the Arab League is not a league of democracies.  It couldn’t have been that hard for Colonel Gaddafi to stay on semi-decent terms with at least a couple of those guys.  But he apparently ticked them all off, so when they got a chance, it was bye-bye, Moammar. 

Then there is the United Nations Security Council.  The key here is to stay on good enough terms with at least one of the permanent members of the Security Council so they will veto any resolution that could be used to justify intervention against you.  (You could, I suppose, try to stay on good terms with enough Security Council members so that they can’t get nine votes out of fifteen to pass a resolution against you.  But the non-permanent members change every two years, and seven votes are a lot harder to get than just one veto.)

So how do you stay on the good side (so to speak) of one of the permanent members of the Security Council while still brutalizing your citizens?  Serbia was able get Russia’s protection by appealing to Slavic brotherhood.  In fact, the U.S., et al, intervention in Kosovo in the late 1990’s ultimately had to be done without a UN resolution because Russia kept threatening to veto any resolution.  Not having a UN resolution didn’t stop Bill Clinton, but it looks like it would stop Barack Obama.

Saddam Hussein used bribes and special deals on oil, especially through the United Nations-run Oil-for-Food program to prevent any real UN action for years.  The bribes went to officials at the United Nations as well as China, Russia and France.*  And they worked.  When France opposed the last resolution that the United States and Great Britain wanted the Security Council to pass before the invasion of Iraq, was it because France was just being France or was it because of the bribes?  Who knows, but that final resolution was never passed.

Obviously, this is not a complete list of how to avoid Barack Obama intervening in your country, but it should give the average citizen-brutalizing dictator some ideas of how to avoid us.  And it may give Americans some idea of where our troops may be going next – which is good, because it doesn’t look like we’ll be consulted.

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* See, inter alia: David Brooks, “The Report That Nails Saddam,” The New York Times, October 9, 2004; “Iraq Amnesia,” The Wall Street Journal, October 8, 2004; Michael Barone, The Duelfer report’s case for war in Iraq,” USNews.com, October 8, 2004; “Truth About Iraq: Sanctions no longer were working,” DallasNews.com, October 12, 2004.