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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Month: September 2013

Creamer: Support Resolution Authorizing Use of Military Force to Stop Chemical Weapons in Syria Because It’s Working

The following article, by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
The ultimate reason to support the Congressional resolution to authorize the use of military force to stop chemical weapons use in Syria is clear: it’s working.
Over a year ago, the U.S. proposed that Syria turn over its chemical weapons for destruction by the international community and join the chemical weapons treaty that bans their possession or use. Syria refused, and Russia refused to demand that it do so.
Today they have both said yes. There is only one reason. They hope to stop the use of military force that President Obama has proposed to degrade their ability to deliver these weapons — and make the regime pay a price for the indiscriminate slaughter of 1,400 adults and children using chemical weapons containing poison sarin gas.
Many of my fellow Progressives — who like me were strong opponents of the Iraq War — support President Obama’s request for Congressional authorization to use force to sanction chemical weapons use in Syria and deter its future use. They include Congressman Keith Ellison, the Co-Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus; former anti-war presidential candidate Howard Dean, progressive columnists E.J. Dionne and Gene Robinson; and of course former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
But for those who do not want to see the use of military force in Syria, the best thing they can do to assure that the military action is not needed is to support the Congressional resolution authorizing the president to use military force if necessary. That is the absolute best way to make certain the Syrian regime actually gives up its chemical weapons once and for all — and that there is no need for the U.S. to take military action to force Assad to comply.
As the President argued last night, we need to make certain that the Russians and Syrians are absolutely convinced that if they do not make good on their new promise to turn over Syrian chemical weapons, military action will ensue — it’s that simple.
Three additional arguments have been used over the last few days that need to be addressed:
1). Some have argued that it is never justified to use force to counter malicious use of violence.
There are some Progressives who are truly pacifists — who feel that the use of force and violence is never justified.
I respect the convictions of those who hold pacifist views, but I do not agree with them.


Bummer in CO Underscores Off-year Challenge Facing Dems

From Dave Nir’s elections Morning Digest at Daily Kos:

In a devastating result for Democrats, two legislators who supported new gun safety laws, state Senate President John Morse and state Sen. Angela Giron, both lost in recall elections spurred by the NRA and gun activists on Tuesday night, Morse by less than 2 percent, Giron by 12. Morse will be replaced by Republican Bernie Herpin; Giron’s seat, meanwhile, will be taken over by another Republican, George Rivera. Both Herpin and Rivera have to go before voters next year, and both seats gave Barack Obama about 58 to 59 percent of the vote in 2012, so they won’t be easy holds for the GOP. But last night’s results show just how badly Democratic turnout dropped in these unusually timed, off-off-year elections.
For now, Democrats’ 20-15 edge in the Senate has been whittled down to a precarious 18-17–and the NRA and their allies will crow about what this means for proponents of gun regulations. Conservatives have talked about ushering in a “wave of fear” among Democratic lawmakers nationwide, but more immediately, they might attempt another recall to try to take control of the chamber, since Republicans clearly benefit when holding elections in non-presidential years. This falloff in enthusiasm in years not divisible by four is probably the biggest electoral challenge Democrats face nationwide right now, and these recalls, if any good is to come of them, should spur the party to seriously address this major problem.

The recall election is a setback for both Democrats and public safety in a state that has experienced more than it’s share of tragedy as a result of mass shootings in Columbine and Aurora. Now might be a good time for Democratic leaders to convene top experts on maximizing voter turnout in non-presidential elections and implement a program to address the issue.


After Obama’s Speech: A Way Forward

The responses to President Obama’s speech on intervention in Syria from pundits and politicos left and right have been predictable enough thus far. But this Washington Post op-ed from a politically-moderate former president and Obama’s fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jimmy Carter, who kept the U.S. out of war, should be of interest:

It is no reflection on the president that he expressed his decision clearly to our citizens and to the world, properly sought congressional concurrence and has done his utmost to implement his decision by securing necessary votes in the House and Senate. All U.S. presidents have been forced to endure highly publicized rejections of major proposals concerning both domestic and international issues. This is to be expected in any democratic nation, as has occurred recently in Britain and might soon happen in France.
…The international community should take concerted action to discourage or prevent a repetition of this crime. Although Security Council condemnation of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is not possible because of division among world leaders about who is responsible for the atrocity, and a strong condemnatory resolution is likely to be vetoed, the ultimate goal of deterring future use of weapons of mass destruction would be greatly enhanced if the major powers were unanimous in their commitment.

