National Journal reports: Billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who spent tens of millions of dollars trying to defeat President Obama last year, has a message for the White House: Call me.

In an interview with National Journal, Adelson said he stands behind the White House’s push for American military action against the Syrian government. Perhaps as important, Adelson said he’s ready, if asked, to roll up his sleeves and help Obama — the “commander in chief,” as he repeatedly referred to him — corral the needed votes in Congress for a strike.

“He is our commander in chief, whether we like what he says politically or not,” Adelson said late Monday evening.

The 80-year-old, one of the most influential GOP moneymen in the nation, is no Obama apologist. He’s still the financier who, along with his wife, spent nearly $100 million trying to defeat Democratic candidates, Obama chief among them, last year. But he is also a pro-Israel hawk who said America’s standing in the world is at stake in the showdown with Syria over chemical weapons.

“I would be willing to help out the administration, because I believe it’s the right thing to do. He is our only — we don’t have any other commander in chief,” he said.

The comments are Adelson’s first public remarks on the Syria situation, although the Republican Jewish Coalition, an advocacy group that he chairs, came out in support of a Syria strike last week. His offer of a helping hand came as Russia floated a diplomatic solution in which Damascus would cede its chemical weapons to avoid a strike, something Obama called a potential “breakthrough” on Monday. [Continue reading…]

The Wall Street Journal reports: With a U.S. attack on Syria on hold, Western-backed rebels said they feared they had lost their best chance of promptly ousting President Bashar al-Assad and sidelining Islamist extremists.

Rebels in Syria, already frustrated with delays in promised U.S. military aid, said on Wednesday that they gave up on the prospect of decisive foreign help after President Barack Obama asked Congress to delay a vote on striking Syria.

Mr. Obama put U.S. military momentum on pause on Tuesday night to give time for diplomacy to run its course, after a Russian proposal that Damascus hand over its chemical weapons, an effort to avert an attack.

The Obama administration moved on Wednesday to follow up on the Russian proposal, with Secretary of State John Kerry heading to Geneva to meet Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.

Britain, France and the U.S. presented proposals for a Security Council resolution to Russia in New York on Wednesday, though a Western diplomat said negotiations on a text wouldn’t begin until after the outcome of the Kerry-Lavrov meetings.

“The revolution is dead. It was sold,” said Mohammad al-Daher, a commander in the rebels’ Western-backed Free Syrian Army. “People used to assume that Assad will be gone, no question. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the end result of these negotiations is that he remains as president and beyond that, turns into a national hero who saved his country.” [Continue reading…]

The Washington Post reports: The CIA has begun delivering weapons to rebels in Syria, ending months of delay in lethal aid that had been promised by the Obama administration, according to U.S. officials and Syrian figures. The shipments began streaming into the country over the past two weeks, along with separate deliveries by the State Department of vehicles and other gear — a flow of material that marks a major escalation of the U.S. role in Syria’s civil war.

The arms shipments, which are limited to light weapons and other munitions that can be tracked, began arriving in Syria at a moment of heightened tensions over threats by President Obama to order missile strikes to punish the regime of Bashar al-Assad for his alleged use of chemical weapons in a deadly attack near Damascus last month.

The arms are being delivered as the United States is also shipping new types of nonlethal gear to rebels. That aid includes vehicles, sophisticated communications equipment and advanced combat medical kits.

U.S. officials hope that, taken together, the weapons and gear will boost the profile and prowess of rebel fighters in a conflict that started about 2½ years ago.

Although the Obama administration signaled months ago that it would increase aid to Syrian rebels, the efforts have lagged because of the logistical challenges involved in delivering equipment in a war zone and officials’ fears that any assistance could wind up in the hands of jihadists. Secretary of State John F. Kerry had promised in April that the nonlethal aid would start flowing “in a matter of weeks.” [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: A surge of clashes in Syria’s oil-producing northeast has killed dozens of rebels and Kurdish fighters in the past two days, activists said on Thursday, in fighting that highlights a struggle for territory and resources.

Fighters from Syria’s ethnic Kurdish minority – roughly 10 percent of the 23-million-strong population – have carved out an increasingly autonomous region near the frontiers with Iraq and Turkey.

Syrian Kurdish militants, particularly the armed wing of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), have repeatedly clashed with opposition fighters led by al Qaeda-linked units in the region as government forces retreated over the past year.

