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| FILE - In this April 30, 2013, file photo President Barack Obama answers questions at a White House news conference in Washington, where he strongly suggested he'd consider military action against Syria if it could be confirmed that President Bashar Assad's government used chemical weapons in the two-year-old civil war. Seeking to avoid getting sucked deeper into Syria's civil war, the Obama administration has long pointed to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq as a symbol of what can go wrong when America's military wades into Middle East conflicts. But experts say the White House is looking at the wrong Iraq war, especially as it weighs whether to impose a no-fly zone over Syria. |
WASHINGTON
(AP) -- The Obama administration, trying to avoid getting drawn deeper
into Syria's civil war, has pointed to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in
2003 as a symbol of what can go wrong when America's military wades into
Middle East conflicts.
But experts say the
White House is looking at the wrong Iraq war, especially as the U.S.
reluctantly considers a no-fly zone over Syria to stop President Bashar
Assad from continuing to use his air power to crush rebel forces or kill
civilians.
A no-fly zone is a territory over
which warring aircraft are not allowed to fly. The U.S. and
international allies have enforced them in several military conflicts
over the past two decades.
When he took office
in 2009, President Barack Obama promised to end the U.S. war in Iraq as
an example of refocusing on issues that had direct impact on Americans.
By the time the U.S military withdrew from Iraq in 2011, almost 4,500
American soldiers and more than 100,000 Iraqis had died. The war toppled
Saddam Hussein but also sparked widespread sectarian fighting and
tensions that still simmer.
But when
considering a no-fly zone, experts point to 1992, a year after the Gulf
War. That's when the U.S. imposed a weakly-enforced no-fly zone over
southern Iraq and could not prevent Saddam, a Sunni Muslim, from
persecuting and killing hundreds of thousands of Shiites whom he viewed
as a political threat.
That failure is now
being used as a case in point of why the U.S. should or shouldn't police
the Syrian sky to prevent Assad from accelerating a two-year death toll
that last week reached 93,000.
The White
House is undecided on whether it will impose a no-fly zone over Syria,
as some have demanded. Egypt's president, Mohammed Morsi, on Saturday
called for a U.N. endorsed no-fly zone.
"We've
rushed to war in this region in the past. We're not going to do it
here," Obama's chief of staff, Denis McDonough, said Sunday on CBS'
"Face the Nation."
Vali Nasr, a Middle East
expert and dean of the John Hopkins' School of Advanced International
Studies, argued for a no-fly zone "to prevent Assad from completely
dominating this war for all practical purposes.
And we need to create a
no-fly zone to create a safe zone for refugees that Assad can't reach."
Nasr,
who held a senior State Department job during the first two years of
the Obama administration, said in an interview Friday that there are
risks, "but perhaps the risks are exaggerated. And what it showed in
Iraq is that it does not have to be a slippery slope into a larger war."
On
the flip side, said retired Navy Adm. William Fallon, "there's no way
to do this in a standoff - `We're just here to help, not going to get
our hands dirty.'"
Fallon, the former head of
U.S. Central Command who helped draw up and carry out the 1992
no-fly-zone in Iraq, said the challenge "is that you'd better be
prepared for escalation and expansion of mission."
"The
likely expansion will be providing air support for guys on the ground,"
said Fallon, now on the board of directors at the American Security
Project, a nonpartisan think tank started by Secretary of State John
Kerry when Kerry was a senator.
Last Thursday,
the White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes announced
the Obama administration has agreed, after months of hesitation, to
start supplying the rebels with upgraded military aid. That decision
came as a result of stronger intelligence indicating that Assad has used
chemicals weapons against his people multiple times this year.
Rhodes
would not detail the type of aid. But military officials and experts
said it probably would include small-arms weapons, shoulder-fired
anti-tank grenades and ammunition.
That would
mark the White House's first lethal shipment to Syria. Until now, the
administration has mostly supplied the rebels with military equipment,
such as body armor and communications devices, and humanitarian aid to
the Syrian people.
Obama has not ruled out imposing a no-fly zone in Syria, Rhodes said.
