THE AUTHOR
John McCain
Remarks by Senator John McCain on the Situation in Syria on the Floor of the U.S. Senate
After a year of bloodshed, the crisis in Syria has reached a decisive moment. BY JOHN MCCAIN
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) today delivered the following remarks regarding the situation in Syria on the floor of the U.S. Senate:
“After a year of bloodshed, the crisis in Syria has reached a decisive moment.
“It is estimated that more than 7,500 lives have been lost. The
United Nations has declared that Syrian security forces are guilty
of crimes against humanity, including the indiscriminate shelling of
civilians, the execution of defectors, and the widespread torture of
prisoners. Bashar Al-Assad is now doing to Homs what his father did
to Hama. Aerial photographs procured by Human Rights Watch show a
city that has been laid to waste by Assad’s tanks and artillery. A
British photographer who was wounded and evacuated from the city
described it as ‘a medieval siege and slaughter.’ The kinds of mass
atrocities that NATO intervened in Libya to prevent in Benghazi are
now a reality in Homs. Indeed, Syria today is the scene of some of
the worst state-sponsored violence since Milosevic’s war crimes in
the Balkans, or Russia’s annihilation of the Chechen city of Grozny.
“What is all the more astonishing is that Assad’s killing spree has
continued despite severe and escalating international pressure
against him. His regime is almost completely isolated. It has been
expelled from the Arab League, rebuked by the United Nations General
Assembly, excoriated by the U.N. Human Rights Council, and abandoned
by nearly every country that once maintained diplomatic relations
with it. At the same time, Assad’s regime is facing a punishing
array of economic sanctions by the United States, the European
Union, the Arab League, and others – measures that have targeted the
assets of Assad and his henchmen, cut off the Central Bank and other
financial institutions, grounded Syria’s cargo flights, and
restricted the regime’s ability to sell oil. This has been an
impressive international effort, and the Administration deserves a
lot of credit for helping to orchestrate it.
“The problem is, the bloodletting continues. Despite a year’s worth
of diplomacy backed by sanctions, Assad and his top lieutenants show
no signs of giving up and taking the path into foreign exile. To the
contrary, they appear to accelerating their fight to the finish. And
they are doing so with the shameless support of foreign governments,
especially in Russia, China, and Iran. A steady supply of weapons,
ammunition, and other assistance is flowing to Assad from Moscow and
Tehran, and as the Washington Post reported yesterday, Iranian
military and intelligence operatives are likely active in Syria,
helping to direct and sharpen the regime’s brutality. The Security
Council is totally shut down as an avenue for increased pressure,
and the recently convened Friends of Syria contact group, while a
good step in principle, produced mostly rhetoric but precious little
action when it met last month in Tunisia. Unfortunately, with each
passing day, the international response to Assad’s atrocities is
being overtaken by events on the ground in Syria.
“Some countries are finally beginning to acknowledge this reality,
as well as its implications. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are calling for
arming opposition forces in Syria. The newly-elected Kuwaiti
parliament has called on their government to do the same. Last week,
the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, Admiral James Stavridis,
testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee that providing arms
to opposition forces in Syria could help them shift the balance of
power against Assad. Most importantly, Syrians themselves are
increasingly calling for international military involvement. The
opposition Syrian National Council recently announced that it is
establishing a military bureau to channel weapons and other
assistance to the Free Syrian Army and armed groups inside the
country. Other members of the Council are demanding a more robust
intervention.
“To be sure, there are legitimate questions about the efficacy of
military options in Syria, and equally legitimate concerns about
their risks and uncertainties. It is understandable that the
Administration is reluctant to move beyond diplomacy and sanctions.
Unfortunately, this policy is increasingly disconnected from the
dire conditions on the ground in Syria, which has become a
full-blown state of armed conflict. In the face of this new reality,
the Administration’s approach to Syria is starting to look more like
a hope than a strategy. So, too, does their continued insistence
that Assad’s fall is ‘inevitable.’ Tell that to the people of Homs.
Tell that to the people of Idlib, or Hama, or the other cities that
Assad’s forces are now moving against. Nothing in this world is
pre-determined. And claims about the inevitability of events can
often be a convenient way to abdicate responsibility.
“But even if we do assume that Assad will ultimately fall, that may
still take a really long time. In recent testimony to the Senate
Armed Services Committee, the Director of National Intelligence,
James Clapper, said that if the status quo persists, Assad could
hang on for months, possibly longer. And that was before Homs fell.
So just to be clear: Even under the best-case scenario for the
current policy, the cost of success will likely be months of
continued bloodshed and thousands of additional lives lost. Is this
morally acceptable to us? I believe it should not be.
