By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--September 12, 2013
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Secretary Kerry initially proposed the disarmament effort as an alternative to the planned strikes in a seemingly impromptu way -- his aides at first described his remarks as wholly rhetorical -- during a news conference in London on Monday. At that time, Kerry also stated flatly that the dismantlement of Syria's chemical weapons arsenal on a rapid timetable "can't be done, obviously." Kerry's aides have since said that his proposal was actually first broached with the Russians back in May, and that it gained new impetus after the London event, when it drew the sudden backing of the Russians and the Syrians. The endorsement of the idea from Damascus marked the first time the Assad regime has acknowledged possessing chemical weapons. These developments the Obama administration attributes to the president's announcement of his decision to use force to respond to the August 21 attack, a threat that was somewhat blunted by Mr. Obama's subsequent decision to seek congressional authorization for the strikes. Kerry's spokesperson, Jennifer Psaki, had earlier told reporters on Wednesday that the U.S. delegation was heading into the session with Lavrov and his technical experts with "eyes wide open" -- an expression of some skepticism in Washington about Syrian and Russian intentions. But a senior aide traveling with Kerry expressed cautious optimism -- in seeming contrast with the secretary's original, dour assessment in London -- that the task of cataloguing, collecting, and securing Syria's banned arsenal can indeed be achieved, even if undertaken on a compressed timetable and in what U.S. officials called the "non-ermissive environment" of the Syrian civil war. "It is doable," the aide said, "but difficult and complicated."Actually there may be one thing worse than not being able to find a way to do this, and that's a realization that would surely horrify Kerry and probably Obama as well: The one time the U.S. successfully disarmed a dictator, the dictator was Mohmmar Khadafy, and the administration was that of George W. Bush. The Wall Street Journal reports that Kerry is trying to learn from the example of the much more capable and intelligent Bush Administration:
Senior U.S. officials said Secretary of State John Kerry has been studying the Bush administration's largely successful efforts to disarm the late Libyan dictator Col. Moammar Gadhafi starting in 2003 as a potential template for Syria. The U.S. cooperated closely with the U.K. at the time to secure and remove most of Libya's infrastructure for developing nuclear weapons and destroyed its delivery systems for chemical agents. Mr. Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, have talked of overseeing a similar process in Syria, said U.S. officials. Still, Ms. DeSutter and other proliferation experts said there are significant differences between Syria and Libya's weapons programs. Mr. Assad's arsenal is significantly larger than Col. Gadhafi's was. And many experts don't believe the Syrian leader intends to give up his weapons, in part, because his government is still at war. "The Libyans basically decided to show us everything," said Ms. DeSutter. "I can't believe this will be the case with the Syrians."Now we ought to remember exactly why it was that Khadafy (we all have our own ways of spelling it, don't we?) decided to show the U.S. and the Brits everything he had. It was 2003, and the U.S. had just made good on its threat to take down Saddam Hussein. After years of the Clinton Administration letting Hussein play games with weapons inspectors, the Bush Administration post-9/11 decided it could no longer let Hussein kick out weapons inspectors, submit phony reports and refuse to verify that he had destroyed his weapons as he was obliged to do under terms of the 1991 cease fire. So the U.S. did what it had every right to do under terms of the cease fire, despite the narrative that we were obligated to "find" Saddam's WMDs. We were not. He was obligated to prove he'd dismantled them, and he never did that. So Khadafy realized he was no longer dealing with a feckless U.S. administration, and he offered up his weapons in exchange for the opportunity not to be next. That's why we were able to disarm him. The difference is this: Bush didn't just talk big about holding Saddam accountable. He was willing to do it, he had the backing of Congress and he did it. Obama ran his mouth, only to realize he did not have congressional support, and it now becomes clearer by the day that Obama will do almost anything to weasel out of this. He does not want to attack, and Assad knows it, and even if he did, Kerry has already decalred that the attack would be "incredibly small" and Assad would pay no real price whatsoever. That's why the U.S. can't really make the Libya model work in Syria. Khadafy voluntarily gave up his weapons because he was scared to death of what we might do if he didn't. Assad has no such fear, so he will do no such thing. It sure was nice when we had a president that actually scared people like this.
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