By Debra J. Saunders
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Last week, Bill Clinton warned that President Barack
Obama risked looking like a "wuss" and "a total fool" for
not acting sooner on Syria. Shortly thereafter -- but two months after
Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel charged that strongman Bashar Assad had
crossed a "red line" in using chemical weapons against his own people
-- the White House announced that in response to Assad's use of sarin, the
administration would send small arms to help Syrian rebels.
Allow me to stand up for the president. Obama didn't look
like a fool for not rushing into the Syrian mess at the behest of Beltway
foreign policy do-gooders. To the contrary, Obama has shown himself to be the
rare Washington leader who learned something from Egypt and Libya. No need to
touch that stove too often.
In 2011, during the heady days of mass protests in
Cairo's Tahrir Square, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton came forward to urge
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak -- a U.S. ally -- "to begin immediately
serious negotiations on a peaceful and orderly transition." Now Her
Stateness looks totally foolish. Because she had Arab Spring fever, an ally is
in chains, and Egypt has new leadership, the Muslim Brotherhood.
At least America had a national interest in ousting
Libyan despot Moammar Gadhafi, who ordered the 1988 Pan Am Flight 103 bombing,
which left 270 dead. But with the U.S. military spread thin from wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan and the po][litical ideology of Libyan rebels in question,
Obama preferred to leave NATO in charge of the air war over Libya. A White
House aide famously dubbed this strategy "leading from behind."
When Libyans killed Gadhafi, Madam Secretary paraphrased
Julius Caesar, quipping, "We came; we saw; he died." She has shown
less bluster since a terrorist attack in Benghazi left Ambassador J.
Christopher Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty dead. The Libyan
non-war doesn't feel like victory anymore.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has faulted Obama for pledging
arms after 100-plus Syrians were killed by chemical weapons but not earlier in
a civil war that has claimed 93,000 lives. Give this to McCain: He has the
moral high ground. I felt the same way about the atrocities committed by Iraq's
Saddam Hussein. Ten years after the Iraq War began, the country is more stable
but at a cost so terrible that Americans don't want to walk that path again.
The Obama administration wisely stipulates that there
will be no American boots on Syrian ground. Deputy national security adviser
Ben Rhodes asserted that Washington expects U.S. arms will not fall "into
the hands of extremists."
The president also has resisted calls to order a
"no-fly zone." He would rather spend tax dollars on nation building
at home than on civil war management abroad.
There's this view among the foreign policy elite that
Obama has to be tough on Syria in order to telegraph to world leaders that
American outrage builds at a penalty. In Egypt, the penalty was that a
terrorist organization won power, and in Libya, the penalty put more firepower
into the hands of hostile militias.
By all means, Mr. President, send arms to the Syrian
rebels. Do what you have to do to keep Assad -- and Hezbollah and Iran and
Russia -- from winning. But don't feel you have to give in to the risky demands
of the foreign policy scolds. Remember: "We came; we saw; he died."
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