The fighting has underlined the growing complexity of Syria’s conflict which started with largely peaceful protests against President Bashar al-Assad and degenerated into a civil war that has killed more than 100,000 people.

Divisions in Syria along ethnic and sectarian lines – as well as the rise of radical Islamist units that have come to dominate the rebel movement – have made Western powers including the United States more hesitant to get directly involved in the 2-1/2-year-old uprising.

The Kurdish PYD’s military wing blamed al Qaeda-linked groups for the latest violence, saying fighters from the Nusra Front and Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) attacked a string of Kurdish villages in Hasaka province.

Heavy artillery and tanks were used, it said. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: Washington and Moscow are taking applause for a possible diplomatic bargain to have Syria hand over its chemical arsenal.

U.S. President Barack Obama has put off a congressional vote on attacking Syria that he was likely to lose; Russia, having presented the idea, can now present itself as peacemaker after two years of Western criticism that it is shielding a tyrant.

Yet the ultimate victor could be President Bashar al-Assad. And, if past experience with international cooperation on Syria is repeated, the main losers may be other Syrians, of whom more than 100,000 have been killed and over 6 million made homeless since Assad cracked down on demands for democracy in 2011.

For all the talk of a deal that may ease a dilemma for Western leaders seeking a politically acceptable response to a poison gas attack on August 21, few Syrians see it as any solution to the greater crisis their nation faces.

Chemical weapons account for perhaps 2 percent of deaths in the civil war; in the three weeks since toxins killed some 1,400 people near Damascus, according to U.S. officials, conventional bombs and bullets have killed more than twice that number.

Assad, who calls his enemies terrorists and highlights the role of Islamist militants, grows in confidence as the threat of U.S. strikes fades and diplomacy affords him legitimacy.

“Syria and its allies are trying to buy time and avert Western action at all costs, while the Obama administration is also looking for time in the face of an uncertain congressional landscape,” said James Fallon of consultancy Control Risks.

“The proposal is of considerable short-term diplomatic utility but is unlikely to form the basis for long-term compromise.”

Those living in rebel-held areas say they now fear more years of attacks by weapons just as deadly and terrifying as nerve gas, but lacking the taboo, all while the world focuses on the minutiae of how to destroy Syria’s chemical arms. [Continue reading…]

Micah Zenko writes: Over the past two years, many thoughtful pieces have advocated for U.S. military intervention in Syria’s civil war. A review of such pieces reveals three core justifications: protecting civilians; altering the battlefield to help topple Assad or facilitate a diplomatic solution; and countering Iranian influence in the region. Very few have emphasized the need for the U.S. military to uphold international norms.

However, since the White House recently made norm-enforcement the primary, professed basis for attacking Syria, intervention advocates have adopted this reasoning. Indicative of this shift, in the 24 months preceding Secretary of State John Kerry’s August 26 speech, the words “international norm” and “Syria” appeared together 263 times in the 6,075 English-language news publications surveyed by the search engine Lexis Nexis, and 792 times in the 13 days after. Naturally, the normative argument has also become fodder for those opposing intervention, with Sen. Ted Cruz proclaiming on Sunday, “I don’t think that’s the job of our military, to be defending amorphous international norms.”

There are two fundamental questions at the heart of this debate that are worth discussing: what, exactly, norms are and how a state can and should go about enforcing them. The answers to these questions, taken together with recent, contradictory statements by the administration about its aims, reveal that, when it comes to international normative arguments, the U.S. is on shaky ground with its quest to strike Syria.

Norms, defined as “shared expectations about appropriate behavior held by a community of actors,” are socially constructed, highly contested, and forever changing. In international relations, both weak and powerful states attempt to promote and socialize norms that are in their own self-interest, while diminishing the salience of those that are not. As political scientist Ward Thomas notes, norms are “both products of and constraints upon state action, serving an essentially instrumental purpose.” For example, President Richard Nixon unilaterally abandoned U.S. offensive biological weapons programs (over the unanimous objection of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) in part for moral and diplomatic reasons, but also for material ones: Biological weapons provided no strategic deterrent advantages over nuclear weapons.

