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The Political Scene | The New Yorker
Dexter Filkins and George Packer on Obama’s Syria dilemma.
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Dexter Filkins and George Packer on Obama's Syria dilemma.
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- [00:00]
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- [01:15]
Dorothy Wickenden
This is the Political Scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and editors about Politics. It's Thursday, August 29th. I'm Dorothy Wickenden, executive editor of the New Yorker. On Wednesday, President Obama made the case for attacking Syria.
- [01:29]
Dexter Filkins
We want the Assad regime to understand that by using chemical weapons on a large scale against your own people, against women, against infants, against children, that you are not only breaking international norms and standards of decency, but you're also creating a situation where US national interests are affected and that needs to stop.
- [01:53]
Dorothy Wickenden
That's from an interview on PBS's NewsHour. George Packer and Dexter Filkins are joining me to discuss Obama's options in Syria. Dexter A year ago, the president warned Assad that the United States would consider the use of chemical weapons a red line in Syria's civil war. And last week's poison gas attack appears to have forced his hand. But this was not unexpected.
- [02:16]
Dexter Filkins
Yeah, according to the exile group that I spoke to, and I don't think this is something that the White House disagrees with. You've had something along the order of 30 to 35 attacks already, but the total number of dead is only between 100 and 150. So he's been kind of flying under the radar. And so what makes this last attack so different is the size of it. Very big, very lethal, as far as we can tell. Hundreds of people dead.
- [02:45]
Dorothy Wickenden
You wrote a big piece for the magazine some months ago and talked a lot about Obama's options. Do you think now that arming the rebels earlier or taking other measures could have prevented a massive slaughter?
- [02:58]
Dexter Filkins
Well, you know, we'll never know. But if you look at the choices today, they're horrendous, right? I mean, on one hand, you have this murderous regime backed by the Iranians and the Russians and Hezbollah, doing terrible things to their people. But on the other hand, what do you have? You have a very fragmented opposition that isn't doing very well. And the one group that's doing well, the Al Nusra Front, is basically a sister organization of Al Qaeda in Iraq. I mean, it's literally the same guys. They came across the border, they changed their names to make them sound Syrian, and they started Al Nusrat. Very radical, but very effective. And those are our choices right now.
- [03:37]
George Packer
And just to add to that, the Al Qaeda affiliate in Iraq, which has been launching just horrendous campaigns of car bombings and suicide bombings and even, you know, beheadings are back in Iraq in the last few weeks. Just a day or two ago, something like eight, 80 people were killed across the country. It feels like 2006, 2007, that affiliate has renamed itself Al Qaeda in Iraq and Syria. So it's as if that border has dissolved and Al Qaeda no longer distinguishes between the two countries because operationally and perhaps in their strategic goals, they've become almost indistinguishable.
- [04:16]
Dorothy Wickenden
Well, and then the other question, Dexter, is whether the use of chemical weapons on this scale gets to, as Obama put it in another interview, some core national interests of the United States. What are they? What are those national interests? This is something that the American public doesn't understand.
- [04:31]
Dexter Filkins
You know, this is not a case where, say, the United States has been attacked. Right? That's an easy national interest that everybody can see. I think this one's a little bit more fuzzy. This one is, can we, the United States of America, allow something this horrendous to go on and not do anything about it? And I think he's going to make the case that we can't, that we have to stop it, because if we don't stop it, Then we're going to get more of it. But I think, you know, I think the difficulty is what his options are. They're terrible.
- [05:01]
Dorothy Wickenden
What are they at this point?
- [05:03]
Dexter Filkins
First of all, he can't attack Assad's chemical weapons sites. That's too dangerous. He might release chemical weapons. I think he's been pretty clear about this. He doesn't want to attack the regime itself. He doesn't want to threaten the regime, because if he did that, then you'd have this gigantic vacuum in the middle of this horrendous civil war. He doesn't want that. So what is he left with? And so the talk, at least in the Times and some other places, has been that they'll go after some of the Syrian military units that have fired chemical weapons on their people. Well, you know, and last night the President said, well, you know, maybe we'll fire a shot across the bow. Boy, you know, this is the Middle east, and people don't take shots across the bow very seriously. But I think those are his options. They're either bad or they're not likely to be terribly effective.
- [05:50]
Dorothy Wickenden
And George, why do you think he's been so reluctant to put this case before Congress?
