UK - USA DEFEATED (Thanks Obama !)

Cameron's Defeat on Syria Is Also President Obama's

The prime minister's loss in the House of Commons was the first on such a question since 1782.

By
• DANIEL JOHNSON

In the deadly poker game that the great powers are playing over Syria, the British have just folded. Thursday's vote in the House of Commons has not only damaged Prime Minister David Cameron's authority, perhaps beyond repair, but forced President Obama to face the prospect of military intervention without the support of America's staunchest ally.

No wonder officials in Washington are making no secret of their fury that for the first time in half a century the Anglo-American "special relationship" has proved unreliable. It was Mr. Cameron who had tried to play the heroic part of Margaret Thatcher by taking the lead on Syria, dragging a reluctant U.S. administration to choose sides in the civil war by arming the rebels. But when put to the test, he failed to deliver.

It is difficult to convey the historical magnitude of Mr. Cameron's defeat, narrow as it was. American presidents can continue in office even if they lose control of Congress, but British prime ministers must command a parliamentary majority at all times, especially on  

Mr. Cameron is the first prime minister to have been defeated in the House of Commons on such a question since 1782, when King George III's premier, Lord North, lost a vote of no confidence and resigned, following the British defeat at Yorktown. In British politics, careers are usually made or unmade on the floor of the House of Commons. Mr. Cameron will be fortunate to survive such a humiliation.

It was all the worse for being self-inflicted: He had recalled parliament from vacation, taking its endorsement of his policy on Syria for granted. By the time he realized that he had misjudged the country's appetite for action, it was too late: In the final vote, some 50 members of his coalition deserted him.

The gravity of Thursday's defeat, however, extends far beyond domestic politics. Just as Hitler in his bunker ranted about dividing the Allies, playing on Stalin's fears that the U.S. and Britain would make a separate peace with Germany, so Bashar Assad must hope to save himself by dividing his foes. At next week's G-20 summit in Moscow, the West will struggle to present a united front against Russia and China. The British, with whom the United States normally makes common cause, will this time stand aloof, leaving the Americans with the French and the Turks; instead of the special relationship, a ménage à trois.

Will dictators now be emboldened to use weapons of mass destruction? That depends, as always, on whether the U.S. administration has the confidence to raise the cost of their doing so. But it is always easier for any president to deter evildoers if he has allies on whom he can rely. Usually that means the British—but not this time.

What, then, has changed? In a speech on Thursday that otherwise failed to persuade, Mr. Cameron had one memorable line: The experience of Iraq, he said, had "poisoned the wells of public opinion," undermining trust in the intelligence and other evidence on which all governments must make decisions.

It will indeed be hard to rebuild that trust, on both sides of the Atlantic—even though the war crimes of the Assad regime are being committed in broad daylight. But the mistake that both Mr. Cameron and Mr. Obama are making, like their predecessors Tony Blair and George W. Bush, is to focus solely on chemical weapons.

Mr. Cameron ruled out regime change as the aim, yet it is obvious that unless he is deposed, Bashar Assad (like his father Hafez Assad before him) will continue to use the genocidal methods to destroy the rebels that have already cost well over 100,000 mainly civilian lives and displaced up to three million refugees.

The attacks now planned by the allies are thus explicitly intended to leave Mr. Assad and his regime in place, but to deter them from deploying WMD. This makes no sense. More likely, airstrikes with this limited purpose will merely embroil the West in a protracted civil war.

The lack of a clear and attainable objective in Syria was one of the main reasons why Mr. Cameron was unable to persuade many of his Conservative colleagues to support him. Another reason was suspicion that Syria's opposition groups, such as the Syrian National Council, are really Islamist front organizations, funded by the Saudis and Gulf states and infiltrated by al-Qaeda-linked terrorists. Many in the West are deeply concerned by the persecution of Christians and other minorities in Syria and across the Middle East, as evidence mounts that rebel forces have carried out ethnic and religious cleansing in the areas under their control. Clearly, any U.S.-led intervention must take precautions against the danger that one genocidal regime could be replaced by another.

How have we arrived at a point where the West, and even the Anglosphere, is not only divided, but we also have only the choice between greater and lesser evils? The ultimate responsibility must lie with the person to whom the Free World looks for leadership: the president of the United States. It is because Barack Obama has abdicated that responsibility, refusing to make a clear distinction in his policy between liberty and tyranny, that the world is now in such an ominous predicament.

Other members of the administration must of course share the blame. Is it any surprise that Joe Biden, John Kerry, Chuck Hagel, Susan Rice and Samantha Power inspire little confidence that they have learned the right lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan? President Obama has "led from behind," which is as much as to say that he has not led at all. This abdication of leadership is apparent in the president's naïve mishandling of the disintegration of the old order in the Middle East, in his failure to anticipate or respond adequately to the wave of Islamist extremism that has imperiled Western interests in the region, and above all in his arrogant treatment of America's closest ally, Israel.

It is easy for President Obama to call on Israel to take risks for peace with the Palestinians. As Mr. Cameron has learned the hard way, his own colleagues are not prepared to risk British lives to bring peace to Syria. Nor has President Obama shown much inclination to risk American lives for Syria.

Israel, in constant danger of attack from Syria, is our best source of intelligence about what is happening there. Yet both Mr. Obama and Mr. Cameron are eager that Israeli lives should be risked: not for peace, but to appease the intransigence of the Islamic world.

The British are proud of their parliament, which served as a model for so many others in the days when it stood for freedom, democracy and the rule of law. The eyes of the world were once again on Westminster this week, but what they beheld was an unedifying spectacle: a prime minister who failed to lead and a nation disinclined to follow its own best traditions. When Chamberlain resigned after the Norway debate in May 1940, there was a Churchill to replace him. If only we had a lionhearted leader waiting in the wings today.
 
Mr. Johnson is the editor of Standpoint magazine, published monthly in London (www.standpointmag.co.uk).