As compared to other norms, the one against the use of chemical weapons in warfare is widely endorsed, meeting international relations scholar Jeffrey Legro’s three criteria for what constitutes a robust norm: specificity, durability, and concordance. Somewhat counterintuitively, the norm’s durability has been further reinforced in Syria: Assad has been compelled to claim that he has never used chemical weapons, and his patron, Russia, is contending that chemical weapons attacks have only been conducted by rebel forces. Since Syrian security forces have not deployed chemical weapons in a widespread and indiscriminate manner since the opening days of the civil war, Assad has not embraced their use. He has also negotiated the — albeit delayed and constrained — United Nations chemical weapons inspection team access to sites where the attacks occurred to collect physical evidence.

With an understanding of what constitutes norms, the more pointed version of the second question of interest here is whether the U.S. bombing of Syria, with little overt or direct international support, would be the most widely accepted and enduring means of enforcing the norm against chemical weapons. As one senior administration official warned, “[D]oing nothing sends a message… that you can carry out chemical weapons attacks with impunity.” This assumes both that any alternatives to military force are “nothing,” and that the only way to enforce this international norm is with a few days of cruise missiles and airstrikes.

Unfortunately for the White House, there are norms about enforcement that contrast with its approach. Syria is a state party to the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which prohibits the use of “asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases” in warfare, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which forbids the arbitrary deprivation of life. Neither of these treaties allows for a single country to be the arbiter and enforcement authority. Most world leaders and international lawyers believe Syria’s referral to the International Criminal Court, U.N. Human Rights Council, and/or the Security Council must be the first step before collective enforcement and punishment procedures are chosen.

If President Obama does not follow any of these near universally accepted enforcement procedures, and — with or without Congress’s approval — authorizes a near-unilateral attack against Assad regime targets, the U.S. will be derided, rejected, or ignored by much of the international community. An attack would build upon the already long and tragic history of American military involvement in the Middle East. Nobody in the region, or elsewhere for that matter, would conceive of this particular intervention in isolation from all the U.S. troops, missiles, and bombs that preceded them. Nothing captures public attention and anger like widely televised and well reported uses of military force. Should Obama proceed on the current path, the world will again remember America’s bombs far longer than the horrendous war crime that they were a response to. [Continue reading…]

USA Today reports: A deal allowing Bashar Assad to surrender Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles runs the risk of extending his stay in power and undercutting support of rebels who have been fighting his regime with U.S. support, some analysts say.

“Assad is going to come out of this stronger,” said Flynt Leverett, a former National Security Council official who is now a professor at Penn State.

Instead of an attack that could weaken Syria’s military, particularly its ability to use chemical weapons, negotiations with Assad’s government could strengthen the Syrian leader, Leverett and others say.

No deal has been struck yet and the United States could still go ahead with a planned cruise missile strike if no agreement is reached, President Obama said in an address to the country Tuesday night.

The president asked Congress to postpone a vote on military action while pursuing diplomacy. But Obama said military action could still be used if diplomacy failed.

The plan was developed by Russia and would be formalized by the United Nations.

Analysts say the risk is that Russia and Syria will be tough negotiators who will use the talks as an attempt to build protection for Assad in return for giving up his regime’s chemical weapons, attempting to trade chemical weapons for allowing Assad to stay in power.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has served as Russia’s permanent representative to the United Nations and understands the institution well, Leverett said. He has a reputation as a tough negotiator.

The process of removing Assad’s chemical weapons could take years, giving Assad and his Russian allies time. The destruction of Libya’s main chemical stockpiles were only completed this year, nearly 10 years after Moammar Gadhafi said he would relinquish his nuclear program and chemical weapons stockpiles.

During that time, Assad will likely be able to continue battling rebels while dealing with weapons inspectors and attempting to consolidate his power.

“In a sense it gives the regime permission to fire as much as it wants” if it doesn’t use chemical weapons, said Jeffrey White, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former Defense Intelligence Agency official. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: Syrian warplanes bombed rebel suburbs of Damascus on Tuesday for the first time in three weeks, in an offensive that opposition activists said showed President Bashar al-Assad no longer feared attack by the United States.

Not seen in action around the capital since before August 21, when hundreds of people were killed in a poison gas attack that Western powers blame on Assad, government jets mounted attacks on three areas, some in support of assaults on the ground.

As world leaders discussed a Russian proposal to confiscate Syria’s chemical weapons and avert U.S. and French action, some of the heaviest fighting was in Barzeh, just north of central Damascus, where residents and opposition activists said air strikes and tank fire supported thrusts by pro-Assad militia.

