Measuring Putin for Mount Rushmore

[natalukjoe]

PRUDEN: Measuring Putin for Mount Rushmore But ridding Syria of its chemicals won’t be easy

By Wesley Pruden

If you’re reading or listening in the wrong places, you might think they’re already measuring a place for Vladimir Putin on Mount Rushmore, sandwiched between Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. That’s where Barack Obama, who may have to give Mr. Putin the Nobel Peace Prize he won for doing nothing, expected to rest one day.

Before the sculptors with their chisels board a train for Rapid City, the euphoric legion should stop to figure out just how Mr. Putin and his client, Bashar Assad, intend to dismantle the stocks of chemical weapons. Easier said than done. The general consensus seems to be that the dreadful potions can be packed up in a couple of days and dispatched to a hole in the ground, never to be seen or thought of again. The Swedes could then get on with casting the Nobel medal, preferably in platinum instead of the cheaper bronze.

But not so fast. Even if the peacemaker and his sidekick, the poisoner, actually want to dismantle the Syrian chemical stocks — an “if” as big as a senator’s backside — it won’t be easy, and the task could take months, if not years. “In the best of circumstances, it will be a long and tedious task,” says a weapons analyst in Washington, “and these will be far from the best of circumstances.” The lawyers, diplomats, United Nations bureaucrats and their endless train of clerks and go-fers must do their work before the chemists and engineers even arrive with their shears and torches.

The Syrians will first have to declare and identify all the items to be destroyed, which will be embarrassing, insofar as war criminals can be embarrassed, because Mr. Assad, with Russian complicity, has insisted for years that the sarin and other gasses were figments of Western imagination, no more substantial than a tiny wisp of suspicious fog. The U.N. will surely insist on being in charge; Mr. Putin has already indicated that he intends to run the show. Despite his effusive praise for the U.N. in his op-ed, he doesn’t trust the U.N. any more than anyone else does.

Exactly what has to happen is not yet clear. Before dismantling starts, Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the U.N., or the U.N. Security Council, might have to approve a lot of fine print with many i’s undotted and t’s uncrossed. Since the Russians, as Mr. Putin pointedly observed in his op-ed, have a veto in the Security Council, everything everyone else decides could be obliterated with a vote, even if the poison stuff can’t.
Then everything will have to be inspected, studied, examined and scrutinized again. Opportunities for stalling will be abundant, and the inspections could go on forever.

The United States discontinued its biological weapons programs in 1969, on the instructions of President Nixon amid a loud public outcry over the use of Agent Orange in South Vietnam. Seven different biological agents were produced at the Pine Bluff Arsenal in rural Arkansas between 1954 and 1969, and all were destroyed between 1971 and 1973. There were no intrusions by outside governments or organizations, and the dismantling still was not easy.

Pine Bluff Arsenal, which was built in 1941 to manufacture magnesium and thermite incendiary bombs used in World War II, was the last repository of American biological stocks. The cotton fields in surrounding Jefferson County were the site of the only gas dispensed on American soil when, in 1947, several captured German rockets containing mustard gas were accidentally launched into the countryside. If anyone was hurt, the U.S. government, which can be as secretive as the Syrians, has never acknowledged it.

Poison gas and the residue is difficult to eliminate. Traces of it remain in storage containers more or less permanently. Only a decade ago, the arsenal at Pine Bluff was assigned the mission of decontaminating more than 4,000 containers, each weighing 1,600 pounds. The containers were heated to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit for 60 minutes, and when cool put on trailers for transport to storage and disposal centers “elsewhere.” The containers were cut in half, and the steel was recycled. By 2011, nearly 7 million pounds of steel from the containers became usable steel again. Several of the buildings where the stocks had been stored were then destroyed.

No one is likely to press Mr. Putin if he plays the delaying game. The euphoria at the White House, like the euphoria in other capitals, will be just as satisfying as actually getting rid of the Syrian chemical stocks. Mr. Putin can probably keep some of the chemicals as “souvenirs” if he likes. The Great Gas Warfare Crisis of 2013 is over.

[wmdn_bs]

Obama should be awarded a second peace prize for manipulating Russian leaders into brokering this deal. He's a genius!

[dont-blameme]

The only manipulating obama has ever done was to manipulate you and others like you to vote for him not once but twice. Like the old saying goes catch a sucker bump his/her head the easy ones do them twice!
 
 

[wmdn_bs]

Falling on your head explains why you are a right-winger DBM. I'm guessing it was multiple falls that keeps you that way.

[dont-blameme]

Why are you so easy, BS stump broke maybe?

[wmdn_bs]

I'm sure you are more familiar with being stump broke than I am.

[wxzyw]

Putin or 0bama.... who is more of a threat to America?

[sweetwater5s9]

Putin, seen by Iran’s clerical establishment as a strong opponent to America and the West — especially after his successful political play on averting a U.S. missile strike on Syria — was approached by Iran to protect the Islamic regime in the face of continued pressure by the West over its illicit nuclear program.

Iranian President Hassan Rowhani issued the call to Putin on Friday while both leaders were attending the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

“Russia could possibly take new steps in solving the Iranian nuclear dossier,” Rowhani said. “The Russian initiative in relation to the Syrian chemical weapons and the steps taken by the Syrian officials provide this hope that a new war can be averted in the region.”

 
09/14/2013
Fars News Agency

[sweetwater5s9]

Obama quoted from the Gettysburg Address when he first announced his decision to seek authorization for using military force in Syria.

In Tuesday night's speech, Obama continued to argue that "democracy is stronger" by striving to live up to Abraham Lincoln's noble ideals.   Yet Abraham Lincoln understood something that Obama has ignored.

Lincoln was a thoughtful skeptic of presidential actions he considered unconstitutional or unnecessary. As a congressman in the late 1840s, he criticized President James Polk for launching the Mexican War.

Nonetheless, Lincoln also believed in following one leader at a time. In 1849, he warned a fellow party member and Cabinet officer against allowing the "public mind" to become fixed with the idea that the president was "a mere man of straw."

Lincoln observed that all presidents "must occasionally say, or seem to say, 'by the eternal,' 'I take the responsibility.'" Then he added with a pointed reference to his old political nemesis, Andrew Jackson, that "those phrases were the 'Samson's locks' of Gen. Jackson, and we dare not disregard the lessons of experience."

Obama has risked shearing his own "Samson's locks" and leaving himself open to the impression that he has become "a mere man of straw."

We must recognize that the template for America's crisis leadership begins, but does not end, with a commander in chief fully prepared to accept his responsibilities alone.


Matthew Pinsker holds the Pohanka Chair in American Civil War History at Dickinson College

[wvit1001]

Syria is a huge victory for the Obama administration.

[sweetwater5s9]

If the Obama administration is siding with Assad, Putin and Iran..., then they have achieved a huge victory.

[sweetwater5s9]

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