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Obama Contemplates Arming Syrian Rebels. What Could Go Wrong?

One of the many critical foreign policy problems confronting the Obama ineptocracy is the unraveling of Syria as a national entity. While we all welcome the departure of the odious Assad clan from power, whether by aircraft or hoisted on pikes, it is unfortunate that this dangerous event, an event so rich with possibilities, has happened under this president.

At first glance, other than the human cost, one is tempted to pop some popcorn, open an good microbrew, and root for injuries. The regime is allied with Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah. If it falls, there is a very good chance that the Hezbollah cancer can be excised from Lebanon and Lebanon will stop being a Syrian colony. On the other hand, the rebels are composed of heaven-knows-what plus al Qaeda. Thrown into the mix is Turkey which wants Assad gone and a stable Syria it can dominate, Saudi Arabia which wants another theocratic kleptocracy in the region, and Qatar because it is bored. Israel is standing clear of the conflict and popping popcorn. We’re concerned because our president wants to look tough and to the Obama White House nothing says tough like arming unknown rebel groups led by unknown persons and giving them a country.

In today’s Washington Post, David Ignatius undertakes the liberal armchair strategist’s favorite act, deciding who to arm in a nebulous civil war.

To deal with this problem, the United States needs better intelligence on the ground. And that’s where the hard calculus of U.S. interests meshes with the quixotic challenge of helping the Syrian rebels. Right now, the United States reportedly has a limited program to supply nonlethal assistance. This program should be tweaked so the rebels get more help building a stronger chain of command.

If the United States helped coordinate funding, the Free Syrian Army would have several advantages: A better-organized opposition might defeat the regime, it would be better able to govern a post-Assad Syria and it could help the United States control Syria’s chemical weapons. That’s a trifecta — three good things in one.

The Obama administration took a small step in this direction last summer by authorizing the Syrian Support Group to help the rebels. Leaders of the group fanned out inside Syria, looking for army defectors who could establish new military councils to coordinate the flow of weapons and money. When I was inside the country, I met the councils’ commanders for Aleppo, Hama and Idlib, who seemed like solid military leaders. They just didn’t have enough guns or money to distribute.

There is a lot wrong with this concept. First and foremost, you can’t just “fan out” and try to find leaders. The leaders will already be there either in the mutinous portions of the Syrian Army or among the jihadis we know are flocking to the Syrian battlefields. If the people you’re talking to didn’t have guns, you were talking to the wrong guys.

We are singularly ill equipped to get involved in either selecting preferred leaders or trying to train the rebels in the middle of an ongoing war. Sticking US Special Forces or CIA paramilitaries into this dog’s breakfast is just a disaster waiting to happen given the presence of Iranian forces in Syria.

Experience everywhere tells you that American dollars, dispensed under loose controls, doesn’t attract patriots, it attracts con men.

Up against this academic butt scratching we have results oriented multimillionaires in the Arabian peninsula.

The funding situation has improved slightly this month. About two weeks ago, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are said to have created a small “Gulf Fund,” to be disbursed by the military councils. The commanders will be paid $150 for each named fighter (including the serial number of his weapon). Col. Abdul-Jabbar Akidi in Aleppo is receiving about $2.5 million under this program; Col. Afif Suleiman in Idlib is getting about $4.5 million. The United States should consider adding money for nonlethal assistance, including training, communications and intelligence.
Syrian jihadist battalions continue to raise their own money directly from wealthy Saudis, Kuwaitis and Qataris. The report to the State Department explains how this works. “The battalion rep or commander travels to Turkey, where he meets Gulf individuals or Syrians who live in the Gulf. The battalion presents ‘projects’ that need sponsorship, for example: targeting a checkpoint costs $20-30K, while targeting an airport cost $200-300K. . . . A video taping . . . is required to provide evidence of the operation.”

This is a very successful model. It was proven in Afghanistan and if our intel people were truthful they would admit that it also happened in Anbar Province in Iraq before the Awakening. It is fast. It rewards success. It encourages the most reckless, charismatic, and brutal leaders to quickly arise to the top.

To his credit, Ignatius asks the right question:

How can the United States break this downward cycle?

But he gets the answer probably as wrong as it can be.

