Bashar al-Assad is probably already planning his victory parade.

First Obama says he’s decided to attack Syria, but then he immediately says he’s seeking authorization from Congress. But then he signals he’ll attack even without the support of Congress. Then AIPAC wheels out its big guns in Obama’s support, but for once it doesn’t look like anyone’s too worried about what the Israel lobby thinks. Even though Israel itself supports Obama, more than anything they just want to see the war in Syria continue. “Let them both bleed, hemorrhage to death: that’s the strategic thinking here,” says a former Israeli diplomat. And now Obama’s latest effort to rally international support has fallen flat — even the French are getting cold feet.

Is the president who likes to lead from behind now ready to lead with on one behind?

Apparently not. The White House isn’t ready to raise the white flag just yet but it’s already signalling that it may soon concede defeat.

Garance Franke-Ruta writes: President Obama does not intend to act in defiance of Congress if it votes down a resolution authorizing the use of force in Syria, White House Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken told Steve Inskeep on NPR’s Morning Edition Friday.

“Has the president decided what he will do if Congress votes no on using force?” Inskeep asked during the short segment.

“You know Steve, when, after the events of August 21, we reached out to Congress and we had conversations with members of Congress across the country,” Blinken replied. “And the one thing we heard from nearly all of them is that they wanted their voice heard and their vote, and their votes counted.”

“The president of course has the authority to act, but it’s neither his desire nor his intention to do, to use that authority absent Congress backing,” Blinken said.

It was the second such signal-sending move of the day, following on the heels of Peter Baker’s report in the New York Times:

Although Mr. Obama has asserted that he has the authority to order the strike on Syria even if Congress says no, White House aides consider that almost unthinkable. As a practical matter, it would leave him more isolated than ever and seemingly in defiance of the public’s will at home. As a political matter, it would almost surely set off an effort in the House to impeach him, which even if it went nowhere could be distracting and draining.

Another way to look at this: If Obama were comfortable acting alone — that is to say, without the support of Congress, the United Nations, NATO, the Arab League, or any major allies save France — to order a strike on Syria, he had the opportunity to do so without going to Congress and requesting that each of its members rouse their electorates and invest political capital in considering and voting on the question for themselves. [Continue reading…]

The Wall Street Journal reports: The U.S. has intercepted an order from Iran to militants in Iraq to attack the U.S. Embassy and other American interests in Baghdad in the event of a strike on Syria, officials said, amid an expanding array of reprisal threats across the region.

Military officials have been trying to predict the range of possible responses from Syria, Iran and their allies. U.S. officials said they are on alert for Iran’s fleet of small, fast boats in the Persian Gulf, where American warships are positioned. U.S. officials also fear Hezbollah could attack the U.S. Embassy in Beirut.

While the U.S. has moved military resources in the region for a possible strike, it has other assets in the area that would be ready to respond to any reprisals by Syria, Iran or its allies.

Those deployments include a strike group of the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and three destroyers in the Red Sea, and an amphibious ship, the USS San Antonio, in the Eastern Mediterranean, which would help with any evacuations.

The U.S. military has also readied Marines and other assets to aid evacuation of diplomatic compounds if needed, and the State Department began making preparations last week for potential retaliation against U.S. embassies and other interests in the Middle East and North Africa.

U.S. officials began planning for a possible strike on Syrian regime assets after the Aug. 21 attack outside Damascus in which the U.S. says Syrian government forces killed over 1,400 people using chemical weapons. The U.S. military has prepared options for an attack and beefed up its military resources in the region, including positioning four destroyers in the Eastern Mediterranean.

That process slowed last weekend when Mr. Obama said he would first seek an authorization for using military force from Congress.

A delay in a U.S. strike would increase opportunities for coordinated retaliation by groups allied with the Assad government, including Shiite militias in Iraq, according to U.S. officials. [Continue reading…]

In the event that the U.S. goes ahead with strikes on Syria, it goes without saying that U.S. interests across the region will be possible targets for acts of retaliation of some kind from a variety of possible sources. So why have U.S. officials chosen to leak this particular classified intelligence on a purported threat from Iran? Is this all part of President Obama’s new found desire to promote transparency in the intelligence community? Unlikely.

