What happens when Assad falls? Most Washington hawks don't know. Or don't care.
Gen. Jack Keane and Danielle Plekta argue (paywalled) that the Obama administration should go to war against the Assad regime:
To successfully target Assad's air power, one option is to outfit moderate rebel units vetted by the CIA with man-portable antiaircraft missiles, otherwise known as Manpads. Providing more moderate rebels with Manpads is a reasonable choice, though unlikely to be decisive because time is on Assad's side. There is also a risk that the weapons could be diverted to al Qaeda-related groups. Despite that risk, however, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former CIA Director David Petraeus recommended this strategy last summer.A cleaner and more decisive option is to strike Syrian aircraft and the regime's key airfields through which Iranian and Russian weapons are flowing to government forces. If American forces use standoff cruise missiles and B-2 stealth bombers for these strikes, they will be out of the enemy's reach....
If the U.S. pursues this strategy, moderates among the rebels will be strengthened, Syrian civilian casualties are likely to be reduced (though not eliminated) and finally, after two long years, Assad will be on notice. This option leaves room for escalation to the no-fly zone, and for a further escalation to attacks on Assad's ground forces if he uses chemical weapons again or tries to transfer them to America's enemies.
It would be nice to know how an intervention will help consolidate a post-war Syria that somehow accommodates itself to American interests and purges itself of al-Qaeda elements. These are critical details that are almost completely absent from most opinion pieces urging American intervention.
Just as with Iraq, it seems far more important to most Washington hawks that the United States precipitate the collapse of a hated regime irrespective of what follows -- even if what follows (as, again, in Iraq) are al-Qaeda sanctuaries and heightened sectarian civil war.
(AP Photo)
