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Heres why Obama is giving up the element of surprise in Syria
Whats about to happen, if the United States and allies do go through with the strikes, is less of a war and more of a ritual. This isnt about defeating Assad, its about punishing him. And that calls for being really precise about how much punishment the United States imposes.This is what the Clinton administration did in 1998 with Operation Desert Fox, when it and the United Kingdom bombed Iraq as punishment for cheating on weapons of mass destruction disarmament. The strikes were also intended to degrade Iraqs WMD production capacity. The 100 or so targets were, as now with Syria, telegraphed ahead of time. Many of them were empty. Iraq knew it was coming and was mostly unsurprised, which meant that it didnt escalate. The campaign was limited in scope and, although the history of Iraq and WMDs is obviously a thorny one, appeared to be largely successful at least at punishing Saddam Hussein. The writer has a very strange definition of "success". Here's my 2 cents on what the big O is going to do: nothing. He'll find some way to punt. From now on they're on double secret probation! Posted by: Spot 2013-08-28 |
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