WarSclerotic

Everything surrounding Syrian President Bashar Assad’s use of chemical weapons a few weeks ago, together with U.S. President Barack Obama’s speech last week, threatens to undermine the U.S.’s strategic claim that Israel should avoid attacking Iran alone because the Jewish state needs to trust the U.S.

The U.S. bases that core argument on the motif of our times. Washington says it has substantial and sound intelligence on Iran’s nuclear program, and if Iran was to manage a “breakthrough” and develop a nuclear weapon, the U.S. would have enough time to respond militarily. But the past few weeks have cast a dark shadow over this claim. While the U.S. under Obama’s leadership has searched through its allies for a broad coalition, the U.S. has been forced to give these countries the necessary time for their political systems to work. And some of these political systems have asked the U.S. to provide further “proof,” as if they need court evidence rather than military intelligence.

But the sort of intelligence that the British and French parliaments demand as proof will be elusive in the future, especially when the intelligence is information gathered by spies rather than legally acquired evidence. Should Iran develop a nuclear bomb, are we going to have the time to wait for back-bench British parliamentarians to be convinced? Assad may have allowed U.N. inspectors to investigate the site of the chemical weapons attack, but what if Iran blocks international inspectors from accessing the facilities where scientists have apparently achieved a nuclear breakthrough? Lacking international inspection, is the argument for a military strike unconvincing?

The past week has also cast a shadow of doubt over the U.S.’s ability to act in a timely manner. The president hesitated before he decided, apparently, that an attack was necessary. Then, on Aug. 31, Obama unleashed the (political) bomb: He announced that he would seek preliminary consultation with Congress and a public debate. Every argument for attacking Syria is all the more valid in the case of Iran, where the dangers and the potential price of inaction are much greater than in Syria. The potential for a serious entanglement is much more acute. So will Obama reject a congressional debate over Iran?

A second claim by the U.S. and other supporters of an international coalition suggests that the Iranian problem is not solely an Israeli concern, but a global and American concern as well. But the past few days have taught us the weakness of such claims. The British Parliament did not approve direct British involvement in a military strike against Syria, despite Prime Minister David Cameron’s wishes. And so membership to the U.S. coalition became thinner until the list comprised, perhaps, just two symbolic partners.

Even more serious than this claim is Obama’s retreat from his own red lines. On Aug. 31, he basically said that while he supported a strike, he would shift the responsibility for making the call to the public and political sectors. He clarified that he could not predict the outcome of this public, political debate. This president, therefore, does not see himself as the leader of the free world. Rather he sees himself more like a clerk writing policy proposals. Former President Harry Truman’s famous quote underling presidential authority, that “the buck stops here,” is fading before our very eyes.

This reality also pulls the rug from under diplomatic negotiations with Iran. A credible military threat is necessary for there to be any sort of substance to negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear program. But now, it turns out, the U.S. has no alternative to negotiations, effectively draining nuclear talks of all meaning.

Two necessary conclusions can be drawn from the recent developments. First, the Iranians will continue working toward breakthroughs for a nuclear bomb. They will learn how to reach weapons-grade status without providing inconvenient evidence. Second, political complications ensure that nuclear development will happen more quickly than the international community will respond to it. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must assimilate the information he already knows — Israel stands alone against a nuclear Iran.

On Tuesday, U.S. President Barack Obama will address the nation as he makes a last-ditch effort to rally support for his proposed punitive strike on Bashar Assad’s regime in Damascus.

Ten days ago he made a speech that should have set the attack in motion, but instead he tied his own hands unnecessarily. Now he will try to get himself out of the corner into which he has backed himself.

Obama would have to put on display virtuoso rhetorical capabilities to undo the prevailing sentiment in Congress, particularly in the House of Representatives.

The public has been largely against military action in Syria, and this sentiment is shared by the House, whose members relish any opportunity to make Obama bleed.

