Tornado Alley (PROG)

[RNsidersbuying]

The Price of Obama’s Mendacity
The consequences of his administration’s lies about Syria are becoming clear.

By Bret Stephens
April 10, 2017 7:19 p.m. ET

Last week’s cruise-missile strike against a Syrian air base in response to Bashar Assad’s use of chemical weapons has reopened debate about the wisdom of Barack Obama’s decision to forgo a similar strike, under similar circumstances, in 2013.

But the real issue isn’t about wisdom. It’s about honesty.

On Sept. 10, 2013, President Obama delivered a televised address in which he warned of the dangers of not acting against Assad’s use of sarin gas, which had killed some 1,400 civilians in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta the previous month.

“If we fail to act, the Assad regime will see no reason to stop using chemical weapons,” Mr. Obama said. “As the ban against these weapons erodes, other tyrants will have no reason to think twice about acquiring poison gas, and using them. Over time, our troops would again face the prospect of chemical weapons on the battlefield. And it could be easier for terrorist organizations to obtain these weapons, and use them to attack civilians.”

It was a high-minded case for action that the president immediately disavowed for the least high-minded reason: It was politically unpopular. The administration punted a vote to an unwilling Congress. It punted a fix to the all-too-willing Russians. And it spent the rest of its time in office crowing about its success.

In July 2014 Secretary of State John Kerry claimed “we got 100% of the chemical weapons out.” In May 2015 Mr. Obama boasted that “Assad gave up his chemical weapons. That’s not speculation on our part. That, in fact, has been confirmed by the organization internationally that is charged with eliminating chemical weapons.” This January, then-National Security Adviser Susan Rice said “we were able to get the Syrian government to voluntarily and verifiably give up its chemical weapons stockpile.”

Today we know all this was untrue. Or, rather, now all of us know it. Anyone paying even slight attention has known it for years.

In June 2014 U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power noted “discrepancies and omissions related to the Syrian government’s declaration of its chemical weapons program.” But that hint of unease didn’t prevent her from celebrating the removal “of the final 8% of chemical weapons materials in Syria’s declaration” of its overall stockpile.

The following summer, The Wall Street Journal’s Adam Entous and Naftali Bendavid reported “U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the [Assad] regime didn’t give up all of the chemical weapons it was supposed to.” In February 2016, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper confirmed the Journal’s story, telling Congress “Syria has not declared all the elements of its chemical weapons program.”

Why did Mr. Obama and his senior officials stick to a script that they knew was untethered from the facts? Let’s speculate. They thought the gap between Assad’s “declared” and actual stockpile was close enough for government work. They figured a credulous press wouldn’t work up a sweat pointing out the difference. They didn’t imagine Assad would use what was left of his chemical arsenal for fear of provoking the U.S.


And they didn’t want to disturb the public narrative that multilateral diplomacy was a surer way than military action to disarm rogue Middle Eastern regimes of their illicit weapons. Two months after Mr. Obama’s climb-down with Syria, he signed on to the interim nuclear deal with Iran. The remainder of his term was spent trying not to upset the fragile beauty of his nuclear diplomacy.

Now we’re coming to grips with the human and strategic price of the Obama administration’s mendacity. The sham agreement gave Assad confidence that he could continue to murder his opponents indefinitely without fear of Western reprisal. It fostered the view that his regime was preferable to its opponents. It showed Tehran that it could drive a hard diplomatic bargain over its nuclear file, given that the administration was so plainly desperate for face-saving excuses for inaction.

And it left Mr. Obama’s successor with a lousy set of options.

Rex Tillerson and Nikki Haley erred badly by announcing, just days before last week’s sarin attack, that the Trump administration had no plans to depose Assad. They gave the dictator reason to believe he had as little to fear from this U.S. president as he did from the last one.

But, unlike their predecessors, the secretary of state and U.N. ambassador deserve credit for learning from that mistake—as does the president they serve. The core of the problem in Syria isn’t Islamic State, dreadful as it is. It’s a regime whose appetite for unlimited violence is one of the main reasons ISIS has thrived. To say there is no easy cure for Syria should not obscure the fact that there won’t be any possibility of a cure until Assad falls.

Mr. Obama and his advisers will never run out of self-justifications for their policy in Syria. They can’t outrun responsibility for the consequences of their lies.

Write [e-mail].

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-price-of-obamas-mendacity-1491866392