Robin Wright is one of the most seasoned journalists in foreign as you will see from the article below. She has been on the ground and see first hand what "limited military action" often results it. While the initial action may be limited, the reaction is often unlimited. If this were a NASCAR race, the yellow caution flag would be waving like crazy.
The risk of taking on Syria
Quick strikes rarely achieve enduring political goals — and often produce more costs or unintended consequences than benefits.
By Robin Wright
August 29, 2013
So the U.S. launches a military strike. Then what?
As the Obama administration and the
U.S. military
plot military action against Syria, they should be spending just as
much time — and arguably more — considering what happens next. Once
Washington crosses the threshold of action, there's no retreating from
blame for anything that follows, whether through action or inaction. And
in the weeks and months to come, dangers will only deepen.
First, quick hits rarely achieve enduring political goals — and often
produce more costs or unintended consequences than benefits. I've seen
it so often before.
I lived in Lebanon in the
fall of 1983 when the Reagan administration ordered the Marine
peacekeepers deployed in Beirut to open fire on a Muslim militia. The
commander bluntly warned Washington that a strike would have dire
consequences for U.S. policy and his troops. "We'll get slaughtered down
here," he predicted. Nonetheless, the cruiser Virginia stationed
offshore fired 70 deafening rounds on the Lebanese fighters.
It was supposed to be a quick hit. It was supposed to send a warning.
But 34 days later, on Oct. 23, a yellow Mercedes truck carrying the
equivalent of 6 tons of explosives drove into the Marine barracks as the
peacekeepers slept. In my head, I can still hear the thundering bomb
blast. It was the single largest nonnuclear explosion anywhere since
World War II. It produced the largest loss of American military life in a
single incident since Iwo Jima.
Four months later, the world's mightiest military was ordered to
leave Lebanon, its mission incomplete. The embryo of what became
Hezbollah, backed by Iran and Syria, had forced the retreat of American,
French, Italian and British troops.
This time in Syria, Washington may again consider its action limited
and specifically targeted. But Syria and its allies, notably Hezbollah,
surely won't. And they can respond in many ways.
The last five presidents have tried limited strikes with specific
messages in various crisis spots, many in the Middle East. The track
record is pretty sorry for both Republican and Democratic
administrations.
Again during the Reagan administration, I reported on the 1986 U.S.
airstrikes against Libya for bombing a Berlin disco, a hangout for
American troops. Three had been killed and more than 200 injured in the
blast, not all Americans. Ten days later, U.S. airstrikes sent a kinetic
message to
Moammar Kadafi about the costs of terrorism.
Operation El Dorado Canyon hit Kadafi's military headquarters and
other military targets in Tripoli and Benghazi, although several bombs
missed their targets and hit civilian areas. The strikes did little to
end the outrages. Two years later, Libya masterminded the bombing of Pan
Am Flight 103 that killed 270 people. And Kadafi remained in power
another quarter-century.
In 1998, I covered Operation Desert Fox, when the Clinton
administration launched four days of cruise missile and bombing strikes
against Iraq. Saddam Hussein's regime had failed to comply with
United Nations
resolutions and weapons inspectors for a year. The goal was to
"degrade" Baghdad's ability to manufacture weapons of mass destruction
and to destabilize Hussein's hold on power.
The impact was negligible. Hussein held on for five more years, until the
George W. Bush
administration launched a ground invasion that cost hundreds of
billions of dollars and nearly 4,500 American lives over the next eight
years.
And in the end, the United States discovered that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction anymore.
I also covered Operation Infinite Reach, when the Clinton
administration ordered cruise missile strikes on terrorist training
camps in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan in 1998. It was
a response to twin bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania. Twelve Americans had been among the 224 killed.
But a year later, I was in Afghanistan, where
Osama bin Laden's
camps were still thriving. The U.S. strikes had made him even more
popular and powerful on the terrorist circuit. And he skillfully adapted
Al Qaeda's tactics. In 2000, a suicide dinghy struck the U.S. destroyer
Cole docked in Yemen, killing 17 sailors. And then the
9/11 suicide planes, the most successful attack against the United States since
Pearl Harbor. Bin Laden may be dead, but the franchises born of his movement are thriving from North Africa to the Persian Gulf.
So the idea of quick hits or short campaigns is often an illusion.
The one notable success was the 2011 air campaign that helped oust
Kadafi. But it had the full endorsement of the Arab League, the United
Nations and ,
NATO, which ran the international mission. Thousands of Libyans actually did the fighting, while the
Transitional National Council provided a viable alternative government from inside the country. And still Operation Unified Protector lasted 222 days.
In the case of Syria, a few days of strikes against military targets
may assuage moral outrage over its heinous use of chemical weapons. But
they also carry the danger of widening the war by legitimizing or
deepening involvement by other foreign powers, notably Iranian and
Russian support for Damascus.
I lived in Beirut during Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon to evict
the Palestine Liberation Organization. It achieved the immediate goal,
yet Operation Peace for Galilee also backfired: Iran deployed
Revolutionary Guards to Lebanon and created Hezbollah, which ultimately
drove out both Israeli troops and American peacekeepers. It was Israel's
first retreat — made voluntarily due to inexorable costs — in the long
Arab-Israeli dispute.
So, as the U.S. and its allies take on Syria, they need to ensure
that the costs do not ultimately outweigh the benefits, and that another
military mission doesn't backfire.