Maybe there are some members of the administration who are trying to hit the brakes and want to alert the public to the risks involved in the attacks. Think Benghazi.

But this report isn’t based on whistle-blowing — it’s based on a briefing and the object of the exercise soon becomes clear.

An alarm bell is being rung and the message to Congress is: don’t hold up the strikes on Syria because if you do, you will be responsible for the next Benghazi.

But just a minute! Wasn’t it only last weekend that Obama declared: “our capacity to execute this mission is not time-sensitive; it will be effective tomorrow, or next week, or one month from now.”

It’s not time-sensitive, but the longer the delay, the greater the risks of retaliation.

It’s not time-sensitive, but the delay that’s already taken place through seeking Congressional approval means that the Pentagon is already working on expanding the target list.

But if the White House is now hitting the panic button, this might have less to do with the information its getting from the Pentagon and more to do with the word from Capitol Hill.

Concerted pressure from AIPAC notwithstanding, there is a strong possibility that Congress may this time around pay more attention to public opinion than anything else and as a consequence reject Obama’s plan. Obama will then be on a trajectory to enter his own unique expression of unilateralism: no support from Britain, nor from the UN, nor from Congress, nor the American people. Even George Bush never attempted to go it alone to this degree.

Obama’s already passed the point of no return. He’s committed the U.S. to this operation with or without the support of Congress.

With Libya, Obama led from behind. With Syria, he may be on the brink of leading with no one behind.

Here’s a friendly bit of advice to some Syrians: If you happen to own a small two-axle flatbed truck — the kind you might use for hauling construction materials, produce deliveries or that kind of thing — and you don’t want to get hit by an American cruise missile, you might want keep your truck in a garage for a few weeks.

It’s now reported that the Pentagon is expanding its target list and will be attempting to destroy “equipment used to deploy chemical weapons.” Most Americans probably think that such equipment would be readily identifiable as military equipment, but if the image below is reliable — it’s a screenshot from a video believed to show a missile launcher used for chemical weapons — then the equipment in question, once covered by a tarpaulin, is probably indistinguishable from thousands of trucks being driven around every single day in Syria for perfectly innocent purposes.

On the other hand, let’s give the Pentagon the benefit of the doubt and assume that its intelligence is so strong that it knows exactly which white trucks at which it should aim. Can it be equally confident that none of them will actually be carrying chemical weapons? Can we be sure that the U.S. effort to prevent the further use of chemical weapons will not instead result in the release of more sarin?

The New York Times reports: President Obama has directed the Pentagon to develop an expanded list of potential targets in Syria in response to intelligence suggesting that the government of President Bashar al-Assad has been moving troops and equipment used to employ chemical weapons while Congress debates whether to authorize military action.

Mr. Obama, officials said, is now determined to put more emphasis on the “degrade” part of what the administration has said is the goal of a military strike against Syria — to “deter and degrade” Mr. Assad’s ability to use chemical weapons. That means expanding beyond the 50 or so major sites that were part of the original target list developed with French forces before Mr. Obama delayed action on Saturday to seek Congressional approval of his plan.

For the first time, the administration is talking about using American and French aircraft to conduct strikes on specific targets, in addition to ship-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles. There is a renewed push to get other NATO forces involved.

The strikes would be aimed not at the chemical stockpiles themselves — risking a potential catastrophe — but rather the military units that have stored and prepared the chemical weapons and carried the attacks against Syrian rebels, as well as the headquarters overseeing the effort, and the rockets and artillery that have launched the attacks, military officials said Thursday.

Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said that other targets would include equipment that Syria uses to protect the chemicals — air defenses, long-range missiles and rockets, which can also deliver the weapons. [Continue reading…]

C.J. Chivers reports from an undisclosed location:

The Syrian rebels posed casually, standing over their prisoners with firearms pointed down at the shirtless and terrified men.

The prisoners, seven in all, were captured Syrian soldiers. Five were trussed, their backs marked with red welts. They kept their faces pressed to the dirt as the rebels’ commander recited a bitter revolutionary verse.

“For fifty years, they are companions to corruption,” he said. “We swear to the Lord of the Throne, that this is our oath: We will take revenge.”