The right next step is to gather into one pot all the official contributions, lethal and nonlethal, from the United States and its Arab and European allies. Then let the Free Syrian Army commanders distribute the money and weapons to fighters, in ways that will build discipline.

The Free Syrian Army has a long shopping list. It claims “minimum” needs of 1,000 rocket-propelled grenades to attack tanks, 500 SAM-7 surface-to-air missiles to destroy Syrian helicopters and jets, 750 machine guns, 50,000 gas masks, 250 vehicles . . . .

Commanders claimed they are forming special units that would operate the anti-aircraft missiles, perhaps under supervision by contractors from the Gulf countries.

First and foremost, I’m not sure we have any Arab allies in this mess. The Saudis are certainly not underwriting any faction that we, or Turkey, or Jordan, or Israel, or Iraq wants to see in charge of Syria.  So right there the idea of pooling weapons breaks down.  As there is no Free Syria Army in anything other than the minds of foreign policy experts and their stenographers.

The idea of equipping the rebels with  SAM-7 is just ridiculous. We are still hunting down Stingers we sent to Afghanistan in the 1980s. At least one of the men killed in Benghazi was engaged in rounding up SAM-7s from the rebels there.

History tells us the last thing we should be doing is sending arms in willy-nilly. The rebels are composed of at least two major factions which will undoubtedly turn on each other if Assad flees. If the jihadis win, and smart money would bet on them being the dominant faction, we don’t want them well armed.

He concludes:

You don’t have to sign off on this whole war chest to agree that it’s time for the United States to experiment with strategies that could produce something other than the bad outcome that’s now ahead.

Indeed. We should be playing the long game here and decide, along with Turkey and Israel (and not the Saudis and Kuwaitis and Qataris) who we want to run Syria. The next step is to embargo the flow of arms into Syria. This necessarily means shutting down all civilian air traffic into Damascus. From all parties. Direct action should be carried out against Iranians forces who will not evacuate the country.  Assad needs to be made an offer he can’t refuse. The shameful end of both Qaddafi and Mubarak have really given him no incentive to do anything but fight it out until the last dog is dead. (Lesson: being tough for the sake of being tough can make your life difficult later on).

The last thing we need is the bunch of clowns running our intelligence, foreign policy, and military operations stepping into Syria and, true to form, making a bad situation much worse.

 

COMMENTS

  • commonsenseobserver

    Of course, Romney must realize this himself as well.

  • rbdwiggins

    “The next step is to embargo the flow of arms into Syria. This necessarily means shutting down all civilian air traffic into Damascus. From all parties.”
    Especially Russia…
    IIRC, more than half of the weapons flowing into Syria, supposedly designated for use by the “Free Syrian Army,” have actually made their way into the hands of the jihadis.
    Such is the consequence of the failed strategy of Leading From Behind…

  • http://travismonitor.blogspot.com Freedoms Truth

    Some of the eager-beaver interventionists in our party, like McCain, have been advocating that support. There was possibly a justification early on to supporting non-violent democracy demonstrators, and there is justification to even today trying to support democracy in Syria. If its one band of Arab jihadis against another, we have no dog in that fight, and any encouragement will lead to a blowback of Bengazi proportions or worse.

  • retrocon87

    Isn’t Romney’s policy on Syria to “work with the Saudis and Qataris to arm the Syrian rebels?” I guess we’ll find out Monday…

  • commonsenseobserver

    It is.
    We may disagree with it, but I find it easier to trust that Romney will be a lot more careful than either Barack Obama or whoever else will try to fill the vacuum.

  • commonsenseobserver

    We all respect Senator McCain, but we also laugh at him.

  • retrocon87

    Obama’s game plan for the debate will just be to scare the hell out of everyone about neocons and then try to make everyone think Romney is one of them… at this point Romney could show up to my door and punch me in the face and I’d still vote for him, but if you take a look at my name you’ll see how eagerly I’ll be watching this thing to see how he responds to it all… my view at this point is let the Syrians kill each other to their hearts’ content and hit Iran if necessary to stop the nuclear program but not until we ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO. There’s no glory in spending another trillion dollars on another goddamn war to “promote freedom” in whatever god-forsaken place has the latest nutjob anti-American dictator trying to get under our skin.

