Bob Dreyfuss | The Nation

President Barack Obama. (AP Images)

It’s up to Congress now to stop President Obama’s push for war. That ought not be encouraging, even though rogue Republican neo-isolationists and Obama-haters in the House might still vote no out of spite. The White House—not to mention the Israel lobby—will push hard for approval of a war resolution, and even staunch, liberal pro-Obama members of Congress, especially in the Senate, will probably go along.

But that doesn’t make the desire of the president and Secretary of State Kerry, who’s emerged as the administration’s über-hawk, to go to war any less insane. Striking Syria in a punishment-minded, wrath-of-God attack, driven by the president’s foolish announcement of a red line in the sand, with absolutely no strategic goal in sight—and now that Syria will have weeks to disperse its forces and its weapons—makes not a shred of sense. But as Obama said yesterday, “We do what we say.” And he’s said he intends to bomb Syria. My guess: he’ll do it even if Congress votes against the idea.

In the president’s statement yesterday, he asked: “What message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of children to death in plain sight and pay no price?” In response, I ask: “By what right does President Obama, any president, decide which dictator, strongman or bad guy anywhere in the world must be punished by the United States? Who made America the world’s policeman—not to mention the world’s judge, jury and executioner?”

Some might be willing to praise Obama for making a virtue of necessity and taking the case for his useless, strategically incompetent Syria plan to the Congress. In fact, without allies (except the French, who long for the long-gone “mission civilisatrice”), with public support, with the formerly puppylike UK, without backing from either the United Nations or the Arab League, Obama was naked before the world. So he wants congressional support for a mission that will kill civilians and accomplish, well, nothing.

As The New York Times reports in some depth, Obama is being ridiculed worldwide, and he deserves every ounce of mockery that he’s getting. No doubt, at the summit meeting of the G-20 in St. Petersburg later this week, Obama will get his head handed to him, and rightly so.

None of this means that Obama, who seems to approach every world conflict with Hamlet-like indecision—perhaps not a bad thing—is as bad as President George W. Bush. A Syrian resident of Homs, anticipating an attack, put it best when he told the Times:

“Man, I wish Bush was the president. He would have reacted right away. He may have invaded Cyprus or Jordan instead of Syria by mistake, but you know he would have done something at least.”

No, Obama isn’t Bush. But on Syria he created his own slippery slope, first by calling for the ouster of President Assad in 2011 without intending to back up his words—but, meanwhile, inciting Islamist fanatics of all kinds into an anti-Assad frenzy—and then by drawing imaginary red lines in the sands of the Middle East.

In his remarks yesterday—and in what will no doubt be the central focus of the Israel lobby’s support for Obama’s war plan in Congress—Obama made it clear that someone, perhaps Kerry, perhaps others, has convinced him that bombing Syria is really a message to Iran. As the president put it:

Make no mistake—this has implications beyond chemical warfare. If we won’t enforce accountability in the face of this heinous act, what does it say about our resolve to stand up to others who flout fundamental international rules? To governments who would choose to build nuclear arms?

In fact, here’s what it says to Iran: We don’t care at all that you’ve elected a peace-minded new president, Hassan Rouhani, who might be able to work out a reasonable compromise on Iran’s nuclear program. Instead, Obama is saying, we’d rather bomb your ally Syria, bolster the hawks in Tehran, and go from there.

Gary Sick, a Columbia University professor and former top Middle East aide in Jimmy Carter’s White House, made an attempt to figure out Obama’s reasoning, if that’s what you can call it, and here’s what he came up with:

Imagine that you are a White House adviser and you have been asked to calibrate a military intervention that will send an unmistakable message to Assad that his use of [chemical weapons] was a serious error and persuade him that any such action in the future would be unacceptably costly to Syria generally and to the Assad government in particular.

However, the attack should not change the fundamental balance of power in the civil war—specifically it should not empower the radical Sunni opposition forces that are potentially worse than Assad. The strike should not be so great that it inspires reckless behavior by other states or parties in the region—specifically it should not provoke retaliation, for example, by either Hezbollah or Syria against Israeli targets.

