{"id":1653,"date":"2013-09-10T08:48:29","date_gmt":"2013-09-10T15:48:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/?p=1653"},"modified":"2013-09-10T08:48:29","modified_gmt":"2013-09-10T15:48:29","slug":"answering-senator-rand-pauls-questions-about-syria-hughhewitt-com-09-05-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/2013\/09\/10\/answering-senator-rand-pauls-questions-about-syria-hughhewitt-com-09-05-13\/","title":{"rendered":"Answering Senator Rand Paul\u2019s Questions About Syria | HughHewitt.com | 09.05.13"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a highly intelligent article posted at the\u00a0Time<\/i>\u00a0magazine site this morning (http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/nyore9m),<\/a>\u00a0Senator Rand Paul asks a series of questions about intervention in Syria.\u00a0 Here they are with my responses:<\/p>\n

Senator Paul\u2019s Question #1: \u201cBashar Assad is clearly not an American ally. But does his ouster encourage stability in the Middle East, or would his ouster actually encourage instability?\u201d<\/p>\n

Answer #1:\u00a0 It depends on his replacement.\u00a0 The upcoming congressional vote, though, is not about replacing him.\u00a0 It is not even entirely about Assad\u2019s use of chemical weapons.\u00a0 We wouldn\u2019t be having this vote if President Obama hadn\u2019t declared a \u201cred line\u201d that Assad must not cross without asking, what if he crossed it?\u00a0 Now he has.\u00a0 If Mr. Obama were president of France, such words would not matter.\u00a0 But more than Syria is at stake when an American president makes an unequivocal statement.\u00a0 As is more common than not, there are today dozens of armed conflicts in process touching nearly every continent.\u00a0 Since 1945, none has grown into a general shooting war, in large part because of the United States\u2019 global role.\u00a0 Now whether we follow through on the president\u2019s statement is being taken as a sign of whether we remain the keystone in the structure of global peace.\u00a0 The president\u2019s words committed us not to overthrowing Assad but to doing something \u2013 something substantial (a non-action action doesn\u2019t count) \u2014 about Assad\u2019s use of chemical weapons.\u00a0 It is in our broadest interest to follow through, but, as Senator Paul suggests, to keep in mind the limits, too.<\/p>\n

Senator Paul\u2019s Question #2:\u00a0 \u201cAre the Islamic rebels our allies?\u201d<\/p>\n

Answer #2:\u00a0 Clearly not.\u00a0 But many of the rebels are not Islamicists.\u00a0 Last year, the governing coalition of rebel groups set as its goal a \u201cdemocratic, civil, pluralistic, strong and stable state.\u201d\u00a0 Since then, the Saudis have been playing a double game (now there\u2019s a surprise), using money and other aid to build up the radical forces at the expense of the drafter of that statement.\u00a0 But keep in mind the composition of Syria.\u00a0 It is 70 percent Sunni.\u00a0 Many, perhaps most, of the Sunnis cannot stomach the Wahhai-types that the Saudis back.\u00a0 Meanwhile, under Assad and his father, the government has been a coalition of everyone else: Alawites (the Assad family\u2019s group and a heretical offshoot of Shi\u2019ite Islam), Shi\u2019ites, Christians, Druze, Jews and any others not part of the Sunni majority.\u00a0 Many of those are looking for a safe exit from the coalition with the Assads.\u00a0 But is there one?\u00a0\u00a0As an Alawite man told a reporter recently, if only because of Assad\u2019s bloody record, \u201cI am sure there will be massacres [of Alawites]; the regime made us [everyone else’s] enemies over the past two years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Senator Paul\u2019s Question #3: \u201cWill they defend American interests?\u201d<\/p>\n

Answer #3: \u00a0No.\u00a0 Like everyone else in the world, they will defend their own interests.\u00a0 But the question for us is different.\u00a0 It is, will following through on the president\u2019s \u201cred line\u201d statement advance American interests?
\nSenator Paul Questions #4, 5, 6: Will they acknowledge Israel\u2019s right to exist? Will they impose Shari\u2018a? Will they tolerate Christians, or will they pillage and destroy ancient Christian churches and people?\u201d<\/p>\n

Answers:\u00a0 Some will.\u00a0 Some won\u2019t.\u00a0 Which is why we should keep in mind that this is not a two-part conflict but a three part one: 1) Assad and his allies funded and run by radical Iran versus 2) radical Sunnis and their radical Saudi backers versus 3) the rest.\u00a0 After the bombing stops and even now, our aid should go to building up the third group.\u00a0 Equally critical, we should place intense pressure on the Saudis to shift their weight to that group, too.\u00a0 This last is not an impossible goal or even, perhaps, a difficult one.\u00a0 But, behind the scenes, we need to engage more effectively than we have to date.<\/p>\n

Too much of the current debate \u2013 including Senator Paul\u2019s questioning \u2014 is running along terms that the weak and in policy making sloppy Obama administration has set.\u00a0 What should we do?\u00a0 Here is a list:\u00a0 1) Launch a strike aimed at destroying as large a part of the Syrian chemical weapon capacity as possible; 2) the strike should also destroy as much of the Syrian air force as possible; 3) pressure the Saudis to redirect their aid from Sunni radicals in Syria to internal disruption in Iran; 4) work closely with the Israelis in determining which elements among the rebels to back and deliver substantial aid to them; and 5) turn our diplomacy to fostering a coalition of non-radical rebels and breakaways from the Assad coalition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a highly intelligent article posted at the\u00a0Time\u00a0magazine site this morning (http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/nyore9m),\u00a0Senator Rand Paul asks a series of questions about intervention in Syria.\u00a0 Here they are with my responses: Senator Paul\u2019s Question #1: \u201cBashar Assad is clearly not an American ally. But does his ouster encourage stability in the Middle East, or would his ouster […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[79,12,60,127,167],"class_list":["post-1653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-global-issues","tag-foreign-policy","tag-hugh-hewitt","tag-obama","tag-rand-paul","tag-syria"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1653"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1655,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1653\/revisions\/1655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}