The White House is up against a wide coalition that includes some strange bedfellows: staunch isolationists from the conservative side of the spectrum alongside liberal Democrats who are fed up with the U.S.’s involvement in war zones.

These two political persuasions are willing to defy their own party leaders, who have already said they would support the 44th president as he seeks an authorization for the use of military force.

With the debt-ceiling debate fast approaching, the president’s adversaries on Capitol Hill have turned his policy on Syria into an hors d’oeuvre in their effort to devour the White House.

By the time the main course (the looming fiscal cliff) is served, they hope Obama will have already become a lame duck and a political punching bag. As House members deliberate their stance, they will be attuned to the voices coming out of their home districts. What voters think back home is very much on the minds of lawmakers and should not be discounted, although this is only one of many considerations. Judging from what constituents are telling them, a significant proportion of the public is very much opposed to the idea of a military intervention in Syria.

Obama’s detractors are now even more motivated to see him humiliated. Meanwhile, his supporters, who are all too cognizant of their perilous situation in their home district, are having a hard time falling in line with the administration.

Barring some upset, the American superpower will be dealt a humiliating foreign policy blow on its home turf, rendering Secretary of State John Kerry’s warning of another “Munich moment” moot.

Whichever way the Syria vote goes, Obama’s decision to grant the legislative branch veto power over what should have been an exclusive White House prerogative could turn into a dangerous precedent — a precedent because, when the moment of truth arrives over Iran, a congressional question mark will hover over any military action as lawmakers create a thick fog of uncertainty.

Just a little over a week ago, it seemed as though the entire Western world had united behind U.S. President Barack Obama as he worked toward building an offensive against Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. But as the week unfolded, it turned out that Obama was very much on his own. A sparse few from the Arab world backed his efforts: Qatar, satellite network Al-Jazeera (owned by Qatar) and Saudi Arabia — that was more or less the list.

The issue in the Arab world — just as in the Europe Union or the U.S. Congress — has little to do with Syria and Assad. The U.S. and Obama are the issue. Even chemical gas, deployed by Assad in the war of annihilation against his own countrymen, failed to chip away at the hostility and base hatred the Arab world feels for the United States and the global values it has come to symbolize.

Indeed, the Arab world loves to the hate the U.S., especially because the country has come to symbolize “the other.” It has become so convenient to blame the U.S. for these countries’ economic backwardness. With its successes, the U.S. symbolizes the failure of most Arab countries to cope with the myriad challenges of the 21st century. And this goes without mentioning the Israel-Arab conflict. The Arab world prefers to forgo salvation as long as it’s proffered by the Americans.

What’s more, the events of the past few weeks have shown us that, just as there is no international community, just as the European Union has proved its inefficacy in dealing with the atrocities in Syria, there is no Arab world. All that exists is an amalgamation of nations, several of them in advanced stages of decay, gutted by their own problems.

Indeed, the Arab Spring has long gone. Egypt is a prime example. Deposed Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi’s government supported the Syrian rebels, its partners in the Islamic movement. And then the military generals of Egypt, who are openly sympathetic toward the Syrian regime in its dogged attempts to restore security and stability in Syria, overthrew Morsi’s Islamist government.

The young activists in Tahrir Square, who once showed empathy for the rebels in Syria, have replaced such feelings with anger directed against the U.S. And the U.S. was seen as a staunch supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, in the name of democracy, of course, but the Brotherhood was ousted from power in July.

And therefore Obama is all alone, just as his predecessor, George W. Bush, was when he went to war with Iraq in 2003. It’s just that Bush was respected and, for the most part, feared. Obama simply “doesn’t count.”

Until some insiders break ranks and tell the truth, we will not know why U.S. President Barack Obama changed his mind over launching cruise missiles at Syria last week.

