The Weekly Standard

In August 2011, about five months after Bashar al-Assad ordered the Syrian military to fire on unarmed demonstrators, President Obama issued his “Presidential Study Directive on Mass Atrocities.” PSD-10 instructed the executive branch to create an interagency group called the Atrocities Prevention Board, with senior representatives from the White House, all major cabinet departments, the military, foreign assistance and trade bureaus, and the intelligence community. The APB’s mission would be “to coordinate a whole-of-government approach to preventing mass atrocities and genocide,” which the president called “a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States.”

PSD-10 ordered up a report with recommendations for creating the Atrocities Prevention Board within 100 days and the APB to begin its work within 120 days. In the event, the review took the National Security Council staff longer, and the announcement of the establishment of the APB did not come until April 23, 2012. About a month before, a United Nations official informed the Security Council that the civilian death toll in Syria had reached 9,000. At this writing, civilian deaths stand at about 30,000, with more than 70,000 dead all told. Continue reading →

The Weekly Standard

Perhaps the least surprising headline in the aftermath of the tax deal last week was the one in Politicodeclaring that congressional Democrats are planning to run against “chaos” in the 2014 midterm elections. It’s unsurprising because Democrats have been working, with considerable success, to establish the proposition that Washington is dysfunctional because of the GOP.

Republicans, for their part, have contributed to the storyline through their own internal divisions. But political parties always have internal divisions. This is mainly a media-driven phenomenon, and not just the “mainstream” media. The interests of the liberal media and hard-core conservative media, especially talk radio, converge in propagating the view that the GOP is divided, feckless, and incapable of governing​—​though of course they disagree over whether Tea Party Republicanism is the source of the problem or the solution. Continue reading →

Weekly Standard

The U.S. ambassador to NATO, Ivo Daalder, and NATO’s top military commander, U.S. Admiral James Stavridis, took to the pages of the latest Foreign Affairs for an unusual but deserved victory lap over the campaign that led to the fall of Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi. It was, the two argued, “a model intervention.”

They are right, it was. But with the carnage continuing in Homs and elsewhere as the Bashar al-Assad regime tries to crush the popular uprising threatening his hold on Syria, it seems that U.S. policy toward Syria has become a prisoner of our “model intervention” in Libya. If the purpose of U.S. policy in Syria is to prevent more slaughter of civilians, to give Assad a push out the door, and incidentally to deal Iran a major strategic setback, it’s time to put aside the Libya “model.” The political and diplomatic conditions under which the Libya intervention unfolded were all but uniquely favorable—the only other contender for the title would be that in which George H. W. Bush organized the intervention to eject Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1990-91. If we insist on duplicating the Libya model for intervention in Syria, Assad will have all the time he needs to wipe out the rebellion, at who knows what human cost. Continue reading →

Question: Why would GOP candidates vying to establish themselves as the “conservative alternative” to Mitt Romney attack the one-time financier for his robust practice of free-market economics, layoffs included, during his years at Bain Capital? Answer: Well, because he is vulnerable on that point.

Let us put aside high principle and deep conviction long enough to observe that running for president usually entails an ambitious disposition. Although people occasionally run for some other reason​—​increased notoriety, book sales, the way-station to the vice presidential nomination​—​the most common motivation is raw desire for the nation’s highest office. And on the GOP side, Mitt Romney is the biggest obstacle in every other candidate’s way in a year in which GOP chances look very good.

If you can take Romney down, you take him down; you can make it up to the capitalists later. Continue reading →