“In addition to the moral and humanitarian interests at stake in
Syria, what is just as compelling, if not more so, are the strategic
and geopolitical interests. Put simply, the United States has a
clear national security interest in stopping the violence in Syria
and forcing Assad to leave power. In this way, Syria is very
different than Libya: The stakes are far higher, both for America
and some of our closest allies.
“This regime in Syria serves as the main forward operating base of
the Iranian regime in the heart of the Arab world. It has supported
Palestinian terrorist groups and funneled arms of all kinds,
including tens of thousands of rockets, to Hezbollah in Lebanon. It
remains a committed enemy of Israel. It has large stockpiles of
chemical weapons and materials and has sought to develop a nuclear
weapons capability. It was the primary gateway for the countless
foreign fighters who infiltrated into Iraq and killed our troops.
Assad and his lieutenants have the blood of hundreds of Americans on
their hands. Many in Washington fear that what comes after Assad
might be worse. How could it be any worse than this?
“The end of the Assad regime would sever Hezbollah’s lifeline to
Iran, eliminate a long-standing threat to Israel, bolster Lebanon’s
sovereignty and independence, and inflict a strategic defeat on the
Iranian regime. It would be a geopolitical success of the first
order. More than all of the compelling moral and humanitarian
reasons, this is why Assad cannot be allowed to succeed and remain
in power: We have a clear national security interest in his defeat.
And that alone should incline us to tolerate a large degree of risk
in order to see that this goal is achieved.
“Increasingly, the question for U.S. policy is not whether foreign
forces will intervene militarily in Syria. We can be confident that
Syria’s neighbors will do so eventually, if they have not already.
Some kind of intervention will happen, with us or without us. So the
real question for U.S. policy is whether we will participate in this
next phase of the conflict in Syria, and thereby increase our
ability to shape an outcome that is beneficial to the Syrian people,
and to us. I believe we must.
“The President has characterized the prevention of mass atrocities
as, quote, ‘a core national security interest.’ He has made it the
objective of the United States that the killing in Syria must stop,
and that Assad must go. He has committed the prestige and
credibility of our nation to that goal, and it is the right goal.
However, it is not clear that the present policy can succeed. If
Assad manages to cling to power – or even if he manages to sustain
his slaughter for months to come, with all of the human and
geopolitical costs that entails – it would be a strategic and moral
defeat for the United States. We cannot, we must not, allow this to
happen.
“For this reason, the time has come for a new policy. As we continue
to isolate Assad diplomatically and economically, we should work
with our closest friends and allies to support opposition groups
inside Syria, both political and military, to help them organize
themselves into a more cohesive and effective force that can put an
end to the bloodshed and force Assad and his loyalists to leave
power. Rather than closing off the prospects for some kind of a
negotiated transition that is acceptable to the Syrian opposition,
foreign military intervention is now the necessary factor to
reinforce this option. Assad needs to know that he will not win.
“What opposition groups in Syria need most urgently is relief from
Assad’s tank and artillery sieges in the many cities that are still
contested. Homs is lost for now, but Idlib, and Hama, and Qusayr,
and Deraa, and other cities in Syria could still be saved. But time
is running out. Assad’s forces are on the march. Providing military
assistance to the Free Syrian Army and other opposition groups is
necessary, but at this late hour, that alone will not be sufficient
to stop the slaughter and save innocent lives. The only realistic
way to do so is with foreign airpower.
“Therefore, at the request of the Syrian National Council, the Free
Syrian Army, and Local Coordinating Committees inside the country,
the United States should lead an international effort to protect key
population centers in Syria, especially in the north, through
airstrikes on Assad’s forces. To be clear: This will require the
United States to suppress enemy air defenses in at least part of the
country.
“The ultimate goal of airstrikes should be to establish and defend
safe havens in Syria, especially in the north, in which opposition
forces can organize and plan their political and military activities
against Assad. These safe havens could serve as platforms for the
delivery of humanitarian and military assistance – including weapons
and ammunition, body armor and other personal protective equipment,
tactical intelligence, secure communications equipment, food and
water, and medical supplies. These safe havens could also help the
Free Syrian Army and other armed groups in Syria to train and
organize themselves into more cohesive and effective military
forces, likely with the assistance of foreign partners.
“The benefit for the United States in helping to lead this effort
directly is that it would allow us to better empower those Syrian
groups that share our interests – those groups that reject Al-Qaeda
and the Iranian regime, and commit to the goal of an inclusive
democratic transition, as called for by the Syrian National Council.
If we stand on the sidelines, others will try to pick winners, and
this will not always be to our liking or in our interest. This does
that mean the United States should go it alone. We should not. We
should seek the active involvement of key Arab partners such as
Saudi Arabia, U.A.E., Jordan, and Qatar – and willing allies in the
E.U. and NATO, the most important of which in this case is Turkey.
