McCain: Old Sectarian Wounds Reopening in Lebanon
U.S. Republican senator John McCain warned on Thursday that the more than two-year-old war in Syria was reopening confessional wounds in Lebanon and said thousands of Hizbullah fighters were operating in the country.
“Old sectarian wounds are being reopened in Lebanon,” McCain said.
Syrian President Bashar Assad's “foreign allies have all doubled down on him. Iran is all in. Russia is all in. Shiite militants are flowing into the fight from Iraq,” he said, speaking after visiting Syria last week to meet with rebel leaders.
“Hizbullah fighters have invaded Syria by the thousands. They were decisive in retaking the critical city of Qusayr, and now they are leading the attacks on Homs and Aleppo,” McCain told the Brookings Institution think-tank.
“Syrian groups are firing rockets into Shiite areas of Lebanon in retaliation for Hizbullah’s intervention in Syria,” he said.
McCain said the U.S. must deepen its engagement in Syria by equipping the rebels or setting up a safe zone to protect the opposition.
Failure to show U.S. leadership risks seeing the Middle East descend into "extremism, and war, and despair," he said.
"The Syrian state is disintegrating in much of the country, leaving vast ungoverned spaces that are being filled by extremists, many aligned with al-Qaida,” he said.
"They are the best armed, best funded, and most experienced fighters. And every day this conflict grinds on, these extremists are marginalizing moderate leaders like the commanders I met last week."
The Free Syrian Army and its commanders seeking to oust Assad were in desperate need of "ammunition and weapons to counter Assad's tanks, artillery, and air power," he said.
“The space for moderate politics is collapsing as the Middle East descends deeper into extremism and conflict," he said, warning the conflict in which 94,000 have been killed was spilling across Syria's borders.
"In short, if the Middle East descends into extremism, and war, and despair, no one should think America would be able to pivot away from those threats. Our national security interests will suffer. That is an inescapable reality."
McCain argued that a deeper engagement by the administration of President Barack Obama did not imply thousands of American boots on the ground.
"We could use our stand-off weapons, such as cruise missiles, to target Assad's aircraft and ballistic missile launchers on the ground," McCain said.
“In Lebanon, this would mean making the strategic defeat of Hizbullah in Syria the centerpiece of a wider campaign to target its finances, cut its supply lines, delegitimize its leaders, and support internal opposition to its role as an armed force in Lebanese politics,” he added.
Source: Agence France Presse, Naharnet
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