War is expensive.
War is unpredictable.
War is hell.
That’s why many people believe that war ought to be avoided whenever possible: that it’s foolhardy to enter a war of choice if you can safely avoid doing so.
There isn’t any one rule that can guide a nation in all circumstances. Perhaps the U.S. ought to have intervened to stop the genocide in Rwanda, though we could avoid doing so. But a strong case can be made that the “go to war only if you must” rule of thumb would’ve served America well even it would’ve been applied inflexibly for the whole postwar era. Imagine a world where the 58,000 Americans who needlessly died in Vietnam were still alive, and the 5,000 Americans who died in Iraq were around too. We’d also be a few trillion dollars richer, and have hundreds of thousands fewer people suffering from missing limbs or PTSD. (Then again, we wouldn’t enjoy the fruits of having invaded Grenada.)
Imprudent wars are so catastrophic that even a small risk of one just isn’t worth it. Most Americans don’t quite believe that war should only be entered by necessity. But their instinct to apply the “only if you must” rule is enduringly strong.
What I don’t understand is another sort of American – a particular kind of foreign policy hawk. They frequently urge interventions, like Senator John McCain, but their interventionism isn’t rooted, like his, in the valorization of martial values. Nor is it rooted in Samantha Power style beliefs about stopping atrocities.
The hawks I don’t understand are the ones who urge war not to achieve a “kinetic” end, but to send a signal. President Obama wants to intervene in Syria not to topple the regime or give the rebels a decisive advantage, but to send a signal about chemical weapons use. I suppose I can almost wrap my brain around that attitude, though I doubt striking Syria will impact future use of chemical weapons.
From there, the Signal Hawks start to totally mystify me.
Professor Carrie Cordero of Georgetown also wants to intervene in Syria in order to send signals, but a different set of signals than the ones Obama wants to send.
Here’s how she put it at Lawfare:
…there is the pragmatic question of whether intervention is in the United States’ national security interests. There are strong arguments that it is, but it does not sound as if the Administration has made that case yet to Congress, or to the public.
In short, punishing the Syrian regime by means of military force, and more broadly, intervening in the Syrian civil war, is in the United States’ national security interests because the world is watching. And what the world, and particularly those governments or terrorist organizations that act contrary to U.S. interests will see in our actions, our resolve*, will affect their behavior in the future. Accordingly, it is in our interests:
- For the Syrian civil war to resolve, sooner rather than later.
- For the Syrian civil war to not spread further and destabilize what is left of governments with whom we can at least have an open dialogue on Middle East issues, such as Jordan.
- To send a message to the world’s rogue regimes-like North Korea and Iran-that we will not tolerate the use of chemical weapons.
- To demonstrate to the Arab street that we have compassion for their children, too, and that we will back that compassion with strength to defend and protect the most vulnerable.
- To see that the Assad regime falls, and that we have deeper insight into who will make up the new leadership of Syria, and that we will have a channel through which to dialogue and work with that leadership.
With all due respect to Professor Cordero, almost every time I encounter this attitude toward international affairs I can’t help but suspect that it is totally lacking in rigor.
Let’s probe some of her arguments.
Is a military attack on another country in the Middle East really the only way, the best way, or an effective way to show that we have compassion for the region’s children? There are certainly ways other than an act of war to send that signal. For example, we could help the child refugees who’ve been streaming out of Syria. Even if we did, the people of the region would still be well aware that Americans are willing to incidentally kill faraway Muslim children in drone strikes if they believe that those strikes will make Americans infinitesimally safer from terrorism. Is a Yemeni, aware of innocents we’ve killed, or an Iraqi, aware of our sanctions regime, or anyone familiar with the totality of U.S. policy really going to conclude, after a cruise missile strike, that the U.S. really does care about their children? “The Americans are bombing Syria – it must be because they have a high regard for the lives of Syrian children,” exactly no one will think.
Now consider another signal intervention would allegedly send.