The Syrian state news agency said troops “inflicted casualties on terrorists” in Barzeh and neighboring Qaboun.

“Even if the Russian initiative fails, the regime has at least bought itself time,” opposition activist Salah Mohammad said. “It seems to be calculating that no strike is coming soon.”

Mohammad said jets had staged three air raids on Barzeh on Tuesday while tanks on the heights of Qasioun mountain and in the government-held city center shelled the area in support of attacks by shabbiha militiamen pushing in to Barzeh from Ish al-Warwar, a district dominated by Assad’s minority Alawite sect.

“The fighting is heavy on that front,” Mohammed said. “The streets are narrow and tanks cannot be deployed.”

A woman living in Damascus said she could see shells hitting Barzeh, apparently fired from Qasioun. Speaking anonymously for fear of reprisals, she said: “Since chemical weapons are a red line, it seems the world has decided it is OK for Assad to destroy Damascus with conventional weapons.” [Continue reading…]

The summary of a newly released Human Rights Watch report says: This report details two alleged chemical weapons attacks in Syria on the opposition-controlled Damascus suburbs of Eastern and Western Ghouta, located 16 kilometers apart, on the morning of August 21, 2013. The attacks killed hundreds of civilians, including large numbers of children. Human Rights Watch analyzed witness accounts of the rocket attacks, information on the likely source of the attacks, the physical remnants of the weapon systems used, and the medical symptoms exhibited by the victims of the attack as documented by medical staff.

Our investigation finds that the August 21 attacks were likely chemical weapons attacks using a surface-to-surface rocket system of approximately 330mm in diameter—likely Syrian-produced—and a Soviet-era 140mm surface-to-surface rocket system to deliver a nerve agent. Evidence suggests the agent was most likely Sarin or a similar weapons-grade nerve agent. Three local doctors told Human Rights Watch that victims of the attacks showed symptoms which are consistent with exposure to nerve gas, including suffocation; constricted, irregular, and infrequent breathing; involuntary muscle spasms; nausea; frothing at the mouth; fluid coming out of noses and eyes; convulsing; dizziness; blurred vision; and red and irritated eyes, and pin-point pupils.

The evidence concerning the type of rockets and launchers used in these attacks strongly suggests that these are weapon systems known and documented to be only in the possession of, and used by, Syrian government armed forces. Human Rights Watch and arms experts monitoring the use of weaponry in Syria have not documented Syrian opposition forces to be in the possession of the 140mm and 330mm rockets used in the attack, or their associated launchers.

The Syrian government has denied its responsibility for the attack, and has blamed opposition groups, but has presented no evidence to back up its claims. Based on the available evidence, Human Rights Watch finds that Syrian government forces were almost certainly responsible for the August 21 attacks, and that a weapons-grade nerve agent was delivered during the attack using specially designed rocket delivery systems. The scale and coordinated nature of the two attacks; against opposition-held areas; the presence of government-controlled potential launching sites within range of the targets; the pattern of other recent alleged chemical weapon attacks against opposition-held areas using the same 330mm rocket delivery system; and the documented possession of the 140mm and 330mm rocket systems able to deliver chemical weapons in the government arsenal—all point towards Syrian government responsibility for the attacks.

Human Rights Watch has investigated alternative claims that opposition forces themselves were responsible for the August 21 attacks, and has found such claims lacking in credibility and inconsistent with the evidence found at the scene. Claims that the August 21 deaths were caused by an accidental explosion by opposition forces mishandling chemical weapons in their possession are inconsistent with large numbers of deaths at two locations 16 kilometers apart, and documentation of rocket attacks on the sites that morning, as evidenced by witness accounts, the damage visible on the rockets themselves, and their impact craters.

The New York Times reports: Spread far and wide across Syria, the chemical weapons complex of the fractured state includes factories, bunkers, storage depots and thousands of munitions, all of which would have to be inspected and secured under a diplomatic initiative that President Obama says he is willing to explore.

But monitoring and securing unconventional weapons have proved challenging in places like Iraq, North Korea and Iran — even in peacetime. Syria is bound up in the third year of a bloody civil war, with many of the facilities squarely in battlefields.

“I’m very concerned about the fine print,” said Amy E. Smithson, an expert on chemical weapons at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California. “It’s a gargantuan task for the inspectors to mothball production, install padlocks, inventory the bulk agent as well as the munitions. Then a lot of it has to be destroyed — in a war zone.”