“There will be no U.N. Security Council mandate for such an
operation. Russia and China took that option off the table long ago.
But let’s not forget: NATO took military action to save Kosovo in
1999 without formal U.N. authorization. There is no reason why the
Arab League, or NATO, or a leading coalition within the Friends of
Syria contact group, or all of them speaking in unison, could not
provide a similar international mandate for military measures to
save Syria today.
“Could such a mandate be gotten? I believe it could be. Foreign
capitals across the world are looking to the United States to lead,
especially now that the situation in Syria has become an armed
conflict. But what they see is an Administration still hedging its
bets – on the one hand, insisting that Assad’s fall is inevitable,
but on the other, unwilling even to threaten more assertive actions
that could make it so.
“The rhetoric out of NATO has been much more self-defeating. Far
from making it clear to Assad that all options are on the table, key
alliance leaders are going out of their way to publicly take options
off the table. Last week, the Secretary-General of NATO, Mr.
Rasmussen, said that the alliance has not even discussed the
possibility of NATO action in Syria – saying, quote, ‘I don’t
envision such a role for the alliance.’ The following day, the
Supreme Allied Commander, Admiral James Stavridis, testified to the
Senate Armed Services Committee that NATO has done no contingency
planning – none – for potential military operations in Syria.
“That is not how NATO approached Bosnia. Or Kosovo. Or Libya. Is it
now the policy of NATO – or the United States, for that matter – to
tell the perpetrators of mass atrocities, in Syria or elsewhere,
that they can go on killing innocent civilians by the hundreds or
thousands, and the greatest alliance in history will not even bother
to conduct any planning about how we might stop them? Is that NATO’s
policy now? Is that our policy? Because that is the practical effect
of this kind of rhetoric. It gives Assad and his foreign allies a
green light for greater brutality.
“Not surprisingly, many countries, especially Syria’s neighbors, are
also hedging their bets on the outcome in Syria. They think Assad
will go, but they are not yet prepared to put all of their chips on
that bet – even less so now that Assad’s forces have broken Homs and
seem to be gaining momentum. There is only one nation that can alter
this dynamic, and that is us. The President must state unequivocally
that under no circumstances will Assad be allowed to finish what he
has started, that there is no future in which Assad and his
lieutenants will remain in control of Syria, and that the United
States is prepared to use the full weight of our airpower to make it
so. It is only when we have clearly and completely committed
ourselves that we can expect other countries to do the same. Only
then would we see what is really possible in winning international
support to stop the killing in Syria.
“Are there dangers, and risks, and uncertainties in this approach?
Absolutely. There are no ideal options in Syria. All of them contain
significant risk. Many people will be quick to raise concerns about
the course of action I am proposing. Many of these concerns have
merit, but none so much that they should keep us from acting.
“For example, we continue to hear it said that we should not assist
the opposition in Syria militarily because we don’t know who these
people are. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeated this
argument just last week, adding that we could end up helping
Al-Qaeda or Hamas. It is possible the Administration does not know
much about the armed opposition in Syria, but how much effort have
they really made to find out – to meet and engage these people
directly? Not much, it appears.
“Instead, much of the best information we have about the armed
resistance in Syria is thanks to courageous journalists, some of
whom have given their lives to tell the story of the Syrian people.
One of those journalists is a reporter working for Al-Jazeera named
Nir Rosen, who spent months in the country, including much time with
the armed opposition. Here is how he describes them in a recent
interview:
“‘The regime and its supporters describe the opposition, especially
the armed opposition, as Salafis, Jihadists, Muslim Brotherhood
supporters, al-Qaeda and terrorists. This is not true, but it’s
worth noting that all the fighters I met … were Sunni Muslims, and
most were pious. They fight for a multitude of reasons: for their
friends, for their neighborhoods, for their villages, for their
province, for revenge, for self-defense, for dignity, for their
brethren in other parts of the country who are also fighting. They
do not read religious literature or listen to sermons. Their views
on Islam are consistent with the general attitudes of Syrian Sunni
society, which is conservative and religious.
“‘Because there are many small groups in the armed opposition, it is
difficult to describe their ideology in general terms. The Salafi
and Muslim Brotherhood ideologies are not important in Syria and do
not play a significant role in the revolution. But most Syrian
Sunnis taking part in the uprising are themselves devout.’
