Sen.
Ron Wyden, Sen. Jeff Merkley, Rep. Suzanne Bonamici,
In the coming days, you will be presented with a resolution proposing military action against Syria. I urge you to vote against it. The matter of who was responsible for the recent chemical weapons attacks is still unresolved, and, even if it is firmly established that the Syrian government was responsible, a military strike will not reduce the level of violence in the region.
Concerning responsibility for the chemical weapons attacks, no ironclad evidence has been presented indicating that the Syrian government carried them out. All of the evidence presented by the Obama administration has been strictly circumstantial in nature (or, worse yet, rooted in “social media reports”), and the administration has withheld from scrutiny the evidence behind its most extraordinary claims. The unclassified intelligence report released on August 30th, for instance, claims that communications involving a senior Syrian official were intercepted, but no transcripts are provided.
The Obama administration also denies the possibility of rebels having carried out the attack despite evidence to the contrary. A recent MintPress article by Dale Gavlak and Yahya Ababneh, for instance, compiles interviews with rebels, their family members, and residents of Ghouta indicating that the attacks may have been carried out by rebels who used weapons provided by the intelligence chief of Saudi Arabia, Prince Bandar bin Sultan.
Carla Del Ponte, a leading member of the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, has also been on record saying that there were “strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof” that the rebels had carried out previous chemical weapons attacks.
We have yet to be presented with incontrovertible evidence indicating the Syrian government’s responsibility for the attacks, and we have not fully considered evidence indicating that the rebels may have been responsible. Even if evidence were to arise firmly establishing the government’s responsibility, however, we should not respond with military action because doing so will not help resolve the situation in any way.
A strike carried out with the intent of limiting the Syrian government’s ability to carry out chemical attacks will prove to be highly problematic. Jonathan Marcus, a BBC diplomatic correspondent, has observed that much of Syria’s chemical weapons complex is “reasonably close to populated areas,” and that attacking such sites could “open up chemical weapons stocks to the air, disperse them over a large area, and potentially cause large numbers of civilian casualties.”
If the strike is to be carried out with the intent of turning the tide of war against the Assad regime, that too will prove highly problematic because the civil war in Syria is a bloody and protracted conflict with many outside players casting their influence. If we influence the conflict more overtly through a military strike, powers favoring Assad will follow suit, leading only to a further escalation of violence in the region.
Instead of pursuing a military strike, we should encourage a diplomatic settlement between the Syrian government and the rebels. Allies of both sides in the international community should withdraw arms support and then focus on bringing the rebels and the government to the negotiating table via a ceasefire agreement. Any other course of action will only lead to more death and destruction in Syria.
In the coming days, you will be presented with a resolution proposing military action against Syria. I urge you to vote against it. The matter of who was responsible for the recent chemical weapons attacks is still unresolved, and, even if it is firmly established that the Syrian government was responsible, a military strike will not reduce the level of violence in the region.
Concerning responsibility for the chemical weapons attacks, no ironclad evidence has been presented indicating that the Syrian government carried them out. All of the evidence presented by the Obama administration has been strictly circumstantial in nature (or, worse yet, rooted in “social media reports”), and the administration has withheld from scrutiny the evidence behind its most extraordinary claims. The unclassified intelligence report released on August 30th, for instance, claims that communications involving a senior Syrian official were intercepted, but no transcripts are provided.
The Obama administration also denies the possibility of rebels having carried out the attack despite evidence to the contrary. A recent MintPress article by Dale Gavlak and Yahya Ababneh, for instance, compiles interviews with rebels, their family members, and residents of Ghouta indicating that the attacks may have been carried out by rebels who used weapons provided by the intelligence chief of Saudi Arabia, Prince Bandar bin Sultan.
Carla Del Ponte, a leading member of the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, has also been on record saying that there were “strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof” that the rebels had carried out previous chemical weapons attacks.
We have yet to be presented with incontrovertible evidence indicating the Syrian government’s responsibility for the attacks, and we have not fully considered evidence indicating that the rebels may have been responsible. Even if evidence were to arise firmly establishing the government’s responsibility, however, we should not respond with military action because doing so will not help resolve the situation in any way.
A strike carried out with the intent of limiting the Syrian government’s ability to carry out chemical attacks will prove to be highly problematic. Jonathan Marcus, a BBC diplomatic correspondent, has observed that much of Syria’s chemical weapons complex is “reasonably close to populated areas,” and that attacking such sites could “open up chemical weapons stocks to the air, disperse them over a large area, and potentially cause large numbers of civilian casualties.”
If the strike is to be carried out with the intent of turning the tide of war against the Assad regime, that too will prove highly problematic because the civil war in Syria is a bloody and protracted conflict with many outside players casting their influence. If we influence the conflict more overtly through a military strike, powers favoring Assad will follow suit, leading only to a further escalation of violence in the region.
Instead of pursuing a military strike, we should encourage a diplomatic settlement between the Syrian government and the rebels. Allies of both sides in the international community should withdraw arms support and then focus on bringing the rebels and the government to the negotiating table via a ceasefire agreement. Any other course of action will only lead to more death and destruction in Syria.
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