Pentagon: America will be ready if needed in Syria

DONNA CASSATA

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — U.S. mil­i­tary lead­ers clearly expressed reluc­tance about using Amer­i­can might to stop the unend­ing vio­lence in Syria, insist­ing that diplo­macy remains the best option to force Pres­i­dent Bashar Assad to end the bru­tal crack­down on his own people.

Tes­ti­fy­ing before Con­gress, Defense Sec­re­tary Leon Panetta and Army Gen. Mar­tin Dempsey, the chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, out­lined the steps the United States and other coun­tries are tak­ing to pres­sure the Assad regime after 13 months of blood­shed that has left more than 9,000 dead, accord­ing to the United Nations, and dis­placed tens of thou­sands. The steps range from tough sanc­tions to shared intel­li­gence to $25 mil­lion in emer­gency human­i­tar­ian assistance.

Dempsey said if called upon, the mil­i­tary would be ready to act and the ser­vices are work­ing on ways to try to halt the vio­lence. But both he and Panetta set a high thresh­old for U.S. mil­i­tary involve­ment in a war in the Mid­dle East after lengthy con­flicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I think it’s clear that the only way that the United States would get involved mil­i­tar­ily is if there’s a con­sen­sus in the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity to try to do some­thing along those lines,” Panetta told the House Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee. “And then obvi­ously ensure that the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity is able to get author­i­ties required in order to make that happen.”

Pressed later on the issue, Panetta said, “At this point in time …a deci­sion is that we will not have any boots on the ground and that we will not act uni­lat­er­ally in that part of the world.”

The Pen­ta­gon lead­ers’ tes­ti­mony came as rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Arab coun­tries includ­ing Saudi Ara­bia, U.N. Secu­rity Coun­cil mem­ber Morocco and Qatar, plus West­ern pow­ers such as the U.S., Britain and Ger­many, gath­ered in Paris to dis­cuss ways of help­ing spe­cial envoy Kofi Annan’s peace plan to end the vio­lence in Syria. Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton was par­tic­i­pat­ing in the session.

Panetta said there were no easy solu­tions. “There is no sil­ver bul­let. I wish there was, but there isn’t,” he said.

At the same time, the Pen­ta­gon chief insisted that Assad’s days are num­bered despite his for­mi­da­ble hold on power. The for­mer CIA direc­tor said U.S. intel­li­gence has con­cluded that the regime faces a broad-based insur­gency that is strik­ing back.

Assad “will be taken down,” Panetta said.

In a bipar­ti­san response, House Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats echoed the mil­i­tary lead­ers’ reluc­tance about using force. Many mem­bers of the com­mit­tee had chal­lenged Pres­i­dent Barack Obama last year after Obama dis­patched the mil­i­tary to pro­tect Libyans under siege in Beng­hazi. The rebel effort, with the help of NATO forces, top­pled the decades-long regime of strong­man Moam­mar Gadhafi.

Law­mak­ers com­plained that Obama failed to get con­gres­sional approval for his actions against Libya. Sev­eral mem­bers of the panel pressed Panetta on whether Obama would seek con­gres­sional autho­riza­tion for any mil­i­tary oper­a­tion against Syria.

“We won’t take any action with­out proper legal author­ity,” Panetta said, adding that Obama would act based on his con­sti­tu­tional pow­ers and the War Pow­ers Act.

The lead­ers of the com­mit­tee cau­tioned against mil­i­tary force against Syria, acknowl­edg­ing that the con­di­tions cre­ated by Dam­as­cus were not com­pa­ra­ble to Libya, with a united oppo­si­tion and a united inter­na­tional community.

“I am not rec­om­mend­ing U.S. mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion, par­tic­u­larly in light of our grave bud­get sit­u­a­tion, unless the national secu­rity threat was clear and present,” said Rep. Howard “Buck” McK­eon, R-Calif., the committee’s chair­man. “Nev­er­the­less, these reflec­tions lead me to won­der what the United States can do to stem the vio­lence and has­ten Pres­i­dent Assad from power.”

Rep. Adam Smith of Wash­ing­ton State, the panel’s rank­ing Demo­c­rat, said the United States should sup­port the Syr­ian peo­ple “but we must be extremely cau­tious as we dis­cuss the poten­tial for the use of mil­i­tary force.”

Their com­ments high­lighted the split in Con­gress on mil­i­tary action. Sen. John McCain of Ari­zona, the top Repub­li­can on the Sen­ate Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee and Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s 2008 pres­i­den­tial rival, along with Sens. Joe Lieber­man, I-Conn., and Lind­sey Gra­ham, R-S.C., have been out­spo­ken in call­ing for mil­i­tary airstrikes against Syria.

“Chang­ing the mil­i­tary bal­ance inside Syria requires the United States, in close coor­di­na­tion with our Turk­ish, Arab and other allies, to pro­vide the Syr­ian oppo­si­tion with the help they are plead­ing for to defend them­selves. This can include train­ing and equip­ping the Syr­ian oppo­si­tion with weapons, pro­vid­ing them with tac­ti­cal intel­li­gence, and using air­power to tar­get Assad’s command-and-control and help the Syr­ian oppo­si­tion to cre­ate safe zones inside Syria,” the three said in a statement.

McCain and Gra­ham also were among a bipar­ti­san group of law­mak­ers who intro­duced a res­o­lu­tion Thurs­day con­demn­ing the Syr­ian gov­ern­ment for crimes against human­ity and urg­ing the pres­i­dent to col­lect infor­ma­tion about such crimes to be used in an appro­pri­ate tribunal.

“If we bear wit­ness today, jus­tice will come closer for the Syr­ian peo­ple,” said Sen. Richard Blu­men­thal, D-Conn., in intro­duc­ing the res­o­lu­tion. “The pres­i­dent and gov­ern­ment of Syria, its lead­ers, and senior offi­cials who are respon­si­ble for crimes against human­ity will be brought to account for such crimes.”

Posted by AP News on Apr 19 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.