But,
Rhodes said, "people need to understand that not only are there huge
costs associated with the no-fly zone, not only would it be difficult to
implement, but the notion that you can solve the very deeply rooted
challenges on the ground in Syria from the air are not immediately
apparent."
Supporters of a no-fly zone in
Syria point to the one that was established by NATO over Libya in 2011.
It overwhelmed Moammar Gadhafi's air defenses and attacked tanks and
military vehicles that threatened civilians.
But
European nations have shown little appetite for getting directly
involved in Syria, where Assad's forces possess an air defense system
made far more robust with Russian-bought weapons than what Gadhafi had.
Last
month, Russia acknowledged it has agreed to sell Syria advanced S-300
air-defense missiles, which are considered to be the cutting edge in
aircraft interception technology and could make a no-fly zone very
costly.
Republican Sens. John McCain of
Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have been pushing for a
no-fly zone in Syria, and last week said supplying arms and ammunition
to rebels is not enough to curb Assad's air power. They raised the
option of using cruise missiles, which can be launched from outside of
Syria, as one way of securing Syria's air space.
On
Sunday, Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the top Republican on the
Senate Intelligence Committee, agreed. "A no-fly zone may be the,
ultimately, tactic that has to be taken," he told NBC's "Meet the
Press."
Responded Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo.:
"You know, though, a no-fly zone and other involvement may lead to this
slippery slope that others talked about."
Twenty years ago, the U.S. mission in Iraq showed that no-fly zones must be aggressively enforced if they are to work.
Military
air units generally need to be working closely with ground forces to
make sure that airstrikes and missile attacks hit their intended targets
and don't kill civilians.
Fallon said that's
how no-fly zones often prompt a mission creep, as deploying air forces
can easily turn into a need to send in ground troops. U.S. and European
officials vehemently maintain there are no plans to launch a ground war
in Syria.
Though fighter jets flew over the
vast Iraqi desert every day for more than a decade, they had no help or
guidance on the ground, and were unable to stop Saddam from moving his
army in to attack Shiites and drain the desert region's vital
marshlands, which served as a water lifeline to the local population.
Saddam still flew Iraqi helicopters and gunships into the south to crush
a rag-tag rebellion.
Iraqi officials estimate
at least 200,000 Shiites were killed, and thousands more fled to
neighboring Iran, a Shiite state, for refuge.
"The
no-fly zone had a limited effect on Saddam's ability to hurt the
Shiites," Haider Mansour, a teacher from the Shiite-dominated city of
Basra in Iraq's south, said Saturday. "But it increased the suffering of
ordinary people because it forced Saddam to dry the marshes."
Nasr
said Iraq's majority Shiites never forgot the tepid U.S. support
against Saddam during the 1990s. Despite the U.S.-led invasion that
overthrew Saddam, Nasr said it's little surprise that Baghdad's
Shiite-led government now arguably has stronger ties with Iran than it
does with Washington.
The parallels between Iraq and Syria are clear, Nasr said, as are the potential consequences.
"There
was an uprising against a dictator who was no friend of ours, and we
did not prevent a massacre," Nasr said. He said the U.S. inaction opened
the door for Shiite militias and radicalism, and led to Iran's
influence in Baghdad "because nobody else supported Shiites against
Saddam."
"And so, one can say, `We can
tolerate hundreds of thousands of people being killed,'" Nasr said. "But
there are consequences to it."
Fallon said the major flaw in the Iraqi no-fly zone was the lack of a clear plan or, even, an ultimate goal.
"At
the time, it sounded OK," he said. "It was certainly much less
dramatic, it wasn't necessarily going to be a shooting war, it was going
to be to `Keep Saddam under control.'
"But
what was the end state? Nobody knew. But we did it anyway. And so this
thing went on forever," Fallon said. "And the longer it went on the more
unpalatable it was to stop it. And was it effective? No. Did it stop
Saddam? No."
The current Iraqi government has ignored several U.S. requests for help in stopping Iranian flights of supplies to Syria.
Creating
an effective no-fly zone in Syria would require fighter jets or drones
equipped with radar and weapons as well as other surveillance planes,
said national security analyst Anthony Cordesman at the Center for
Strategic and international Studies. He predicted it probably would have
to be done without U.N. support, and it may lead to U.S. troop deaths.