- [05:54]
George Packer
It's strange, isn't it? I mean, they also seem reluctant to put it before the United nations. And this is the President who tried to restore international institutions as an important framework for American foreign policy and for actions, especially if it's going to be military action. The United nations is blocked up. We're not going to get anything through that would allow military force because of Russia and China vetoing it. We might not even get a resolution passed that condemns the Syrian government for using chemical weapons because there's all this smoke and gas in the air about who's responsible for this. And the Russians began a disinformation campaign before the gas had even cleared East Ghouta and began saying it was done by the insurgents. So the forums that Obama would have chosen are not going to serve his purpose. Congress, I don't see the reason not to. It seems like he would get it through. Republicans have been at least as adamant, at least the more hawkish ones, led by John McCain, as Democrats. The procedural channels that Obama faulted Bush for either ignoring or jamming through when it was the Iraq War, Obama now seems to be ignoring. And perhaps it's just what presidents do. They want to exercise power as freely as possible.
- [07:09]
Dexter Filkins
I think certainly the shadow of the Iraq war is looming pretty large here. We're all waiting to see the case that the president makes and the intelligence that he's willing to release. And we all know what happened the last time that that happened. You know, President Bush and the White House made this case to go to war in Iraq. And of course it was. It was catastrophic. It took 19 days, I think, or 21 days to take down the regime in Baghdad. And then it collapsed. And then there was this terrible power vacuum and chaos and anarchy, as we all know, that took, you know, eight years to stabilize again. And so I think this comes back to what can the president do? He's made it pretty clear he doesn't want to destroy this regime and he doesn't want to do something that's going to materially kind of affect the direction of the civil war in Syria.
- [07:57]
George Packer
The justification for a strike and this is being put forward by people outside the government and probably by certain people inside the government, is that this is so egregious and it's such a long standing norm. And that is actually the word that Secretary Kerry used and that others have used. It's an international norm that you don't gas people. Apparently, Syria is not a signatory to the treaties banning chemical weapons. So international law can't be invoked here. It's a norm. Do a few airstrikes or cruise missile strikes against the units that launch those chemical weapons attacks, is that really going to deter Assad and and other monsters from doing this Again? That, to me, is the only justification for using force here because Obama's made it clear that we don't have a larger strategic purpose in either forcing negotiations or forcing the collapse of the regime. It's simply a kind of one off. Hey, you've just gone too far. We're not stopping your war. Keep on fighting. We actually have decided we can't game this out in our favor, so we're keeping out of it. But we're not going to let you use these weapons. And if these strikes don't have that deterrent effect, then to me they seem like a foolish, reactive effort that could have untold consequences. And so far, Obama has not made the case that that can happen.
- [09:19]
Dorothy Wickenden
Dexter, what about that?
- [09:21]
Dexter Filkins
Well, I just imagine. I mean, imagine if we do a kind of, you know, some kind of pinprick slap on the wrist attack. We hit a couple of units that use the chemical weapons and then Assad uses them again on a larger scale. What do we do then? It's terrible. And one of the things that's been puzzling to me is why Assad did this now. Six months ago, Assad was on the ropes. It looked like he was going to go down. The rebels were gaining ground. You know, it looked like he was going to head for the exits. That situation has totally changed in his favor over the past six months. You've had a huge Iranian intervention, intervention by Hezbollah, the Shiite militia from Lebanon, help from the R. His situation has stabilized. And so you would think that the use of chemical weapons would be a decision made by a desperate man. And Assad has a lot fewer reasons to be desperate today than he did earlier this year. So it's puzzling.
- [10:18]
George Packer
And he may have slightly overplayed his hand inadvertently. It's hard to know, but I've read some military speculation that, you know, those eastern suburbs of Damascus were sort of a holdout of rebels and were hard to clear, and the population had stuck it out under heavy bombardment. And it be that Assad decided, we're going to try it here, and there was just too much. They used too much gas and did it in the middle of the night when people were sleeping. And it may be that he made a mistake. He's made mistakes before.
- [10:51]
Dorothy Wickenden
Dexter, I think the last time you were on this program, we were talking about this subject. You talked about the civil war in Syria engulfing the entire region. Hasn't that begun to happen? We see it in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq.