Imagine that we fire cruise missiles into Syria. Would that really send a signal to North Korea that we would not tolerate their use of chemical weapons? Whatever one thinks about an American attack on Syria, it is unlikely to lead to a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula, or the deaths of thousands of American troops stationed in South Korea, or a potentially catastrophic confrontation with China, all of which could happen if we attacked North Korea after it used chemical weapons on its own people. And the North Koreans surely understand that the strategic calculus used to attack Syria for chemical weapons use would be different from the factors President Obama would weigh if it were North Korea. Signal hawks often act as if foreigners will be totally oblivious to the obvious.
Despite all the talk about red lines and the “necessity” of responding to the use of chemical weapons with force, everyone in the United States and the world understands that the United States would not go to war with Russia, or China, or North Korea, or Pakistan, if one of those countries used chemical weapons on their own people. No foreign government is so simpleminded as to think, “The Americans responded to chemical weapons in Syria by striking the country, so they’re obviously going to respond in exactly the same way to any other country.”
Whether or not we attack Syria, “rogue regimes” will know, as well as we do ourselves, that “getting away with” future use of chemical weapons depends not on precedent, but on the offending country, its international alliances, its military strength, the president at the time and his or her priorities, and three dozen other factors. The faith of Signal Hawks in absolute transitivity is as strong as it is baffling.
Arguments that turn on signal-sending so often adopt assumptions about the signal that would be sent that are highly questionable at best, and that are, at worst, simplistic, naive, and totally lacking in rigor. Their advocates never seem to look back and notice the signals that don’t work. The Iraq invasion was predicated in part on the fact that Saddam Hussein gassed his own people, and the belief that he had chemical weapons. Yet neither the Iraq invasion nor the execution of Saddam Hussein stopped chemical weapons from being used in Syria.
And what are we to make of the argument that we must intervene because “the world is watching”? That might make sense as a hawkish talking point if most of the world decidedly favored intervention, but that is far from true. The parliament of our closest ally, along with the British people, think intervention is a bad idea. Neither the UN nor NATO will endorse intervention, and it’s hard to imagine that, say, Brazil or Canada or India will change its attitudes toward America in any salutary way if and only if we send cruise missiles or bombs into Syria.
The world is always watching, and parts of the world, like the Israelis, may be eager for America to intervene in Syria. Of course, disappointing the Israelis by failing to intervene, even though they’re watching, wouldn’t do any damage to the United States. Nor is America’s relationship with the hawkish French likely to suffer in any profound way if we stay out of Syria. Meanwhile, there are many parts of the world who are watching President Obama and thinking to themselves, “Are those fool Americans so arrogant as to launch another war in the Middle East?” The signal hawks often invoke “the world watching” in a way that is totally disconnected from actual world opinion and perceptions of the conflict in question – as if global observers broadly share hawkish notions of credibility.
Ignored are the many salutary signals that would just as plausibly be sent by doing the opposite of what the hawks want. The United States must not intervene in Syria, because the U.N. has not approved a strike, and the United States must signal that it respects international law so that we have credibility in the future. Why isn’t that the relevant signal? America must send a signal to anti-regime forces in the Muslim world that they won’t get our help if al Qaeda friendly factions are among their ranks. Why isn’t that the relevant signal? I don’t accept the notion that signals are as important as the Signal Hawks say, but if they were, the Signal Hawks never offer any argument about why the particular signal that they focus on is operative or most important — as best I can tell, it’s an unexamined assumption that is never fleshed out or defended.
Different Signal Hawks typically believe that credibility is conferred by bellicose rhetoric (neocons) or military strikes against much weaker countries (internationalist liberals), and erroneously believe that everyone else in the world will react to American intervention by respecting us more forever after. Going to war to send signals is always a dubious enterprise that shows insufficient respect for the seriousness of war. It is especially foolish when there’s no reason to believe that the signal being sent is the one Signal Hawks want to send.
_____
*”What does getting deployed mean, mommy?”
“It means they’re sending your dad very far away for awhile.”
“Will he have to kill people?”
“Maybe.”
“Why did they send daddy far away to go kill people?”
“Well, America has to signal resolve, so that other countries will know we have it in the future.”