“What I’m saying is, ‘Beware of this deal,’ ” Dr. Smithson added. “It’s deceptively attractive.”

As difficult as it may be to reach a diplomatic solution to head off a United States strike on Syria, the details of enforcement are themselves complex and uncertain, people with experience monitoring weapons facilities said.

Syria would first have to provide specifics about all aspects of its chemical weapons program. But even that step would require negotiation to determine exactly what should be declared and whether certain systems would be covered, because many delivery systems for chemical weapons — including artillery, mortars and multiple-rocket launchers — can also fire conventional weapons.

Then, experts said, large numbers of foreign troops would almost certainly be needed to safeguard inspectors working in the midst of the civil war.

“We’re talking boots on the ground,” said one former United Nations weapons inspector from Iraq, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he still works in the field on contracts and did not want to hurt his chances of future employment. “We’re not talking about just putting someone at the gate. You have to have layers of security.”

Destruction and deactivation of those weapons could then take years. [Continue reading…]

Foreign Policy: Even before President Barack Obama put his plans to strike the Syrian regime on hold, he was losing the battle of public opinion about military intervention. Part of the credit, no doubt, goes to a successful media blitz by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and its supporters. In an interview aired on Monday night, Assad himself advanced his government’s case to Charlie Rose, saying that the United States had not presented “a single shred of evidence” proving the Syrian military had used chemical weapons.

Assad has always been able to skillfully parry Western journalists’ criticisms of his regime — and, at times, it has won him positive international coverage. Before the uprising, the U.S. media often described the Assad family as Westernized leaders who were trying to bring their country into the 21st century. The most infamous example was Vogue‘s profile of Asma al-Assad, which described Syria’s first lady as “a thin, long-limbed beauty with a trained analytic mind … [with] a killer IQ.” But even experts in the field went along: Middle East historian David Lesch wrote a biography of Bashar describing the president as a modernizer, before changing his mind during the uprising.

The carnage over the past two and a half years put an end to much of this praise — but now pro-Assad media outlets have found a new way to influence the American debate. Assad supporters’ claims have repeatedly been republished unquestioningly by right-wing commentators in the United States, who share their hostility toward both Sunni Islamists and the Obama administration. It’s a strange alliance between American conservatives and a regime that was one of America’s first designated state sponsors of terror, and continues to work closely with Iran and Hezbollah.

“There is evidence — mounting evidence — that the rebels in Syria did indeed frame Assad for the chemical attack,” conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh told his audience on Sept. 3. “But not only that, but Obama, the regime, may have been complicit in it. Mounting evidence that the White House knew and possibly helped plan the Syrian chemical weapon attack by the opposition!”

Limbaugh’s cited an article by Yossef Bodansky on Global Research, a conspiracy website that has advanced a pro-Assad message during the current crisis. “How can the Obama administration continue to support and seek to empower the opposition which had just intentionally killed some 1,300 innocent civilians?” Bodansky asked.

Bodansky is an ally of Bashar’s uncle, Rifaat al-Assad — he pushed him as a potential leader of Syria in 2005. Rifaat is the black sheep of the Assad family: He spearheaded the Syrian regime’s brutal crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood in the early 1980s, but then was forced into exile after he tried to seize power from his brother, President Hafez al-Assad, in 1983. Despite his ouster, however, Rifaat is just as hostile to a Sunni Islamist takeover as other members of the Assad family — a position Bodansky appears to share. Ending Alawite rule in Syria, Bodansky wrote on another pro-Assad website, “will cause cataclysmic upheaval throughout the greater Middle East.” [Continue reading…]

The Wall Street Journal reports: Syria said it would cease production of chemical weapons and disclose the locations of its stockpiles to the United Nations, Russia and others, as Damascus seized on a possible diplomatic route to avert international military action.

The statement by Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem represented the first direct admission by the Syrian government that it possesses chemical weapons. Mr. Moallem said Syria aimed to sign the international convention banning chemical weapons.

The offer came as Syria’s ally Russia clashed with France over a possible U.N. Security Council resolution aimed at forcing Syria to hand over its stockpiles, following what the U.S. and France said was the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons in an attack outside Damascus on Aug. 21.

Syria has denied a role in the attack, blaming opposition rebels in the country’s 2½-year old civil war.

President Barack Obama has mounted a campaign at home and abroad for support for military action to punish Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime for the attacks.

