There are some people who wish the United States would intervene in Syria. For these people, any scrap of evidence will do. Chemical weapons use is convenient because it supports a pre-existing policy preference -- much as Paul Wolfowitz explained that, of the many reasons members of the Bush administration had for wanting to invade Iraq, "we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction."
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That's all well and good if you are already itching to lead the paratroops into Damascus, but what about those of us who don't want to get involved in this mess unless we have no choice?
Let's stipulate that you are, like me, a reluctant interventionist. We don't see the United States having a particular interest in who governs Syria, provided that person isn't in the business of genocide. We'd like to mitigate the humanitarian impact of sectarian conflict, which is why we're happy the United States has provided $385 million in humanitarian assistance and recently decided to double the $117 million in non-lethal aid it has provided to the opposition.
But it isn't clear to us that whoever follows Bashar al-Assad will be any better. That's not an endorsement of the virtues, such that they are, of the Assad government so much as it is a grim prognosis about the prospects for a post-Assad Syria. Much of the literature on successful democratic transitions suggests that violent transitions are unlikely to result in durable democratic systems. I just don't see much evidence that one can drop democratic processes on a country by JDAM.
Let's stipulate, then, that we take seriously the president's red line: We do not wish to enter this conflict, unless the Assad regime begins committing widespread atrocities, like the gassing of cities. Or, as the president said in August, "We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation." (Aside: Can you imagine the mockery if Bush had set the red line at "a whole bunch" of chemical weapons?)
The purpose of a red line is to deter something like what the Iraqis did at Halabja. There are already terrible things happening in Syria -- sectarian conflicts are truly ugly and this is becoming one. The conflict has killed tens of thousands, most of them innocent civilians. But, as far as I can tell, Assad has not yet begun a policy of conducting large-scale massacres of civilians, whether by chemical weapons (like at Halabja) or not (say, Srebrenica in Bosnia). That would change things. As awful as the current conflict is, it could get worse. Holding something back to deter Assad is worth doing.
The corollary is that if we do intervene on the basis that Assad is using chemical weapons, then he might very well start gassing cities -- and we won't be sitting around wondering whether he's done so or not. When Saddam used chemical weapons against Halabja, there was video of the attack and thousands of casualties. Survivors traveled abroad where they received medical treatment. The evidence was clear and overwhelming.
The evidence we have now is rather less than that. The Syrian opposition has repeatedly claimed that it has been gassed, but these claims have been of doubtful reliability, including allegations that Syria used a chemical weapon that does not exist.
The first lesson of Iraq -- and I don't want to offend your delicate sensibilities here -- is that defectors and opposition groups don't always tell the truth. When President Obama set a red line, he also established a goal for Syrian opposition groups: establish chemical weapons use, get additional U.S. assistance. Pass go, collect $200. Remember the lead-up to Iraq, when an Iraqi defector told Sky News that it was "100 percent guaranteed" that Saddam would use chemical weapons on coalition forces? Defectors. Caveat emptor.
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