The moment the poem ended, the commander, known as “the Uncle,” fired a bullet into the back of the first prisoner’s head. His gunmen followed suit, promptly killing all the men at their feet.

This scene, documented in a video smuggled out of Syria a few days ago by a former rebel who grew disgusted by the killings, offers a dark insight into how many rebels have adopted some of the same brutal and ruthless tactics as the regime they are trying to overthrow.

The New York Times reporter (one of their best — and I mean that) just got his hands on this video. Its content provides a graphic fresh image of the country in which the United States is about to become militarily entangled. The report is clearly intended as a warning: venture no closer.

What Chivers clearly didn’t realize when he filed his report (I’m assuming he’s in Turkey) was that the video he had just been handed was a year and a half old. Only after the story got published was the date of the video later corrected from April 2013 to the spring of 2012.

It’s not that there is the slightest reason to think that the situation in Syria has improved during the intervening period, yet I doubt that Chivers would have made the centerpiece of his presentation of “an increasingly criminal environment populated by gangs of highwaymen, kidnappers and killers,” a video made that long ago. It naturally begs the question: if you want to convey what Syria’s like in late 2013, why are you using a video from early 2012?

Moreover, in his choice of language — gangs of highwaymen, kidnappers and killers — why is Chivers now sounding like Bashar al-Assad who has always insisted that his battle is against criminals and terrorists?

Summary executions, wherever they take place, are always an ugly affair. Americans, however, are generally shielded from the brutal nature of such killing because the cases we most often hear about are not carried out at the order of a vindictive field commander, nor with bullets through the back of the head. Instead, all we hear is that an estimated number of suspected terrorists died in a covert drone strike that had presumably been authorized by the president. No blood, no bodies, no names.

The argument against Obama’s plan to strike Syria takes frequent twists and turns, but a theme that keeps on returning — they are all as bad as each other — appears like the ghost of 9/11.

What are Americans to make of the Middle East with its teeming masses of Muslims. Some Sunni, some Shia, and how to remember which is which, yet above all, each a potential terrorist. Surely the wisest course of action is to have nothing to do with the lot.

After 12 years we’re still talking about “bad guys” and our difficulty in knowing who they are — a difficulty that has led so many Americans to conclude: they’re all bad guys.

And then we’re told that even now the intelligence services, who are supposedly better informed than anyone else, are still struggling to connect the dots. Why? Because they haven’t finished working on their coloring books?

Maybe the problem has less to do with the nature of the Middle East, and more to do with the fact that Americans remain locked in a kindergarten mindset, seeing a world persistently rendered with no more complexity than a comic book. We imagine a comic book world, but we don’t actually live in one.

August 20, 2012:

Chuck Todd: Mr. President, could you update us on your latest thinking of where you think things are in Syria, and in particular, whether you envision using U.S. military, if simply for nothing else, the safe keeping of the chemical weapons, and if you’re confident that the chemical weapons are safe?

President Obama: I have, at this point, not ordered military engagement in the situation. But the point that you made about chemical and biological weapons is critical. That’s an issue that doesn’t just concern Syria; it concerns our close allies in the region, including Israel. It concerns us. We cannot have a situation where chemical or biological weapons are falling into the hands of the wrong people.

We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.

September 4, 2013:

Yahoo News: Recasting his role in setting a “red line” on Syria, President Barack Obama insisted on Wednesday that Congress and the world will lose credibility if Bashar Assad’s alleged chemical weapons massacre goes unpunished.

“My credibility’s not on the line. The international community’s credibility is on the line, and America and Congress’ credibility is on the line,” Obama said during a visit to Stockholm, Sweden.

“I do have to ask people, well, if, in fact, you’re outraged by the slaughter of innocent people, what are you doing about it?” Obama asked. “The moral thing to do is not to stand by and do nothing.”

The president rejected any notion that he needs to use military force against Syria in order to preserve his personal standing in the world after calling a chemical weapons attack a “red line” in an Aug. 20, 2012, press conference.

“I didn’t set a red line. The world set a red line,” he insisted.

So is Obama now not merely U.S. president but also president of the world? When he says “my calculus” this doesn’t merely reflect his own thinking — it represents the will of humanity?