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Egyptians security forces escort an Islamist supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood out of the al-Fatah mosque and through angry crowds, after hundreds of Islamist protesters barricaded themselves inside the mosque overnight, following a day of fierce street battles that left scores of people dead, near Ramses Square in downtown Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, Aug. 17, 2013. Authorities say police in Cairo are negotiating with people barricaded in a mosque and promising them safe passage if they leave. Muslim Brotherhood supporters of Egypt’s ousted Islamist president are vowing to defy a state of emergency with new protests today, adding to the tension. (AP Photo/Hussein Tallal)
Egyptians security forces escort an Islamist supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood out of the al-Fatah mosque and through angry crowds, after hundreds of Islamist protesters barricaded themselves inside the mosque overnight, following a day of fierce street battles that left scores of people dead, near Ramses Square in downtown Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, Aug. 17, 2013. Authorities say police in Cairo are negotiating with people barricaded in a mosque and promising them safe passage if they leave. Muslim Brotherhood supporters of Egypt’s ousted Islamist president are vowing to defy a state of emergency with new protests today, adding to the tension. (AP Photo/Hussein Tallal)
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BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union says it will “urgently review” its relations with Egypt where more than 800 people have died in clashes between security forces and supporters of deposed President Mohammed Morsi.
The Presidents of the European Commission and the European Council, Jose Manuel Barroso and Herman Van Rompuy, said Sunday in a rare joint foreign policy statement that it’s the responsibility of the army and the interim government to end the violence.
They say calls for democracy and fundamental rights “cannot be disregarded, much less washed away in blood,” adding “the violence and the killings of these last days cannot be justified nor condoned.”
EU foreign ministers are expected to hold an emergency meeting on Egypt this week. The bloc is a major source of aid and business for Egypt.
Anthony Gucciardi
Prison Planet.com
August 15, 2013
Barack Obama is pushing harder than ever to fuel hot proxy wars against Putin’s Russia, publicly comparing him to Hitler and Stalin on national television, and pushing relations to the brink of full scale war.
When we really look at what’s going on, really looking at the way Obama and his handlers are pushing such outlandish and venomous attacks on every front against the slightest possibility of enhanced foreign relations, we come to the realization that Obama is intentionally generating the spirit of conflict between Russia and the United States. And, while we were discussing this months ago, it’s now being highlighted in the Russian media and internationally as a blatant reality.
First and foremost we need to examine the ‘hottest’ form of instigation that is currently ongoing from the Obama administration, and that is the Sryian proxy war that virtually no one knows about. As I’ve reported in the past, Obama is of course funding the Syrian rebels who run around in the streets beheading the Christians and innocents in general bloodlust. Well, that’s bad enough, but it just so happens that Russia is aiding and supporting the opposing side in the war for Syria — Assad’s forces.
HOT WAR WITH RUSSIA
The Russian media is extremely open about this glaring danger, with RT reporting in the article ‘US is involved in ‘Hot War’ with Russia‘ how the hot war in Syrian is truly raging on. Even Yahoo News has detailed this scenario, with one piece entitled ‘By arming Syria rebels, US drawn into proxy war‘. From the Yahoo report:
“Arming the rebels is bound to heighten U.S. tensions with Russia, a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad. It could further escalate a brutal, if deadlocked, civil war that has killed nearly 93,000 people and displaced millions, with no end in sight. “
So what you have here is a true proxy war, except it may actually be much worse. You see Russia’s involvement with the Syria conflict is potentially much deeper than just the funding of Assad’s army, which is the current government military within Syria. If you remember the Israeli strike on Russian missile compounds within Syria, which I originally was reporting on amid a mainstream media blackout, there is now military action that may be directly killing Russian troops.
And it is no coincidence that Putin ordered an immediate ‘combat readiness’ exercise for 160,000 troops and an arsenal of military machines following the Israeli strike on the Russia missile compound (originally denied by Israel until it was leaked by US intelligence weeks later). This exercise included everything from naval ships to strategic bombers, but as always it was not worthy of appearing in mainstream news reports. At the time, the media was simply too busy reporting on what George Zimmerman was doing that day.