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The attack should be time limited, so the United States should not be required to go back again and again—to “mow the lawn” in Israeli parlance. Above all, it should not require us to escalate, regardless of how Assad or his allies may respond.

Ultimately the strike should at best encourage a shift to a negotiating track or at least not place an insuperable obstacle in the path of a non-violent solution to the problem. Within Syria, the attack should not create a new wave of refugees or make the conditions of ordinary Syrians worse than it already is.

You may have up to ten days to present your plan (depending on the Congressional calendar), but your proposal really should be available tomorrow for proper vetting in advance and possible immediate use.

As Sick implies, it’s impossible to propose a plan of attack that can’t go wrong. Will Congress understand that? Unfortunately, both Obama’s war plan and the vote in Congress will be about politics, and there the balance of power likely rests with the White House, which will make its case for war again and again, as Kerry did on television today across the networks on four Sunday shows. Right now Americans are ambivalent about Syria: most of them are more concerned about football and twerking than foreign policy. A president who campaigns for war in the United States usually wins.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has a few cautionary words before we launch airstrikes in Syria.

A man inspects a site hit by what activists said were missiles fired by Syrian Air Force fighter jets loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, in eastern Syria, on August 21, 2013. Reuters/Nour Fourat.

Here’s the core question now, in regard to Syria: If it’s true that President Bashar al-Assad’s government used poison gas in an incident that killed hundreds of people, at least, in the suburbs of Damascus, can the United States avoid military action in response? The answer is: yes. And it should.

That doesn’t mean that the United States ought to do nothing. The horrific incident, reported in detail by Doctors Without Borders, demands action. But the proper response by the United States is an all-out effort to achieve a cease-fire in the Syrian civil war. It’s late in the game, but it can be done. The first step would be for Washington to put intense pressure on Saudi Arabia, the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, and Turkey, to halt the flow of weapons to the Syrian rebels, while simultaneously getting Russia and Iran to do the same. A concerted, worldwide diplomatic effort along those lines could work, but there’s zero evidence that President Obama has even thought of that.

Indeed, it seems clear now that the United States is about to launch a series of cruise missile strikes against Syrian targets, including military command centers, airports, and other facilities. A US naval buildup in the eastern Mediterranean, off the coast of Syria, is underway, including four destroyers carrying cruise missiles. Ominously, the United States yesterday rejected as “too late” a Syrian offer—which, indeed, may have been disingenuous—to allow United Nations inspectors to visit the site where the gas was reportedly used. Virtually the entire Obama administration national security team huddled in the White House yesterday to decide what to do about Syria.

Obama, meanwhile, is busy building a “coalition of the willing” to back an American attack on Syria, calling the leaders of Britain and France, rallying support in Eastern Europe, NATO and the Arab League, and of course getting strong support from Saudi Arabia and Israel. The latter two countries see an attack on Assad’s forces as a proxy for an attack on what they consider their main enemy, Iran.

The Wall Street Journal reported that, meanwhile, the Obama administration is crafting legal justifications for unilateral action, perhaps under the umbrella of NATO and Arab League support, a la Libya 2011 (or Kosovo in 1999):

Administration lawyers have been crafting legal justifications for an intervention without U.N. approval that could be based on findings that Mr. Assad used chemical weapons and created a major humanitarian crisis.

At this point, if the United States bombs Syria, it will be mostly an emotional and reactive attack designed to protect President Obama’s right flank, because ever since he said that a chemical weapons attack would be a “red line” that would “change [his] calculus,” he’s been pilloried for holding off. And in addition—at the exact wrong moment, given Iran’s newfound moderate tone and a new president, Hassan Rouhani, who appears to be looking for an end to the confrontation over Iran’s nuclear program—Obama would be bombing Iran’s main ally, strengthening the hand of hardliners in Tehran and undermining Rouhani’s room for maneuver.

And to what end? As General Martin Dempsey has outlined at length, in a letter to members of Congress and in testimony and speeches, there’s no obvious alternative to Assad yet. There’s no government-in-exile, and Al Qaeda types and radical Islamists of all kinds dominate the rebel movement.

