The Administration’s Case for a Strike on Syria

The Washington Post has video of a speech by US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power which, I presume, represents that Obama Administration’s official position on Syria.

What I like about the argument:

In arguing for limited military action .. we are reaffirming what the world has already made plain in laying down its collective judgment on chemical weapons. There is something different about chemical warfare that raises the stakes for the United States and raises the stakes for the world.

I support that rationale and limited, symbolic strikes based on it. Strikes that do not have the intent of changing the balance of the conflict or of disarming Assad, because such goals beyond what is required to sustain the convention against use of chemical weapons, and would incur an open-ended use of American power leading, potentially, into another quagmire.

Samantha Power Discusses Use Of Chemical Weapons In Syria

What I do not like about her argument, however, is the fact that it is irrationally manipulative and basically an extension of the Bush Doctrine. First, she describes a father’s grief at the loss of this two little girls. Personal tragedy is no basis for foreign policy, and the inclusion of this rationale is not merely spurious. It’s an affront to common sense and an insult to the intelligence of her audience. 

Second, she cites the fear of a new generation of radical extremists in an argument that is so long-ranged and tentative that–if taken seriously–would officially signal the moment at which virtually ever policy action imaginable could be justified as a response to terrorism. Her argument is:

Half of Syria’s refugees are children, and we know what can happen to children who grow to adulthood without hope or opportunity in refugee camps. The camps become fertile recruiting grounds for violent extremists.

Again, this argument is so excessively bad that including it in a rationale isn’t merely superfluous, but deeply troubling. Experts believe that a significant mismatch in the male:female ratio of a rising generation leads to political extremism, meaning that China’s One Child Policy and India’s increasingly prevalent use of sex-selective abortions could each lead to “fertile recruiting grounds of violent extremists.” Are we preparing military strikes there as well?

Of course not. It’s an absurd suggestion, and it’s also an absurd suggestion when it comes to Syria. There are good reasons for a narrow, limited, symbolic use of military power to reinforce longstanding international norms rejecting the use of chemical weapons. Relying on sob stories of fathers weeping over the corpses of their daughters or fear-mongering about shadowy future attacks undermine the actual rationale for the strike, eviscerate the credibility of the Obama administration, and represent a grave threat of turning military strikes on Syria into a dangerous new precedent that–as in almost every other case the Obama Administration has taken–will further solidify the mistakes of the Bush Administration and draw us deeper into a never-ending, self-justifying, and ultimately self-destructive cycle of violence.

It’s not just what we do in Syria that matters, but why we do it. I understand that the Obama Administration may need to employ some less-than-ideal arguments in order to rally the necessary support at home and abroad, but the risk there is that by the time you’ve got the support you need you are no longer engaging in an action that deserves that support.

In theory, I support limited strikes on Syria. In reality, a speech like this makes me deeply suspicious that our present administration has the integrity to do what is needed. The Assad regime should face military repercussions for their actions (and, for the purpose of this argument, I’m assuming that the charges against them are true), but unfortunately I don’t know if there exists a world power with sufficient military power and moral courage to carry a strike out within ethical and rational constraints.

4 thoughts on “The Administration’s Case for a Strike on Syria”

  1. Hey, I’ll take a half (1/100th?)of a loaf on this!

    I see what you’re saying but think you’re conflating supporting evidence and a tangential case for near-term national security interests with truly sophist credulity-straining arguments made by the Bush admin.

    To the first bit: the anecdote, however emotional, is employed in reinforcing why CW use is so unacceptable. Is it tugging at heart strings? Sure. But can you point to ANY President EVER who hasn’t done this same thing in appealing rhetorically to the nation to act? Can you help me imagine how it would work for a future president to never, ever, do so? Perhaps this is a dangerous entrenching of the worst parts of the Bush administration’s foreign policy. For me, that would be letting Bin Laden go, invading the wrong country to the tune of $3 trillion, and getting 600,000 killed. YMMV. Perhaps, though, the emotional appeal always has been and always will be an essential element of people-driven politics?

