Ode to the Strongman

The touch of international politics and diplomacy affects lives. It builds Ebola clinics, dispatches food convoys, sets armies in motion, turns landscapes into cultivated fields or cratered desolations. It impacts this physical world from atmosphere to crust.

With so much at stake then, it is a surprise—a pity, really—when a searching look at the first causes and animating forces behind tectonic political and diplomatic decisions finds them anchored not in hard facts, visited objectively and analyzed rationally, but in illusion.

One such illusion is the perception that an authoritarian leader—any authoritarian leader, any dictator—is a greater evil than anything chosen by force of arms or by elections to replace him. Let’s see if the lessons of recent history shed light any on the subject.

Saddam Hussein: In response to a 2001 terrorist attack against New York City, organized by a Saudi billionaire who holed up in Afghanistan, the United States attacked Iraq. Though Hussein played no part in that attack, many of us bought the faulty intelligence suggesting otherwise and supported the invasion. Besides, Hussein was not a nice man. Opposing him could get you a sip of a sarin/mustard gas cocktail—ask the Kurds in Halabja—or land you in one of his rape rooms. Certainly not my nominee for Man of the Year. The long and short of it is simply this: We didn’t like him, we took him out. Did we have a security imperative or constitutional authority to invade? Irrelevant. The country, furious and still grieving over our 9/11 dead, demanded more than a pounding of the Taliban.

When the invasion-insurgency-civil war was over, we delivered to the world the hanged corpse of the dictator and a country with a government as viciously sectarian as the one that preceded it: only the Shiite shoe was now on the Sunni foot. The results are: near-daily bombings, a stalled government, and a country with an oppressed Sunni minority—rancorous and as stable as your great-grandfather’s cache of nitro glycerin—existing in a political vacuum, while one of the most notorious and ruthless terror organizations in the world rushes toward Baghdad to fill it. 

If we measure the effect of the take-down of Hussein only in terms of lives lost before versus after his ouster, the math may not vindicate us. Add to that the destabilizing affects of the ISIL terrorist group we unwittingly helped spawn and subsequently armed with left-behind weapons of war and we lose the debate.

Muammar Gaddafi: Let’s take a look at another dictator, and one named by one of my heroes—Ronald Reagan—as the leader of Libya’s troop of misfits, looney tunes, and squalid criminals. Well said, Gipper!

In 2011, in the context of the wider Arab Spring, civil war broke out in Libya. In response to atrocities committed by Muammar Gaddafi against his own people the international community came to the rescue. The dictator’s forty-two year regime ended amid a hail of celebratory automatic weapons fire and the parading of Gaddafi's bloody body in the streets.

Where is Libya today? It has melted down into a fractured land roved and run by warring militias and terrorist groups. How many, in addition to U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, have been killed since, compared to those killed in ‘atrocities’ meted out by Gaddafi? No one knows. Statistics are not kept. We do know that 300,000 have been displaced. And though we don’t know how many futures have been injured by job loss, we do know the economic slide has seen what was the highest African GDP take a tumble, and oil production fall by a million barrels a day. Alongside the economic damage, a free health care system has nearly collapsed and higher education is practically shut down. Let’s not discuss the sky-high crime rate. Is Libya better off?

Hosni Mubarak: For years Mubarak worked with us to help maintain the peace treaty with Israel by maintaining the security of the Sinai. We supplied military foreign aid to Egypt to facilitate this and got head-of-the-line privileges for our warships transiting the Suez Canal. We quickly abandoned him during the Arab Spring for elections and democracy. Elections brought us the Muslim Brotherhood, followed by unrest, followed by a military coup. And though Egypt's new leader, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, is taking action to put his economic house in order and to keep down the Muslim Brotherhood, there has been a cooling of U.S.-Egypt relations under his watch. Should this surprise us?

The speed with which the U.S. abandoned Mubarak, and the frequency of calls by the U.S. Congress to cut off our substantial foreign aid to Egypt have driven al-Sisi toward Russia, with whom he is negotiating a major arms deal. In the meantime, jihadist activity in the Sinai is on the increase and there are more calls than ever for al-Sisi to ignore the treaty with Israel.

If Egypt, the largest Arab state, cannot reverse the economic malaise that threatens her with failed-state status; turns the Sinai over to the jihadists; or is driven further into the orbit of Russia, history will be hard-pressed to see any advantages for the United States in its blithe abandonment of Mubarak.

Syria’s Assad? Now we come to a pertinent question. Do we send Bashir Al-Assad packing? Can you say, “Significant deployment of U.S. air and ground forces?” Let’s be honest, sending the man on his way is synonymous with "major U.S. led invasion." By now you’ve figured out that we must first ask, “What will the new Syria look like without him? Like Iraq? Libya? Egypt?” (Actually, the first question is whether the turmoil in Syria represents an identifiable security risk to the United States. Ah, but let’s not delve into arcane questions about the constitutional authority of presidents and congressmen).

And, when we depart, who will we leave in place to govern?

Of the many opposition forces, whom do we lift into governance? The Syrian moderates? Name one. And let’s not play with definitions. You may view anyone short of a cannibal as a moderate in today’s Syria. I don’t. There are no Syrian moderates. The only effective fighting forces in Syria are the Al Qaeda affiliates. And if we do decide there are moderates, and arm them, how can we realistically assure ourselves those weapons will not be taken by defecting ‘moderates’ right straight to their Sunni brothers in ISIL?

Given the list of options it is fairly easy to predict what Syria will look like if we intervene and then leave four or five years down the road. After we secure victory against government forces on the battlefield, put down the subsequent insurgency, organize a constitutional convention, pass a constitution, hold elections, reel back in shock when a terrorist organization wins the vote, Syria will look like…a humanitarian catastrophe.

