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>> house. let's bring in our panel. in washington, nia malika henderson for the " washington
post." steve clemens of "the atlantic." good afternoon to both of you. steve, given the
terrible toll of the last ten years and still uncertain outcomes in places like iraq and
afghanistan, is it really time to engage in yet another military conflict with an arab
nation or does the humanitarian situation in syria simply demand an intervention?
>> well, there's no simple answer to that good question in the sense that, you know,
whether it's your framing or lindsey graham saying other nations are watching this and
he wants a cookie cutter approach to intervention. the fact is that syria is not libya, and syria
has its own somewhat compounding circumstances and the largest of which are that despite
humanitarian trauma which is clear and evident, despite now with the potential use of chemical
weapons in syria that i think would bring a lot of realists into the camp and say, this
is a different kind of conflict, basically, you know, issuing a u.s. military intervention,
whether it's a no-fly zone strategy or something more robust really raises the prospects that
you create a situation in which the state, which assad now has. all of that bureaucracy
and infrastructure completely collapses. and the heroes of the revolution who will succeed
are not the ones that we're talking to diplomatically. they are a much more ferocious and a much
more extreme islamist faction and you end up with a much worse situation. i think the
administration is trying to be surgical to some degree and cautious. i talked to senior
state department officials saying it's hard to get to the best outcome in a horrible situation.
somewhat the best outcome is to get rid of assad but largely keep the infrastructure
of the state in place.
>> right.
>> and that's what they're trying to do and why they're not moving as rapidly as some
others are demanding.
>> nia malika, the president has been attacked, as, quote, being too waeak on syria. even
a superficial glance at the rebels is enough to cause us to think very, very carefully
before taking action. you've got an opposition made up mostly of sunni arabs but also the
country has christians, kurds, palestinians, armenians. one group of rebels known as the
jabat al nustra declared allegiance to al qaeda. are people like lindsey graham suggesting
we dive headlong into that?
>> you heard lindsey graham say that as well as john mccain, saying we should arm the rebels.
the problem as you laid out there and as "the new york times" laid out over the weekend
is the lerebels aren't natural allies of the united states. they have al qaeda links. so
to arm the opposition is in many ways to arm the opposition against the u.s. so it doesn't
look like that would happen. i think one of the things that is interesting about this
is that we are seeing the sort of post- iraq reaction to the middle east. even someone
who is as hawkish as a john mccain or lindsey grah graham, they are certainly not advocating
any boots on the ground. what it looks like that we're in for is this long sort of evaluation
of whether or not there actually were chemical weapons used then the white house will have
to decide what they want to do. they want to figure out what russia, what china, would
do. so far russia and china have been pretty much road blocks of getting anything done
there.
>> sure.
>> what does turkey want to do? what does jordan want to do? their neighbors in that
region. syrian neighbors. so, you know, this is a complicated, a hornet's nest of a situation
and you certainly don't have a situation, at least yet, where americans are overwhelmingly
backing any sort of intervention that would cost the lives of american soldiers.
>> certainly not. steve, despite all the risks of involvement in syria's civil war, noted
war hawk, bill kristol, thinks it's totally irresponsible for the president not to jump
in. take a listen to this, steve.
>> this is not a president who wants to start another war. that's the way he sees it. i
think it's totally irresponsible for an american president to have that -- no one wants to
start wars -- but you have to do what you have to do.
>> have to do what you have to do, consequences be damned?
>> bill kristol is irresponsible, he once worked in the white house. it's irresponsible
to basically critique the commander in chief for taking a pause to ask the key questions
about --
>> especially after, especially, steve, after the irresponsible response to the belief that
there was wmd in iraq where 5,000 troops gave their lives. is that not irresponsible? isn't
it right for this president to pause and say, hang on a second?
>> no, that's absolutely right. it's absolutely right to check out the scenarios of what happened.
to look at what the motives were. i raised on msnbc the other day that there were, you
know, a lot of scenarios. you need to think through the unthinkable issues and not just
let the bandwagoning emotion of the moment drive u.s. military commitments. and i think
the biggest issue is we're all assuming is the assad regime commanded the use of those
weapons. i talked to a senior administration official over the weekend who said that if
chemical weapons were used, it is most likely the case but not only the case that those
were under assad's command if they were used, and that the question they don't understand
is if assad did give the command to use those weapons, why were they used to such a minimal
degree? these are questions that anyone in the position of deploying potentially men
and women to the frontline, but u.s. military force, need to think through and work through.
we have a lot of intelligence we're not sharing publicly that is signals intelligence, chatter
among the syrian command staff on what happened. we don't know what any of that is, but it's
vital to do that and bill kristol knows this. and we see a lot of people that for months
have been discussing chemical weapons and red lines and it's almost as if those wanting
to advocate a more robust response are gleeful that, in fact, chemical weapons have somehow
been used. we need to stop and pause.
>> absolutely. nia malika henderson, steve clemons, thank you for joining us.