Another hardcore example of Obama’s out of control taunting of Putin and Russia at large is evidenced in the recent Jay Leno interview, where both Obama and Jay begin heavily demonizing Russia following the nation’s decision to allow NSA whistleblower and hero Edward Snowden into the country. We’re talking about the kind of incendiary wording that does not just equate to political pebbles being thrown across the pond, but a full on attack like nothing I’ve seen before from Obama. In the segment, which CBS News has posted up, Jay and Obama bash Putin for ’rounding up the gays’ as if he were Hitler or Stalin.
Meanwhile, the United States has submerged into a spy grid that only Stalin could dream of.
But it’s essential that we understand the true severity of this and how hard Obama continues to throw coal into this raging Syrian proxy war. We’re talking about a president that back in 2012 issued a ‘secret order’ to begin funding and arming the barbaric Syrian rebels without any form of oversight or approval — without any form of public announcement or justification. And the media just goes with it, accepting the funding as if it were a part of life.
We can go back to present day to see further evidence of this, however, going beyond the 2012 Reuters report and into a sneak peek that shows just how desperately Obama wants to fund these Sryian rebels. Even in the face of resistance from Congress and policymakers at large, Obama is pushing through the funding one way or another. And with the funding set to end for this year in September, he is on a burning mission to get it instituted once again, and it doesn’t matter that the Washington Times has put out articles showing how these Syrian rebels behead Christians and their families.
Yet people think Obama actually cares about them and their families.
The fact is that the classified arming of the rebels is entirely an Obama administration (and handlers) program, and not even the other politicians really have any idea what’s going on. Senator Ron Wyden explained to the Daily Star:
“Increasingly, I believe senators on both sides of the aisle want more information about what the end game is here,” said Democrat Senator Ron Wyden.
And so do I, so do those seeking truth, so does everyone that actually knows about what’s going on here. What is Obama’s end game? The reality of the situation here is that Obama is not playing games when he goes on Jay Leno and compares Putin to Hitler, he is not playing games when he arms Syrian rebels who are massacring Christians and the Russian-supported troops, and he is not playing games when he pretends all of this isn’t really happening.
This post originally appeared at Story Leak
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This article was posted: Thursday, August 15, 2013 at 4:52 am
Print this page.U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry waves journalist after a press conference at the headquarters of the Colombian National Police Counter-Narcotics in Bogota, Colombia, Monday, Aug. 12, 2013. Kerry is on a one-day official visit to Colombia. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry waves journalist after a press conference at the headquarters of the Colombian National Police Counter-Narcotics in Bogota, Colombia, Monday, Aug. 12, 2013. Kerry is on a one-day official visit to Colombia. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, third from right, plays a volleyball game with handicapped Colombian police officers and Army soldiers who lost their legs in the line of duty during his visit to Bogota, Colombia, Monday, Aug. 12, 2013. Kerry is on a one-day official visit to Colombia. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)
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BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — Secretary of State John Kerry will seek to allay the concerns of Brazil’s top leaders about U.S. surveillance in their country while highlighting the expanding relationship the U.S. is nurturing with the economic powerhouse in Latin America.
Kerry will have talks with Brazilian officials, including President Dilma Rousseff, on Tuesday as part of the Obama administration’s quest for deeper relations with the region.
During President Barack Obama’s visit to Brazil in 2011, the two nations signed 10 bilateral agreements. Five more were signed when Rousseff visited the United States earlier this year, evidence of enhanced cooperation between the two countries. She has been invited again to Washington in October, when Obama hosts a state visit for Brazil.
The U.S.-Brazil relationship, however, is not without snags — the latest prompted by the National Security Agency’s controversial surveillance programs.
The O Globo newspaper reported last month that information released by NSA leaker Edward Snowden showed Brazil is the top target in Latin America for the NSA’s massive intelligence-gathering effort, aimed at monitoring communications around the world. U.S. journalist Glenn Greenwald, who lives in Rio de Janeiro and initially broke the Snowden story in the Britain-based Guardian newspaper, sought to explain Brazil’s involvement during an interview with O Globo.