In an interview with NPR’s Michelle Martin, former World Court Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo offered this observation and suggestion:

I think it’s very important that President Obama took a firm stand. Without that energy – without that will – nothing would happen today. In the last month, nothing happened. So that’s first point – very important President Obama moving. What the world will do what the Obama administration should do is to discuss it. The idea that something should be done is the first point….
…My idea is use the International Criminal Court as a future threat. So my idea is tell me all the actors, because it’s not just Assad. People say it’s Al Qaeda – other groups committing crimes, OK. Everyone, the idea will be you have to understand from the first of January 2014, the International Criminal Court will investigate any crimes. So, stop the crimes now or you will be prosecuted.
And to make this threat serious, we have to say and we will enforce the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court. Whoever is indicted will be arrested and we will find a way to arrest them. So that could make the difference. That I think could happen….The way to include the International Criminal Court is a Security Council resolution. The U.N. Security Council could decide. So the idea I’m discussing is, if the U.N. Security Council decide to do it in the next three months – so we will start the adjudication in three months – then you create a different environment because if you’re not stopping the crimes, you go to jail. And people in Syria are committing crimes to gain power. So if they know they go to jail, they will stop…
…What I saw as a prosecutor, when the world is united, they can stop the crimes. If China, Russia, U.S. and everyone is united, they can stop the crimes in Syria. So we have to build this community. And in some way, President Obama triggered this new moment. We have to take advantage of the moment.

What is interesting about Ocampo’s idea is the notion that the threat of punishment for atrocities, when grounded in solid international commitment, could be more powerful than punishment itself in preventing future use of chemical weapons. It would also set a precedent that could help deter future tyrants from gassing civilians.
It’s easy enough to be cynical about Russia and China doing the right thing regarding chemical weapons in Syria. But it’s hard to see a successful outcome without their support. Both nations stand to benefit from stability in Syria.
Credit Ocampo also with the insight that, despite all of the Obama-bashing going on from the right and the left regarding his threat to Assad, the President has raised the dialogue to a new understanding that “something should be done.” The Republicans will never give him due credit for it, but the stage is now being set for diplomatic progress and creative conflict-resolution, two alien concepts for their party.


Update: McConnell Caves to Tea Party on Syria

From Ed Kilgore’s Washington Monthly post, “Where’s My War?“:

Mitch McConnell has released his draft speech opposing a use-of-force resolution, and it relies very heavily on the no-win-war meme (even if his real motives are inveterate Obama-hatred and fear of getting out of synch with his most crucial ally in his primary battle back home, Rand Paul).
On the deepest level, I think it comes down to a fundamentally different view of America’s role in the world. Unlike the President, I’ve always been a firm and unapologetic believer in the idea that America isn’t just another nation among many; that we’re exceptional. As I’ve said, I believe we have a duty, as a superpower without imperialistic aims, to help maintain an international order and balance of power that we and other allies have worked very hard on over the years.
This President, on the other hand, has always been a very reluctant Commander in Chief. We saw that in the rhetoric of his famous Cairo speech, and in speeches he gave in other foreign capitals in the early days of his administration. The tone, and the policies that followed, were meant to project a humbler, more withdrawn America … and, frankly, I’m hard pressed to see any of the good that’s come from it.

He goes on and on, but the bottom line is that he won’t support a limited war and doesn’t think this president is capable of anything else.

Kilgore concludes, “Yeah, it’s sad that Obama may be in the process of spoiling the war with Syria that was supposed to pave the way to the war with Iran that so many GOP “hawks” actually want. So many of them may well move from a tactical alliance with Obama to a tactical alliance with Rand Paul, squawking belligerently all the way.”


