Perhaps it is because everyone is enthralled by Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s admission that he smoked crack cocaine “probably in one of [his] drunken stupors.”
Perhaps it is because everyone is mesmerized by the horror stories on the Obamacare website glitches.
Perhaps it is because everyone has been (shameless self-promotion alert!) glued to my Tidbits from Down Under.
For whatever reason or reasons, there is a “strange silence on success in removing Syria’s chemical weapons,” as Katrina vanden Heuvel writes in the Washington Post.
But, really, after all the handwringing and angst over Obama’s handling of the chemical weapons crisis “red-line” and all; after all the criticism of Kerry’s so-called “rhetorical” remarks on Syria about turning over “every single bit” of chemical weapons to the international community and allowing a full accounting of it; after all the scoffing at Obama’s and Kerry’s “cozying-up” to Russia to resolve the crisis and, let us not forget, after the inimitable Bill Kristol once again intimated that Obama is a Marxist and lambasted the whole thing as “Obama’s Munich moment [that] turned out to be a Marxian version, with Obama doing farcical pratfalls as he followed down Neville Chamberlain’s tragic path,” after all that, where are the Republican acknowledgments — not kudos, just a simple admission — of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) reports that Syria “has completed the functional destruction of critical equipment for all of its declared chemical weapons production facilities and mixing/filling plants, rendering them inoperable.”?
Of course, there will not be Republican praise for the Obama administration, come hell or high water. But how about just a tiny little bit of recognition for the OPCW or for the people who did the difficult and dangerous work? Don’t count on it.
As Katrina vanden Heuvel puts it:
On the heels of winning the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize, the unglamorous but undeniably effective OPCW, using saws, sledgehammers and cutting torches in the middle of a war zone, defied predictions by meeting the Nov. 1 deadline to disable Syria’s chemical weapons program. The bombshell was that there was no bombshell — at least, not of the unconscionable chemical kind.
She adds:
…there have been no “Mission Accomplished” banners unfurled, no victory laps of any kind, underscoring — appropriately — the fragile and incomplete nature of this progress. And yet, it is progress all the same. Twenty heroic OPCW inspectors have successfully dismantled 21 out of 23 chemical weapons sites. They also secured the removal of weapons equipment from the two remaining sites that were too dangerous for them to reach.
There is some praise and recognition for the OPCW, albeit from the administration.
For example, according to Jim Garamone at the American Forces Press Service, Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall — the White House coordinator for defense policy, countering weapons of mass destruction, and arms control — praised the OPCW for its work in Syria.
Sherwood-Randall charted the process that led to the U.N. team working to control these weapons:
In mid-September, we and Russia agreed to work together to ensure the destruction of the Syrian chemical weapons program in the fastest and safest manner possible. Our joint commitment led to an historic United Nations Security Council resolution that legally bound Syria to destroy its chemical weapons stockpile under international supervision on a very fast timeline.
She adds that the world has recognized the incredible job these men and women are doing by awarding the organization the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize: “The people behind the scenes are brave and dedicated, and so we applaud the OPCW and U.N. personnel who have taken great personal risks to get the job done…They planned and conducted the inspection site visits, supervised the destruction process, and provided security and logistics to the inspectors.”
There is still a lot of difficult and dangerous work ahead.
Vanden Heuvel:
There remains, of course, difficult work ahead. The OPCW must meet a Nov. 15 deadline to destroy more than 1,000 metric tons of weapons stockpiles, even as fierce fighting continues in many of the parts of Syria where the weapons are located. Syria’s foreign minister requested that some weapons factories be spared, calling into question the country’s genuine commitment to disarmament. And the country’s deadly civil war continues unabated.
Andrew C. Weber, assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs, also says, “With the successful destruction of Syria’s capacity to produce chemical weapons, we are now focused on the critical next step of removing and eliminating the chemical agent stockpile.”
The United States has so far contributed $6 million of the $14 million earmarked for the mission and will require more money and resources.
As one who just a few weeks ago called for holding the Assad regime accountable for the cruel and indiscriminate use of chemical weapons against innocent men, women and children, that it was high time to end such a “moral obscenity” — by whatever means — I am now thankful that such “means” and resources has not involved placing our troops in harm’s way.
Perhaps some thanks should go the Obama administration’s way — certainly to the OPCW.
Image: www.shutterstock.com
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.