The US military, following orders of the 45th
President, did something in Syria this week. Lots of people were heard to say, “finally”.
The Commander-in-Chief who boasts he has never changed a diaper grieved
publicly for the lost Syrian children who died slow deaths choking on sarin
gas. “No child of god should have to suffer such harms.” A statement no one save
atheists can argue with.
You might be tempted to see this as a rupture with the
recent past, but if we listen carefully we will see not a break with the 44th
President’s policy, but rather continuity. The current administration, like its
predecessor, is reacting not to the generalized horror of the Assad regime’s
assault on its people, but on its use of this specific horror – chemical weapons.
Since World War I, with few and notable exceptions, the world has agreed that
chemical weapons should not be deployed.
When Assad used these poisons in 2013, the previous administration
reacted. We’ve grown so accustomed to hearing the chorus saying that Obama did “nothing”
at the time. Which is only because in the minds of too many in the media and
among conventional thinkers in both parties, you are doing “nothing” unless you
are doing “something” that involves weapons.
The previous administration did react. Here is what they
did: they forced Syria to sign a treaty against the use of chemical weapons,
charged Russia with removing and destroying them, and put the force of the
United Nations behind that sentiment.
That action, frequently described by commentators and hawks
as “doing nothing” worked for four years. Four years without a chemical attack
in this war – if I were a Syrian family trying to stay alive, I would take
that. Four years to find safe haven, to find more effective means of resistance,
four years to stay alive. I would take that. Call it what you will, it’s not
nothing.
Enter 45. Assad attacks Idlib with chemical weapons, probing
to find out if the current President really means what he said in 2013, that
this was not really our concern, and that we should stay out. Assad learned
when the US launched the 59 missiles that destroyed his 20 planes and shut down
his airfield for 24 hours, that the ban on chemical weapons - a red line, if
you will – was still in effect.
Both actions – Obama’s diplomacy, Trump’s gunplay – have the
same result. They remind Assad that there is no percentage in using these
particular weapons. And that is, by any realistic standpoint, about all we can
do in this situation (that plus open our doors to those who flee).
The partisan bickering that goes on just masks this
fundamental consistency. If you needed any more proof of continuity you should
watch Hillary Clinton, hours before the Tomahawks flew, egging on the man who
she beat by 3 million votes in November to rev his engines.
The good news in all, a sanity within the unbearably painful
insanity of this conflict, is that both administrations seem to recognize
limits. There is little that we can do to end this war, short of sending an
army as populous as the city of Miami to spend decades in Damascus, and so
every day we stay away, and every day that chemical weapons remain in their
sheaths, is what passes for a good day.
Sigh.