Lost in the apparent tumble down the slippery slope to war is the question of why Assad would use chemical weapons now, given the near-certainty that it would provoke US action, since his forces have made major gains in the last two months or so. That’s a point made by Assad himself, in an interview with Russia’s Izvestia:

“Would any state use chemical or any other weapons of mass destruction in a place where its own forces are concentrated? That would go against elementary logic. So, accusations of this kind are entirely political and the reason for them is the government forces’ series of victories over the terrorists.”

It seems clear that the weapons were used, perhaps—if not by Assad’s own decision, by a military commander who took it upon himself to do so. Maybe we’ll never know, and it will be lost in the fog of war.

But it’s clear that both Israel and Saudi Arabia want war, and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu says it’s all about Iran. Reports the Times:

“This situation must not be allowed to continue,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, referring to the Syrian civilians “who were so brutally attacked by weapons of mass destruction.”

“The most dangerous regimes in the world must not be allowed to possess the most dangerous weapons in the world,” he said.

Some Israelis have argued that international intervention in Syria would distract the world from the crucial effort to prevent a nuclear Iran. But there is a growing sense among Israelis that Syria is now a test of how the world might respond to Iran as it approaches the ability to make a nuclear weapon.

“Assad’s regime has become a full Iranian client, and Syria has become Iran’s testing ground,” Mr. Netanyahu added.

An attack on Syria could easily spiral out of control in full-scale war. As The Wall Street Journal reports, citing the apparently dwindling administration contingent still urging caution:

Officials cautious of intervening say targeted strikes to punish Mr. Assad for using chemical weapons risk triggering a bloody escalation. If the regime digs in and uses chemical weapons again, or launches retaliatory attacks against the U.S. and its allies in the region, Mr. Obama will come under fierce pressure to respond more forcefully, increasing the chances of full-scale war, the officials say.

And, of course, Russia—which has declared that it won’t support an American action against Syria—could up the ante, too, by backing Assad more powerfully in response.

The cooling towers of Three Mile Island’s Unit 1 Nuclear Power Plant pour steam into the sky in Middletown, Pennsylvania, Tuesday, March 17, 2009. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

A horrifying account written from America’s largest coal mine in Wyoming and a leaked report, published by The New York Times, of the upcoming report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ought to convince some, at least, that nuclear energy should be a major part of the solution to the world’s greatest crisis.

The vast coal mine, which produces 10 percent of the coal that the United States burns, coughs up 108 million tons every year:

Scott Durgin, who manages the mine for Peabody Energy, tries hard to communicate its enormous scale.

In a typical day, Mr. Durgin tells me, 21 trains depart the mine, pulling 135 cars each. Each car bears 120 tons of coal. At this pace, he says, there is more than 20 years’ worth of coal ready to mine under my feet.

That puts an exclamation point on the Times’ report on the IPCC report, scheduled for release next month. The report, which is issued roughly at five-year intervals, raises from 90 to 95 percent the certainty that human activity is responsible for observed rises in world temperatures. Says the report:

“It is extremely likely that human influence on climate caused more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010. There is high confidence that this has warmed the ocean, melted snow and ice, raised global mean sea level and changed some climate extremes in the second half of the 20th century.”

Politico, reporting on the leaked IPCC report—which was first reported by Reuters—notes the significance of the change in certainty:

An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report due out next month will say there’s at least a 95 percent chance that human activities (mostly burning fossil fuels) have been the main cause of global warming since the 1950s, according to a draft version of the report seen by Reuters. “That is up from at least 90 percent in the last report in 2007, 66 percent in 2001, and just over 50 in 1995, steadily squeezing out the arguments by a small minority of scientists that natural variations in the climate might be to blame. That shifts the debate onto the extent of temperature rises and the likely impacts, from manageable to catastrophic. Governments have agreed to work out an international deal by the end of 2015 to rein in rising emissions.”

And the Times summarizes the range of outcomes like this, citing the IPCC draft report:

Regarding the likely rise in sea level over the coming century, the new report lays out several possibilities. In the most optimistic, the world’s governments would prove far more successful at getting emissions under control than they have been in the recent past, helping to limit the total warming.