- [11:04]
Dexter Filkins
The conflict does appear to be spreading. And I think the concern. I mean, when I spoke to many people in the White House reporting that story that I did about three months ago, the concern that everybody I talked to was, we can't have this war go on another year. If it goes on for another year, then the consequences for the region are going to be catastrophic. Well, you know, here we are, and the. The war is proceeding, and there's really kind of no end in sight. So just imagine, you know, how many more refugees are going to flow into Jordan and into Lebanon. I mean, these countries are being overwhelmed.
- [11:41]
George Packer
And then there's Iran, which, you know, this is a moment when, with a new government in Tehran, it seemed to be about as favorable a climate for negotiations between the US And Iran over the nuclear issue and all the other issues, sanctions and everything else there between us. If we strike Damascus, what will that do to President Rouhani's ability to bring hardliners along in serious negotiations? Is that going to set it back a couple of years? Is it going to poison the atmosphere from the very start of his administration? Because suddenly it plays into all the propaganda tricks of the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, and The hardliners in Iran as well as in neighboring countries.
- [12:24]
Dexter Filkins
I think that in the case of Iran, Syria, for them is an existential threat. I mean, I think that's how serious it is for them. And so here you have a country, Iran, which is under severe economic pressure from the Western sanctions to stop their nuclear program. And nonetheless, they are all in and they are massively helping Assad. I mean, this conflict turned around late last year when it looked like Assad was going to fall. And suddenly, really, almost overnight, you started seeing, you know, a daily stream of Iranian cargo planes going into Damascus. And unloaded from those planes were Revolutionary Guard officers, ammunition, guns, tons of it. And again, this is a country which Iran, which has embattled itself, and that's how serious they take this.
- [13:12]
Dorothy Wickenden
So I want to end by asking you the sort of imponderable question that Obama must be struggling with. Cameron, everybody else who's trying to decide what. What our role in all of this is. How do you stop a humanitarian disaster and when do you intervene?
- [13:25]
George Packer
Well, one of the notable features of this moment is that the new United States Ambassador to the UN is Samantha Power, who's made a career out of thinking about that question and writing about that question and writing about it for this magazine. And now she's at the UN and may well be in a key position of making the American case to the world if President Obama chooses to use American force to do exactly what you said. And yet, to me, this seems like a very muddled moment because we are not going to stop a humanitarian disaster, and we probably aren't even going to be able to stop the use of chemical weapons in the future in this war. I think there's probably a serious argument going on inside his administration and maybe inside individual members of his administration who are haunted by two different specters. One is the specter of Iraq, which Dexter brought up and which should haunt all of us. And the other is the specter of genocide and of what happens when dictators are not stopped. The history in Samantha Powers book shows they go to further means, they start using it in wider ways. They even start using it across borders, as Saddam Hussein did during the Iran Iraq war. So those two scenarios, neither of them is a happy one and they undercut each other. And it seems as if Obama is kind of trying to have it neither, nor to split the difference, to find that sweet spot between robust intervention of the kind that a letter issued by 50 or so Hawks just asked him to do, which is to go all in, and the impulse which has so far won the day, which is to do nothing. This halfway response, which is what we're hearing about, seems like his attempt to resolve that conflict I just described, and I'm not sure it's a very satisfactory one.
- [15:18]
Dorothy Wickenden
No, there's no sweet spot here. Thank you both. We'll be coming back to this subject, obviously, in coming weeks. George Packer and Dexter Filkins are staff writers. This has been the political scene from the New Yorker. I'm Dorothy Wickenden.
- [15:31]
Dexter Filkins
You can subscribe to this and other free New Yorker podcasts in the iTunes store. The weekly audio edition of the magazine is available at audible.com Subscribers can read the magazine online at new yorker.com and also in the tablet edition on the iPad and the Kindle Fire.
- [15:53]
George Packer
America is changing, and so is the world.
- [15:58]
Dexter Filkins
But what's happening in America isn't just the cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
- [16:06]
Mint Mobile Advertiser / Asma Khalid
I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. i'm.
- [16:08]
Dexter Filkins
Tristan Redman in London, and this is the Global story.
- [16:12]
George Packer
Every weekday, we'll bring you a story.
- [16:14]
Mint Mobile Advertiser / Asma Khalid
From this intersection where the world and America meet.
- [16:18]
Dexter Filkins
Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts from. PRX.