Tomgram: Jo Comerford and Mattea Kramer, Dealing With the Syrian Quagmire
By Jo Comerford and Mattea Kramer
Posted on October 18, 2015, Printed on October 18, 2015
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176057/
Whatever happened to the "imperial presidency"? In mid-September, in the
midst of the serial collapse of a $500-million Pentagon program to train
"moderate" Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State (ISIS), President Obama
suddenly claimed, through White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, that it
wasn't really either his program or his fault. He was only the president,
after all. In fact, he had, in essence, been forced into it. Here's the way
Peter Baker of the New York Times put it:
"But the White House says it is not to blame. The finger, it says, should be
pointed not at Mr. Obama but at those who pressed him to attempt training
Syrian rebels in the first place -- a group that, in addition to
congressional Republicans, happened to include former Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton... In effect, Mr. Obama is arguing that he
reluctantly went along with those who said it was the way to combat the
Islamic State, but that he never wanted to do it and has now been vindicated
in his original judgment."
The right wing, not surprisingly, had a field day with this explanation and
who could blame them? After all, as commander-in-chief, a
twenty-first-century American president can essentially order the U.S.
military to do just about anything, just about anywhere, without having to
worry much about Congress or anyone else. Indeed, Obama did exactly this
when he launched Syrian War 1.0 in September 2014 under a congressional
resolution from 2001 allowing "all necessary and appropriate force against
those nations, organizations, or persons [the president] determines planned,
authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on
September 11, 2001." That moment, of course, long preceded the rise of ISIS.
Yet Congress barely weighed in, passing no new or updated resolution to
authorize this particular war or, for that matter, Iraq War 3.0. It did,
however, put a stamp of approval on, and $500 million into, the training
program for Syrian rebels.
Given the ultimate power of a president -- especially one finishing up his
second term in office and hardly beholden to a Republican Congress -- to say
"no," Obama's explanation for the dismal failure of part of this country's
war policy is, in its admission of weakness, possibly unique in the annals
of the modern White House. It may indeed have reflected his own doubts from
the beginning about what a war in Syria and Iraq could produce other than a
quagmire of the first order. (That, of course, is something he now predicts
the Russians are in for, and who should know better?) Whatever he may say
and whatever fears he may have harbored, he now owns the Syrian and Iraq
wars, whether he likes it or not. Those linked conflicts represent the
flowering (or is it withering?) of what Juan Cole has dubbed the Obama
Doctrine of airborne counterinsurgency (which Russian President Vladimir
Putin has essentially just put his own stamp of approval on).
By now, Obama must sense that his doctrine has visibly failed. What he owns
is a war policy in the Greater Middle East that is tottering in Afghanistan
and dead on arrival in Iraq and Syria, which means it's certainly a
propitious moment for something new from a president who previously couldn't
say no.
Of course, under the circumstances, you might wonder what's left to be done.
But as TomDispatch regulars Jo Comerford and Mattea Kramer suggest today,
there is indeed another avenue to head down, one the president has already
taken successfully with Iran, and it goes by the quaint name of diplomacy.
Tom
Putting Out the Syrian Fire
Can Diplomacy Do What War Couldn't?
By Jo Comerford and Mattea Kramer
As war between President Bashar al-Assad and various rebel forces raged
across Syria, as the Obama administration and the CIA armed rebel factions
of their liking while continuing an air campaign against the militants of
the Islamic State (ISIS), as Russia entered the quagmire with its own
airstrikes, and as millions of Syrians fled for their lives amid untold
violence, a Connecticut congressman decided to do something.
At the end of September, Connecticut Representative Jim Himes, a House
Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, corralled 54 of his colleagues into
sending a letter to President Obama calling for the start of international
negotiations that would include Iran and Russia and be aimed at ending the
Syrian civil war. President Obama is reportedly listening.
This could prove to be a critical turning point in a brutal conflict that
has, until now, seemed without end -- not because Himes has a quick,
sure-to-succeed solution, but because every other course of action is
overwhelmingly likely to fail. To understand why, it's necessary to take a
brief look backward.
