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My Voice: Obama Should Return Nobel Prize
I am opposed to the United States conducting any kind of attack on Syria, so in the interest of full disclosure, I am obliged to say that my wife is from Syria, and her family, who are Alawites, and most of whom are farmers, still live there. Her sister is a medical doctor, and one of her brothers is a storekeeper. Another, younger, brother runs the family farm. I have three cousins, who are Christians, who lived in Syria until recently when they were forced to move their business to Beirut to escape the violence threatening them in Damascus.
Having said that, and disregarding our families who are under the gun, armed intervention into Syria is wrong, both morally and politically. Permit me to respond to President Obama’s rationale for bombing Syria:
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria has crossed the red line established by Obama with respect to chemical weapons use. The red line was established by the president, not by Congress, which, under our Constitution, has the sole power to declare war. Drawing such red lines is itself either an act of war or a prelude to war, something which the president cannot do without a declaration from Congress. No matter that LBJ, both Bushes, and Bill Clinton all started wars without a congressional declaration, doing so is still in violation of the U.S. Constitution. It would be an illegal war.
⬛ Not following up on Obama’s “red line” threat would embarrass the president. What would be the cost in human Syrian terms and American taxpayers’ money simply to spare an embarrassment for our president, one that he has brought upon himself?
⬛ The chemical attack most recently referred to was a violation of the international agreements with respect to what kinds of weapons can be used in war and demands punishment of the government that has used them. I guess that means that Agent Orange and napalm, used extensively by the U.S. during the Vietnam War, and the phosphorous bombs Israel dropped on the Palestinians trapped in Gaza in recent years, were not banned chemicals. Neither would it include the child-killing cluster bombs with which Israel carpeted South Lebanon during its numerous invasions of that small country, nor the chemical gases the U.S. provided to Saddam Hussein when he slaughtered entire villages in Iran during their war.
⬛ The president announced that he was not trying to target Assad, nor the chemical stockpiles, but only those sites that enable him to use chemical weapons. It is probably no secret to Obama that there are millions of innocent Syrian civilians living in Damascus who would be killed by the cruise missiles he plans to send into Damascus. Many of those living under the bombs are not supporters of Assad. Both my wife and I have Sunni friends living in downtown Damascus who would be targeted by our cruise missiles being aimed at, for example, the Defense Ministry, which is very near their home.
⬛ The cruise missile strike would be only a small one that would bring no reaction. No matter what the size of the attack, we would be conducting war against a sovereign nation, a nation which has allies. And what if Syria or its allies decided to retaliate for such an attack? Would Secretary of State John Kerry’s pledge of “no boots on the ground” still hold if we or our forces were attacked? Would we then feel the need to re-retaliate, pulling us into another wasteful Middle East war? I forget which army general said it, but his statement still holds true: “Starting a war is much easier than ending one.” Would we start pouring money into a war with Syria as we have with Iraq and Afghanistan?
⬛ Has Syria done anything to threaten the U.S., requiring us to start a war there? This is a key question. Obama said nearly two years ago that “Assad must go.” We can only guess why he felt that a country that has never threatened the U.S. is now on his enemies’ list, but there has been no such threat against our country. During one of my meetings with Assad, he told me of his intelligence services uncovering a plot against American interests in the Middle East. He turned over that information to the U.S. government, which was able to dismantle the threat. After hearing this from him, I contacted the U.S. ambassador to Syria, asking him if this claim was true. “Not only that was true,” the ambassador told me, “but he has helped us stop more than one threat against our interests.” Obama’s reaction proves what Gore Vidal was fond of saying, that “No good deed goes unpunished.”
There is no doubt about Obama’s intentions — to weaken Assad and strengthen the “rebels.” That puts us on the side of the terrorist group who destroyed the World Trade Center and killed 3,000 Americans, not a good side for us to take in this civil war.
Are we ready for another Middle East war? I believe that most Americans are not ready for us to become involved once again, but especially on the wrong side.
James Abourezk
The Argus Leader