Until recently, there was speculation that when the president saw the public opinion polls showing that Americans were sharply opposed to a strike, he became nervous about being out there on his own, without the U.N., the British, or Congress, especially if there was a modest risk that things might “go south” after a strike (retaliation against U.S. assets or domestic terrorism). Another circulating theory was that if the British were taking the war to a vote, then Obama, who had been a frequent war critic as a senator, needed to do the same.

But now a new explanation is gaining currency: that the president simply lost his will to fight because he became afraid of Iranian/Hezbollah repercussions. Unlike the Iranians, the Syrians, the Egyptians, the Russians and pretty much everyone else on the international stage, who understand that the president is an empty vessel at this point, and whose word means little or nothing, Obama may take the Iranian threats seriously.

One Iranian cleric, Alireza Forghani, offered this: “In just 21 hours [after the attack on Syria], a family member of every U.S. minister [department secretary], U.S. ambassadors, U.S. military commanders around the world will be abducted. And then 18 hours later, videos of their amputation will be spread [around the world].”

This Shiite cleric also promised that one of Obama’s daughters would be kidnapped and raped. One wonders if the threats not only caused Obama to back off from a unilateral attack on Syria, but also caused anyone in the administration or the mainstream media to challenge their assumptions about the new moderate Iranian leadership and their supposed openness to negotiations over their nuclear program, almost completed at this point.

The Wall Street Journal, generally considered a more reliable source than ranting Iranian clerics, also reported that there were threats from Iran that the administration was taking seriously: “The U.S. has intercepted an order from Iran to militants in Iraq to attack the U.S. Embassy and other American interests in Baghdad in the event of a strike on Syria, officials said, amid an expanding array of reprisal threats across the region.”

There were also threats from Russian leader Vladimir Putin, an ally of the Syrian government, backed up by the movement of Russian ships. Putin has clearly learned since the days of Hillary Clinton’s pathetic gift of a reset button (mistranslated no less into Russian) that the Americans are in strategic retreat around the world, and Putin seems eager to reassert Russia into the power vacuum in the Middle East this has created.

There is an argument to be made at this point that Obama really does not care that much if he loses the vote in Congress. In fact, if Congress backs a resolution authorizing the use of force against Syrian President Bashar Assad, however limited, there are clear risks for the president at this point, with little in the way of gains, other than the supposed defense of American credibility in the world. The president has argued that he never set any red lines about the use of chemical weapons by the Assad government but that the international community did, and Congress did, and that he is seeking only to defend international norms.

The problem is that while 98 percent of the world’s population may reside in nations that signed a chemical weapons treaty, that treaty did not obligate any nation to act with force in the instance of a violation of the treaty.

The U.S. Senate may have signed a chemical weapons treaty, and Congress may have passed the Syrian Accountability Act, but it has not passed any measure requiring action in the case of a violation of such a treaty. The president, revealing his inner pacifist, stated publicly that he had been elected to end wars, not start them. This Syria business, it seems, was a distraction he had not bargained for.

It was of course, the president himself, who set a red line on Syria and the use of chemical weapons, not anybody else. The president ignored earlier violations of that red line, but there is now added pressure to respond after the most recent violation from the humanitarian hawks (such as the Samantha Powers of the world) since the death toll from the use of chemical weapons has been substantially higher, including hundreds of children.

And then there are those who seem to think that if Congress passes the resolution, and Obama launches one or two days of strikes (even if they accomplish nothing strategically to alter the course of the war), that American credibility will have been instantly restored internationally, and we will now be respected again by the likes of Iran. To say this seems like wishful thinking puts too good a face on it.

The president did not ask his domestic lobbying arm, Organizing for America, to lobby Democrats in Congress this week, but he did ask the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to lobby members from both parties. Moving away from its historic policy of not lobbying on issues that do not directly relate to Israel and its security, or U.S.-Israel relations, AIPAC signaled it was all in and would send 250 top people to visit House and Senate members next week.

