By Gary Rotto
SAN DIEGO — To counteract the impression that he didn’t have the credentials to be the commander in chief or positions on key international issues, Governor Romney recently put forward his ideas on Syria. Actually, he made like a cliff diver and made a huge splash with great risk. His solution is to send heavy arms to the rebels.
After months of not saying much on foreign relations, he trots out an ill advised and poorly thought out strategy.
I have two basic questions: Who are the rebels? How do we make sure that they are not the next Mujahedeen?
Didn’t we learn out lessons from our first involvement in Afghanistan where the rebels may have beaten back the evil Soviets – but evolved into the Taliban? They might not have been friendly to the USSR, but they were certainly no friend of ours. As we know, the Taliban are not exactly the most tolerant of people – certainly, they wish to send women back into the 18th if not the 17th Century.
And what about the Arab Spring in Egypt where the Muslim Brotherhood emerged rather than a secular party? What about Libya where that country still has a chance to fall into domination by Islamists? Sunday night, 60 Minutes aired a piece by CBS correspondent Clarissa Ward filmed in Syria. Ward interviewed Ahmed al-Abaid, a rebel leader, one who recruits fighters and wages war under the black flag of radical Islam. In the transcript of the program, the n Ward asked Al-Abaid whether he would like to see Sharia law implemented as the law of the land.
Al-Abaid (translator): Certainly. Certainly, yes.
Clarissa Ward: That is therefore saying that you wish to create an Islamic state in Syria.
Al-Abaid: And what’s wrong with that? The world has misguided ideas about Islam. Muslims have never been the aggressors against anyone.
And Al-Abaid’s forces are already enforcing Sharia Law in the area that they command. A video shown byWard on her video phone showed four Syrian prisoners – captured government soldiers – receiving a sentence from an off screen judge. And in the next scene, they are bound by the hands, on their knees with their backs to the camera. And they were shot dead. Clearly the execution of captured soldiers in such a manner is a violation of the Geneva Convention. But Sharia Law trumps international law.
A New York Times article published this morning gets right to the point: “Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups that the West wants to bolster, according to American officials and Middle Eastern diplomats.”
Let me think about this for a minute. So if we send tanks, helicopters and other heavy arms, who will be operating this sophisticated equipment? And where will they be aimed next? Naturally, Obama haters will blame the fact that arms are falling into questionable hands on the president. But if Romney wants to rely on our Arab Allies to screen the recipients, who is better trained to do so that the Saudis and the Qataris? And they can’t sort it out as it is. So who does Romeny suggest relying on?
Even more troubling than the delivery of heavy arms is the request by rebel leaders for anti-aircraft weapons. Yes, for the moment they may neutralize the advantage of the Syrian military, but what happens after the war? If the Islamists do dominate within the rebel forces and then in the new government, they control these key weapons. They could neutralize US or Israeli superiority in a regional conflict over the Golan Heights.
Oh and one last question: Since Syria borders Israel, are there any security concerns with this policy of supplying Syrian rebels with heavy arms and surface to air missiles? Let’s make that a rhetorical question, shall we?
The solution is not a pretty one. In the short term, it seems that having the Turks take to the sky and enforcing a no-fly zone would stop the Syrian government’s brutal bombing of places like Aleppo. As fellow Muslims, a Turkish intervention might be better accepted by the Syrian people than a Western sponsored initiative. Their presence would prevent the need to deploy American troops in yet another war zone.
Ideally, a secular government would be created that would respect all people – religions, tribes and sexes. In most countries, it’s the military establishment that is the most secular of institutions. That means keeping the military, which has been brutally promulgating a scorched Earth policy, in power in Syria while toppling Bashar al-Assad. That probably means granting a de facto amnesty to the current Syrian army and empowering the army to oversee a post-Assad Syria as democratic institutions are nurtured and secular parties are trained in how in statecraft. So we have a truly Hobson’s choice: go after perpetrators of some ghastly war deeds, or grant amnesty so that a secular state tolerant of all peoples, of all sexes might flourish?
It’s a messy solution, but a far better one that indiscriminately arming people for whom our only commonality is that we are both enemies of the current Syrian regime.
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Rotto is a freelance writer based in San Diego. He may be contacted at gary.rotto@sdjewishworld.com