The people who fear world government are mostly nutcases, but when Obama talks like this he fuels their paranoia.

You — Barack Obama, the guy sitting in the White House — it was you who set that red line. You weren’t giving a legal interpretation of the Chemical Weapons Convention to which Syria isn’t even a signatory.

Moreover, it’s worth noting, as the Washington Post points out, Syria’s possession of chemical weapons stockpiles “results from a never-acknowledged gentleman’s agreement in the Middle East that as long as Israel had nuclear weapons, Syria’s pursuit of chemical weapons would not attract much public acknowledgement or criticism.”

Obama now says: “The moral thing to do is not to stand by and do nothing.” True. And given that, how does he account for the fact that for the last two years, as 100,000 Syrians have been killed, he has essentially stood by and done nothing?

As always though, this isn’t a choice between nothing and something, the “something” now seemingly reduced to a Goldilocks military strike — one that is not too hot, nor too cool.

In several directions there are diplomatic doors inching open — in Iran and Russia. Instead of pursuing those, Obama appears to insist on a course of action that might end becoming worse than nothing and there’s nothing moral about that.

Eliot Higgins has become one of the most widely respected analysts studying weapons used in Syria. At Brown Moses Blog he writes:

Since the August 21st alleged chemical attack in Damascus, I’ve been working to gather as much evidence as possible relating to the attack, and sharing it on this blog. This post acts to summarise the evidence I’ve gathered so far, as well as examining some of the claims made about the attack. This is all up for healthy debate in the comments below, and it should be kept in mind that “evidence” does not equal “proof” when debating this information.

What munitions were used in the attack?

One thing to understand about the munitions used in chemical attacks is they are designed to disperse an agent, and as chemical agents are generally heat sensitive, huge explosions are the not the ideal mechanism to do that. In many cases a smaller dispersal charge is used, and this means you can expect to find significant remains of the munitions used after a chemical attack.

M14 140mm Artillery Rocket

Since the attacks the remains of only two munitions have been recorded by activists in Damascus. The first, a M14 140mm artillery rocket fired from the BM-14 multiple rocket launcher (and variants), was filmed in Medmah al-Sham in Damascus, and footage recorded by the activists shows the UN inspectors taking measurements and samples from the munition. The remains shown in the video are barely damaged, with only the warhead and connector missing. This may be significant, as one potential warhead carries 2.2kg of sarin, but it should be clear there’s also a smoke warhead for this munition. As with both munitions linked to the alleged chemical attack, it seems only the UN report will clarify whether or not these were likely to be carrying any sort of chemical agent. Only one example of this artillery rocket was recorded and put online, it’s unknown if there’s further examples at the attack sites. More details on the M14 140mm and my identification of it can be found here.

The second munition linked to the alleged chemical attack is pictured above. What’s extremely interesting about this munition is it appears to be something that’s unique to the conflict. I’ve spoken to a number of arms and chemical weapons specialists, and they do not recognise this as any specific type of munition. For the purposes of this blog post, and to save me having to write out “the unidentified munition linked to alleged chemical attacks” repeatedly, I will refer to this as the UMLACA (Unidentified Munition Linked to Alleged Chemical Attacks). [Continue reading…]

The canister shown in the image above, appears to be of similar dimension to the head of the missile shown in the video at the top of this post. Its construction quality does not suggest that this was fabricated in some jihadist’s workshop. Moreover, the launcher shown in the video appears to be an Iranian Falaq-2 model, according to N.R. Jenzen-Jones.

For those who are still in the false flag brigade and who insist that the attack must have been launched by an opposition element — sure, that’s possible.

It’s possible that rebels were able to steal or capture an Iranian launcher. It’s possible that they were also able to obtain missiles already armed with their chemical components from one of the regime’s stockpiles. It’s possible that having gathered together the weapons and the delivery system. It’s possible that each of these came with detailed instructions on how to use them. And it’s possible that these novices in the use of such weapons were quick studies and successfully fired them.

All of that is possible. But is it likely? And given the more obvious explanation — that these chemical weapons were being used by the forces that had been trained and then authorized to use them — why lean in favor of the remote possibility?

