Ready! Fire! Aim . . . .

 . . . is what seems to be the U.S. Administration’s foreign policy stance towards Syria’s President, Bashar al-Assad.



 President Barack Obama responds to journalists
 at the White House. Says no decision has yet been
made concerning a possible strike on Syrian targets
 as of Friday afternoon, August 30, 2013.
 (TV Screen Shot/CNN)

No visible end game has been presented to the American people, as the Commander-in-Chief prepares to give the order to launch cruise missiles over Syrian skies:  There has yet to be a clearly articulated rationale for what President Obama plans to do after the “shock and awe” of the missile barrage have subsided.

What his advisors have told the world up to now is what the Administration won’t do; namely, that the United States is not seeking to depose Assad.  No regime change is anticipated as a direct result of this imminent air strike.

Furthermore, there is to be no introduction of U.S. ground troops.

Those are unmistakable signals to the despot of Damascus not to worry for his personal safety as the guided bombs explode all over Syria.

Nor will the U.S. aerial bombardment of Tomahawk missiles now poised within their launching tubes on surface ships and submarines in the Mediterranean Sea be aimed at Syria’s cache of chemical weapons. Too dangerous, we are told. 

Consequently, Assad’s WMD’s (weapons of mass destruction) will remain safely in storage within Syria.  The imminent air strike is, according to President Obama, just “a shot across the bow.”

Secretary of State John Kerry, comments on the
Syrian crisis and its cache of weapons of mass
destruction on Friday, August 30, 2013.
 (TV Screen shot/Fox News)

There are other unstated, but significant considerations in this hazardous Byzantine drama:  Russia, China, and Iran are Assad’s allies.  They have direct interests in assuring that Assad remains in power. 

Let me cite merely one of the many aspects in this imbroglio:  the long memory of Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin:

As a former KGB agent, he undoubtedly remembers very well the result of a covert CIA operation during the 1980’s, dubbed Charlie’s War, an action by the U.S. that eventually stymied the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan  decades before our own offensive in that same country after 9/11/2001.

Our involvement in the 1980’s was to supply and train mujahedeen rebels in Afghanistan with the use of lethal, shoulder-fired U.S. Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, a weapon which proved deadly when fired at the Soviets’ Mi-24 helicopter gunship – a formidable aircraft which, up to that time, had been devastating rebel fighters.

That new American weapon became a causal factor in the humiliating defeat of the Soviet Union’s foray into Afghanistan.  TV footage of the time showed Soviet tank columns rumbling back to the homeland.

Putin, the wily, former KGB agent has likely never forgotten the aftermath of that clandestine CIA operation that impeded Soviet forces in that part of the world.

Fast forward:  Today, Russia’s only military naval installation in the Mediterranean basin is located in Syria, at the port of Tartus.  There has been talk between Syria and Russia of expanding operations there.

Given the Soviet Union’s trouncing in Afghanistan during the 1980’s at the hands of mujahedeen fighters with the assistance of the CIA, Putin is highly unlikely to be friendly to a change in Syrian leadership – especially one which could threaten his only toehold in the Mediterranean Sea.

He’s seen that movie before.

The irony of this story is that the U.S. - assisted defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan led directly to a takeover by the Taliban, the rise of Osama bin Laden in that region, and the 9/11/2001 attack on America in New York City.

This time, it may be wise to aim before we fire.