In that circumstance, sea level could be expected to rise as little as 10 inches by the end of the century, the report found. That is a bit more than the eight-inch increase in the 20th century, which proved manageable even though it caused severe erosion along the world’s shorelines.

At the other extreme, the report considers a chain of events in which emissions continue to increase at a swift pace. Under those conditions, sea level could be expected to rise at least 21 inches by 2100 and might increase a bit more than three feet, the draft report said.

Eduardo Porter, in his account written from the Wyoming mine, strongly advocates a boost for nuclear energy, making the argument that solar and wind energy can’t supply enough power to allow nations to sharply reduce coal, oil and natural gas. That’s a view that has been embraced by increasing numbers of environmentalists, especially younger ones, he notes, citing the controversial film Pandora’s Promise:

Robert Stone, a documentary filmmaker who directed “Pandora’s Promise,” about the environmental case for nuclear power, argues that atomic energy’s time is coming. Younger environmentalists don’t associate nuclear power with Chernobyl and the cold war. Studies have revealed it to be safer than other fuels.

In the movie, Michael Shellenberger, an environmental activist whom Time magazine once named a Hero of the Environment, argues that beliefs that solar and wind power can displace fossil fuels amount to “hallucinatory delusions.”

Still, the hurdles are substantial. There are fewer nuclear generators in the United States than in 1987. Just maintaining nuclear energy’s share of 19 percent of the nation’s electricity generation will require adding several dozen new ones. Each will take some 10 years and $5 billion to construct. If nuclear power is to play a leading role combating climate change, it should start now.

In an editorial today, the Times praises a recent court decision aimed at compelling the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to move ahead with studies of the long-running—and long-stalled—Yucca Mountain nuclear waste depository in Nevada. Concludes the editorial:

After spending decades and billions of dollars in studying Yucca, Congress ought to appropriate enough new funds to complete the overall licensing evaluation to determine whether or not Yucca would make an acceptable repository. Meanwhile, as a step in that process, we urge the commission not to appeal the court decision but instead use its remaining money to publish an unredacted safety evaluation. The information would be useful because underground burial, if not at Yucca then elsewhere, remains the preferred option for permanent disposal.

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Liberals and the left are frequently critical of Republicans and the right for the manifest hostility to science, including of course their stubborn refusal to recognize the reality of human-caused global warming (not to mention, say, their denial of evolution). In the case of nuclear power, however, the left and many environmentalists have too often allowed themselves to be caught up in an almost superstitious fear of nuclear energy. Vast problems accrue to nuclear energy, of course, as with all technologies. But they can be solved.

Mark Hertsgaard and Terry Tempest Williams debate Pandora’s Promise ,its provocative claims—and the facts it leaves out.

Bodies of supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi lie on the floor of the El-Iman mosque in Cairo's Nasr City, Egypt, Thursday, Aug. 15, 2013. (AP Photo/Ahmed Gomaa)

UPDATE 10:40 am: President Obama spoke today of the “complexity of the situation” in Egypt. It is, indeed, complex. That’s why, as I wrote in the original post, the administration has been so irresolute in responding the Arab Spring’s events in Egypt since 2011. Today, Obama said he opposes the institution of martial law in Egypt and “strongly” condemned the violent crackdown. And, as expected, he announced the cancellation of a joint exercise with Egypt’s military, which is not exactly a big loss to the generals. The violence, Obama said, “needs to stop” and that the “state of emergency needs to be lifted.” The “cycle of violence and escalation needs to stop,” said Obama. More important, and exactly accurate, is his comment that the United States “cannot determine the future of Egypt.” He complained that both sides blame Washington for supporting the other side, which is the legacy of the fact that the United States actually has little or no influence over both sides.

There’ll be more to come from Washington, but not much that matters.

* * *

ORIGINAL POST: The Egyptian police state is dead! Long live the Egyptian police state!

Things have come nearly full circle in Egypt since 2011, when —in response to a popular uprising—Egypt’s military toppled President Hosni Mubarak and installed a ruling military council. Two years later, after the election of a Muslim Brotherhood president, the military stepped in once again in response to a popular revolt, an uprising that was likely orchestrated by the military from behind the scenes. That allowed Egypt’s armed forces to step intervene directly, with the clear intention of eliminating the Muslim Brotherhood from Egypt’s political scene.