  • septembergurl

    Yeah. McCain was big on intervention in Libya and before that, the surge in Afghanistan. How did those work out?

    By the way, we haven’t heard a peep from the NSA, Thomas Donilon, or from Samantha (smart) power, the NSC person who is supposed to handle humanitarian issues, on Libya.

    It was Power, along with Hillary Clinton and Susan rice, who persuaded Obama to get involved in Libya’s civil war. Although no national interest was involved, and the NATO fig leaf was presposterous (what member of NATO was attacked by Libya), Obama went ahead without Congressional approval — not even a resolution.

    We have no guarantee that Syria won’t be another Libya — or Egypt — and we need to hold back on a total support for these rebels till we know more. In Libya we armed jihadis who had fought our troops in Iraq and killed Americans

    Luckily Obama is engaged in his trademark dithering which will last until he is kicked out..

  • commonsenseobserver

    Certainly, no one likes neoconservatism now, and even Conservatives think that we ought to pull out of Afghanistan immediately if we don’t even want to make an effort to keep our troops safe and win. On the other hand, there is a longstanding bipartisan tradition of peace through strength. More Reagan and H.W. than W., or Carter and O.

  • retrocon87

    Peace through strength is fine. Peace through strength but “only until John Bolton goes on Hannity and says it’s time to start bombing another country in the Middle East because their crazy dictator looked at us the wrong way” isn’t.

  • Dave_A

    The problem is, Obama doesn’t have a clue how to manage this…

    First off, the time to ‘do something’ was BEFORE the Jihadis started flocking to Syria.

    Because we fiddled while the villages burned, Syria has served as ‘reputation rehab’ for Al Queda and similar groups – they can now (again) claim to be the defenders of the Sunni Arab people, a title they squandered with wonton bloodshed in Iraq.

    Further, If you want to help the rebels, you send US advisors with the weapons, to train and lead the groups you are arming… You don’t just provide weapons…

    Finally, what kind of IDIOT considers ‘non lethal’ aid something that will turn the tide against Assad… These people don’t need field dressings & MREs… They need weapons & explosives… And training on how to use them.

    If we do not provide these things, Al Queda will…

    If Al Queda provides them with the tools of their liberation, then they will become a hardline Islamist state after Assad falls.

    If we want to influence the post-rebellion peace, we need to become involved with the pre-peace rebellion!

  • Dave_A

    If every crazy dictator who looked at us the wrong way ended up like Saddam, they’d stop doing it eventually.

    Peace through strength works for the sane.

    Peace through FEAR is the only way to have peace with the rest…

  • commonsenseobserver

    Of course, but there are simply too many Jihadis in Syria, and I think Obama has made it very difficult for us to reverse course towards victory in Afghanistan.

  • retrocon87

    OK, and how much will it cost to turn “every dictator who looks at us the wrong way” into Saddam in hopes that they “might finally start to become afraid of us”?? Personally I would love to see all of these bastards’ hearts on plates but wars happen to cost a whole hell of a lot of money and lives, and getting trigger-happy every time we’re offended by something is fundamentally stupid policy.

  • Dave_A

    1) Syria.
    Agreed. That’s why at this point, direct US intervention – at a minimum, special forces teams on the ground as advisers (Ala Afganhistan, 2001/2002) & US air cover – is required.

    Because there is going to be a ‘war after the war’ between the secular free-Syrians and the Jihadis, and by getting our pieces on the board now, we can be in position to ensure the right people win that war.

    Further, direct US intervention allows us to say ‘No, you’re not getting any anti-air or anti-tank missiles’ – with the alternative of US air cover… A flight of F-16s beats a container-load of ancient SA-7s & RPGs (which are near-useless against modern tanks, btw) any day…

    2) Afghanistan.
    Thanks to the total lack of any concept of ‘loyalty’ to anything but family/tribe over there, all we have to do to win is stay & keep the pressure on the Taliban. Obama’s damage can be reversed simply by saying ‘Hey, that whole leaving in 2014 thing? Forgeddaboudit!’

    The majority of Taliban support over there is obtained via intimidation or a perception of inevitability – not ideological belief or actual loyalty to Taliban ideals.

