I am not against an attack on Syria no matter what. I can understand and appreciate the urge to punish the chinless tyrant if it is proven that he used chemical weapons against his own civilian population.
That being said, going into a military action announcing to the world you will tie one arm behind your back and make a knot between your right and left shoelaces before you even start sounds kind of stupid to me. Almost as stupid as setting red lines without a real plan to follow through if someone calls your bluff.
So with this bewildering exhibition of confusion the administration is preparing to commit another blunder, with results so obvious It makes one wonder who the hell is running the show?
One of the main reasons for attacking Syria given to us is the suffering of civilians.
It follows that when we go attacking we must make sure that the price civilian population will pay due to our actions (and they will pay) is smaller than the price they would have paid without our intervention. We must make sure it isn't going to be another "We have to kill them in order to save them".
The current statements from the Administration is that there will be no American boots on the ground. Excellent. While I'm sure the men and women in uniform can handle any mission given to them, it is extremely cruel to take them out of the Afghan fire only to throw them into the Syrian frying pan. Our soldiers deserve our thanks and gratitude and a fucking long vacation on some Caribbean beach where they are served cocktails with little umbrellas. But I digress.
So it is going to be Tomahawks and B-2s and all the great fireworks CNN loves to show on our TV screens.
The "problem" is that they also show the carnage afterwards.
The other side knows this as well. The other side knows that all it has to do is to hanker down for, what?, a month of booms? Been there, done that.
When the physical survival of your tribe is at stake, this is a small price to pay.
The other side also knows that we are sensitive to civilian casualties. The other side doesn't give a flying f@$k about civilian casualties.
So if I were Assad this is what I would do (those tyrants' modus-operandi is very well known, as they all share the "Tyrant's user manual")
1. Call Mr. Obama and thank him for giving Assad more than a month warning. This is more than enough to move whatever assets he has to alternative locations. The Syrians are in a state of war with Israel for the last 65 years. Believe me, they have alternative sites.
2. Call CNN ans other media outlets to thank them and all their talking heads for giving him the list of possible targets for strikes and revealing some of the intelligence you have regarding their locations (Do the Syrian have five or six chemical weapons depots- what was the last count on MSNBC? is it 20 miles or 50 miles from Homs?)
3. Now Assad is stuck with a lot of empty bunkers. They were supposed to be "command and control" centers American always like to bomb. The Syrian army is no longer acting as a single cohesive body, so calling them "c & c targets" is a sad joke, really. All Assad need to "control" his divisions around Damascus is a guy on a moped.
So what to do with all these buildings? Well, Assad prisons are full to the brim with dissidents. Move them to the bunkers. Move their families as well, the more children the better.
4. Get some medical equipment. Old EEG and EKG machines. Cases upon cases of expired medicine, and the best - incubators. Place them in the buildings as well.
5. Wait for the initiation of the attack. Assad may pray that the building is included in the targets bank of the American Tomahawks. Or, he can take a more proactive approach and booby trap the installation and the minute those missiles start flying he presses the button.
6. Syrian and Russian TV crews are rushed to the scene where firefighters carry dead children out from the smoldering rubble. A zoom shot at a mangled incubator. Women in black wailing, beating their hearts in agony. The videos move at the speed of light around the globe with the title "The result of an American attack on children's hospital".
By the time Mr. Carney takes the podium with the response, anyone from Jakarta to Rabat will be completely convinced that all the US does is kill Muslim babies.
What do you think the world's reaction to this footage will be? What is the US contingency plan in such a case that, judging from past events, is probable?
What will the US gain from this attack? How will the interests of the American people be served?
And more importantly - going back to my first sentence- What will the Syrian civilians get from such an attack other than the expected more death and destruction? The vague promise that these limited attacks will somehow convince Assad and the Alawites to give up and throw themselves at the mercy of their Sunni opponents? Are you fucking kidding me? The battle cry of the rebels is "Christians to Beirut and Allawites to the coffins" (in Arabic it sounds better....). It doesn't leave much hope for a peaceful regime change, does it?
The administration first mistake was to set a red-line (in a TV interview no less) without the faintest clue how to go about responding to Assad stepping over this line.
Now the administration is compounding its mistake by coming with some limited plan that shows all its cards before the first bet was even placed.