Pouring Gasoline on Syria's Fire
More than four years ago, in 2011, passionate Arab Spring protesters rose up
to overthrow despised leaders from Tunisia to Libya, Egypt to Yemen. In
Syria, citizens filled the streets, voicing their opposition to the
murderous regime of President Bashar al-Assad. His government responded by
unleashing its military on the protesters. Some of them, along with soldiers
from Assad's forces, went on to form the Free Syrian Army (FSA), thanks, in
part, to financing from the CIA and the Saudis, and a civil war began. As
months of fighting turned into years, hundreds of thousands of civilians
died, and millions more were uprooted.
In the process, more extreme factions among the rebels, including the
al-Qaeda-aligned al-Nusra Front, gained ever greater traction, while ISIS
spread across parts of Syria and Iraq, proclaiming a "caliphate" and drawing
foreign volunteers by the thousands. ISIS had grown and prospered within the
mayhem and power vacuum created by the Bush administration's invasion of
Iraq and then its dismantling of Saddam Hussein's army. (Some future ISIS
leaders, in fact, first met inside U.S. military prison camps during those
years.)
Turning the fog of the Syrian civil war to its advantage, ISIS claimed ever
more land in northern Syria and, emboldened, launched an offensive in Iraq,
routing the army the U.S. had created there and taking the country's second
largest city, Mosul. But ISIS was more than a brutal, terrorist insurgency.
It was also a darkly savvy PR operation. In September 2014, it filmed
beheadings of American prisoners and put them online.
That was the moment when the U.S. public really began paying attention to
Syria.
And so, just over a year ago, relying on a 2001 authorization to wage war
against al-Qaeda, President Obama ordered the first of what are now more
than 7,000 airstrikes against ISIS, stationed thousands of U.S. military
advisers and trainers in Iraq, and soon launched what would be a disastrous
program to vet, arm, and train "moderate" Syrian rebels to counter the
militants of the Islamic State.
In the year that followed, the Syrian refugee crisis escalated dramatically,
thanks to the growing strength of ISIS, the brutality of the Syrian regime,
and an ever more violent civil war. The entry of the U.S. and other
countries into the conflict likely only increased the chaos and misery.
As a result, Lebanon alone, with a population of around 4.5 million, has
taken in more than a million refugees. In other words, approximately one in
every five people in that country is now a refugee from Syria. And while
Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey have struggled to accommodate this deluge of
asylum seekers, refugee Syrian families endure chronic and debilitating
poverty, inadequate health care, and lack of access to education for their
children.
Enter Russia, Stage Right
Just a couple of weeks ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin, a longstanding
supporter of Assad, launched his own air war against ISIS. On September
30th, soon after Russian explosives began dropping, reports started to
surface that they were hitting FSA fighters and infrastructure. In other
words, Russia was dropping bombs on some of the rebels who have been
receiving support from Washington.
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter promptly (and accurately) accused Russia of
"pouring gasoline on a fire." And he would know, since the U.S. has been
among the biggest gas pourers of all.
According to the National Priorities Project, U.S. taxpayers have already
forked over an astonishing $6.5 billion in the administration's failed air
war against ISIS, even as Pentagon officials acknowledge that airstrikes
alone won't snuff out the terrorists or their "caliphate."
Meanwhile, Congress allocated $500 million for the failed "train and equip
program" that was meant to produce 5,000 "moderate" Syrian rebels to fight
ISIS. That program yielded only a handful of fighters, some of whom the
al-Nusra Front reportedly kidnapped or killed. Some American-supplied trucks
and ammunition were also turned over to Nusra Front fighters.
Yes, you read that correctly. The U.S. effectively supplied arms to al-Qaeda
in Syria, just as -- thanks to the collapse of Iraqi army units, which
abandoned their equipment in Mosul, Ramadi, and elsewhere -- we in effect
helped equip ISIS, too. How's that for gasoline?
