Washington’s march to war on Syria took a serious blow on Thursday. It was struck in London. And it is a good thing.
It happened in the British Parliament, which unexpectedly voted 285-272 against joining the United States in military action after last week’s reported Syrian chemical attack that left at least 300 people dead.
Prime Minister David Cameron, who recalled Parliament from its summer recess, said he believed a “tough response” to Bashar Assad’s government was necessary in the wake of the gruesome Aug. 21 assault.
But it’s still far from clear that Assad’s forces are responsible for it. United Nations weapons inspectors are on the ground in Damascus and their findings aren’t expected before this weekend at the earliest. Even Cameron was forced to concede that the intelligence was far from ironclad.
That seemed to be enough to derail an endorsement by Parliament. Many members still are bitter about the faulty intelligence they received in the buildup to the war in Iraq. British and American officials insisted at the time that they were certain Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction and was flirting with giving them to al-Qaida elements to use against the West. Of course, after the war began those WMDs were never found and a serious link between Saddam’s regime and al-Qaida was never proven.
In the meantime, thousands of allied troops lost their lives in the carnage that followed, along with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.
Cameron was chastened after the vote. “It is clear to me that the British Parliament, reflecting the views of the British people, does not want to see British military action,” he said. “I get that, and the government will act accordingly.”
In the United States, President Barack Obama may not get that opportunity. Despite polls showing the vast majority of the public is against military action, he contends he has the authority to launch an attack without a vote by Congress. Administration officials spent 90 minutes talking to Congressional leaders in a teleconference Thursday night, outlining their evidence against the Assad regime. The White House said the U.S. is willing to retaliate against Syria on its own.
“The president of the United States is elected with the duty to protect the national security interests in the United States of America,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.
But the Americans have the same problems as the Brits: U.S. officials admit their intelligence assessments are no “slam dunk.” Nobody really knows if the Syrian government has chemical weapons, or who controls them. Did Assad himself order the strike? No one knows that, either.
These issues need to be aired before any attack takes place, and they should be addressed on the floor of Congress. We’ve seen the results when a war is heedlessly launched without careful vetting. It was a debacle that will take years to get over.
We can’t make that mistake again.
