While sense on the hard realities of the Syrian mess is hard to come by, nonsense abounds

"A bitter past hangs over this debate and could overwhelm a discussion of what's actually at stake."

-- E. J. Dionne Jr., in his Washington Post column
today, "Syria puts our system on trial"

by Ken

I've been watching from the sidelines with mounting confusion and incredulity as the Syrian mess has hardened U.S. political lines in hard-to-comprehend ways and moved us toward a crisis point from which it's just about impossible to imagine a sane exit.

I've stayed out of it mostly because I have no halfway clever ideas of how to reshape the mess into something that might stand some reasonable chance of reducing the horror for Syrians and for all sorts of other people who stand to suffer for the "lessons learned" there.

We've long been told that hard cases make bad law, and it's bewildering to see that a mess as complex and seemingly insoluble as this one has repolarized an already-polarized political landscape even though nobody actually has any answers. And so the mess has taken some weird shapes.

It has, for example, taken the form of a test for the future of this president's ability to lead -- and also, we're told, for the future authority of the presidency itself. Perhaps most personally confounding to me, it has given shape to a new litmus test for "progressivism": You must oppose the president's plan for a response to the horrors perpetrated by the Assad regime or else you're evil and anti-progressive.

Apparently, as long as you do oppose the president's plans, you don't need to support anything else. Actually, though, you are supporting something else: the position that Assad can do any damned thing he pleases and none of it is any of our concern. This is, of course, the very position that Assad is advancing, and the new arbiters of progressivism are among those who are shouting loudest in favor of making it official.

One truth that gets very little hearing here is that the world is no closer than it ever was to figuring out a system for deciding when and how it is appropriate for other countries to interfere in the internal workings of a sovereign country. There are people who genuinely believe that the answer is never, and they have the advantage of never having to think about the matter. I think they're dangerously nuts, but that doesn't mean I can write a formula for when an internal mess becomes the world's business.

One way in which the Syrian mess is the world's business is the lesson it conveys to the world's other tyrants, present and future. As it stands, that lesson is:

Tough it out, no matter what it takes. Keep pushing with whatever means you have at your disposal until someone stops you.

I'm a little encouraged to speak out now that E. J. Dionne Jr. has attempted to inject a ration of sense -- and sensitivity -- into the American response to the mess.

E.J. is at pains to point out that his intention --

is not to denigrate those, left and right, who deeply believe that the United States should temper its international military role. Nor is it to claim that President Obama's proposed strikes on Syria in response to Bashar ­al-Assad's use of chemical weapons constitute some sort of “slam dunk” policy that should win automatic assent.

However, he says, and here I'm repeating the point I put atop this post, but it's worth repeating: "A bitter past hangs over this debate and could overwhelm a discussion of what's actually at stake."

Again not surprisingly, E.J. shows considerably sympathy for the historical battle scars that have driven many of the U.S. political combatants into their present concrete-reinforced positions. I'm not going to go into any of that, though. I do like his characterization of the "peculiar position" President Obama finds himself in:

He faces a peculiar problem: While hawks criticize Obama for not being willing to act boldly enough against Assad, doves criticize him for being too willing to risk a wider war. Members of Obama’s party have to understand the risks of forcing him to walk away from a red line that he drew for good reason.

(Not mentioned is that the awkwardness of his attempt to craft a proposal for Congress, setting out precise goals, strategies, and methods, has boxed him into a fairly absurd position, and it's a position that has been forced on him by people who insist that he do so, even though such a procedure has hardly any precedent for solving or even improving any international crisis.)

E.J. notes that the president "bears responsibility here, too.

Precisely because he had been so unwilling to intervene in Syria, he has handed opponents of his policy some of the very arguments they are using against him. Until Obama decided that the chemical attacks required a strong response, he was wary of getting involved, because the United States has reason to fear victory by either side in Syria. His old view may have been reasonable, but it can easily be invoked to undercut his current one.

E.J.'s "hunch" is that Congress doesn't really want "to incapacitate the president for three long years, and points to the efforts of House Democrats and Republicans who "find themselves battling to give Obama the authority to act."

They will not prevail, however, unless Obama makes an unabashedly moral case on Tuesday explaining why things are different than they were a few months ago while laying out a practical strategy beyond the strikes. He must do something very difficult: show that his approach could succeed, over time, in replacing Assad with a new government without enmeshing the United States in a land conflict involving troops on the ground.

The administration's view is that only a negotiated settlement will produce anything like a decent and stable outcome in Syria -- and that only forceful U.S. action now will put the United States in a position to get the parties to the table. It's not tidy or an easy sell, but it's a plausible path consistent with what the United States can and can't do.

If Obama wins this fight, as he must, he should then set about restoring some consensus about the United States' world role. He has to show how a priority on “nation-building at home” can be squared with our international responsibilities. The seriousness of this crisis should also push Republicans away from reflexive anti-Obamaism, Rush Limbaugh-style talk-show madness, extreme anti-government rhetoric and threats to shut Washington down.

If we want to avoid becoming a second-class nation, we have to stop behaving like one.

"A LIBERAL ALTERNATIVE TO WAR IN SYRIA?"

The above is the head on Greg Sargent's "Morning Plum" post today, about a resolution to be pushed by House liberals "that would call on the United States to exhaust all diplomatic efforts to reach a negotiated political solution to the Syrian conflict, and all means for using international law to hold Assad accountable, rather than opting for military intervention."

A draft of the measure, which will be introduced by Dem Rep. Barbara Lee, a staunch opponent of intervention, is currently being circulated among House Dems, aides tell me."

It urges the U.S. to require Syria to grant unfettered access to humanitarian organizations to help civilians; step up diplomacy via the international community to advance a negotiated settlement; strengthen sanctions targeting Assad’s assets; prosecute the use of chemical weapons via the International Criminal Court; establish an international Syrian war crimes tribunal; and develop any further responses with member states of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

There are some interesting ideas here, but anyone who believes that any of them will change the reality on the ground in Syria in any way is, I think, either disingenuous or nuts.

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