It will be a land where women are given head scarves and have their drivers licenses removed; where petty shoplifters have their arms removed; where dissenting Christians and Alowites have their heads removed. In short, Syria will be another example of U.S. led regime change gone bad. Another humanitarian intervention undertaken without a cool calculation of humanitarian costs. We will look across the landscape of one of the oldest cities—Damascus—and civilizations on earth, and see a long shadow. All else we might say we have achieved by the removal of the strongman—improvement in the lives of Syrians, freedom, an inclusive democratic process—will be illusion.

The Noble Syrian Opposition

I remember viewing footage of a handcuffed Vietnamese man being led into a Saigon street. As he stood there in his plaid shirt, expression of pain on his face, his captor produced a handgun and, placing the muzzle inches from his temple, pulled the trigger. It was February,1968. The image, which energized the Vietnam anti-war movement, was captured by an AP photographer and landed on the cover of at least one major magazine. I remember the picture. It captured that instant just when the bullet entered the man’s head. The man had tilted his head away from the muzzle, as if it might protect him. I can still see his hair, flung straight upward and outward, the way a boxer’s hair goes straight at the impact of a disabling upper cut. The point of the article? The U.S. and its military might were on the side of the man with the smoking gun—Nguyen Ngoc Loan, Chief of the South Vietnamese National Police. The incident made America look inward, questioning whom we had become friends with, as much as the cause.

It is forty-five years later, and all that has changed are dates and scenery.

The scene this time is the town square in Aleppo, a town in northwestern Syria surrounded by olive, nut, and fruit orchards and known for its domes, minarets, stark apartment buildings, and war. It is an ancient city, among the oldest inhabited ones on earth. If it were human it would have celebrated nearly 8,000 birthdays.

It is a Saturday, June 8^th, 2013. Fourteen-year-old Muhammad al-Qatta is working at his coffee kiosk in the working-class Shaar neighborhood. Two years of civil war have left the Syrian economy and currency in free fall and he is glad to have a way to help with his family’s needs. When a man approaches and asks for a free cup of coffee, Muhammad’s smiling reply, variously reported, seems to have been, ‘If Muhammad, peace be upon him, were to come to this earth right now, I would still not give a cup of coffee to anyone unless they pay for it.’ 

Nearby, three men overhear the comment. They accuse him of insulting the prophet.  He is forced into a car and driven away. When he is returned, his head is covered with a shirt and he is blindfolded. Visible on his body are whip marks. The three men, who speak in a clear Arabic accent as opposed to a Syrian accent, announce to bystanders that the youth is guilty of blaspheming the prophet and that all who blaspheme will suffer his fate.

The teenager’s mother is watching from an upstairs window when it becomes clear the men intend to shoot her son. When she rushes into the street her son has already been shot at least once. She pleads with the men who stand over him. ‘That’s haram, forbidden! Stop! Stop! You are killing a child.’ The answer was another shot. Then, the men leave by car, driving over an arm. Muhammad is left in the street. Entry wounds have left his lower face bloody and grotesquely deformed; another bullet hole gapes in his neck.

The men who shot Muhammad al-Qatta are members of the Islamic State of Iraq. In the continuing struggle to overthrow al-Assad, they are part of the diverse mix of opposition forces receiving millions of dollars in non-lethal aid from around the world, and just one of the Al Qaeda affiliates.  And while the United States has taken pains to deny aid to extremist groups, many question whether there can be any effective way to accomplish this goal given the thin lines separating factions fighting alongside one another in shelled ruins, or dashing from building to building in the beleaguered cities and towns of the crumbling state.

Over the past month, concerns took on a new urgency as President Obama, faced with a growing humanitarian crisis and a death toll approaching 100,000,  agreed to send arms. And though the president’s plan—for the moment stymied by Congress—would limit supplies to the more moderate rebel groups, it is difficult to discern who, if anybody, fits the definition of moderate. Certainly not the group that armed Muhammad’s killers, or the militia unit that recently stormed the convent of the Custody of the Holy Land in the village of Ghassaniyeh and put eight rounds into the chest of Father Francois Murad while he tried to protect the nuns.  Nor would it be those represented by Khalid al-Hamad, who was videoed biting into the heart of a fallen Syrian soldier (medical experts say it was actually a lung). The fact is, moderate rebels in Syria are as rare as Baptists in the Vatican.

 By far, the most well-organized and most effective units of the opposition are the Al Qaeda affiliates; and to them the war is not part of a democracy movement: it’s about killing Shiites and establishing Sunni rule. One spokesman has even gone so far as to call fellow Sunnis traitors worthy of death who support democratic elections. Even if these groups are barred from receiving any U.S. weapons shipments, there is no guarantee that supplies of arms and ammunition would not be shared with, or even captured by them or other unsavory members of Syria’s opposition forces.

The atrocities committed by the Assad regime are undeniable. His aircraft bomb civilians, his paramilitary thugs crash through doors to stab, shoot, and incinerate the bodies of those within. His use of chemical weapons has been confirmed. 

But the existence of a cruel, dictatorial regime must never be the sole qualifying criterion for U.S. aid—lethal or non-lethal. In determining who should be friends and beneficiaries, there are certain things we must first learn about them. After they have prevailed; after they have paraded the bloody body of the dictator in the street; after they have posed before the cameras, lighting up the air with their U.S-made automatic weapons, how will they govern? What system of law will they impose? How will they treat dissenters or those who do not conform to their religious views? These questions must be answered in a way that does not offend our basic instincts and values.

Like individuals, nations can be measured by who their friends are. Remembering the police chief in Saigon, and getting a clearer view day-to-day of what contributing to a Sunni victory in Syria would say about us, I, for one, am inclined to be selective.