War for as Far as the Eye Can See

The news from yesterday is that ministers for the European Union declared Lebanon's Hezbollah a terrorist organization. Hezbollah responded dryly with the statement, “It appears that the decision was written with an American hand in Zionist ink.” This from an article, "European Union Adds Military Wing of Hezbollah to List of Terrorist Organizations," by James Kanter and Jodi Rudoren. Since the blacklist covers only Hezbollah's military operation, much of which is kept confidential, and not the many social organizations that the Party of God operates, it is unclear how much of an impact the EU decision will have:

After the decision, [William] Hague [British foreign secretary] sought to reassure member states that support for Lebanon, including significant aid payments, would remain intact.

Kamel Wazne, a Lebanese analyst and director of the Beirut-based Center for American Strategic Studies, said that by designating only the military wing of Hezbollah, the Europeans appeared to want to maintain dialogue with others in the group, including members of Parliament and the cabinet. He doubted such a strategy would work.

Others called the European Union’s action a significant setback for Hezbollah, partly because it could provide the United States with a new legal basis for strengthening its own sanctions against Hezbollah’s commercial and fund-raising activities in a way that could then pressure the Europeans to do the same.

The toughened European sanctions against Iran, including an oil boycott, evolved in the same way under American pressure, said Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a group in Washington that supports sanctions. “Today’s military designation was a powerful symbolic blow,” he said. “It hasn’t been a death blow. But it’s certainly laid an important predicate.”

A bigger story in today's New York Times is from Mark Landler and Thom Shanker, "Pentagon Lays Out Options for U.S. Military Effort in Syria." Joint Chiefs chairman General Martin Dempsey enumerates in a letter to Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin the military options available for intervention in the Syrian civil war. Never mind the lack of public support for another war in the Middle East. Never mind that the opposition against the Syrian government is led by forces that the United States is at war with. The only important thing is that al-Assad must go, even if it creates an enormous failed state in the heart of the Middle East.

To Dempsey's credit, he alludes to all this, albeit gingerly. The options for intervention are listed as follows:

If ordered by the president, General Dempsey wrote, the military is ready to carry out options that include efforts to train, advise and assist the opposition; conduct limited missile strikes; set up a no-fly zone; establish buffer zones, most likely across the borders with Turkey or Jordan; and take control of Mr. Assad’s chemical weapons stockpile. 

“All of these options would likely further the narrow military objective of helping the opposition and placing more pressure on the regime,” General Dempsey wrote. But he added: “Once we take action, we should be prepared for what comes next. Deeper involvement is hard to avoid.”

Dempsey says that it will cost $1 billion a month to impose a no-fly zone.

Clearly the Pentagon, at least the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is mindful of the folly of declaring war on Syria. But this doesn't faze the people's elected representatives, who are going ahead with support for Obama's covert war conducted out of Jordan:

The plan to supply the rebels with small arms and other weaponry is being run as a covert operation by the Central Intelligence Agency, and General Dempsey made no mention of it in his letter. 

On Monday, Representative Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican who heads the House Intelligence Committee, said that despite “very strong concerns about the strength of the administration’s plans in Syria and its chances for success,” the panel had reached a consensus to move ahead with the White House’s strategy, without specifically mentioning the covert arms program. Senate Intelligence Committee officials said last week that they had reached a similar position. 

A Syrian opposition leader said in an e-mail Monday night that with the Congressional reservations largely addressed, American arms would most likely begin flowing to the rebels within a few weeks. “We think August is the date,” the official said. 

In an interview, Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations special envoy to Syria, expressed disappointment at the Congressional approval. “Arms do not make peace,” he said. “We would like to see the delivery of arms stopped to all sides.”

In anticipation of the arrival of weaponry, jihadi fighting units are scrubbing religious names in favor of innocuous labels like "9th Brigade." But Congressional reservations are not largely addressed. Politico is reporting that a vote is forthcoming in the House on whether the military aid is consistent with the War Powers Act.

One Obama administration shift noted by Landler and Shanker is the acknowledgement that the Baathist-led Syrian government is not going anywhere anytime soon:

[T]he White House began publicly hedging its bets about Mr. Assad. After saying for nearly two years that Mr. Assad’s days were numbered, the press secretary, Jay Carney, said, “While there are shifts in momentum on the battlefield, Bashar al-Assad, in our view, will never rule all of Syria again.”

Those last four words represent a subtle but significant shift in the White House’s wording: an implicit acknowledgment that after recent gains by the government’s forces against an increasingly chaotic opposition, Mr. Assad now seems likely to cling to power for the foreseeable future, if only over a rump portion of a divided Syria.

Covert support for one side, dominated by Wahhabi jihadists, in a civil war where the other side is supported by Mother Russia -- we've seen this before in Afghanistan, and it didn't end well; in fact, it's still playing out, with the full impact of negative repercussions yet to be tallied. One thing is for sure, war fills the horizon for as far as the eye can see.