What matters most, however, is the staggering human toll of all this. More
than 6.5 million Syrians are now displaced, impoverished, and adrift inside
their own country. Another four million have become refugees, spilling into
Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey, and more recently heading for Europe in
staggering numbers.
Their misery and utter desperation are beyond imagining as they push off
rocky coasts heading for Europe, clinging to shoddy rubber rafts, or are
crammed into suffocating cargo trucks -- sometimes to be met on arrival by
water cannons and tear gas. A Syrian father recently laid bare the choices
his family faced. Asked why he was "risking the lives of his children on an
illegal and potentially lethal seaborne passage," he answered, "in Syria,
they are dead already."
A Congressman Decides to Do Something
Until Congressman Himes sat down to write his letter, there had been
remarkably little talk of international negotiations as an alternative to
this endless devastation. It should be clear enough by now that continued
violence, with ever more parties joining the fray, will bring only what it's
brought for the past four years: chaos and destruction. While some war hawks
in Washington have previously urged more "decisive" military action to oust
Assad as well as destroy the Islamic State, that path would most likely
leave Syria in still greater chaos -- and ripe for further exploitation by
ISIS, the al-Nusra Front, and other extremist outfits.
Negotiations it must be. They won't be quick or easy. It's a guarantee, in
fact, that they'll be messy and wrenching. When it comes to Syria, that's
nothing new. But diplomacy does promise gains over the situation as it
stands today. The hard-nosed and principled diplomatic negotiations
involving the U.S., Russia, China, Great Britain, France, and Germany around
Iran's nuclear program prevailed when naysayers swore that they would fail.
They stand as a remarkable example of what's possible when nations resolve
conflicts with diplomacy instead of bloodshed.
Philip Gordon, the former White House Coordinator for the Middle East, North
Africa, and the Gulf Region, has laid out a blueprint for how such
negotiations might proceed on Syria. All the international players would
have to be brought to the table, including Russia, Iran, Turkey, Saudi
Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Gordon notes that, since this group
includes vehement supporters of Assad as well as those who are invested in
his departure, negotiators would have to postpone any decision about Assad's
fate and focus first on common interests.
And there are common interests -- in de-escalating the violence, addressing
the refugee crisis, and defunding and defeating ISIS. Shared objectives
might include negotiating localized ceasefires between the government and
rebel forces and establishing a structure in which representatives of
Assad's regime could begin a dialogue with the rebels. Then the group of
negotiating nations could turn its focus to ISIS. Indeed, the ongoing wars
and the disintegrating states of the region have created a fertile habitat
for that terrorist group to spread its radical agenda and claim new ground.
A de-escalation of the civil war, paired with meaningful humanitarian aid
and cohesive and coordinated international efforts against ISIS, could prove
the best hope for changing the fate and fortunes of the region.
Here, Washington bears responsibility -- both to quit pouring gasoline and
to help repair some of the devastation. President Obama has recently taken
modest steps in the right direction, ending the failed program to train
moderate Syrian rebels and stating his willingness to work with Russia and
Iran to find a solution to the civil war. Yet these positive developments
come as the U.S. renews its pledge not to train but to equip "vetted
leaders" of rebel groups with new weaponry (including TOW anti-tank
missiles), and as tensions and fighting escalate not just between Assad and
the rebels but also, by proxy, between the U.S. and Russia. That will make
finding a diplomatic solution all the more difficult, yet all the more
urgent.
A Path to a Different History
Meanwhile, the U.S. has been roundly criticized by the international
community for its closed-door policy toward the millions of Syrians who are
running for their lives. While Germany will have admitted 800,000 of them by
year's end, the U.S. has taken in only 1,500 to date. For that reason
mayors, faith leaders, and thousands of ordinary citizens are calling for
more refugees to be welcomed into our country.