I suspect the reason is this — and it has nothing to do with the evidence. If you start with two convictions — that military intervention in Syria is a bad idea, and that the U.S. is hellbent on intervening — then you will be vigilant, watching for anything that could be used as a pretext for intervention. If such a pretext emerges, then the first line of resistance in preventing its use as a justification for intervention will be to say: it didn’t happen. The second line of resistance is to concede it happened but to assert that the Assad regime was not responsible.

The cause is just — attempting to oppose what appears to be an unjust war-making agenda — but its pursuit gets quickly divorced from any desire to be objective. The focus is on that which must be resisted, even if that means abandoning any real interest in what actually happened.

When members of Congress return from vacation and debate President Obama’s measure calling for military strikes on Syria, some people think that the body elected to represent the will of the American people will pay more attention to popular opposition to the strikes than to pressure from the White House. Yet many members of Congress will be less attentive to either of those elements and be much more concerned about how this issue is playing in Israel. When members of Congress see headlines like this — “Israelis fear U.S. debate on Syria foreshadows weakness on Iran” — they will be left in no doubt about which way to cast their vote.

Moreover, when Obama enjoys resolute support from the Jerusalem Post and from President Shimon Peres, no one on Capitol Hill needs to think too deeply about what their ‘duty’ dictates.

Sure, there will be a lively debate. There will be outright opposition from a liberal/libertarian/Tea Party coalition and Congress probably won’t give the president a blank check, but at the end of the day, Obama will get what he’s asking for. (But I’ll be happy to be proved wrong.)

The Los Angeles Times reports: Israel braced for rockets and got a diplomatic bombshell instead.

The Obama administration’s surprise decision to delay a U.S. strike against Syria to allow for congressional debate left anxious Israelis relieved Sunday that any potential blow-back from Syria would be postponed for at least a week.

But there was hand-wringing inside government offices over how Obama’s hesitancy will be interpreted in the restive region and what it says about U.S. assurances to Israel that it will use military force to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb.

Many here viewed Obama’s last-minute equivocation as the latest evidence of a growing U.S. reluctance to engage aggressively in the Middle East, a worrisome prospect for a nation that relies heavily on its close American ties to intimidate enemies.

Even if the U.S. eventually punishes Syria for its alleged use of chemical weapons last month, Obama’s delay is expected to embolden those in Israel who argue for a unilateral military strike against Iran.

And the upcoming congressional debate over Syria will complicate Israel’s effort to keep a low profile on the issue and avoid taking sides in what could become a partisan clash in Washington.

Not surprisingly, Obama’s announcement dominated the headlines and airwaves Sunday in Israel, where citizens had been rushing to get government-issued gas masks in anticipation that Syria or Iran would make good on their threat to bomb Israel in the event of a U.S. strike against Damascus.

Some praised Obama for putting the matter to a more rigorous debate. Many predicted the U.S. ultimately would still strike Syria and that the impact could be stronger with a united American front.

But in a region that tends to value military strength over democratic ideals, others lambasted Obama’s decision and said it would be seen as a sign of weakness. [Continue reading…]

The editorial in the Jerusalem Post spells out what no American politician would be blunt enough to say: that Israel and America have no interest in seeing the war in Syria end. They are content to see the killing continue — just so long as mass casualties from chemical weapons can be avoided. The measure of “success” following U.S. strikes will be that the world can sink back into its indifference about Syria.

[T]he ongoing civil war in Syria is primarily a humanitarian crisis. While there is a desire by the civilized world to stop the bloodshed and reinstate political stability, the West has no real geopolitical interests in ending the Syrian conflict.

Aside from the innocent civilians caught in the crossfire, there are no “good guys” among the sides of the conflict. The despotic Assad regime, which has no qualms about using chemical weapons to kill its own citizens, is battling against forces aligned with al-Qaida – the archenemy of the US – and against the Muslim Brotherhood.

A picture is worth a thousand words. #Syria pic.twitter.com/bWxvTOo0Ec

— فوب (@wotisdisfuckery) September 2, 2013

President Obama announced this afternoon that he has decided to launch an attack on Syria but will not move forward until Congress has had an opportunity to debate the issue and has voted to authorize the attack.