That campaign, and U.S. congressional debate over supporting military action, have been sidetracked by a Russian proposal that led to Syria’s unexpected offer.

Mr. Obama has agreed to explore the possibility of a Syrian chemical-weapons handover, the White House said, even as he continued to seek support for a U.S. military strike from a reluctant Congress.

Mr. Obama traveled to the Capitol to meet with Senate Democrats and Republicans on Tuesday, ahead of a prime-time speech to make his case to the American public. Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel again testified on Capitol Hill to press the case for military action.

Secretary of State John Kerry warned Tuesday that it would be “exceedingly difficult” for Syria to meet the international community’s conditions for giving up its chemical weapons and avoiding a threatened U.S. military strike.

But a new international debate also took shape over a possible U.N. resolution.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said France’s proposal would invoke Chapter 7, a clause that allows member states to use all possible means, including military action, to enforce a U.N. resolution.

Mr. Fabius said the resolution would call for consequences if the regime of Mr. Assad fails to comply with the proposed program, adding that “all options remain on the table.”

Russia’s Foreign Ministry rejected the French proposal because of the Chapter 7 reference, as well as the suggestion that the resolution would blame the Syrian government for deploying chemical weapons. [Continue reading…]

George Monbiot writes: You could almost pity these people. For 67 years successive US governments have resisted calls to reform the UN security council. They’ve defended a system which grants five nations a veto over world affairs, reducing all others to impotent spectators. They have abused the powers and trust with which they have been vested. They have collaborated with the other four permanent members (the UK, Russia, China and France) in a colonial carve-up, through which these nations can pursue their own corrupt interests at the expense of peace and global justice.

Eighty-three times the US has exercised its veto. On 42 of these occasions it has done so to prevent Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians being censured. On the last occasion, 130 nations supported the resolution but Barack Obama spiked it. Though veto powers have been used less often since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the US has exercised them 14 times in the interim (in 13 cases to shield Israel), while Russia has used them nine times. Increasingly the permanent members have used the threat of a veto to prevent a resolution being discussed. They have bullied the rest of the world into silence.

Through this tyrannical dispensation – created at a time when other nations were either broken or voiceless – the great warmongers of the past 60 years remain responsible for global peace. The biggest weapons traders are tasked with global disarmament. Those who trample international law control the administration of justice. [Continue reading…]

Note: Israel is by far the wealthiest country bordering Syria yet it hasn’t accepted any refugees. Some people may counter that Syrians wouldn’t want to seek refuge in the Jewish state. But Israel wouldn’t need to accommodate refugees inside Israel in order to accept them. Refugee camps could be created in the Golan Heights, which is to say, inside Israeli-occupied Syria.

Scott Lucas writes: Unresolved questions are flying over Russia’s proposal that Syria to give up chemical weapons stocks, in exchange for the US lifting its threat of airstrikes. Did Moscow seize upon a blunder by US Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday morning to make the proposal? Or did Russia and the Obama Administration work behind the scenes to come to an acceptable compromise?

In either case, the immediate outcome is that the Russians have gotten President Obama off the political hook.

Twenty-four hours ago, Obama was facing domestic and international humiliation, piled upon his indecision and mis-steps since the Assad regime’s August 21 chemical weapons attacks.

In the week following the attacks, the US President fumbled over whether the US would carry out a “limited” military response to the mass killing. Then on August 30, when US Secretary of State John Kerry finally put Washington on the verge of action with a tough speech, Obama abruptly changed course. The President believed a strike was necessary, but rather than taking the decision himself, he would put the issue to Congress.

For the sake of his domestic position, Obama had given the Assad regime a window of at least two weeks to resume a mass offensive against insurgent positions. But even the move on the home front was on the verge of backfiring last weekend: polling of Congressional representatives indicated there would be an embarrassing rejection of Obama’s proposal for limited intervention.

Other developments had hindered Obama. The British Parliament’s rejection of immediate action undermined a “coalition” for the airstrikes, and the President’s military has waged an internal but well-publicized battle against any intervention.

Still, the headline after Congress’s verdict looked set to be that the Commander-in-Chief had failed to Command.

And then on Monday, Russia offered salvation — whether as part of a smart, back-channel plan with the Americans or as an opportunistic gambit.

