Spoiling for a Fight (Updated)

The New York Times and other major news outlets are reporting that a cadre of mostly mid-level State Department officials have circulated an internal memo calling for military action against the Assad government in Syria:

WASHINGTON — More than 50 State Department diplomats have signed an internal memo sharply critical of the Obama administration’s policy in Syria, urging the United States to carry out military strikes against the government of President Bashar al-Assad to stop its persistent violations of a cease-fire in the country’s five-year-old civil war.

The memo, a draft of which was provided to The New York Times by a State Department official, says American policy has been “overwhelmed” by the unrelenting violence in Syria. It calls for “a judicious use of stand-off and air weapons, which would undergird and drive a more focused and hard-nosed U.S.-led diplomatic process.”

I haven’t been able to locate the actual text of the memo but none of the reports I’ve read include any mention of what these foreign service officers think will happen after Assad has been removed. We actually have a good model for that: Libya, where radical Islamists have mostly taken over after the removal of Moammar Qaddafi that we connived at.

As I see it there are at least two problems with their preferred course of action:

1. With Russia’s active presence in Syria in support of and at the invitation of the internationally recognized government of Syria it sets the stage for major power confrontation, a confrontation from which Russia cannot back down.
2. It would result in turning Syria over to DAESH. The rump Alawite government would fight it out to the death in the Alawite strongholds in northern Syria because they have no other choice.

What is the vital U. S. interest in putting DAESH in control in Syria and fomenting a nuclear war? I don’t see it. Want a diplomatic solution? Negotiate it with the Russians. If we strike the Assad government in the absence of United Nations Security Council authorization (which won’t be forthcoming because of Russia’s veto at the very least), we will be in the wrong. We will be the bad guys.

To my mind what this memo reveals is how deeply entrenched neoconservatives and liberal interventionists are at the State Department. It sounds to me like a good housecleaning is in order.

Update

Larry Johnson tells the simple truth—the U. S. and Europe are responsible for the carnage in Syria, not the Assad regime:

The United States, along with Britain, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, set the match to Syria. It was covert funding for opposition groups, which included providing weapons and other material support to carry out military strikes against the Syrian Government.

while my old friend, Mary Ellen O’Connell, quoted at Atlantic, lends a touch of sanity:

In a statement, Mary Ellen O’Connell, professor of international law at the University of Notre Dame, said the letter is, in essence, “calling for a grave breach of international law.” She said the U.S. military intervention in Libya had been an “unmitigated disaster,” and “[a]ttacking Syria will have no better results.”

“Diplomacy is the way to end the Syrian civil war,” she said. “State Department officials need to get on that job—not pass the buck again to the military.”

and, as I noted above, the path to diplomacy leads through the Kremlin.