It appears that this movement has helped build a political appetite for such
an approach, as some members of Congress are now demanding that the U.S.
admit tens of thousands more Syrians and expand humanitarian aid. President
Obama has announced an increase to 10,000 refugees next year, but some
lawmakers are advocating taking in 10 times more. In a letter co-signed by
26 of his Senate colleagues, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut
compared the paltry number the Obama administration has announced to the
more than 700,000 Vietnamese the U.S. admitted in the years after the
Vietnam War. They insist that on this subject Washington must not "sit on
the sidelines."
Another step in the right direction came from a bipartisan duo in the
Senate. Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Patrick Leahy of
Vermont unveiled legislation to provide $1 billion in humanitarian aid for
the refugees, noting that the Syrian crisis "dwarfs anything we have seen
for decades." Such funding could be used to resettle Syrian refugees more
quickly as well as to provide immediate lifesaving assistance, since the
World Food Program has run out of money to feed the millions of Syrians
currently outside its camps and has been forced to make painful cuts even
within its settlements. The approach of winter threatens food supplies still
further, leaving some refugees so desperate that they are returning to
war-torn Syria.
If asylum and humanitarian aid are essential measures to heal the wounds of
millions, diplomatic negotiations are essential for preventing a future
crisis that could leave this one in the shade.
As Russian missiles rain down alongside American ones, as ever more groups,
nations, and areas are embroiled in the Syrian conflict, as yet more
innocent blood is spilled, it's obviously time for international
negotiations to finally begin. Diplomacy doesn't promise a speedy end to
the almost unfathomable suffering in the region, but it does offer a
potential path to a different history, a path away from ceaseless violence
and toward the imperfect rule of law.
Jo Comerford is a national campaign director for MoveOn.org, helping lead
that group's Syria-related organizing, and Mattea Kramer is a writer. Both
are senior advisors at the National Priorities Project and TomDispatch
regulars.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest
Dispatch Book, Nick Turse's Tomorrow's Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and
Secret Ops in Africa, and Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government:
Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a
Single-Superpower World.
Copyright 2015 Jo Comerford and Mattea Kramer
C 2015 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176057
Tomgram: Jo Comerford and Mattea Kramer, Dealing With the Syrian Quagmire
By Jo Comerford and Mattea Kramer
Posted on October 18, 2015, Printed on October 18, 2015
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176057/
Whatever happened to the "imperial presidency"? In mid-September, in the
midst of the serial collapse of a $500-million Pentagon program to train
"moderate" Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State (ISIS), President Obama
suddenly claimed, through White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, that it
wasn't really either his program or his fault. He was only the president,
after all. In fact, he had, in essence, been forced into it. Here's the way
Peter Baker of the New York Times put it:
"But the White House says it is not to blame. The finger, it says, should be
pointed not at Mr. Obama but at those who pressed him to attempt training
Syrian rebels in the first place -- a group that, in addition to
congressional Republicans, happened to include former Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton... In effect, Mr. Obama is arguing that he
reluctantly went along with those who said it was the way to combat the
Islamic State, but that he never wanted to do it and has now been vindicated
in his original judgment."
The right wing, not surprisingly, had a field day with this explanation and
who could blame them? After all, as commander-in-chief, a
twenty-first-century American president can essentially order the U.S.
military to do just about anything, just about anywhere, without having to
worry much about Congress or anyone else. Indeed, Obama did exactly this
when he launched Syrian War 1.0 in September 2014 under a congressional
resolution from 2001 allowing "all necessary and appropriate force against
those nations, organizations, or persons [the president] determines planned,
authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on
September 11, 2001." That moment, of course, long preceded the rise of ISIS.
Yet Congress barely weighed in, passing no new or updated resolution to
authorize this particular war or, for that matter, Iraq War 3.0. It did,
however, put a stamp of approval on, and $500 million into, the training
program for Syrian rebels.