MIA McConnell: This is What Passes for GOP ‘Leadership’?

As President Obama prepares for his address on Syria, he has backing for military action from from some Republican leaders, including House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Speaker John Boehner, while others in their party are attacking Obama for what they believe to be a miscalculation of public support for military action. Not all Republican ‘leaders,’ however, have voiced an opinion, as Daniel Strauss notes at Talking Points Memo:

Republican Matt Bevin, the primary challenger running against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) in the 2014 Senate race, is urging him to announce his position on whether to take military action in Syria.
“It’s too late for Mitch McConnell to lead on the issue of Syria, but he needs to let Kentucky and the rest of America know where he stands,” Bevin said in a statement on Monday. “We deserve better than a senator who ducks important debates like amnesty, defunding Obamacare, and now strikes in Syria. Like a true career politician, he waits to see the poll numbers so he can weigh how it will affect his own re-election instead of making decisions based on principles.”…McConnell has withheld publicly taking a stance on Syria, making him the only top congressional leader who has not yet said whether the United States should conduct a missile strike.

McConnell has said he will announce his position this week, presumably when he stops trembling at tea party threats. To be fair, however, McConnell isn’t the only Republican who is having trouble defining his position, as Sahil Kapur explains in his post, “Five Republicans Who Were For Syrian Intervention Before They Were Against It,” also at TPM. From Kapur’s report on GOP presidential aspirant Sen. Marco Rubio:

BEFORE: “The fall of Assad would be a significant blow to Iran’s ambitions. On those grounds alone, we should be seeking to help the people of Syria bring him down. … Finally, the nations in the region see Syria as a test of our continued willingness to lead in the Middle East. If we prove unwilling to provide leadership, they will conclude that we are no longer a reliable security partner, and will decide to take matters into their own hands. … The most powerful and influential nation in the world cannot ask smaller, more vulnerable nations to take risks while we stand on the sidelines. We have to lead because the rewards of effective leadership are so great.”
— Speech to Brooking Institution, April 25, 2012
AFTER: “While I have long argued forcefully for engagement in empowering the Syrian people, I have never supported the use of U.S. military force in the conflict. And I still don’t. I remain unconvinced that the use of force proposed here will work. The only thing that will prevent Assad from using chemical weapons in the future is for the Syrian people to remove him from power.”
— Remarks at Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Sept. 4, 2013

And here’s Sen. Ted Cruz:

BEFORE: “Right now we need to develop a clear, practical plan to go in, locate the weapons, secure or destroy them, and then get out. We might work in concert with our allies, but this needs to be an operation driven by the mission, not by a coalition. The United States should be firmly in the lead to make sure the job is done right.”
— Congressional record, June 20, 2013
AFTER: “I think a military attack is a mistake. For two reasons. One because I think the administration is proceeding with the wrong objective, and two, because they have no viable plan for success. They are beginning from the wrong objective because this attack is not based on defending U.S. national security. … I don’t think that’s the job of our military to be defending amorphous international norms. There are many other steps we can do to express strong disapproval to Assad’s murderous conduct, But I don’t think it’s the job of the military.”
— Transcript of Cruz interview on ABC’s “This Week,” Sept. 8, 2013

M.I.A. Mitch may end his dithering and weigh in today or tomorrow, after the President’s speech. No doubt his supporters hope he will resist the temptation to stake out both sides of the issue, like his vacillating Republican colleagues, Sens. Cruz and Rubio.