Moscow’s seizure of the political high ground, offering “peace” through Syria’s relinquishing of chemical weapons and the deferral of US airstrikes, meant that Obama could step back from the Congressional cliff. As the President told national television on Monday night that he supported the Russian plan in principle, the Senate postponed its vote, set for Wednesday. That in turn delays a decision by the House of Representatives, the more likely of the two chambers to reject intervention.

Of course, none of this — so far — offers a practical answer as to how Syria’s chemical weapons will be secured and handed over. Such a process is likely to take many weeks, and it can only be achieved if there is a cease-fire on the ground, a far-from-likely prospect. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reporting on comments made today by Syria’s foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem:

Mr. Moallem said later in a statement that his government welcomed the Russian proposal [to put Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons under international control and ultimately destroy them], Russia’s Interfax News Agency reported, in what appeared to be the first acknowledgment by the Syrian government that it even possesses chemical weapons. The Syrian government historically has neither confirmed nor denied possessing such weapons.

The New York Times, July 23, 2012:

Syrian officials warned Monday that they would deploy chemical weapons against any foreign intervention, a threat that appeared intended to ward off an attack by Western nations while also offering what officials in Washington called the most “direct confirmation” ever that Syria possesses a stockpile of unconventional armaments.

The warning came out of Damascus, veiled behind an assurance that the Syrian leadership would never use such weapons against its own citizens, describing chemical arms as outside the bounds of the kind of guerrilla warfare being fought internally.

“Any stock of W.M.D. or unconventional weapons that the Syrian Army possesses will never, never be used against the Syrian people or civilians during this crisis, under any circumstances,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Jihad Makdissi, said at a news conference shown live on Syrian state television, using the initials for weapons of mass destruction. “These weapons are made to be used strictly and only in the event of external aggression against the Syrian Arab Republic.”

Mr. Makdissi said that any such weapons were carefully monitored by the Syrian Army, and that ultimately their use would be decided by generals.

NBC News reports: With Obama set to address the nation Tuesday night to advocate U.S. intervention against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime, just 24 percent of Americans believe military action in response to Assad’s reported use of chemical weapons is in the United States’ interest.

CBS News: In an interview Monday, President Obama responded to a surprising late proposal that could head off a military strike against Syria. The Syrians agreed to a Russian proposal to put their chemical weapons under international control and destroy them.

I talked to President Obama about that, and about a threat Syrian dictator Bashar Assad made during an interview with Charlie Rose.

SCOTT PELLEY: Can you accept the Russian/Syrian proposal?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, we don’t know the details of it yet. But I think that it is a potentially positive development. I don’t think that we would’ve gotten to the point where they even put something out there publicly, had it not been — and if it doesn’t continue to be a credible — military threat from the United States and those who support Syria’s responses to what happened inside of Syria. But, you know, my central goal throughout this process has not been to embroil ourselves in a civil war in Syria.

I have shown great restraint, I think, over the last two years, despite the heartbreak that’s happened there. But what I have said is that the ban on chemical weapon use is something that is of U.S. national interest. It protects our troops, so that they don’t have to wear gas masks whenever they’re in theater, the weapons by definition are indiscriminate and don’t differentiate between somebody in uniform and a child.

Which is to say, they are unlike America’s smart weapons systems which have supernatural powers of discrimination and target the guilty while protecting the innocent.

Whoever heard of an American bomb killing innocent people? Unless of course they happened to be attending a wedding or engaged in some other kind of suspicious behavior.

No doubt a 2 per cent accuracy rate in differentiating between civilians and suspected terrorists leaves room for improvement, but having set the benchmark for indiscriminate killing in Hiroshima, the United States has been making huge strides ever since.

The 15,000 lb Daisy Cutter that has been replaced by the 22,000 lb Mother of All Bombs. The blast from the later produces a shock wave that can kill people up to 1.7 miles away and obliterates everything up to a 1,000 yards. Maybe that’s a bit indiscriminate.

Perhaps Obama can stand on more solid ground if he avoids suggesting that one weapons system is significantly more discriminating than another.

The indiscriminate nature of the violence used by the Assad regime has had less to do with differences between conventional and unconventional weapons, and much more to do with the fact that these weapons are being used to destroy whole cities in Syria and cause a quarter of the population to flee their homes.

The use of chemical weapons last month certainly had catastrophic results, but let’s keep in mind the big picture: Syria is a country with a government whose actions have resulted in more than 6 million people becoming homeless.