Thomas Friedman, "Caution, Curves Ahead": Let Them Bleed

In June 2012, Henry Kissinger weighed in on the issue of American intervention in the Syrian civil war in a Washington Post opinion piece entitled "Syrian intervention risks upsetting global order" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/syrian-intervention-risks-upsetting-global-order/2012/06/01/gJQA9fGr7U_story.html). Kissinger, a refugee from Nazi Germany, wrote:

"Military intervention, humanitarian or strategic, has two prerequisites: First, a consensus on governance after the overthrow of the status quo is critical. If the objective is confined to deposing a specific ruler, a new civil war could follow in the resulting vacuum, as armed groups contest the succession, and outside countries choose different sides. Second, the political objective must be explicit and achievable in a domestically sustainable time period. I doubt that the Syrian issue meets these tests. We cannot afford to be driven from expedient to expedient into undefined military involvement in a conflict taking on an increasingly sectarian character. In reacting to one human tragedy, we must be careful not to facilitate another."

This was written by the same man who advised President Nixon, when Israel was struggling against Egypt and Syria during the War of Atonement, to withhold supplies. Although the Arabs had been supplied with the latest Soviet weaponry, Kissinger reportedly told Nixon, "Let them [the Israelis] bleed a little."

This was written by the same man who also informed Nixon (see: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/us/politics/11nixon.html):

"The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy. And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern."

Maybe a "humanitarian concern"? Humanitarian concerns should not shape foreign policy? Every sinew in my body rebels against this noxious declaration.

Today, in a New York Times op-ed entitled "Caution, Curves Ahead" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/27/opinion/friedman-cautions-curves-ahead.html), Thomas Friedman similarly concludes with respect to Syria:

"I’m dubious that just arming 'nice' rebels will produce the Syria we want; it could, though, drag us in in ways we might not want. But if someone can make the case that arming the secular-nationalist rebels increases the chances of forcing Assad and the Russians into a settlement, and defeating the Islamists rebels after Assad falls, I’m ready to listen.

This is the problem from hell. Sometimes the necessary and desirable are impossible, which is why I commend the president on his caution, up to now."

Some 70,000 civilians have been killed by the Assad regime over the past three years, and Friedman is "commending" the president on his inaction?

The likelihood is indeed that when Assad is ultimately deposed, Syria's Sunnis, some 70 percent of the population, will seek revenge against Assad's Alawaite minority. And I hope at that time the world will do all in its power to protect innocents.

But just in case my soft-hearted pleas for mercy don't resonate with Tom, perhaps he should reconsider the vast stockpiles of chemical weapons that Assad has accumulated, and in whose hands this arsenal might ultimately find itself when Assad falls. There is every reason for the US to seek to achieve a desired outcome to this conflict, albeit without boots on the ground.

"Leading from behind" just doesn't cut it.