Grand Strategy Behind Syria Policy Options

Juan Cole has an interesting post on the complicated geopolitics behind President Obama’s request for authorization of military strikes against the Assad regime. Cole, who believes the administration’s strategy considerations “rest on doubtful premises,” writes at his blog:

The increasing importance of al-Qaeda-linked radical Sunni fundamentalist groups to the civil war in the north of Syria has posed a dilemma for the Obama administration, which began calling for the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad in late spring of 2011.
The US now doesn’t want the regime to fall relatively quickly as in Libya, because the al-Qaeda affiliates have become too powerful and could well take over Damascus. Highly undesirable. The US does not want that outcome, and neither do Israel or Saudi Arabia, the two pillars of US policy in the region.
So US policy is to join with Saudi Arabia and Jordan to encourage a second front at Deraa with anti-al-Qaeda fighters a la sons of Iraq and limiting access for heavy weapons to Jabhat al-Nusra at the northern front by intercepting them in Turkey. Turkey and Qatar are upset with this policy and both try to subvert it, undisturbed by the al-Qaeda tendencies of their allies.

Cole adds that “this strategy is likely a multi-year effort” which “has the potential for provoking a Syria-Jordan War, since Jordan is clearly the base.” He believes that the Assad regime sees chemical weapons as an essential part of it’s ability to “level the playing field” against the rebels, while Obama is hoping that the threat of a rapid, Libya-like overthrow will persuade Assad to refrain from any further use of chemical weapons.
Cole sees three major problems with the strategy:

1. There is enormous space for mission creep
2. The premise that the regime can be forced to fight the southern rebels fairly is not entirely plausible
3. The US-Jordan-Saudi rebel forces are Sunni and could well be radicalized by their fight with the Alawite army; the idea that people keep the ideology you pay them to have is simplistic.

Cole also cites the danger of a “failed gambit,” which are usually followed by escalations, rather than a prudent scaling back. Cole does see an alternative, however, difficult:

One way the incipient Washington strategy could succeed is if Russia and Iran can be enlisted in forcing the regime to stop using chemical weapons. It would not shorten the civil war, but it might avoid a US quagmire. The signs that President Obama will go back to the UN Security Council are positive, and might be a step toward this outcome.

That’s a big “if,” though one that merits consideration as an alternative to U.S. military involvement and risking a quagmire. It’s difficult to assess how much of the administration’s policy is based on such geopolitical concerns vs. the moral imperative of taking a strong stand against allowing use of chemical weapons to go unchallenged. What is likely is that a majority of American voters will want to know that all diplomatic paths are fully-explored before military action is taken, which should be clearly delineated in the President’s speech on Tuesday.
UPDATE: Via Ed Kilgore’s Washington Monthly post, “The Game-Changer?“:

There’s no way to know at this point if John Kerry’s “offhand” suggestion that U.S. military strikes on Syria might be avoided if Assad gives up his chemical weapon stockpiles was actually “offhand” or part of the administration’s plan. But now that Russia, the United Kingdom and Syria itself are greeting the idea positively, and the administration is said to be “reviewing” the Russian government’s proposal for how it might happen, this could be a game-changer, at least temporarily. It comes, moreover, in the wake of a report from the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz that Russia and Iran were already preparing a peace proposal that involved surrender of chemical weapons and perhaps even a path to free elections in Syria…this new development could represent a 180-degree change in a positive direction for the Obama administration, and a plausible way out of a military conflict no one but neocons seemed to relish.