Given the ultimate power of a president -- especially one finishing up his
second term in office and hardly beholden to a Republican Congress -- to say
"no," Obama's explanation for the dismal failure of part of this country's
war policy is, in its admission of weakness, possibly unique in the annals
of the modern White House. It may indeed have reflected his own doubts from
the beginning about what a war in Syria and Iraq could produce other than a
quagmire of the first order. (That, of course, is something he now predicts
the Russians are in for, and who should know better?) Whatever he may say
and whatever fears he may have harbored, he now owns the Syrian and Iraq
wars, whether he likes it or not. Those linked conflicts represent the
flowering (or is it withering?) of what Juan Cole has dubbed the Obama
Doctrine of airborne counterinsurgency (which Russian President Vladimir
Putin has essentially just put his own stamp of approval on).
By now, Obama must sense that his doctrine has visibly failed. What he owns
is a war policy in the Greater Middle East that is tottering in Afghanistan
and dead on arrival in Iraq and Syria, which means it's certainly a
propitious moment for something new from a president who previously couldn't
say no.
Of course, under the circumstances, you might wonder what's left to be done.
But as TomDispatch regulars Jo Comerford and Mattea Kramer suggest today,
there is indeed another avenue to head down, one the president has already
taken successfully with Iran, and it goes by the quaint name of diplomacy.
Tom
Putting Out the Syrian Fire
Can Diplomacy Do What War Couldn't?
By Jo Comerford and Mattea Kramer
As war between President Bashar al-Assad and various rebel forces raged
across Syria, as the Obama administration and the CIA armed rebel factions
of their liking while continuing an air campaign against the militants of
the Islamic State (ISIS), as Russia entered the quagmire with its own
airstrikes, and as millions of Syrians fled for their lives amid untold
violence, a Connecticut congressman decided to do something.
At the end of September, Connecticut Representative Jim Himes, a House
Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, corralled 54 of his colleagues into
sending a letter to President Obama calling for the start of international
negotiations that would include Iran and Russia and be aimed at ending the
Syrian civil war. President Obama is reportedly listening.
This could prove to be a critical turning point in a brutal conflict that
has, until now, seemed without end -- not because Himes has a quick,
sure-to-succeed solution, but because every other course of action is
overwhelmingly likely to fail. To understand why, it's necessary to take a
brief look backward.
Pouring Gasoline on Syria's Fire
More than four years ago, in 2011, passionate Arab Spring protesters rose up
to overthrow despised leaders from Tunisia to Libya, Egypt to Yemen. In
Syria, citizens filled the streets, voicing their opposition to the
murderous regime of President Bashar al-Assad. His government responded by
unleashing its military on the protesters. Some of them, along with soldiers
from Assad's forces, went on to form the Free Syrian Army (FSA), thanks, in
part, to financing from the CIA and the Saudis, and a civil war began. As
months of fighting turned into years, hundreds of thousands of civilians
died, and millions more were uprooted.
In the process, more extreme factions among the rebels, including the
al-Qaeda-aligned al-Nusra Front, gained ever greater traction, while ISIS
spread across parts of Syria and Iraq, proclaiming a "caliphate" and drawing
foreign volunteers by the thousands. ISIS had grown and prospered within the
mayhem and power vacuum created by the Bush administration's invasion of
Iraq and then its dismantling of Saddam Hussein's army. (Some future ISIS
leaders, in fact, first met inside U.S. military prison camps during those
years.)
Turning the fog of the Syrian civil war to its advantage, ISIS claimed ever
more land in northern Syria and, emboldened, launched an offensive in Iraq,
routing the army the U.S. had created there and taking the country's second
largest city, Mosul. But ISIS was more than a brutal, terrorist insurgency.
It was also a darkly savvy PR operation. In September 2014, it filmed
beheadings of American prisoners and put them online.
That was the moment when the U.S. public really began paying attention to
Syria.
And so, just over a year ago, relying on a 2001 authorization to wage war
against al-Qaeda, President Obama ordered the first of what are now more
than 7,000 airstrikes against ISIS, stationed thousands of U.S. military
advisers and trainers in Iraq, and soon launched what would be a disastrous
program to vet, arm, and train "moderate" Syrian rebels to counter the
militants of the Islamic State.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608464636/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608464636/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20In the year
that followed, the Syrian refugee crisis escalated dramatically, thanks to
the growing strength of ISIS, the brutality of the Syrian regime, and an
ever more violent civil war. The entry of the U.S. and other countries into
the conflict likely only increased the chaos and misery.