Earlier this week, Politico reported:

As President Barack Obama moves closer to calling for military action against Syria, a powerful ally that could help him win over skeptics is staying quiet.

The Israel lobby, including the high-profile American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other Jewish groups, isn’t pushing for intervention even as evidence emerged this week that the Assad regime used chemical weapons against its citizens.

The silence could be a problem for Obama, since the Jewish groups are connected across the political spectrum, wielding influence from the far right to liberal Democrats on issues critical to the Middle East — especially when it comes to the use of military force.

And while Obama has been willing to strike a foreign country without Congress’s approval — as he did in Libya — this time he not only faces a reluctant Congress, but a vocal chorus of Republican and Democratic lawmakers publicly advocating against entanglement.

Since AIPAC and the rest of the lobby have thus far remained silent, will they now start lobbying on behalf of the White House? Possibly, but it seems just as likely that they will not want to be held responsible for pushing Congress to make an unpopular decision.

As for what Congress will do, Obama is taking a gamble, but not as big a gamble as Britain’s prime minister David Cameron took when he got defeated in parliament. Chances are, Congress will bloviate on the issues, tip their hats in the direction of a president who was polite enough to ask their opinions and then, since they don’t really have any, they’ll mostly line up behind him support his decision and sing the praises of the men and women of America’s armed services.

Since Obama has introduced an element that up until now was not part of the debate — that this attack once authorized could come at any time at all — there is another course of action that the White House should consider and that might actually make more sense even to those who remain mesmerized by the supposed utility of America’s military strength: use it as an ongoing deterrent rather than an instrument of punishment. In other words, once Obama has been given the green light from Congress, U.S. battleships can then hold their positions off the coast of Syria indefinitely ready to strike without warning.

If the goal is simply to prevent further use of chemical weapons, the threat of an attack of indeterminate scope is likely to have much more impact on Assad’s calculations than the memory of an attack his forces managed to survive.

Obviously, there are more constructive courses of action that America and its allies should pursue that would not involve either the threat or use of military strikes, but since strikes themselves are the focus of the current debate, then it’s surely preferable to think about using that particular form of power in the most intelligent way possible.

This may be the one and only time I ever quote Infowars, but at least on this occasion it’s worth pointing out why in the following instance (and no doubt too many others), it’s a boneheaded operation.

During his State Department speech today [Friday], Secretary of State John Kerry grossly misrepresented the facts about the chemical attack at Ghouta near Damascus.

“The United States government now knows that at least 1,429 Syrians were killed in this attack, including at least 426 children,” Kerry said. “I’m not asking you to take my word for it. Read for yourself, everyone… the evidence from thousands of sources, evidence that is already publicly available,” he added.

According to the international aid group Doctors Without Borders, however, 355 people were killed, not the wildly exaggerated figure cited by Kerry.

To inflate 355 deaths to 1,429 would certainly be a wild exaggeration. But did Doctors Without Borders report that just 355 people were killed?

No.

This is what they said:

Three hospitals in Syria’s Damascus governorate that are supported by the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) have reported to MSF that they received approximately 3,600 patients displaying neurotoxic symptoms in less than three hours on the morning of Wednesday, August 21, 2013. Of those patients, 355 reportedly died.

That’s 355 people who survived the attack, were taken to one of the three hospitals referred to, and then died.

A lethal dose of sarin can kill someone in one minute. The majority of the children who died in the attack most likely died before they could even crawl out of bed. The 3,600 people who reached a hospital were those who had suffered less exposure. Most of the dead probably didn’t get outside their homes.

When I say Infowars is a boneheaded operation, I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt. I’m assuming their analysis is stupid and not purposefully deceptive.

And as I’ve said repeatedly over the last week, there are many good reasons to oppose the imminent U.S. military strikes on Syria. But those who minimize the scale of the chemical attack, or based on minimal evidence insist that it must have been launched by the opposition, do two things:

1. They undermine their own credibility.
2. By arguing from what is increasingly exposed as a false position they thereby empower those they are arguing against.

If the Obama administration sounds more credible in its assessment of what happened on August 21, then more Americans will be inclined to accept the administration’s determination of an appropriate response to the attacks.

