VP Debate About Syria

On October 11, 2012 in the Vice Presidential debate moderator Martha Raddatz went on to Syria – saying it’s estimated that 25-30,000 people have been killed. She said in March 2011 the president explained why we went into Libya – it was in the national interest to go and prevent further massacres from occurring there. So why doesn’t the same logic apply to Syria? Biden said Syria has 5 times the geographic area with 20% of the population of Libya; it’s in a part of the country where if the wrong people get control it’s going to blow up; we’re working with ALL the people in the region to determine who should be in charge when Assad falls; the last thing Americans need is to put troops on the ground; Romney when pressured doesn’t say what he’d do. Ryan in response said – nobody is proposing to send troops to Syria but we wouldn’t be outsourcing our foreign policy to the UN giving Putin veto power over this issue; he did acknowledge that Hillary Clinton did go to Putin and tell him he’s on the wrong side but said this is just one more example of how the Russian reset is not working; the longer this goes on the more groups like Al Qaeda are spilling in to Syria; had we had a better plan working with our allies going in we could have more easily identified the Free Syrian Army (FSA), the freedom fighters but we waited for Kofi Annan to come up with an agreement through the UN and that bought Assad time.

Martha asked – what happens if Assad doesn’t fall. Ryan said Iran keeps its greatest ally in the region; we and the world lose our credibility on this. Biden responded with NATO and our allies were all on the same page with trying to get a settlement; Russia has a different agenda than we do. Martha asked – what would the Romney/Ryan ticket do – Ryan said we’re on the same page when it comes to sending troops in to secure the chemical weapons; we would have tried to work with the FSA and freedom fighters sooner and wouldn’t have waited for Russia to give us a green light; Iran is flying over Iraq (there are plenty of articles about Turkey handling this). Biden said – and the (Syrian) opposition is being armed. Ryan didn’t answer the question so Martha asked what his criteria was for intervention in the world – Ryan responded with - what’s in the national security interest of the American people. Martha said – no humanitarian aid – Ryan said each situation will come up with its own set of circumstances but as far as putting American troops on the ground it has to be in the national security interest of the American people; it means things like embargos, sanction and over-flights (in other words they have no criteria for intervention and they would have done nothing different). I have information on Kofi Annan’s attempts to negotiate and the UN process but I see no point in going into it as Ryan used hindsight to just attack and he had no reasonable answers or plans on foreign policy.