As a result, Lebanon alone, with a population of around 4.5 million, has
taken in more than a million refugees. In other words, approximately one in
every five people in that country is now a refugee from Syria. And while
Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey have struggled to accommodate this deluge of
asylum seekers, refugee Syrian families endure chronic and debilitating
poverty, inadequate health care, and lack of access to education for their
children.
Enter Russia, Stage Right
Just a couple of weeks ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin, a longstanding
supporter of Assad, launched his own air war against ISIS. On September
30th, soon after Russian explosives began dropping, reports started to
surface that they were hitting FSA fighters and infrastructure. In other
words, Russia was dropping bombs on some of the rebels who have been
receiving support from Washington.
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter promptly (and accurately) accused Russia of
"pouring gasoline on a fire." And he would know, since the U.S. has been
among the biggest gas pourers of all.
According to the National Priorities Project, U.S. taxpayers have already
forked over an astonishing $6.5 billion in the administration's failed air
war against ISIS, even as Pentagon officials acknowledge that airstrikes
alone won't snuff out the terrorists or their "caliphate."
Meanwhile, Congress allocated $500 million for the failed "train and equip
program" that was meant to produce 5,000 "moderate" Syrian rebels to fight
ISIS. That program yielded only a handful of fighters, some of whom the
al-Nusra Front reportedly kidnapped or killed. Some American-supplied trucks
and ammunition were also turned over to Nusra Front fighters.
Yes, you read that correctly. The U.S. effectively supplied arms to al-Qaeda
in Syria, just as -- thanks to the collapse of Iraqi army units, which
abandoned their equipment in Mosul, Ramadi, and elsewhere -- we in effect
helped equip ISIS, too. How's that for gasoline?
What matters most, however, is the staggering human toll of all this. More
than 6.5 million Syrians are now displaced, impoverished, and adrift inside
their own country. Another four million have become refugees, spilling into
Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey, and more recently heading for Europe in
staggering numbers.
Their misery and utter desperation are beyond imagining as they push off
rocky coasts heading for Europe, clinging to shoddy rubber rafts, or are
crammed into suffocating cargo trucks -- sometimes to be met on arrival by
water cannons and tear gas. A Syrian father recently laid bare the choices
his family faced. Asked why he was "risking the lives of his children on an
illegal and potentially lethal seaborne passage," he answered, "in Syria,
they are dead already."
A Congressman Decides to Do Something
Until Congressman Himes sat down to write his letter, there had been
remarkably little talk of international negotiations as an alternative to
this endless devastation. It should be clear enough by now that continued
violence, with ever more parties joining the fray, will bring only what it's
brought for the past four years: chaos and destruction. While some war hawks
in Washington have previously urged more "decisive" military action to oust
Assad as well as destroy the Islamic State, that path would most likely
leave Syria in still greater chaos -- and ripe for further exploitation by
ISIS, the al-Nusra Front, and other extremist outfits.
Negotiations it must be. They won't be quick or easy. It's a guarantee, in
fact, that they'll be messy and wrenching. When it comes to Syria, that's
nothing new. But diplomacy does promise gains over the situation as it
stands today. The hard-nosed and principled diplomatic negotiations
involving the U.S., Russia, China, Great Britain, France, and Germany around
Iran's nuclear program prevailed when naysayers swore that they would fail.
They stand as a remarkable example of what's possible when nations resolve
conflicts with diplomacy instead of bloodshed.
Philip Gordon, the former White House Coordinator for the Middle East, North
Africa, and the Gulf Region, has laid out a blueprint for how such
negotiations might proceed on Syria. All the international players would
have to be brought to the table, including Russia, Iran, Turkey, Saudi
Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Gordon notes that, since this group
includes vehement supporters of Assad as well as those who are invested in
his departure, negotiators would have to postpone any decision about Assad's
fate and focus first on common interests.