He said the Snowden documents show that the U.S. was using Brazil as a “bridge” to gather data on better-protected states where it cannot gain direct access, but whose traffic could pass through Brazil. Both Rousseff and Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota expressed deep concerns about the monitoring of Brazil and demanded explanations from the U.S.
Knowing he would be asked about the surveillance program, Kerry sought to ease Brazil’s concerns even before he arrived.
In an op-ed Sunday in the newspaper Estado de Sao Paulo, Kerry wrote: “We both agree we must find a way to work through and move beyond this issue. The stakes are far too high to let one issue detract from the clear momentum we’ve built toward an even more effective strategic relationship.”
Kerry noted that the U.S. and Brazil are cooperating on issues like science, education, defense and disaster management, and that trade between the countries has reached $ 75 billion annually.
Kerry is beginning his one-day visit to Brazil with a stop at an educational institute. Brazil’s Scientific Mobility Program aims to train 101,000 Brazilian students overseas and have them return to their homeland to make use of their newly acquired knowledge in science and technology. Rousseff plans to have 47,000 of those students trained in the United States. This dovetails with President Obama’s 100,000 Strong Initiative to bring 100,000 Latin American students to the United States and send the same number of U.S. students to that region.
Next, Kerry will meet with Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota. The two are to discuss issues like human rights, climate change, the environment and curbing the use of hydrofluorocarbons. They also are expected to talk about their recent visits to the Middle East and Patriota’s attendance at the inauguration of Iran’s new president, Hasan Rowhani.
The U.S. is hoping to have warmer relations with Rousseff than her predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who supported the governments of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuela’s late president Hugo Chavez. Rousseff seems more focused on internal issues and her popularity has suffered, with massive street demonstrations across the country.
The protests began in June in response to a transportation fare increase, but quickly became a forum for Brazilians to vent complaints about government corruption, high taxes, poor public services and billions being spent for next year’s World Cup soccer tournament and the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
Kerry arrived late Sunday in Bogota, the Colombian capital, at a time when the country is holding peace talks to end a half-century-old conflict with the Western Hemisphere’s most potent rebel army, known as FARC.
The rebel force has diminished in strength thanks in considerable measure to U.S. military and intelligence support. Kerry’s discussions in Colombia also focused on trade, energy and counternarcotics, and he met with Colombia President Juan Manuel Santos.
“Colombia is a success story,” Kerry said. “The Santos administration has taken a very courageous and very necessary and very imaginative effort to seek a political solution to one of the world’s longest conflicts.”
JAY CARNEY: “I think as I just said, when it comes to our relations with Hong Kong and China that we see this as a setback in terms of their efforts to build, the Chinese, their efforts to build mutual trust. And our concerns, I think, are pretty clearly stated.”
REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Monday that China and Hong Kong made a “deliberate decision” to let National Security Agency leak source Edward Snowden leave Hong Kong for Russia, and that it “unquestionably” serves as a setback to U.S.-China relations.
“That decision unquestionably has a negative impact on U.S.-China relations,” Carney said during the White House’s daily press briefing on Monday.
“The Chinese have emphasized the importance of building mutual trust, and we think that they have dealt that effort a series setback,” he added, in what served as a strong, terse statement.
Carney painted much of the same picture as a Department of Justice official and called the decision “troubling.” He said that the White House didn’t “buy” suggestions that Hong Kong allowed Snowden to leave based on technicalities.
“We are just not buying that this was a technical decision by a Hong Kong immigration official,” he told reporters. He said that the White House has expressed “frustration and disappointment” with both Hong Kong and China over Snowden’s departure.
Carney said that the U.S. now assumes Snowden is still Russia, and that it is “in talks with Russian authorities” about Snowden. He said that upon recent revelations, it’s clear that Snowden’s “true motive has been to injure the national security of the United States.”
Earlier, a Justice Department official told Business Insider that the U.S. was “disappointed” and that it “disagrees” with the Hong Kong government’s “troubling” decision on the matter.
“At no point, in all of our discussions through Friday, did the authorities in Hong Kong raise any issues regarding the sufficiency of the U.S.’s provisional arrest request,” the official said. “In light of this, we find their decision to be particularly troubling.”