Political Strategy Notes

Brookings senior fellows William A. Galston and Elaine C. Kamarck have a good read at The Washington Post, (adapted from their article in Democracy: A Journal of IdeasHow to save the Republican Party, courtesy of two Democrats.” the authors explain why even good Democrats should care about making the Republican party better: “…Our democracy is better off with two healthy political parties willing to debate fiercely — and then reach honorable compromises. A Republican Party dominated by a new generation of reform-minded conservatives who care more about solving problems than scoring points would be a huge step toward restoring a federal government that can govern….”
Steven Greenhouse has a NYT update on organized labor’s two-pronged approach toward enhancing unions growth and influence: experimenting with different levels of membership and a more energetic effort to build coalitions for political change.
Also in the Post, George Will predictably snarls, along with the higher-brow Hillary-haters, at another Clinton candidacy. But he gets in a potent dig at the prospect of a Christie presidency, riffing of an incident in which the NJ governor got down and dirty with a NY Daily News sportswriter. “But who wants to call the person “Mr. President” who calls a sportswriter an “idiot”?,” asks Will. Put another way, do voters really want to be reped by a bellowing gasbag at future G-20 summits? “So’s yer muddah, Putin.”
At the National Journal, Ronald Brownstein’s “Bad Bet: Why Republicans Can’t Win With Whites Alone” notes an often overlooked point: “Greenberg, who polled for Bill Clinton, says Obama faces unique problems among whites both because of his race and the gruelingly slow economic recovery. “Those things together make me think these white numbers [for Democrats] are not the new baseline–that they are much more likely to go up than down,” he says…Veteran Republican pollster Whit Ayres is no less dismissive. “Any strategy that is predicated on [consistently] getting a higher percentage of the white vote than Ronald Reagan got in 1980 is a losing strategy,” he says.”
Yes, every effort toward bipartisanship by House GOP leaders should be encouraged. But, as Keith Brekhus points out at PoliticusUSA that the failure of House Republicans to support Speaker Boehner and Majoritry Leader Cantor on the Syria resolution provides yet another example of their limp leadership. Says Brekhus: “…They have demonstrated that they have lost control of their own caucus, because the number of GOP representatives who have chosen to join them in support of the policy can almost be counted on one hand. Of the 232 House Republicans not named Cantor or Boehner, a grand total of six of them, have joined in expressing support for the authorization of force in Syria…as the mutiny spreads within the GOP ranks, Boehner and Cantor are spiraling deeper and deeper into political irrelevancy.”
At The Daily Beast Michael Tomasky spotlights the “brazen hypocrisy” of Republicans on U.S. military intervention in Syria, noting “The Gold Weasel Medal goes to Marco Rubio, as others such as Tim Noah have noted. Back in April, Rubio thundered that “the time for passive engagement in this conflict must come to an end. It is in the vital national security interest of our nation to see Assad’s removal.” Removal! Obama’s not talking about anything close to removal. So that was Rubio’s hard line back when Obama was on the other side. And now that Obama wants action? Rubio voted against the military resolution in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week.”
Nobel prize for Economics laureate Joseph E. Stglitz makes a strong case for Janet Yellen to head the Fed, including his belief that she does not suffer from “cognitive capture” by Wall St. and he adds, “Ms. Yellen has a superb record in forecasting where the economy is going — the best, according to The Wall Street Journal, of anyone at the Fed. As I noted earlier, Mr. Summers’s leaves something to be desired.”
Credit President Obama with overseeing significant progress toward energy independence for the U.S. As Bill Scher writes at Campaign for America’s Future: “In many ways President Obama’s energy policies have been a huge success. Carbon emissions are down. Oil consumption is down. Renewable energy consumption is up. North America is projected to be effectively energy independent by 2020, and the United States by 2030.” On the other hand, adds Scher, “renewables still amount to a paltry portion of our overall energy usage, with wind and solar power producing only three percent of the nation’s electricity. In other words, this is the area that has the most room to grow, the most potential for creating green jobs and further slashing our carbon pollution.”
Yikes, now they want to privatize the money.


Dems Mull Military Action, Alternatives vs. Assad Regime

TDS founding editor William Galston writes in the Wall St Journal in support of a “measured” military response to the Assad Regime’s use of chemical weapons against civilians:

Only now is America reckoning the full cost of the disaster in Iraq–friends in the Middle East doubting our competence, our closest ally unwilling to stand with us in Syria, our people weary and fearful of entanglements that could prove open-ended. Little more than a decade after the Vietnam syndrome was laid to rest, an Iraq syndrome has replaced it.The question is whether this new sentiment will dominate policy–whether acting for the wrong reasons in Iraq will prevent us from acting for the right reasons in Syria.
On Friday, in what was surely Secretary of State John Kerry’s finest hour, he stated the challenge clearly to the nation: “Now, we know that after a decade of conflict, the American people are tired of war. Believe me, I am too. But fatigue does not absolve us of our responsibility.”
“Our responsibility.” What is it? What does it require of us?…Whatever the truth of the interminable debate over the limits of executive power, Mr. Obama was right to ask the members of Congress, as representatives of the American people, to join him in a firm but measured response to Bashar Assad’s crime against his own people.
But why is it this country’s responsibility? The stark fact is that the U.S. is the only country in the world with the capacity to respond to Assad’s outrageous use of chemical weapons in a way that might deter him from repeating it.
It would be good to have friends and allies standing with the U.S. But from a military standpoint, it is not strictly necessary. If America acts, others may follow–or at least offer support. If we don’t, no one else will.