What the administration has utterly failed to do and has not even attempted, is to explain why anyone should expect or have any confidence that the strikes it has planned will actually have their intended effect — to deter any future chemical attacks.

Since President Obama has already made it clear that neither he, nor the Pentagon, nor most Americans have any appetite to enter a broader military intervention in Syria, the punitive strikes that seem likely to take place in the coming hours, may prompt the Assad regime to plan and carry out yet another chemical attack.

The follow-up attack may be smaller than the one on August 21. It may again occur with conflicting assertions about who is responsible and yet it will almost certainly accomplish its strategic objective: to confront the United States with an impossible choice — to either ignore the attack and thereby demonstrate that the first “punishment” was less than ineffective; or, to get drawn into a cycle of escalation that almost every American wants to avoid.

And just in case anyone thinks that’s a piece of wild conjecture I plucked out of thin air, in fact it comes from the former U.S. ambassador to Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker.

President Obama says he hasn’t made a decision on whether to launch a military strike on Syria. Having consulted with his national security team and with foreign allies, the one person he might wish he could secretly consult would be the Syrian president himself. After all, since the White House has made it abundantly clear that the widely announced coming attack (assuming it happens) will be limited in scope, it’s effect will largely be determined by Bashar al-Assad. This might be what Bashar would tell Barack:

I’ve looked at your options, and I’m going to be honest here, I feel for you. Not exactly an embarrassment of riches you’ve got to choose from, strategy-wise. I mean, my God, there are just so many variables to consider, so many possible paths to choose, each fraught with incredible peril, and each leading back to the very real, very likely possibility that no matter what you do it’s going to backfire in a big, big way. It’s a good old-fashioned mess, is what this is! And now, you have to make some sort of decision that you can live with.

So, where do I begin? Well, this is just the tip of the iceberg, but let’s start with the fact that my alliance with Russia and China means that nothing you decide to do will have the official support of the UN Security Council. So, right off the bat, I’ve already eliminated the possibility of a legally sound united coalition like in Libya or the First Gulf War. Boom. Gone. Off the table.

Now, let’s say you’re okay with that, and you decide to go ahead with, oh, I don’t know, a bombing campaign. Now, personally, I can see how that might seem like an attractive option for you. No boots on the ground, it sends a clear message, you could cripple some of my government’s infrastructure, and it’s a quick, clean, easy way to punish me and make you look strong in the face of my unimaginable tyranny. But let’s get real here. Any bombing campaign capable of being truly devastating to my regime would also end up killing a ton of innocent civilians, as such things always do, which I imagine is the kind of outcome you people would feel very guilty about. You know, seeing as you are so up in arms to begin with about innocent Syrians dying. Plus, you’d stoke a lot of anti-American hatred and quite possibly create a whole new generation of Syrian-born jihadists ready to punish the United States for its reckless warmongering and yadda yadda yadda.

Okay, what else? Well, you could play small-ball and hope that limited airstrikes to a few of my key military installations will send me the message to refrain from using chemical weapons again, but, c’mon, check me out: I’m ruthless, I’m desperate, and I’m going to do everything I can to stay in power. I’d use chemical weapons again in a heartbeat. You know that. And I know you know that. Hell, I want to help you guys out here, but you gotta be realistic. Trust me, I am incapable of being taught a lesson at this point. Got it? I am too far gone. Way too far gone.

Oh, and I know some of you think a no-fly zone will do the trick, but we both know you can’t stomach the estimated $1 billion a month that would cost, so wave bye-bye to that one, too.

Moving on.

I suppose you could always, you know, not respond with military force at all. But how can you do that? I pumped sarin gas into the lungs of my own people, for God’s sake! You can’t just let me get away with that, can you? I mean, I guess you easily could, and spare yourself all of this headache, but then you would probably lose any of your remaining moral high ground on the world stage and make everything from the Geneva Conventions to America’s reputation as a beacon for freedom and democracy around the world look like a complete sham.