    To the second bit: global instability is absolutely of interest to US national security, no matter the vector. While DoD and intel agency portfolio operators absolutely keep track of things like reproductive gender imbalances in Southeast Asia, military intervention in response to such things has zero validity under long established Just War Theory, international norms and rule of law regarding conflict, etc.

  2. Just to clarify my last graf: Assad’s use of CW is necessary and sufficient in passing the threshold for international norms-based strikes. This can be separate and apart from an articulation to a domestic audience of those near-term US national security interests that also (but not mutually exclusively) happen to be served by said strikes.

  3. To the first bit: the anecdote, however emotional, is employed in reinforcing why CW use is so unacceptable.

    It absolutely, positively, completely, and totally fails to do so. Does it any way matter–to any degree whatsoever–that this father’s children were killed by chemical weapons instead of by snipers, a drunk driver, or a sexually predator? It does not.

    The only justification for relating this anecdote to foreign policy is a simple, straightline. “Chemical weapons will dramatically increase the casualty and vastly multiply stories like this one.” Such a case is not a foregone conclusion, however, when chemical weapon attacks have accounted for only 1-2% of the fatalities in the conflict so far. What’s more damaging, however, is that Power barely even gets to the only argument that matters, instead deliberatly focusing on the father’s grief (which is crass and manipulative) and then stating inanities like “These weapons kill in the most gruesome possible way. They kill indiscriminately. They are incapable of distinguishing between a child and a rebel.” Really, Ambassador Power, please tell us about the weapons that do discriminate between rebel and civilian. And regale us about the non-gruesome ways for children to die in combat.

    What bothers me is not just that such poor, emotional manipulation is being used (it always has been), but that it is given such prominent in what I would have expected to be a serious policy speech. This isn’t a propaganda poster, after all.

    To the second bit: global instability is absolutely of interest to US national security, no matter the vector. While DoD and intel agency portfolio operators absolutely keep track of things like reproductive gender imbalances in Southeast Asia, military intervention in response to such things has zero validity under long established Just War Theory, international norms and rule of law regarding conflict, etc.

    You’re right that it has “zero validity under long established Just War Theory,” and in so doing only underscore my point: then why is it being cited as a rationale for military action in this case!? I’m glad that, at least in this case, you seem to grasp how utterly inappropriate the comment was, and that it does indeed fly in the face of historical norms.

  4. “stating inanities like ‘These weapons kill in the most gruesome possible way. They kill indiscriminately. They are incapable of distinguishing between a child and a…”

    But these aren’t inanities at all. They’re the micro-level foundations undergirding the macro international norm you champion.

    Soldiers can go door to door with small arms, indescriminately killing women and children. Artillery can be rained down upon neighborhoods to the same end. Any weapon can be used to commit war crimes. But war crimes are the exclusive, by-design end use of chemical weapons. They are not effective against regular armies with access to the most basic of CW countermeasures (masks, suits, counter-agent autoinjector pens). Unlike white phosphorus or agent orange or cluster bombs, chemical weapons cannot be used against infrastructure or vehicles or jungle foliage. Their sole reason for existence is the indescriminate extermination of civilians.

    Clearly you disagree with Powers’ attempting to underline the above with an emotional anecdote about two such civilians killed in this particular chemical weapons attack. That’s okay! What Powers’ remarks to an audience at the Center for American Progress are not, though, is some kind of ghastly ethical abdication or deviant rhetorical attempt at manipulation propagating the historically ruinous national security failings and foreign policy blunders of the previous administration.

    Lastly, citing direct nearer-term US national security interests in ADDITION to laying out a Just War case for punishing chemical weapons use, doesn’t foster internal contradiction. These nearer-term interests are NOT enough to make a global case for strikes. Switching between global and national lenses, though, reveals that 1) norm reinforcement justifies US action in an international context and 2) with this threshold met, it’s perfectly valid and almost a moral necessity to clearly articulate other national interests furthered by strikes justified in the relatively more abstract and academic case of #1.

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