The president has a twofer here as well — if he wins the vote, he will get credit and leftist anti-war advocates can blame AIPAC and the Israel lobby for once again sending the U.S. to war. On the other hand, if the resolution does not pass, AIPAC looks weak, and its ability to achieve results on issues that actually matter to the community, and to both countries, such as Iran’s nuclear program, will be diminished.

A defeat of the resolution is not a bad result for the president if he does not want to take action. The president won re-election by appealing to his base, and he is very uncomfortable taking it on, or forcing it to support policies it always opposes, or at least always opposes if the president is a Republican, or named Bush. If Obama has grown fearful of the potential blowback that might result from a short pointless military strike, then why should he take the risk?

There is also the cynicism angle. Obama gets to blame Republicans in Congress for the defeat in the House if it happens (and as now seems likely), which simply sets him up for the fall battles with House Republicans over the budget, the federal debt limit and Obamacare — things that actually matter to this White House, unlike the Syrian war or Iran. Greater federal spending, higher taxes, and more redistribution of wealth and income are the things that move Obama, not military action or addressing humanitarian issues abroad. The U.S. has a president who wants a much smaller American footprint abroad, but a much larger government footprint within the country.

The president hoped that he had insulated himself from serious risk of blowback from a military effort directed at Assad for his chemical weapons use, by letting the Syrians and their allies know in advance that we were not seeking to change the momentum of the battle between the regime and its many opponents, nor to remove Assad, nor to hit his chemical weapons depositories (rumored to be the largest supply in the world). Rather, the U.S. communicated in every way possible that its response would be small.

The Obama administration, in other words, was communicating its utter lack of strategic seriousness. Pinprick strikes were needed to show America’s humanitarian credentials, but it was not taking sides in the Syrian civil war. Jon Stewart, a popular comedian, mocked the administration’s response, suggesting that the U.S. was now going to war because it did not like how the regime had killed these most recent victims, but the other ways Assad had killed people were acceptable.

It is easy to get the sense today that the president expects to lose the vote in Congress, and tossing the military authorization to it anticipated this outcome. If a majority votes in favor of the limited war resolution in the Senate (60 votes may be required), this will increase pressure on wavering Democrats in the House, who are reluctant to embarrass a president of their party (embarrassing a Republican or a Bush on a war vote is a different matter entirely). For now, 224 House members have committed to vote no, or lean that way, with only 35 certain or leaning the other way. That is more than enough to defeat the resolution if the leaners stay on the no side. But even if Congress provides a split verdict — the Senate for, the House against — the president can abandon the effort and blame House Republicans for U.S. inaction.

Those arguing the hardest for support for American military involvement seem convinced that U.S. credibility will be shot if it does not strike back at Assad. Until last week, the president had behaved as if Congress was an irrelevance in the decision process. The U.N. and the international community seemed to matter, but Congress was hardly mentioned.

With the decision to throw this to Congress, Obama has damaged American credibility in a far more lasting way than how this vote and U.S. action or inaction in Syria is perceived. For from now on, presidents will assume they cannot simply strike at enemies, but must enter the political process and get congressional support, even for quick actions, thereby removing the element of surprise. If you want to neuter the credibility of U.S. fighting forces and the American ability to matter on the international stage, you could not do more than what Obama has already done.

The small margin by which U.S. President Barack Obama’s proposal to attack Syria passed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — 10 in favor, seven against, one abstention — testifies to the tough road ahead for the president this week in the Senate and in the House of Representatives.

While a preliminary vote count among Senators showed that more were in favor than against, the margin was narrow and a large camp is still on the fence. At the moment it appears that a majority is not a certainty, which is why Obama, in his speech to the nation this week, will focus on convincing those who are either against his proposal or undecided.

The recent vote in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the frantic activity aimed at securing the deciding votes in the two houses of Congress is a reflection of the growing chaos, surprisingly, within the Republican Party. This situation could frustrate their hopes of winning the next elections to both houses. Some of the party’s senators in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted for Obama’s proposal while some voted against — a telltale sign of a divided party.

