Arming the Syrian rebels

What happened

With Syrian President Bashar al-Assad now winning the civil war against the rebels, President Obama this week reversed course and ordered the CIA to start supplying weapons to selected rebel groups. Obama said the U.S. now had definitive proof that Assad had crossed a “red line” by using nerve gas against anti-Assad forces, killing up to 150 Syrians. During a visibly tense meeting with President Obama at this week’s G-8 summit of world leaders in Northern Ireland, Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed open opposition to the U.S.’s intervention in Syria, citing a video that shows an Islamist rebel biting a piece of a dead soldier’s entrails. “One hardly should back those who kill their enemies and, you know, eat their organs,” Putin said.

Obama administration officials said that any arming of the rebels would be limited to small arms and ammunition, and would not include anti-aircraft missiles, out of fear that the weapons would end up in the hands of Islamic extremists. But many members of the Syrian opposition called the decision to ship rifles too little, too late. Backed by thousands of fighters from the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah, Assad’s forces recently recaptured the strategic southern town of Qusair, and are now laying siege to the rebel stronghold of Aleppo. “How can small arms make a difference?” said rebel spokesman Louay al-Mokdad. “[America] should help us with real weapons, anti-tank and anti-aircraft.”

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What the editorials said

Obama made the wrong call, said the Chicago Sun-Times. “The Syrian conflict already is bitter and bloody enough,” and has devolved from a political uprising into a savage sectarian conflict between majority Sunni Muslims and the ruling Alawites—a Shiite sect. More weapons will only feed the violence, and could lead “to a bigger U.S. role in yet another Mideast war.”

“It took two years, 93,000 casualties, and the growing prospect of victory by strongman Bashar al-Assad,” but Obama has finally had his epiphany that Syria can’t be ignored, said The Wall Street Journal. But the president’s offer of small-arms aid is “almost certainly inadequate.” The rebels are being slaughtered by Syrian missiles and airstrikes. If they don’t get anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons, Assad will eventually crush them, handing Russia and Iran a major victory, and further diminishing U.S. power in the Middle East.

What the columnists said

We’re on the slippery slope “to another disastrous war,” said Marc Lynch in ForeignPolicy.com. For months, warmongers like Republican Sen. John McCain have been publicly chiding Obama for his failure to supply the rebels with weapons. Those same hawks will soon begin demanding more direct action, such as a no-fly zone, a U.S. air campaign, or even American boots on the ground. Obama’s capitulation “to pressure this time will make it that much harder to resist in a few months when the push builds to escalate.”

Obama has chosen the least worst option, said Doyle McManus in the Los Angeles Times. With the rebels in danger of losing, he had to act. The goal now is to pool military aid from the U.S., Britain, France, and other nations, and turn “the rebels into a more effective army—one the Assad regime won’t be able to destroy.” The goal is no longer to topple Assad, said Daniel Drezner in ForeignPolicy.com. For “the low, low price of aiding and arming the rebels,” the U.S. will trap its enemies Iran and Hezbollah in a bloody, protracted, and resource-draining civil war. This is not liberal hawkery, but old-fashioned realpolitik.

It may not work out as Obama hopes, said Daniel DePetris in NationalInterest.org. Moscow could respond to U.S. arms shipments by sending “an even greater amount of weaponry to the Syrian regime.” And Iran and Hezbollah could deploy thousands more fighters to fight an enemy now openly backed by the Great Satan. Clearly, Syria is no longer a mere civil war. It is a proxy war, “with Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah on Assad’s side—and the U.S., Europe, and the Gulf on the other.” Whether Obama likes it or not, it’s now “a fight in which Washington is a direct investor.”