The United States is weighing military action against Syria for its alleged

chemical weapons attack on rebel forces
and civilians outside Damascus on
August 21.
U.S. officials say President Barack
Obama is considering limited military
action to deter and degrade the Syrian
government’s ability to use chemical
weapons.
Christopher Hill, former U.S.
ambassador to Iraq and special envoy
to Kosovo (1996-1999), says the reason
given by the Obama administration
resembles the one used in 1999 when
NATO launched a bombing campaign to
degrade the Serbian military forces and
stop ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.
But Hill says there is a fundamental
difference between the situation in Syria
and Kosovo: the Kosovo campaign was
part of an overall political plan for the
Balkan region.
"With respect to Syria, there is no
political process," he said. "There is no
way forward, there has been no
agreement on what Syria should be in
the future, what kind of governance it
should have in the future. And so we are
in a situation where there’s going to be
a use of force, but it is in respect not so
much of the Syrian situation, but in
respect of the use of banned weapons,
weapons that have been banned for 100
years."
Retired United States Marine Corps
General Anthony Zinni, who headed
"Operation Desert Fox" — a series of air
strikes against Iraq in December 1998 —
agrees.
"We don’t have a strategy. We are
reacting to a single event," he said. "We
are trying to isolate it from the overall
conflict, and it can’t be.
"You are about to do something that in
effect is an act of war," he added. "You
are about to take sides. Although the
president has tried to make the
intellectual argument [that] this is about
a non-acceptable violation of
international norms and use of chemical
weapons, it still means you are
attacking one element there.”
Zinni says a U.S. military strike on Syria
will not be seen only as an attack on
President Bashar al-Assad.
"This will be taken in the region that you
are attacking Alawites, Shia, Christians,"
he said. "The tribal, ethnic and religious
sects here are so divided, that once you
do something — regardless of intention
— you have in effect taken a side."
Zinni and Hill say that in previous wars
— whether in Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya
— the United States was able to put
together an international coalition in
advance of planned strikes.
"What has happened that should not
have happened is we should have
gained international support and
commitment to act well before this and
not wait to the last minute to try to put it
together," said Zinni. "But to try to
scramble to put a coalition together at
the last minute, to gain international
legitimacy: it creates a problem once
you have moved assets into position
and said that this is the crossing of the
red line."
The United States lost a major partner
in a potential international coalition
strike against Damascus when British
parliamentarians on Thursday voted to
keep their armed forces from out of any
military action against Syria.

U.S secretary of State John Kerry