Vanity Warfare

What is the U.S. trying to achieve?

As everyone probably knows by now, U.S. warships in the Mediterranean Sea launched 59-cruise missiles last evening at the airbase from which Syria launched a chemical attack upon its own citizens earlier in the week. Six people were killed.

As gratifying as it may be to imagine Assad trembling and muttering “Guess I’d better not annoy the U.S. again,” I’m having a difficult time thinking of this attack as anything but crude theater.

  • Though the War Powers Act grants the president authority to deploy military force in exigent circumstances to defend the U.S., it isn’t at all clear that there was any threat whatever to the U.S. — in which case the Constitution requires that the President seek authorization from Congress to use military force. The reason for this provision is to avoid exactly the situation in which the U.S. now finds itself: A war that never ends.

    Trump cited a “vital national security interest” to justify the attack, probably so that he could claim it was lawful. What is that interest?

  • When U.S. intelligence established that Libya was behind an attack on U.S. troops in Germany (this was back in the ’80s), Ronald Reagan ordered an attack on Qaddafi’s palace; the strike missed him, but killed some of his family members. That strike was probably unlawful, too, but at least had the virtue of targeting the person with ultimate responsibility for the deaths of American soldiers.

    So: Why didn’t we strike directly at Assad?

  • Why does it matter how Assad kills his people? Death by Sarin is faster than death by starvation or festering wounds, so Assad could claim he is killing rebels more humanely than by conventional warfare, and the deaths of children were merely unhappy collateral damage. Does the U.S. have an answer to that, besides that it makes for upsetting television?

  • Is America prepared to resume allowing Syrian refugees into the U.S.?

A case for intervention in Syria can be made on humanitarian grounds, and a case for letting them kill each other and then dealing with the last dictator standing can be made on pragmatic grounds. It isn’t at all clear that Trump has thought through what his policy is going to be and, recalling that he said just a day before the gas attack that the U.S. wasn’t interested in Assad, the airfield attack looks downright schizophrenic. It is particular dangerous to loosen Constitutional restraints when the Commander-in-Chief plainly is emotionally unstable, has formulated no policy of his own, and is susceptible of influence by whomever he speaks with last.

The U.S. and its allies cannot impose a peace upon the Middle East; there are too many factions, and none of them will be mollified by even two generations of stringent martial law. Our policy should be to contain the sickness, end our reliance upon Middle Eastern oil, and disengage.

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