“He could just as well have been describing average citizens in Egypt, or Libya, or Tunisia, or other nations in the region. So we should be a little more careful before we embrace the Assad regime’s propaganda about the opposition in Syria. We certainly should not let these misconceptions cause us to keep the armed resistance in Syria at arm’s length, because that is just self-defeating. And I can assure you that Al-Qaeda is not pursuing the same policy. They are eager to try to hijack the Syrian revolution, just as they have tried to hijack the Arab Spring movements in Egypt, and Tunisia, and Libya, and elsewhere. They are trying, but so far, they are failing. The people of these countries are broadly rejecting everything Al-Qaeda stands for. They are not eager to trade secular tyranny for theocratic tyranny.
“The other reason Al-Qaeda is failing in Tunisia, and Egypt, and
Libya is because the community of nations, especially the United
States, has supported them. We are giving them a better alternative.
The surest way for Al-Qaeda to gain a foothold in Syria is for us to
turn our backs on those brave Syrians who are fighting to defend
themselves. After all, Sunni Iraqis were willing to ally with
Al-Qaeda when they felt desperate enough. But when America gave them
a better alternative, they turned their guns on Al-Qaeda. Why should
it be different in Syria?
“Another objection to providing military assistance to the Syrian
opposition is that the conflict has become a sectarian civil war,
and our intervention would enable the Sunni majority to take a
bloody and indiscriminate revenge against the Alawite minority. This
is a serious and legitimate concern, and it is only growing worse
the longer the conflict goes on. As we saw in Iraq, or Lebanon
before it, time favors the hard-liners in a conflict like this. The
suffering of Sunnis at the hands of Assad only stokes the temptation
for revenge, which in turn only deepens fears among the Alawites,
and strengthens their incentive to keep fighting. For this reason
alone, it is all the more compelling to find a way to end the
bloodshed as soon as possible.
“Furthermore, the risks of sectarian conflict will exist in Syria
whether we get more involved or not. And we will at least have some
ability to try to mitigate these risks if we work to assist the
armed opposition now. That will at least help us to know them
better, and to establish some trust and exercise some influence with
them, because we took their side when they needed it most. We should
not overstate the potential influence we could gain with opposition
groups inside Syria, but it will only diminish the longer we wait to
offer them meaningful support. And what we can say for certain is
that we will have no influence whatsoever with these people if they
feel we abandoned them. This is a real moral dilemma, but we cannot
allow the opposition in Syria to be crushed at present while we
worry about the future.
“We also hear it said, including by the Administration, that we
should not contribute to the militarization of the conflict. If only
Russia and Iran shared that sentiment. Instead, they are shamelessly
fueling Assad’s killing machine. We need to deal with reality as it
is, not as we wish it to be – and the reality in Syria today is
largely a one-sided fight where the aggressors are not lacking for
military means and zeal.
“Indeed, Assad appears to be fully committed to crushing the
opposition at all costs. Iran and Russia appear to be fully
committed to helping him do it. The many Syrians who have taken up
arms to defend themselves and their communities appear to be fully
committed to acquiring the necessary weapons to resist Assad. And
leading Arab states appear increasingly committed to providing those
weapons. The only ones who seem overly concerned about a
militarization of the conflict are the United States and some of our
allies. The time has come to ask a different question: Who do we
want to win in Syria – our friends or our enemies?
“There are always plenty of reasons not to do something, and we can
list them clearly in the case of Syria. We know the opposition is
divided. We know the armed resistance inside the country lacks
cohesion or command and control. We know that some elements of the
opposition may sympathize with violent extremist ideologies or
harbor dark thoughts of sectarian revenge. We know that many of
Syria’s immediate neighbors remain cautious about taking overly
provocative actions that could undermine Assad. And we know the
American people are weary of conflict – justifiably so – and would
rather focus on domestic problems.
“These are realities, but while we are compelled to acknowledge
them, we are not condemned to accept them forever. With resolve,
principled leadership, and wise policy, we can shape better
realities. That is what the Syrian people have done.
“By no rational calculation should this uprising against Assad still
be going on. The Syrian people are outmatched. They are outgunned.
They are lacking for food, and water, and other basic needs. They
are confronting a regime whose disregard for human dignity and
capacity for sheer savagery is limitless. For an entire year, the
Syrian people have faced death, and those unspeakable things worse
than death, and still they have not given up. Still they take to the
streets to protest peacefully for justice. Still they carry on their
fight. And they do so on behalf of many of the same universal values
we share, and many of the same interests as well.
“These people are our allies. They want many of the same things we
do. They have expanded the boundaries of what everyone thought was
possible in Syria. They have earned our respect, and now they need
our support to finish what they started. The Syrian people deserve
to succeed, and shame on us if we fail to help them.”
About the Author
John McCain is a Republican Senator from Arizona. This text is a speech he delivered on the Senate floor on March 5, 2012, and agreed to publish as a NewJurist article.