At HuffPo, George Lakoff’s “Obama Reframes Syria: Metaphor and War Revisited” analyses President Obama’s strategy from a wonky, but interesting linguistic perspective, noting:

President Obama has reframed his position on Syria, adjusting the Red Line metaphor: It wasn’t his Red Line, not his responsibility for drawing it. It was the Red Line drawn by the world, by the international community — both legally by international treaty, and morally by universal revulsion against the use of poison gas by Assad. It was also America’s Red Line, imposed by America’s commitment to live up to such treaties.
The reframing fit his previous rationale for the Red Line: to uphold international treaties on weapons of mass destruction, both gas and nuclear weapons. By this logic, the Red Line therefore applies not just to Assad’s use of sarin, but potentially to Iran’s development of nuclear weapons.
The new version of the metaphorical policy has broad consequences, what I have called systemic causation (that goes beyond the immediate local situation) as opposed to direct causation (in this case applying just to the immediate case of Assad’s use of sarin).
Some will call the reframing cynical, a way to avoid responsibility for his first use of the Red Line metaphor. But President Obama’s reframing makes excellent sense from the perspective of his consistent policy of treaties and international norms, which he has said was the basis for the Red Line metaphor in the first place.

Lakoff has much more of interest to say about the uses of metaphor in selling both military action and opposing it, and his post is highly recommended for those who want to better understand this particular battle for hearts and minds.
In terms of seeking alternatives to military action, political commentator Fareed Zakaria has opined that it is still possible for the U.S. and Russia to negotiate a deal to de-escalate the crisis, and CNN reports that “U.S. President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, held “constructive” talks Friday on Syria on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Russia.”
Rep. Alan Grayson has called for more multilateral diplomacy, focusing on helping Syrian refugees and taking a complaint about the use of chemical weapons to the International Court of the Hague.
For those who don’t want to rush into military action, but also don’t want to take it off the table just yet, a proposal being floated by Sens. Joe Manchin and Heidi Heitkamp, the U.S. offers Assad’s government 45 days to sign an international chemical weapons ban “or face the wrath of American military might,” reports Jonathan Allen at Politico. If Assad refuses, however, it could lock the U.S. into military intervention.
At present no one is reporting anything close to majority support in congress for military action against Assad. But President Obama will soon take his case to the American people on Tuesday. It’s conceivable the Administration could pick up some support for military intervention if Assad refuses to sign on, but it’s unclear how much.


Argument Against Military Intervention in Syria Needs Alternatives

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich has made a fairly strong argument against U.S. military intervention in Syria. From his blog, via Reader Supported News:

Even if the President musters enough votes to strike Syria, at what political cost? Any president has a limited amount of political capital to mobilize support for his agenda, in Congress and, more fundamentally, with the American people. This is especially true of a president in his second term of office. Which makes President Obama’s campaign to strike Syria all the more mystifying.
President Obama’s domestic agenda is already precarious: implementing the Affordable Care Act, ensuring the Dodd-Frank Act adequately constrains Wall Street, raising the minimum wage, saving Social Security and Medicare from the Republican right as well as deficit hawks in the Democratic Party, ending the sequester and reviving programs critical to America’s poor, rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, and, above all, crafting a strong recovery.
Time and again we have seen domestic agendas succumb to military adventures abroad – both because the military-industrial-congressional complex drains money that might otherwise be used for domestic goals, and because the public’s attention is diverted from urgent problems at home to exigencies elsewhere around the globe.