The result so far: three massacres, including yesterday’s slaughter in Cairo, where more than 300 died, and in other cities, where another 200 perished. There is, obviously, more to come. The Brothers, whose cult loves martyrs and martyrdom, is promising to take to the streets.

Since the start of Egypt’s Arab Spring—an ironic term now—in 2011, the Obama administration has seemed paralyzed, and for good reason. Most of what’s happened in Egypt since then has unspooled outside of American control and influence, and the White House has tacked this way and that for two years, managing only to convince both the Muslim Brotherhood and the army that it supported the other side. Since the fall of Mohammed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood president, in early July the administration’s dithering has seemed particularly acute, but it stems from the fact that American influence in the region has fallen dramatically since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. No statement more underlines the poignancy of that reality than the comment yesterday from the White House spokesman, the aptly named Josh Earnest, of whom it can be said that it’s hard to tell if he’s joshing or being earnest:

“We have repeatedly called on the Egyptian military and security forces to show restraint and for the government to respect the universal rights of its citizens.”

True, that. Since the coup, they’ve called repeatedly for everyone in Egypt to be nice to each other. It hasn’t worked. But what leverage does the United States have? Much has been made of the fact that that the Obama administration hasn’t called the July military takeover a coup, since that could trigger the suspension of aid to the Egyptian military under US law. That made the administration look ridiculous, as the transcripts of countless State Department and White House briefings show—but so what? Had the United States cut off aid to the army, nearly all of which has already been delivered for 2013, Egypt’s generals would simply get help from Saudi Arabia and seek arms and support elsewhere, as Pakistan did when the United States cut off aid in the 1980s in response to Pakistan’s bomb. Now, the United States has announced that it will halt joint military exercises with the Egyptian armed forces, hardly an effective action. No doubt, when it wakes up, the administration will condemn the violence, as plenty of other countries have done. And the military will ignore the United States, too. It’s clear that the army has decided to wage total war against the Muslim Brotherhood.

To be truly effective, the United States would have to risk a fundamental break with the military’s main backers in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Indeed, the United States alienated Riyadh thoroughly in 2003 by overthrowing the government of Iraq and installing a pro-Iranian Shiite-majority government, and it cemented that alienation  in 2011 by applauding the toppling of Mubarak, who was seen by Saudi Arabia as a pillar of the pro-Saudi bloc in the Arab world. Cutting of military aid to Egypt, and unleashing anger at Saudi Arabia and its allies—including halting the $60 billion US arms sale to them—would be the right thing to do, but even that won’t have any effect other than erasing the last vestiges of American influence in the region. The Saudis, whose intelligence chief just visited Moscow and whose king has been building ties with China, their main future oil market, will just turn to others, too.

On the other hand, the seeming American complicity in the July coup—even though there’s zero evidence that the United States either orchestrated it or even supported it, other than hoping for the best, including the eventual return of some version of democracy—also carries serious risks. The vaunted American “democracy project” in the region is in tatters, made worse by the tepid response to the July coup. As Bruce Reidel, a former CIA Arabist, told The New York Times:

“If it looks like the U.S. effectively colluded in a counterrevolution, then all the talk about democracy and Islam, about a new American relationship with the Islamic world, will be judged to have been the height of hypocrisy.”

Exactly. Most people in the region didn’t think much of the American “Freedom Agenda” in the region before this anyway (case study: Iraq, 2003–13). Now, not only is the United States losing credibility with the region’s elite (read: Saudi Arabia, Egypt’s army) but with the people, too.

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The Times, in reporting on the Obama administration’s response, slyly built opinion into its news analysis by noting that as Egypt burned Obama “was playing golf at a private club” and attending a cocktail party “at the home of a major political donor.” But doing nothing is better than plotting some sort of American “intervention” in the Middle East—either in Egypt, where things have spun out of control, or in Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad is winning his civil war, or elsewhere. Recently, where the United States has intervened (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya) it hasn’t worked out so well.

For more on the situation in Egypt, read Sharif Abdel Kouddous' report from the ground.