Jennifer Rubin
The plunge of Syria and Iraq into seemingly
interminable warfare is the most long-lasting debacle of the Obama presidency.
Despite a temporary cease-fire in Syria — which only cements Bashar al-Assad’s
continued rule and Russia’s geopolitical victory — and some gains in Iraq, the
facts on the ground have changed irreparably.
While subsequent presidents may be able to halt Iran’s
quest for nuclear weapons (although thanks to President Obama, more likely
through the use of force), genocide cannot be undone. On March 17, Secretary of
State John Kerry had this to say:
My purpose in appearing before you today is to assert
that, in my judgment, Daesh [the Islamic State] is responsible for genocide
against groups in areas under its control, including Yezidis, Christians, and
Shia Muslims. Daesh is genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology, and by
actions — in what it says, what it believes, and what it does. Daesh is also
responsible for crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing directed at these
same groups and in some cases also against Sunni Muslims, Kurds, and other
minorities. . . .
Our goal, after all, is not just to defeat Daesh —
only to find that in a few years some new terrorist group with a different
acronym has taken its place. Our purpose is to marginalize and defeat violent
extremists once and for all.
By that standard, the Obama administration has failed
miserably.
Of course, the Islamic State is responsible for
only part of the mayhem. The continued rule of Assad — who has repeatedly used
chemical weapons with no real or lasting consequences and has waged a bloody
civil war taking the lives of more than 300,000 and turning millions into
refugees — is a critical part of Obama’s legacy as well. In other words, the
Obama team will leave behindmore than a genocide.
We must tell our children about how this evil was
allowed to happen — because so many people succumbed to their darkest
instincts, and because so many others stood silent. . . . We must tell our
children. But more than that, we must teach them. Because remembrance
without resolve is a hollow gesture. Awareness without action changes
nothing. In this sense, “never again” is a challenge to us all — to pause
and to look within. . . . And finally, “never again” is a challenge to
nations. It’s a bitter truth — too often, the world has failed to prevent
the killing of innocents on a massive scale. And we are haunted by the
atrocities that we did not stop and the lives we did not save. . . . In
short, we need to be doing everything we can to prevent and respond to these
kinds of atrocities — because national sovereignty is never a license to
slaughter your people. . . .
To Elie [Wiesel] and to the survivors [of the
Holocaust] who are here today, thank you for not giving up. You show us
the way. (Applause.) You show us the way. If you cannot give
up, if you can believe, then we can believe. If you can continue to
strive and speak, then we can speak and strive for a future where there’s a
place for dignity for every human being. That has been the cause of your
lives. It must be the work of our nation and of all nations.
That was Obama at the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum nearly four years ago.
Indeed, the administration seems to have learned
nothing from a long, dreadful history of inaction in the face of genocide:
Time and again the U.S. government would be reluctant
to cast aside its neutrality and formally denounce a fellow state for its
atrocities. Time and again though U.S. officials would learn that huge numbers
of civilians were being slaughtered, the impact of this knowledge would be
blunted by their uncertainty about the facts and their rationalization that a
firmer U.S. stand would make little difference. Time and again American
assumptions and policies would be contested by Americans in the field closest
to the slaughter, who would try to stir the imaginations of their political
superiors.
That’s from the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,” by now-Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power. Written well
before she began working in the Obama administration, the 2002 book provides
an apt description, frankly, of the administration in which she now serves:
The real reason the United States did not do what it
could and should have done to stop genocide [Turkish government against
Armenians, Khmer Rouge against its own people in Cambodia, Christians against
Muslims in Bosnia, Saddam Hussein against Kurds in Iraq, Hutus against Tutsis
in Rwanda] was not a lack of knowledge or influence but a lack of will. Simply
put, American leaders did not act because they did not want to. They believed
that genocide was wrong, but they were not prepared to invest the military,
financial, diplomatic, or domestic political capital needed to stop it. The U.
S. policies crafted in response to each case of genocide … were not the
accidental products of neglect. They were concrete choices made by this
country’s most influential decisionmakers after unspoken and explicit weighing
of costs and benefits.
In each case, U.S. policymakers in the executive
branch (usually with the passive backing of most members of Congress) had two
objectives. First, they wanted to avoid engagement in conflicts that posed
little threat to American interests, narrowly defined. And second, they hoped
to contain the political costs and avoid the moral stigma associated with
allowing genocide. By and large, they achieved both aims. In order to contain
the political fallout, U.S. officials overemphasized the ambiguity of the
facts. They played up the likely futility, perversity, and jeopardy of any
proposed intervention. They steadfastly avoided use of the word “genocide;’ which
they believed carried with it a legal and moral (and thus political) imperative
to act. And they took solace in the normal operations of the foreign policy
bureaucracy, which permitted an illusion of continual deliberation, complex
activity, and intense concern.
After four years of negligible action, bitter
condemnation of critics urging him to do more and rejection of advice from many
national security officials, the president has now changed his tune. Now, the
Middle East is too messy, too incapable of resolution to be bothered with.
“This falls in the category of something that I had been brooding on for some
time,” he is quoted in a recent interview with Jeffrey Goldberg as saying with regard to his about-face on the red line. “I had come
into office with the strong belief that the scope of executive power in
national-security issues is very broad, but not limitless.” He says he is
“proud” of that decision because he somehow defied the Washington “playbook.”
Actually, as he and his U.N. ambassador have
acknowledged in the past, the “playbook” for decades has been to do nothing
about genocide, to find excuses not to act. They have become what they have
deplored — apologists for a policy of passivity that results in unimaginable
human suffering, not to mention geopolitical defeat.
In setting up the fleet of straw men —
we either do nothing or we “commit to governing the Middle East and North
Africa” — perhaps Obama derives some rationale for his failure that allows him
to sleep at night. But, in fact, there is not an ex post facto rationalization
to justify passivity in the face of genocide when both humanitarian and
strategic interests coincide, especially when early minimal action could have
staved off disastrous results. Maybe Power will write a
book about it someday.
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