Resist temptation to follow Putin into Syria

The Russian thrust into Syria these last two weeks was not the first time the sons of the Volga have interfered militarily for lengthy periods in the Arab world; and their influence there has not been without humor.

I remember being in Cairo as a correspondent in 1969 and visiting an Egyptian army base near the capital city in the overwhelming heat. Interviewing some of the local soldiers, I asked them what their Russian "advisers" told them to do when they were losing a battle.

One bright-eyed young Egyptian immediately responded. "They tell us to 'wait for winter,'" he answered.

Then again, I was in Cairo in 1971, when the new leader, President Anwar Sadat, made it known that he was going to throw the Russians out. It was an amazing story, and I was able to get most of it - but how to get it out and back to my paper in Chicago?

Egypt at that time had the strictest of censorship. Most of us flew to Beirut simply to file our stories. But this time, I decided to try another possibility: You could "walk it through" the censor and, if he agreed, he would send it. Off I went!

"Ummm," he said approvingly as he read my story. "Yes, quite nice." He smiled. I smiled, too. "Would you like some coffee?" he asked. "I love Egyptian coffee," I responded.

"Yes," the censor went on, as we sipped our hot, sweet coffee. "Yes, your story is quite good." But then he raised his eyes mischievously. "But you don't have it all."

At that point, he offered to share the rest of the story and did so. I went into a side room to write the new information into mine, and he promised to send the piece forthwith to my paper.

The only problem was that he didn't send it at all - he was just toying with me. By the time I was able to send it myself, everybody and his camel was ahead of me. That was the day I learned that the Middle East can be a treacherous place.

These weeks, that knowledge reinforced itself. While the United States had eyes glued upon the Russian takeover of eastern Ukraine, where the Russians have deployed roughly 9,000 regular troops and more than 30,000 irregulars, Russia began overflying northwest Syria, building barracks at a new base and unloading new armed vehicles. It was quite obvious that Moscow was shifting targets and that the Pentagon was leery of a new front on the Syrian seacoast.

This was, of course, not new for the Russians. They have been supporting the hated regime of President Bashar al-Assad for many years and enjoying the use of a port on Syria's Mediterranean coast. This new activity is near the ancestral home of the Assad family, who are part of the 10 percent Alawite minority, a mountain people with a unique form of Islam and whose sons dominate Assad's military.

To hear it talk, Washington sees this redirection of the Russians from Ukraine to Syria as almost a personal slight. There have been complaints and threats from the U.S. government, even though Washington has done little in Syria except threaten. A much-ballyhooed military program to train "moderate Syrians" ended up with a menacing corps of 54 American-trained Syrians landing in their country, only to be taken prisoner by radical Islamists almost immediately.

So, allow me, please, to make a suggestion. Why not, for once, stand back, fellow Yankees? Why not let the Russians fight it out with the Islamic State, or al-Qaida, or the Nusra Front, which by the way apparently just took the government's only remaining air base in the north? Why not stand by, watching and waiting in order to perhaps re-emerge as a player at a more congenial time, or perhaps not?

Oh, that is really not nice, I know it. In fact, you may well accuse me of being very Machiavellian - and if I am, so be it. In fact, I always thought that, compared to our "way of war" by massive bombings obliterating every living soul, Machiavelli was rather a moralist!

But the really supreme moralist was that famous ancient strategist Sun Tzu, who is believed to have lived in the fifth century B.C. They say he is popular in the Pentagon today. Were it only so!

He wrote, for instance, that "the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting." And he wrote, at another point, "Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategies."

One would not go far afield by judging that Vladimir Putin, given a weak and failing state behind him, flits from battle to unwon battle because that is all he can do - constantly threatening us anew. Let us, for once, stand aside. Let us observe the enemy's strategies. Let Putin sink deeper into the Mideast quagmire all on his own.

Email Georgie Anne Geyer at gigi_geyer@juno.com.

© 2015 Universal