And there are common interests -- in de-escalating the violence, addressing
the refugee crisis, and defunding and defeating ISIS. Shared objectives
might include negotiating localized ceasefires between the government and
rebel forces and establishing a structure in which representatives of
Assad's regime could begin a dialogue with the rebels. Then the group of
negotiating nations could turn its focus to ISIS. Indeed, the ongoing wars
and the disintegrating states of the region have created a fertile habitat
for that terrorist group to spread its radical agenda and claim new ground.
A de-escalation of the civil war, paired with meaningful humanitarian aid
and cohesive and coordinated international efforts against ISIS, could prove
the best hope for changing the fate and fortunes of the region.
Here, Washington bears responsibility -- both to quit pouring gasoline and
to help repair some of the devastation. President Obama has recently taken
modest steps in the right direction, ending the failed program to train
moderate Syrian rebels and stating his willingness to work with Russia and
Iran to find a solution to the civil war. Yet these positive developments
come as the U.S. renews its pledge not to train but to equip "vetted
leaders" of rebel groups with new weaponry (including TOW anti-tank
missiles), and as tensions and fighting escalate not just between Assad and
the rebels but also, by proxy, between the U.S. and Russia. That will make
finding a diplomatic solution all the more difficult, yet all the more
urgent.
A Path to a Different History
Meanwhile, the U.S. has been roundly criticized by the international
community for its closed-door policy toward the millions of Syrians who are
running for their lives. While Germany will have admitted 800,000 of them by
year's end, the U.S. has taken in only 1,500 to date. For that reason
mayors, faith leaders, and thousands of ordinary citizens are calling for
more refugees to be welcomed into our country.
It appears that this movement has helped build a political appetite for such
an approach, as some members of Congress are now demanding that the U.S.
admit tens of thousands more Syrians and expand humanitarian aid. President
Obama has announced an increase to 10,000 refugees next year, but some
lawmakers are advocating taking in 10 times more. In a letter co-signed by
26 of his Senate colleagues, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut
compared the paltry number the Obama administration has announced to the
more than 700,000 Vietnamese the U.S. admitted in the years after the
Vietnam War. They insist that on this subject Washington must not "sit on
the sidelines."
Another step in the right direction came from a bipartisan duo in the
Senate. Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Patrick Leahy of
Vermont unveiled legislation to provide $1 billion in humanitarian aid for
the refugees, noting that the Syrian crisis "dwarfs anything we have seen
for decades." Such funding could be used to resettle Syrian refugees more
quickly as well as to provide immediate lifesaving assistance, since the
World Food Program has run out of money to feed the millions of Syrians
currently outside its camps and has been forced to make painful cuts even
within its settlements. The approach of winter threatens food supplies still
further, leaving some refugees so desperate that they are returning to
war-torn Syria.
If asylum and humanitarian aid are essential measures to heal the wounds of
millions, diplomatic negotiations are essential for preventing a future
crisis that could leave this one in the shade.
As Russian missiles rain down alongside American ones, as ever more groups,
nations, and areas are embroiled in the Syrian conflict, as yet more
innocent blood is spilled, it's obviously time for international
negotiations to finally begin. Diplomacy doesn't promise a speedy end to the
almost unfathomable suffering in the region, but it does offer a potential
path to a different history, a path away from ceaseless violence and toward
the imperfect rule of law.
Jo Comerford is a national campaign director for MoveOn.org, helping lead
that group's Syria-related organizing, and Mattea Kramer is a writer. Both
are senior advisors at the National Priorities Project and TomDispatch
regulars.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest
Dispatch Book, Nick Turse's Tomorrow's Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and
Secret Ops in Africa, and Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government:
Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a
Single-Superpower World.
Copyright 2015 Jo Comerford and Mattea Kramer
C 2015 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176057