Syria: Holding Off The Missiles of September

A Russian proposal currently being negotiated to let an international team dismantle all the chemical weapons Syria supposedly has in stock has succeeded in cooling, at least temporarily, threats by the United States to reduce parts of the country to cinders.

This development has left President Barack Obama without a leg to stand on as he tries to avenge a poison gas attack near Damascus that killed nearly 1400 people, which was allegedly attributed to Syrian President Bashar Assad, whose country is in the midst of a civil war that has so far taken at least 100,000 lives.

Obama's efforts to mount airstrikes on Damascus and thereabouts have been met with resistance from Congress and most of the American public, who are sick to death of ten years of wars in the Middle East.  On the 12th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and the one-year anniversary of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, there's no point in creating another Middle Eastern enemy.  As it was, the Russian proposal forced the President to tone down his prime-time speech Tuesday night, asking Congress to postpone a vote on approving the missile strike, but leaving open the possibility of firing away if diplomacy fails.

There was one part of Obama's speech that was disturbing.  On the basis of the video of the chemical attack's aftermath (which we have no way of knowing if it was staged or not), the President noted that 400 of the victims happened to be children.  He seemed to suggest that if the video wasn't enough to convince folks that limited airstrikes are needed to teach Assad a lesson, then we should think of The Children as a reason to stop chemical weapons.  That is the worst reason in the world for going to war, as well as the worst excuse to justify anything.  No one, let alone the President of the United States, should be putting The Children up on pedestals.  They're human beings, not property or objects of sympathy and sentimentality.

As for the removal of weapons, the U.S. is taking a skeptical eye over the proposed deal.  It's one thing to say that you're getting rid of the chemical stockpile.  It's quite another to actually do it.  According to one report, the U.S. and the Russians have vast amounts of experience in handling the removal of chemical materials.  Syria does not.  So this could mean that there could be those so-called "boots on the ground", which Obama has promised would not happen, landing in Syria.

Don't think for a moment that anyone holds the moral high ground as far as chemical weapons are concerned.  Mustard gas was used in World War I.  Hitler used chemicals to kill six million Jews during World War II.  Even the good old U.S.A. used napalm and Agent Orange during the Vietnam war on Communists, civilians and soldiers alike.  And let's not forget that America used two atom bombs to help end their war with Japan.

None of this, of course, is going to end the fighting in Syria's two-year old civil war.  The Assad regime is as dug in about staying in power as their enemies are about driving him out.  The major objective right now is to keep the conflict from spreading to other Middle Eastern countries.  Taking chemical weapons out of the equation might go a long way toward accomplishing that.  And President Obama can keep his powder dry.