And, hey, as long as we’re just throwing stuff out there, let’s consider a ground invasion for a moment. Now, even if you could reasonably fund a ground invasion, which I’m pretty sure you can’t, what exactly would such an invasion accomplish in the long term? I suppose it’s possible that you could come in and sweep me out the door and that would be the end of it. It’s possible. You know, like, in the sense that seeing a majestic white Bengal tiger in the wild is possible. Or, more likely, you could find yourself entrenched in a full-blown civil war that drags on for 15 years and sets off further turmoil in the rest of the region, leading to even more dead bodies for your country and mine, and even more virulent hatred of America. In fact, boy, maybe this is the one option that should be totally off the table.

Oh, and speaking of me being toppled from power, let’s say, just for fun, that tomorrow I were to somehow be dethroned. Who’s in charge? Half of these rebel groups refuse to work with one another and it’s getting harder to tell which ones are actually just Islamic extremists looking to fill a potential power vacuum. We’ve got Christians, Sunnis, and Shias all poised to fight one another for control should I fall. You want to be the ones sorting through that mess when you’re trying to build a new government? I didn’t think so.

As Marsha Cohen notes, some of the most astute political commentary these days comes in the form of satire, and no, the words above did not actually come from Bashar al-Assad — they came from the Onion.

At the same time, there are quite a few professional political commentators whose work might benefit a bit if they injected a bit of irony into their observations.

A few days ago a blog post at The Nation on “The Moral Obscenities in Syria” solemnly featured the favorite question of all conspiracy theorists: Cui bono? Who benefits?

It’s a reasonable question. But by this point, when it comes to the chemical attacks in Damascus, it’s an easy question to answer: Assad, of course.

Whether Assad planned the attack, authorized it, or even knew about it before it captured the headlines, is by now besides the point.

Whether by accident or by design, this has turned out to be one of the most grizzly master-strokes in the whole conflict.

If 100,000 deaths exposed Western indifference to the plight of Syrians, 1,400 additional deaths are now exposing the impotence of the most powerful nation on earth and the weakness of the man who tries to play the role of the most powerful man on earth. And that’s the problem with both these expressions of American hubris: they only hold up when left untested.

American power might be more sustainable if it had more subtlety and didn’t allow itself to always ultimately be reduced to a display of pyrotechnics. Yes, Americans have great skill in setting off explosions — in the art of shock and awe — but when was the last time one of these performances actually accomplished something useful?

President Obama might feel like he’s rounding out his experience of presidential power if he gives the order for a fusillade of cruise missile strikes on Syria some time in the next few days, but to what end?

Years hence, when Obama feels safe enough to give an honest explanation for why he acted, will it be any better than Bill Clinton’s explanation for his relationship with Monica Lewinsky? “I did something for the worst possible reason — just because I could,” he said. “I think that’s just about the most morally indefensible reason anybody could have for doing anything.”

With a preponderance of the evidence always pointing strongly in the direction of the Assad regime being responsible for the chemical attack, the most pressing question has never been, who did it? but rather, what is an appropriate response?

In 2006, after a Hezbollah ambush resulted in eight Israeli soldiers getting killed and two captured, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert launched a war in which he said that Hezbollah’s stronghold in Southern Lebanon would be bombed “back into the stone age”. But after a month of devastating air strikes, Hezbollah, far from having been crushed, had demonstrated its capacity to withstand the assault. Once the fighting ended, Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah was able to declare that Hezbollah had achieved a “divine victory” and his popularity soared across the Arab world among both Shia and Sunnis.

Likewise, an American attack on Assad’s military infrastructure — an attack which will be small in comparison to Israel’s assault on Lebanon — is pretty much guaranteed to leave the Syrian leader stronger. He will have faced and withstood American might and his willingness to use chemical weapons may not even have been diminished.

Even if his use of chemical weapons in the future turns out to be more cautious, the August 21 attack will still serve as a reminder of his force’s capabilities. Just as the Deir Yassin massacre in Palestine in 1948 demonstrated, a relatively small massacre can have a huge effect in terrorizing a population.

Assad has arguably already demonstrated the value of his chemical weapons arsenal even if he never uses it again. And Obama’s message to Assad — his “punishment” for using prohibited weapons — is likely to telegraph to the Syrian people the opposite message: that there is no limit on the number of people the regime slaughters so long as their deaths are bloody — the kinds of deaths the world deems tolerable.