Reich goes on to add, quite rightly that “a strike on Syria may well cause more havoc in that tinder-box region of the world by unleashing still more hatred for America, the West, and for Israel, and more recruits to terrorism. Strikes are never surgical; civilians are inevitably killed. Moreover, the anti-Assad forces have shown themselves to be every bit as ruthless as Assad, with closer ties to terrorist networks.”
Reich deplores Assad’s use of chemical weapons, but warns against the U.S. getting bogged down in a “slippery slope,” which almost always accompanies military action that purports to be limited.
Reich is a good writer, and his points are well-stated. Regarding his concern about squandering Obama’s “limited amount of political capital,” needed to advance his domestic agenda, however, Ed Kilgore has an instructive post on “Obama’s ‘Political Capital‘” up at Washington Monthly, in which he observes:

…Seriously, what sort of “political capital” does the president have with congressional Republicans? They committed to a policy of total obstruction from the day he became president and picked up right where they had left off the day he was re-elected. Obama’s only options in dealing with the GOP are to offer them cover for compromise when he must and hand them an anvil to speed their self-destruction when he can. But he has no “political capital” to spend.

A good point. Another problem with Reich’s argument is that he offers no suggestions for alternative action. Is doing nothing about atrocities with chemical weapons really our best option? Nothing?
Part of the argument against military intervention is well-stated by Reich and other writers. But, the anti-interventionist argument could use a little more heft. There may indeed be nonviolent alternatives, and perhaps some input by leading nonviolent strategists like Dr. Gene Sharp could open up the dialogue. Certainly the Syrian resistance to Assad could benefit by applying some of Sharp’s ideas, as did the ‘Arab Spring’ uprising in 2010-11. In the future, at least, the U.S. could invest in training pro-democracy movements in nonviolent strategy and action.


Creamer: Chem Weapons, Iraq War Resolutions ‘Completely Different’

The following article, by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
There has been a lot said in the last week comparing the Congressional resolution authorizing the use of force to punish Bashar al Assad’s government for using chemical weapons to the resolution authorizing the Iraq War. Nothing could be further from the truth.
As an ardent opponent of the Iraq War resolution, I am proud to say that 60% of the Democrats in the House of Representatives voted against authorizing the Iraq War. Today, I support the resolution authorizing force to sanction the use of chemical weapons in Syria.
There are five major differences between the current resolution and the one that authorized the Iraq War:
1). The President is asking for a narrow authorization that the U.S. exact a near-term military price for Assad’s use of chemical weapons. He is not asking for a declaration of War – which is exactly what George Bush asked from Congress in Iraq.
George Bush sent thousands of U.S. troops to overthrow the government and then occupy Iraq. He spent what will ultimately be trillions of dollars to overthrow the Iraqi regime and then conduct a 10-year campaign to pacify the country.
The President’s proposal to Congress is not intended to overthrow the government of Syria. And it certainly does not involve conducting an American war against Syria. This is not an action that the President would have contemplated absent the use of chemical weapons. This resolution is intended entirely to make the Assad regime pay a price for their violation of a 100-year international consensus that the use of chemical weapons is unacceptable in the civilized world.
Some have argued that killing people with chemical weapons is no worse than killing them with a gun or a bomb. Both are horrible. But the difference that created a worldwide consensus against their use is that they are weapons of mass destruction. Like biological and nuclear weapons they are distinguished by two characteristics that would make their regular use much more dangerous for the future of humanity than guns and bombs:

  • They can kill massive numbers of people very quickly.
  • They are completely indiscriminant. They kill everything in their path. They do not discriminate between combatant and non-combatants – between children and adults.
  • Those two characteristics make weapons of mass destruction different from other weapons. In the interest of our survival as a species we must make the use of all weapons of mass destruction unthinkable. That must be one of humanity’s chief goals if it is to survive into the next century.
    There has been talk about “other options” to punish Assad and deter him from using chemical weapons in the future. But the fact is that the only price that matters to Assad – or to anyone who is in the midst of a military struggle – is a military price.
    There is a worldwide consensus that no matter how desperate someone’s military situation, the use of chemical weapons in specific – and weapons of mass destruction in general — is never justified.