    The Taliban have power & influence because enough locals think that they will win in the end, and thus supporting the Taliban is a path to future wealth & patronage once the Taliban ‘inevitably win’.

    If the people begin to perceive that the Taliban will NOT regain power, then support will shift to whichever group or movement seems to be most likely destined for future power (And thus able to bestow patronage and graft upon their supporters, once in power).

    So ‘victory’ comes from simply sticking it out until the people realize that the Taliban will never be allowed back in power, at which point allegiances will shift to whoever can provide the best gravy-train….

  • Dave_A

    It WAS a secular revolt against a pro-Iranian dictator.

    The Jihadists got involved because we abdicated leadership to them, by refusing to intervene.

    If your people are being massacred due to a total lack of adequate weapons, generally you will take help from anyone who can give you the tools to resist…

    They very clearly preferred US support… The most telling protest sign I’ve seen, was one that said ‘We miss President Bush. The world is a better place with America’s Republicans in charge’. Not kidding. A group of Syrian anti-govt demonstrators painted that on a sheet & it wound up in the news.

    But we gave them nothing but Obama’s hot-air…

    So when Queda & the like showed up promising to give them a way to beat Assad… Beggars can’t be choosers, and while they’d rather have US fighter jets sweep Assad’s army off the field, if all they can get is some help making HME and setting IEDs… Well it beats being shelled off the field by Assad-ist artillery….

  • Dave_A

    It’s the consequence of leading from behind and letting the Saudis administer the weapons flow…

    The Free Syrian Army needs to be lent a little bit of the US Air Force (I’m sure the Turks will let us base out of their country for this one, given the Assadists have been attacking them lately) & some advisers who can translate dirka-dirka-make-go-boom into an air-mission request… Not given a bunch of hand-weapons that, while useful for attacking undefended diplomatic missions, are no match for Syrian planes & tanks…. And that about sums up the hardware requested….

  • Dave_A

    I’m not a fan of Air Force Diplomacy mainly because they tend to miss too often (nothing against the folks in blue, they do an excellent job hitting what they aim at – the problem is that it does no good to blow up a building if the targeted people are no longer (or were never) inside)…

    The point is, it doesn’t take many – and we can select the ‘Examples’ based on the impact that maneuver will have on US interests.

    Assad should have been swinging from a rope months ago… Courtesy of the US Marines & Army SF, maybe with some support from the Air Force.

    Criteria for selection:
    1) Ally of Iran
    2) If we don’t Queda will
    3) The influence we’d gain in the formation of a post-Assad Syria
    4) A regional menace, vis-a-vis Hezbollah and Hamas.

    BTW, the ‘Weapons the Pentagon says they don’t need’ thing is a Dem crock.

    Coming from the Army perspective, I can tell you that the brass-hats will say what they think will get them promoted….

    Telling Obama that ‘yes, we need those weapons, badly’ when he wants to hear ‘No, cut that, please’ is not the way to get another star…

    Flag officers are political creatures.

  • Dave_A

    BTW, given the giant ‘pile-O-gunz’ Assad has amassed over the years, an embargo will do no good… Just like it did no good in Sudan, etc…

    It’s like the international version of Chicago-style gun-control… Ban the import of weapons when the bad guys (both Assad & AQ) already have everything they need, and the good-guys have jack-all….

  • commonsenseobserver

    Well, even Romney wants to leave by 2014…

  • commonsenseobserver

    If we could, I’m sure we’d all just prefer to just bomb, bomb, bomb Syria.