The Democrats are also showing cracks, primarily from the “dovish” leftist camp, which is torn between not wanting to undermine its president and being fundamentally opposed to any military action.

Among the Republicans, meanwhile, the vote will serve as a litmus test for the differing and contradictory positions on matters of diplomacy and security. This can be seen in the differences between the “hawkish” security-oriented camp associated with Sen. John McCain and the populist isolationists who oppose American interventionism. In the first camp, known for its staunch support of Israel, there is concern that significant opposition to an attack in Syria will determine the party’s direction on matters of diplomacy and security for years to come. Moreover, they believe that no less than the very future of the Republican Party is at stake.

There is a reason for the disarray among the Republicans — and it is called the Tea Party. The goal of this grassroots movement is to “return America to its basic historical values,” which have been lost, according to its members, due to senior politicians from both parties diverting from the path set by the country’s founding fathers. The Tea Party’s various branches do not have a structured diplomatic and security doctrine, but can all be characterized by their extremism and hatred for they deem to be “the elites.” The result: Tea Party candidates are increasingly winning important congressional appointments in inner-party elections, despite their considerably lower chances of winning the deciding general elections.

As the Democratic Tip O’Neill once said: “All politics is local.” This is liable to gain expression during the vote on whether to attack Syria. Israel does not have a firm position, here or there, on the matter, aside from its essential and immediate need to neutralize Syria’s chemical weapons and missile stockpiles.

But Jerusalem cannot be indifferent to the prospect of Obama losing the vote in Congress, after which elected officials in countries around the globe will conclude that there will be no repercussions for following the lead of their American counterparts. The main consequence could be a nuclear Iran, because the vote in Congress will also influence Tehran’s response to American attempts, whether through diplomatic measures or threats of military action, to put an end to its nuclear ambitions.

U.S. President Barack Obama, perhaps more than any other world leader, knows how rapidly our world is changing. In fact, this may have been one of the things that contributed to his meteoric rise in politics, taking him from the Illinois Senate to the White House in four short years.

Obama is no longer a political novice and he is far from naive. He had probably hoped that the new world, which seems to have been tailor-made for him, would also promote a new agenda, one that would suit his own. He was willing to sacrifice some of the status and strength of the world’s No.1 power to make this world a better place, one where we are all brothers.

Reality, however, is different and much crueler. Obama, who tried to shirk responsibility during the Arab Spring — and lost Egypt as a result — now faces an internal ideological conflict when it comes to Syria: What is more important — dodging a military conflict, or looking the other way when Syrian President Bashar Assad uses chemical weapons on his people?

Obama has woken up from his pipe dream just in time to realize that our new world sports the same old order. There are good guys and bad guys, and the U.S. has many rivals in the international arena that are unwilling to cut it any proverbial slack, like Russia, China, Indonesia, Brazil and India. He has realized that Russia is still the same old Soviet Union, that the Arab world is as divided as ever, and that there will always be some sadistic leader out there who will not hesitate to use whatever means at his disposal to stay in power.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is also undergoing a rude awakening of sorts these days. Kerry, who returned from his multiple tours in Vietnam as a stern opponent of war, now finds himself the biggest advocate of a strike on Syria.

The biggest problem Obama and Kerry face is that the changing world, including allies such as Britain and Germany, is now refusing to listen to them.

Global surveys clearly indicate the international community’s reluctance to support military intervention in Syria. A survey conducted by a prominent German institute in the U.S. found that 75 percent of Americans oppose a strike on Syria. An ABC News poll found that only 19% of the American public support a military campaign in Syria and 72% oppose it. In the same poll British support of a strike was also only 19%, and the same went for Turkey, despite Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s own support of it. In France, only 36% of the public agree with President Francois Hollande, who supports Obama.

What do we have to do with dead Syrian children, the polls say. In such a political climate, it is no wonder that Obama passed this hot potato to Congress.

