The True Test of American Resolve: Not Attacking Syria But Living Up to Our Ideals at Home

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog

01 September 13

e are on the brink of a tragic decision to strike Syria, because, in the dubious logic of the President, "a lot of people think something should be done," and American "credibility" is at stake. He and his secretary of state assure us that the strike will be "limited" and "surgical."

The use of chemical weapons against Syrian citizens is abominable, and if Assad's regime is responsible he should be treated as an international criminal and pariah.

But have we learned nothing from our mistakes in the past? Time and again over the last half century American presidents have justified so-called "surgical strikes" because the nation's "credibility" is at stake, and because we have to take some action to show our "strength and resolve" - only to learn years later that our credibility suffered more from our brazen bellicosity, that the surgical strikes only intensified hostilities and made us captive to forces beyond our control, and that our resolve eventually disappears in the face of mounting casualties of Americans and innocent civilians - and in the absence of clearly-defined goals or even clear exit strategies. We and others have paid an incalculable price.

On Labor Day weekend we should instead be testing the nation's resolve to provide good jobs at good wages to all Americans who need them, and measuring our credibility by the yardstick of equal opportunity. And we should strike (and join striking workers) against big employers who won't provide their employees with minimally-decent wages. We need to commit ourselves to a living wage, and to providing more economic security to the millions of Americans now working harder but getting nowhere.

Mr. President, a lot of Americans do think something should be done - about these mounting problems at our doorstep here in America. We can have more influence on the rest of the world by showing the rest of the world our resolve to live by our ideals here in America, than by using brute force to prove our resolve elsewhere.

Invoking International Law Against Obama

By Juan Cole, Informed Comment

01 September 13

aretaker Czech Prime minister Jiri Rusnok and president Milos Zeman have denounced President Obama's plans to bomb Syria not just as unwise but as actually illegal.

In the United Nations Charter, which the US crafted and to which it is a signatory, there are only two grounds for going to war: self-defense and a UN Security Council resolution designating a country as a threat to world order. President Obama has neither consideration on his side in bombing Syria, though he did seem to make an argument that the use of chemical weapons anywhere is a de facto threat to all other nations, edging toward a rather implausible assertion of US self defense in Ghuta. The US political class either hasn't read the UN charter or actively despises it, and if they were honest they would revoke their treaty obligations.

Czech officials compare the plans for the US to strike Damascus to the Clinton administration's bombing of Serbia in the late 1990s, which they say killed innocent non-combatants in contrast to American pledges.

This development strikes me as a startling turn-around from 2003, when France and Germany criticized Bush's invasion of Iraq but then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld could point to support from "new Europe," the post-Soviet states of eastern Europe.

Zeman is a notorious Islamophobe who probably just hates the Syrian rebels, coding them as Nazis. He also denounces Bashar al-Assad as a dictator, but says there isn't much to choose between the two. Still, the Czech Republic has an embassy in Damascus and Rusnok says there are Czech "interests" in Syria (probably referring to trade, including arms trade).

Poland hasn't gone so far as to denounce the US for plotting illegal activity, but it has firmly declined to be involved in any military action vis-a-vis Syria. Prime Minister Donald Tusk referred to Polish troop deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, saying: "We have experience in this part of the world, which shows that military intervention, even from the most obvious and noble motives, rarely produces the desired effect." The US Neoconservative scorched earth tactics in pulling a 'coalition of the willing' into the cauldron of Iraq has left the US with virtually no allies save a handful of countries (chiefly France and Turkey) who wisely stayed out of the Iraq fiasco and so aren't traumatized.

Poland is suggesting a face-saving way out, that Russia should intervene with its Syrian ally to extract pledges and ensure that chemical weapons are not used again. (Unfortunately, Russia is in complete denial about the Baath regime's chemical weapons use and so at the moment not exactly helpful).

One of the differences between Syria and Iraq is that Syria is not very far from eastern Europe. For Bulgaria, the anxiety about an American attack mainly centers on fears that it will create a whole new wave of Syrian refugees in that country, which is already facing a refugee crisis from the Syrian influx.

Although many in Western Europe (including the British parliament) also oppose unilateral American action, Eastern European opposition, especially the Polish, is one reason that NATO has said that it won't be aboard with a US attack.

In essence, the US is flanked only by France, Israel and Turkey publicly, and behind the scenes by Qatar and Saudi Arabia. It is a much diminished, pitiful coalition of the willing.

Ironically, the breathtaking illegality of the US war on Iraq may have over the succeeding decade given the UN charter and international law more standing than it had ever had before, at least in world political rhetoric. To have even a ethnically chauvinist government like that of the Czech Republic invoke it against the United States is mind-boggling.