POISON GAS AND THE FUTURE OF BASHAR AL-ASSAD

There seems to be a lot of confusion about the U.S. intention in Syria and Bashar al-Assad, dictator of Syria.  Today I heard complaints on TV that the bombing raids of Syrians poison gas facilities did nothing to take out Assad.  For a long time, I too was confused.  I thought that first we would get rid of ISIS and then get rid of Assad.

But I have finally figured it out, and I believe our intention is not to eliminate Assad.  We only want him to stop using poison gas.  Further, we have decided that Syria is in the Russian sphere of influence, perhaps Iranian too by default.  Others have commented on the strangeness of it being all right to do "industrial scale"* murders of the Syrian people using "conventional" explosives, but poison gas is unacceptable.  Society has concluded, however, that poison gas is an unacceptable way of killing people in war (executions are something else).

To go back to the beginning. a multi-nation airforce organized by President Obama began an air strike against Libyan forces in support of an uprising by a mob on March 19, 2011, to stop threatened crimes against humanity by Qaddafi**  To do this without any plan as to what should happen after Qaddafi was overthrown was a bad mistake.  An even bigger mist mistake was we had promised Qadaffi that, if he got rid of his nuclear weapons program, we would not try to overthrow him.  Doing so has haunted international relations since.

Indeed, Obama himself admitted earlier this year [2016] that "failing to plan for the day after" the overthrow of Gaddafi was the "worst mistake" of his presidency. Critics of U.S. military strategy have long-warned that the 2011 intervention would create a power vacuum and inevitably pave the way for an entity, such as ISIS, to gain control.*** 

Then, I think on August 18, 2015, or close to it, President Obama announced that Assad must go in Syria.  His idea was to enlist forces in Syria to overthrow Assad, but again there was no plan as to who should take over if Assad is overthrown.  While it proved difficult to find any Syrian forces to eliminate ISIS, many could be found to fight Assad, but ISIS was the first priority.

At some point, President Obama abandoned plans to overthrow Assad because of the inability to plan for the day after.  It was hard to stand by as Russia pummeled Aleppo, killing and injuring a huge number of civilian people.  I wondered if President Obama could hold out against calls for the U.S. to interfere, but he didn't.

At any rate, President Obama's term as President was over before he could return to the Assad problem, and, by this time, the Russians were firmly ensconced in Syria.

Present Trump took over the U.S. government.  President Trump also has had to stand by during a merciless attack on a city, this time Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus.  Cries for humanitarian interference were more muted than for Aleppo.  He also announced that our troops would soon leave Syria because ISIS was all but beaten, a comment that alarmed our military.

So the surgical air attack by multination forces to degrade Syrian poison gas facilities was intended to be just that and I have no problem with it.  Many buildings were destroyed along with a lot of equipment, and no one was killed.  In spite of the disappointments of many, it was never intended that this attack would overthrow Assad.

[Note added 04-16-2018: Rather than an air raid, the military apparently really wanted greater sanctions on Russia which, after all, had promised to take care of the poison gas problem but hasn't done so.  President Trump, however, decided he didn't want more sanctions on Russia.  Because Trump lately had said a few nasty things about Putin, I thought he had given up on building a Trump tower in Moscow, but it seems he hasn't.  At any rate, the air raid is the only punishment the Syrians are to get.  I would have liked to see both.]

My conclusion is that there is no plan by the U.S. to get rid of Assad no matter how bad the humanitarian crisis.  We have ceded Syria to the Russians and Iranians, as it has no strategic value to us.

I feel that, if a force in Syria of 2,000 troops, will keep the lid on groups like Isis, we should do it forever if called for.  We have 10s of thousands of troops spread all over the world - Japan and Germany in particular.

* A term I actually heard yesterday.
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_military_intervention_in_Libya
** https://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/08/02/us-attacks-libya-again-peace-group-tells-obama-stop-bombing