Biden beats war drums over Syria

Vice President Joe Biden had the whole world wondering what he meant last weekend when he announced the U.S. and Turkey were prepared for a military solution in Syria should the Syrian government and rebels fail to reach a political solution to their war.

Excuse me? What does that mean?

To any sensible person halfway versed in the politics of the Middle East, it would mean that if Bashar Assad doesn't step down as president and hand over power to the rebels he's fighting, then the U.S. and Turkey will remove him militarily.

There are more than a few problems with that idea:

1. Russia and Iran are supporting Assad. They are supporting him militarily. Russia is very engaged and very committed – even flying air strikes against the rebels. Assad is a very important ally for Iran, which has troops on the ground and its Hezbollah forces in both Syria and Lebanon. Neither Iran nor Russia will take lightly an attack on their friendly government in Damascus.
2. Assad is hardly the biggest problem in the Middle East. While he's an autocratic thug, he also provides something few Middle East leaders do – a degree of religious freedom, especially for minority, non-Muslim populations including a large Christian segment. With Christians on the run across the Middle East, they need the fall of Assad like they need a hole in the head.
3. Turkey is an imperial power in the region and wants Assad gone for its own reasons. They want a staging ground against Kurds, one of the most pro-West of all Middle East populations. It's also partial to the majority Sunni population of the Middle East, which it once dominated in the days of the Ottoman Empire right up until 1918. It still dreams of ruling the Islamic world as the base of a caliphate.
4. Turkey has been covertly funding and providing arms to ISIS. Does Biden really think Turkey is a good Middle East military ally under those circumstances? Or does he think at all before he opens his pie hole?
5. Shouldn't eliminating ISIS be the No. 1 military objective for the U.S. in the Middle East?

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Later, a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, which is probably the only condition on which Biden should talk all the time, explained Biden was not talking about a military action against Assad, but only against ISIS. But that makes no sense at all. What would the negotiations between Assad and the rebels have to do with ISIS? Those talks are about who will be in power in Syria? Doesn't ISIS have to go regardless of who is in power in Syria?

Do you see my confusion here?

Do you see why Biden needs to keep his big trap shut?

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But it gets worse.

You see, the Syrian rebels (excluding ISIS, presumably) are backed by Saudi Arabia, which says its surrogates will not even talk about a negotiated settlement of the civil war unless Russia halts its air strikes.

Does anyone really think that's going to happen? Russia is conducting air strikes to keep Assad in power and to smash the genocidal and destabilizing effects of ISIS' terror across the Middle East.

And one last question: Why on earth would the United States want to see Sunnis take power in Syria, which has large non-Sunni populations that will immediately experience persecution or worse as a result? Nevertheless, that's precisely who the U.S. is supporting in the conflict, probably because the Saudis are telling them to do so. (There's always a big fat payday for ex-presidents of the U.S. thanks to the Saudis. It's been true of every ex-president since George H.W. Bush. That's what Barack Obama's looking for in 2017. How's that for a glaring conflict of interest?)

By the way, do you know which constituencies have not been asked to participate in negotiations for a political solution in Syria? The Kurds and the Christians – the two voices of sanity in the country.

But still there is more …

If the U.S. and Turkey team up in a military alliance in Syria, there's going to be another problem. Biden also affirmed Turkey's official position that the Kurdistan Workers Party, known as PKK, is a terrorist organization. But guess who the U.S. is backing in the civil war in Syria – an offshoot of the PKK known as People's Protection Units, or PYD, if you can follow all of this. (Obviously, Biden cannot.) So, in effect, Biden pledged to join Turkey in a military solution in Syria in which the U.S. is already backing one of Turkey's targets of annihilation. It's no small matter since the PYD is in control of large swaths of Syria, which, ironically, it has seized from ISIS.

Biden needs a full-time keeper. But who is going to do that in an Obama administration?

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