The Washington Post reports:
Syrian rebels battling the regime led by President Bashar al-Assad are running out of ammunition as black market supplies dry up, neighboring countries tighten their borders and international promises of help fail to materialize, according to rebel commanders and defected soldiers who have crossed into this Turkish border town in recent days in a quest for money to buy arms.
They describe what appear to be desperate conditions for the already lightly armed and loosely organized rebel force, made up of defected soldiers and civilians who in recent months have banded together in the name of the Free Syrian Army, transforming what had been an overwhelmingly peaceful uprising into an armed revolt.
This news, if true, is a tragedy and a disgrace. The Free Syrian Army is, at this point, the best chance to force Basher Assad and his criminal regime from power–if only by putting enough pressure on him to lead to a negotiated transition. Yet the Syrian army is on the offensive and, having taken Homs with great brutality, now has the rebels on the run–and the rebels can’t even find enough bullets with which to defend themselves.
It did not have to be this way. This is a direct result of the Obama administration’s failure to engage actively in favor of a revolt that could tip the balance of power in the Levant in favor of the West and against Iran and its allies. All sorts of arguments have been made as to why we should not arm the rebels. All need to be taken account, but none is particularly persuasive in light of the likely fact that, unless we do more to arm the rebels, Assad will remain in power and will remain more dependent than ever on Iranian support. This would be both a humanitarian and a strategic tragedy, hurting not only the people of Syria but American interests in the region. It is still not too late for the administration to act in concert with our allies. But time may be running out.
Well , Max , with reference to the Zen riddle of trees , sounds and listeners , this ain't news until the WaPo and the NYT wring their hands and tut-tut the farce cum disgrace after a decent interval to sanitize the issue . In an election year , Obama wants hisforeign affairs/national security problems to simply disappear . No messy foreign entanglements. And that includes you , Israel , Taiwan and S Korea , you're on your own
No good guys leading either side in this fight. n nAssad is a monster, granted. n nPitty the civilians. n nThey must be horribly confused. All this time, they thought it was Israel and Jews who were the monsters. n n
I turned on WIIFM (What's In It For Me), but when the subject was intervention in Syria, all I got was static. A weakened, bloody but secularist Assad clinging to power? A sectarian civil war with many thousands of refugees seeking entry into the US? A partition of Syria? A victory by divided rebels with a heavy Sunni Islamist component, after a bloody civil war? n nI see nothing in any of these results worth the bones of a single Appalachian grunt. The think-tankers might like writing op-eds about it now, and five or ten years from now books about how we screwed the pooch in yet another intervention, but for the good of the Republic, let's just say, "Mister, I ain't got no dog in that fight."
Think tanker, Grumps. One or two Senators. Maybe one or two. Think we're passing on this dogfight. Maybe the preceding Commentary story about Libyan militias gone wild has a passing connection to the intervention that isn't going to happen.
Um, Max, no, this is a direct result of Assad having regional friends with their own hegemonic clout, a major power protector, and a skittish collection of enemies, onlookers, and non-participants who still can't think of a good reason to become involved. And, as you note a functioning army and more than enough backstory about what happens to dictatorial satrapy cum one-party-bureaucratic sectarian oligarchies who give way. (cue to montage of heads on pikes, ex-grand number ones being rifle butted and stabbed on the sly while a surrounding mob cheers and holds up cell phones to catch the exquisite moment when cats-play turns into mouse dismemberment). America is supposed to do what exactly via what mesmeric enchantment of MIddle Eastern currents? Bizarre.
Perhaps it is a moment to consider that having abandoned the old ways of forthright Constitutional bright line wars backed by national will and a national draft, we have wandered into ever muddled ambiguous sorta-military "nation-building" exercises (counting the development of English common law after the Magna Carta that was a task accomplished for sure here in the colonies/states/Articles of Confederation/Federal union in a wee bit more time than we've politically got to piss away in the Hindu Kush, tell you that) with an available manpower pool that has already reached its peak (let alone with Obama's disingenuously engineered trillion dollar cut –half declared, half from sequestration). Maybe its time we stopped sending our volunteer force into their third and fourth rotation and beyond.