Top US Military Officer: America Is Considering Entering Syrian War
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, the highest-ranking American military officer
America’s top military officer
told a Senate committee that the Obama administration is considering the
use of military force in Syria, Richard Lardner of the Associated Press reports.
U.S. Army General Martin Dempsey testified that he has provided President Barack Obama withoptions for the use of force in Syria, including “kinetic strikes.”
The military is constantly laying
out potential courses of action, but Dempsey’s comments signal at least
a willingness to directly enter the conflict.
The issue “is under deliberation
inside of our agencies of government,” the four-star general said,
adding that ”it would be inappropriate for me to try to influence the
decision with me rendering an opinion in public about what kind of force
we should use.”
In March Dempsey implied military
force would be a bad idea: “I don’t think at this point I can see a
military option that would create an understandable outcome. And until I
do, it would be my advice to proceed cautiously.”
U.S. military options range from one-off missile strikes on infrastructure linked to chemical weapons, to funneling more weapons to rebels, to carving out no-fly zones, and even as far asputting 20,000 U.S. troops in Jordan for a ground invasion.
“Senator, I am in favor of
building a moderate opposition and supporting it,” Dempsey said on
Thursday. “The question whether to support it with direct kinetic
strikes … is a decision for our elected officials, not for the senior
military leader of the nation” (emphasis ours).
Also on the table are drone strikes targeting rebels linked to al-Qaeda, which indicates that America would actually be attacking the strongest elements on both sides of the conflict.
Consequently, all signs point to a quagmire as American goals would include attempting to arm only moderate rebels and marginalizing the opposition’s best forces while simultaneously attempting to topple Assad’s regime.
Meanwhile Assad has regained the upper hand on the battlefield in the west of the country while j ihadists control much of the north and east.
“Assad is powerful now, not as a
president who controls a state but as a warlord, as someone who has more
and more sophisticated weapons than the others,” said Hassan Hassan , a Syrian journalist at the Abu Dhabi-based English-language newspaper The National, told The New York Times . “He is not capable of winning back the country.”
The scope of the conflict continues to get larger as Syria’s borders blur, which provides an opportunity for the radical rebels in Lebanon and northeastern Syria.
Dempsey’s statements come days after the U.N. envoy to Iraq told the U.N. Security Council that
the Syrian civil war and the escalating violence in neighboring Iraq
can no longer be separated because “the battlefields are merging.”
The envoy, Martin Kobler, noted
that the last four months have been among the bloodiest in Iraq in the
last five years as nearly 3,000 people have been killed and more 7,000
injured.
“These countries are interrelated,” Kobler stressed. “Iraq is the fault line between the Shia and the Sunni world.”
The Iraqi government has backed Assad, but Sunni jihadists in Iraq’s western Anbar province have poured into Syria to fight with al-Qaeda-affiliated rebels.
Basically, the U.S. would be throwing their hat into a very messy ring.
The CIA has a presence on at least three of Syria’s borders.
In March The Wall Street Journal reported that since 2011 the U.S. has been expanding the CIA’s role in Iraq as radical Syrian rebels threaten the border region.
Last June The New York Times reported that CIA officers in southern Turkey were funneling weapons to Syrian rebels.
In December NPR reported that CIA officers were training rebels in Jordan on how to identify and safeguard chemical weapons (while Der Spiegel reported that it had been happening since May).
In October and November we reported on potential but unconfirmed indications that the CIA may have been funneling heavy weapons from Benghazi, Libya to Turkey. Overt U.S. promises to provide arms to the Free Syrian Army have stalled amid concerns that the weapons would fall into the wrong hands.
The Syrian war began in March 2011 as a nonviolent revolution with
an Arab Spring “Day of Rage” when 200 mostly young protesters gathered
in the Syrian capital of Damascus to demand democratic reforms and the
ouster of President Bashar al-Assad.
Assad swiftly cracked down on the dissent, and over the next 28 months the conflict transformed into a proxy war and then a full-blown sectarian conflict exacerbated by by radical jihadists andlocal militias loyal to Assad.
Stratfor
Air superiority remains Assad’s greatest asset, but recently he has been bolstered by Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon, guerrilla training from Iran, and continued support from Russia.
In November Russia sent six warships from its Black Sea Fleet to the Mediterranean in response to the Israel-Gaza conflict. That month the U.S. also began making moves to increase the American military presence in the east Mediterranean.
In May a detachment from Russia’s Pacific Fleet entered the Mediterranean waters for the first time since the Cold War, a nd the next month the Kremlin sent its only aircraft carrier to the region.
“The Russian Defense Ministry
started setting up a special force of warships in the Mediterranean in
order to protect Russia’s interests in the region,” Syria’s state-run
news agency, citing a spokesman for Russia defense ministry, reported.
Google Maps
The port of Tartus (A), which is the last Russian military facility outside the former Soviet Union.
Over the course of the conflict, the Kremlin has provided Assad with supplies including guns, grenades, tank parts, fighter jets, advanced antiship cruise missiles, long-range air defense missiles, military officers as advisors, diplomatic cover, and lots of cash.
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