  • retrocon87

    Criteria for selection–
    1) Ally of Iran
    Response: most ordinary Arabs hate America and Israel’s guts while most ordinary Iranians don’t, but for political reasons most Arab dictators don’t while the Iranian dictators do. It is not quite as simple as “Bashar al-Assad is an Iranian ally so that means we’d be better off without him.” The Iranian government hates our guts and as a Alawite (Shiite) minority government Assad has needed Iran’s help to stay in power, but all he had to do to get it was act as a conduit for weapons to Hezbollah which Israel has had pretty well-contained in Lebanon at this point, pay lip-service to “resisting Zionism and Western imperialism” and that was really about it. Assad has been a secular ruler who with his father has kept a lid on Sunni extremism for 40 years, and the Syrian border has been the quietest one Israel has had since ’67. Help get rid of Assad and the only result is the Brotherhood and Salafists take over Syria like they did Egypt and Israel now has another border that for the first time in 40 years they actually have to (now seriously) start worrying about. No one in Israel is saying they’d be better off with Assad out and they are frankly loving every minute of watching Hezbollah/IRGC and al Qaeda/MB killing each other… we should be too.
    2) If we don’t, “Queda” will
    Al Qaeda and other various radical “foreign fighters” are already there now and the rebels are avoiding them like the plague because the rebels are totally relying on the Saudis and Qataris for their arms and funding and al Qaeda makes no secret that it wants the Saudi and Qatari governments gone. Put American boots on the ground there and the only result is Hezbollah and/or al Qaeda (or possibly even both, which is the one thing the two would ever actually agree on) making sure there’s a Beirut 1983 reenactment almost immediately while the sane factions of the rebels are caught in the middle. Hit Assad with air strikes and the result is my response from #1.
    3) The influence we’d gain in the formation of a post-Assad Syria
    There will be no formation of a “post-Assad Syria” in a way that’s at all conducive to friendly US relations. If we help the Sunnis overthrow Assad’s military, the result will be the subsequent Sunni slaughtering of the Shiite and Christian minorities after which point it will be near impossible to associate with them in any way other than voting to indict their leaders for genocide.
    4) A regional menace, vis-a-vis Hezbollah and Hamas.
    What are you suggesting here exactly? A US military presence in Lebanon and/or Gaza? Hezbollah managed to chase us out of Lebanon in the 1980s, Israel invaded Lebanon in 2006 with the explicit purpose of “destroying Hezbollah,” the result was the IDF got bogged down there for about a month in a guerrilla war, withdrawing after a “UN-brokered ceasefire,” Hezbollah taking over Lebanon, and most Israelis quietly thinking they lost. If we attack Hezbollah the result is that Hezbollah agents start blowing up American civilian targets all over the world, they immediately shoot a few thousand missiles at Tel Aviv, the IDF winds up having to invade again, it ends with the exact same stalemate it did the last time. As far as Hamas goes, Israel has Gaza totally shut down. Give them diplomatic cover to continue the blockade and end it there.

  • tetrisd85

    Isn’t this Romney’s policy too? In fact, isn’t Romney even more hawkish than Obama on this? If Obama is really considering arming the Syrian rebels then that might actually be the first thing he’s done that I can halfway agree with.

  • Dave_A

    I am suggesting that without an Iran-friendly regime in Syria, Lebanon and Hamas will have their supply lines cut.

    I’m suggesting that unless you want to go to war with Iran and oust *THEIR* government, you had better get used to them being our enemy because THAT regime isn’t going anywhere, any time soon. They successfully quashed their ‘Persian Spring’ already, when Ab-Jab got re-elected “Chicago Style”.

    And continuing the above, I’m suggesting that if we are not willing to move for regime change in Iran, we HAVE TO contain & isolate them, which means depriving them of their allies.

    I’m suggesting that Queda would not be there now, but for our ‘lead from behind’ non-leadership

    I’m suggesting that right now Queda & the Fundies *ARE* getting weapons, because that’s who the Saudis and Quataris are arming (this is a news-report thing, not speculation. Expect to hear about it in the debate on Monday)…

    I’m also suggesting that left on their own, the rebels will eventually turn to anyone who can help them win. No matter how vile

    And finally, I am not exactly worried about the settling-of-scores that will happen once Assad is gone… That’s life in that part of the world.

    Finally, America is not the ‘protector of Christendom’, nor should we give preference or concern to any given religion in our foreign policy.

  • Dave_A

    Last I heard from Ryan, the rule was ‘No deadlines’ and ‘We’ll listen to the military on when to leave’.

    Campaign rhetoric aside, of all the times we CANNOT leave, 2014 is now marked as such, merely because Obama said that’s when we’re leaving, and thus that is when the enemy is expecting us to be gone…

    The additional impact of this, is they will have one gigantic offensive ready to go in 2014, for ‘when the Americans leave’…

    We not only have to stay, we have to be ready for ’14 to be an ‘active’ year….

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