"It Will Suck You In"

“The one thing we should learn is you can’t get a little bit pregnant. If you do a one-and-done (a few days’ punitive air strikes with Tomahawk cruise missiles) and say you’re going to repeat it if unacceptable things happen, you might find these people keep doing unacceptable things. It will suck you in.”

                                                       - Gen. Anthony Zinni.

Obama's secretary of state, John Kerry, and defence secretary, Chuck Hagel, are arguing the case for a U.S. attack on Syria even as it remains unclear that is what Obama really wants.  But, as Gwynne Dyer notes, Obama is learning that, when it comes to these things, a president doesn't always get his own way.

Obama’s problem is that he has fallen into the clutches of Washington’s foreign-policy establishment, which has enduring purposes and prejudices that usually overpower the particular views and wishes of passing  presidents and Congresses. Consider its six-decade loathing of Cuba and its 35-year vendetta against Iran. (It hates to be successfully defied.)

This establishment has no problems with weapons of mass destruction so long as they are on its side. It has never renounced the right to initiate the use of nuclear weapons, although they are a hundred times deadlier than poison gas. It didn’t even mind the Shah of Iran working to get them, back when he was Washington’s designated enforcer in the Middle East. But it has never forgiven the Iranians for overthrowing the Shah.

Syria is Iran’s ally, so Washington has always seen the regime in Damascus as an enemy too. Over a thousand Egyptians murdered in the streets of Cairo by the army that overthrew the elected government last month is no cause for U.S. intervention, because Egypt is an ally. Over a thousand Syrians killed in the streets of Damascus by poison gas requires an American military response, because Bashar al-Assad’s regime is the enemy.

Assad’s regime must not be destroyed, because then al-Qaeda might inherit power in Syria. But it must be whacked quite hard, so that it dumps Assad—and with him, perhaps, the alliance with Iran. The gas is a pretext, not the real motive for the promised strikes.

Obama doubts that this will work, and rightly fears that even a “limited” American attack on Syria could end up as a full-scale war. The events in London have won him some time, and “letting Congress decide” is his best chance to escape from his dilemma. What could possibly go wrong?