The big question is, of course, what will Obama do if Congress votes him down, as the British Parliament did to Prime Minister David Cameron in August, for the first time since the 18th century. Even with the important support of Muslim nations such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, the American president has taken a big risk, especially after failing to put together an international coalition.

Obama now faces three possible scenarios. In the first, Congress greenlights a strike on Syria, thus legitimizing the move. In the second, Congress votes him down and the Obama administration launches a strike without declaring war, as his predecessor George W. Bush did in Iraq — and the last thing in the world Obama wants is to be mentioned in the same breath as Bush. In the third, Congress votes him down and Obama nixes his plan of attack entirely.

The third option is the Obama administration’s nightmare scenario, as it will deal his legacy and Washington’s credibility a fatal blow, essentially giving Russian President Vladimir Putin his first victory in the new cold war, after U.S. President Ronald Reagan won the last round. And that is without saying a word about the potential festivities in Damascus and Tehran.

“We are not talking about going to war. This is not Iraq and it’s not Afghanistan. It’s not even Libya or Kosovo … This is our Munich moment. This is our chance to join together and pursue accountability over appeasement,” Kerry said Saturday, referring, of course, to the 1938 agreement that ceded part of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany in an attempt to appease Adolf Hitler, which did little to maintain the free world’s dignity. Just like the recent polls on Syria.

U.S. President Barack Obama is sinking deeper and deeper in trouble. Immediately after the Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack in Syria, the enlightened world still stood with him. Even Russia, a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, was not as resolute as usual.

But the American president failed to understand that there is a time for war and a time for peace. It is all about momentum, and he missed his opportunity to attack without sparking resistance and a backlash.

As soon as the sheer dimensions of the chemical massacre became clear, the citizens of the enlightened nations were angry and outraged, and even terrified. But, when instead of responding, the world’s only superpower avoided making decisions and pretended that it was not clear whether what happened had actually happened, and when Europe gladly jumped on the indecision bandwagon, the right moment to strike quickly slipped through Obama’s fingers. Now it looks like it may be too late. Not just for Obama, but for more than a thousand victims of a deadly attack on a dark day in Damascus.

How was Obama pushed into a corner like this? Subliminally, he signaled that he was not entirely at peace with launching a military attack on Syria. He then lost the support of one European nation after another, while ignoring the most disconcerting historical phenomenon: the gradual Islamization of the European continent. If he had taken action on time, British Prime Minister David Cameron would have been on board, even without the support of the British Parliament.

But the thing that best reflects the West’s detachment is the process currently underway in the U.S. The way of the world is that usually the military is eager to use its power while the state is there to restrain the army’s enthusiasm. The current situation is that the American command is probably the least aggressive and least professional that the country has known since its inception. The U.S. army doesn’t trust its own power.

In any case, the 435 members of the House of Representatives are also uninterested in an attack. In 1967, when Education and Culture Minister Zalman Aran was asked why he did not back Israel’s defensive war, he replied honestly, “I don’t vote in favor of war when I don’t feel the army pushing me to do so.” That is how it is in democracies, but it is the opposite direction in which U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey is headed.

Especially considering that members of the House of Representatives, familiar with their indifferent or decadent voters, are asking why, if Obama doesn’t legally need the approval of Capitol Hill, he is placing the burden of the decision on them. If he needs them, then they don’t want the responsibility.

It turns out that Israel is the only loyal supporter the U.S. president has left. Israel is also liable to pay a heavy price if Obama decides to honor his own commitment and refuse to erase the red lines he himself drew. But supporting the American president doesn’t relieve Jerusalem of its duty to think long and hard about whether Israel can really trust its superpower ally.

There is a psychological and diplomatic link between U.S. policy toward Assad and the American vow to prevent the nuclearization of Iran. This latest complication has forced Obama to bet everything he has — diplomatically, militarily and morally.