Selling a strike on Syria

As G20 leaders meet in St Petersburg, US President Barack Obama’s drive to strike Syria is on top of the agenda. His ‘coalition of the willing’ is rather weak and much divided with Vladimir Putin resolutely against any military intervention without a United Nations Security Council resolution.

My fear is that this summit could be the final step before another disastrous involvement by the West in the Arab world. The similarities of 2013 and 2003 are startling: John Kerry, a few days ago, reassured Congress that the Assad regime is the one using chemical weapons because he has US intelligence that says so — just like US intelligence was received in 2003 to sanction military action in Iraq. No clear source of information has further been mentioned or described, which seriously questions this knowledge, especially after the failure to find any weapons in Iraq.

One thing should be clear: in absolutely no case is the use of chemical weapons justified. But the idea that the proposed US military strike in Syria is driven by the moral outrage of the use of these weapons or because of pressure from the left wing, foreign policy lobby or President Obama’s concern for the Syrian people, is frankly, ludicrous. Part of the hypocrisy of all this is that the same ‘liberals’ and neo-conservatives did nothing when Saddam Hussein gassed and killed 5,000 Iraqis and when he used chemical weapons against Iran. What the US did with chemical weapons also can’t be forgotten. Millions of gallons of Agent Orange were dropped on Vietnam due to which the entire country was defoliated and generations of birth defects were created

The vast majority of world leaders and the US public oppose a strike on Syria by a factor of percent. The US can’t say it wants to occupy and dominate an oil-rich region, therefore, the invasion needs a noble cause, such as protecting civilians in Syria or stopping the use of weapons of mass destruction, like it did in Iraq. It makes no sense whatsoever that Assad would use chemical weapons knowing that it would be the one thing that could possibly trigger Western intervention in a war that he was winning.

The Obama Administration has also chosen to ignore any evidence suggesting that chemical weapons could have been used by the Syrian opposition. Putin recently presented a 100-page report to the UN to the effect that chemical weapons used in Aleppo actually came from Iraq and were transferred to the rebels.

The US government is telling its people that it can’t go to the UN Security Council because Russia would automatically veto any resolution, effectively using the country as a punching bag for getting what it wants. Putin has said that once evidence has been presented, Russia and the UN will consider it, find out who is responsible for gassing whom, and come up with a resolution.

The US, by taking the matter to Congress, simply seems to be trying to sell its plans, even though Congress does not have the right to pass illegal resolutions. Article 51 of the UN Charter which the US has signed making it the highest law of the land says that a member state can only attack another member state in case of imminent self-defence. This clearly means that an attack by the US on Syria is illegal under international law.

If only common sense prevailed.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 10^th, 2013.

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