The Syrian meltdown is horrible to watch, and thanks to the fact that much of the killing is being done by official enemies of the United States, we are actually able to watch it. The Syrian regime is doing the only thing it knows how to do – killing and torturing those who oppose it. The Russians, too, have only one speed on their killing machines. Lebanese Hizbullah fighters are there to support the regime, just as the regime and the allied government of Iran was there to help them in their time of need – it’s hard for me to blame them, frankly. But the true crime of Syria is that there are many players involved in this senseless war and their all pursuing their own agendas.
The United States has had dogs in this fight for years, despite what you’ll hear on bullshit broadcast outlets like Morning Joe. They have provided covert support to rebel groups in Syria since before the uprising, so there’s little doubt that some of those fighters assumed – as Chalabi did with regard to Iraq – that Uncle Sam would swoop in and save the day, Kosovo style. The notion that the United States could somehow fix this problem through the application of military force has remarkable currency among politicians, pundits, and talking heads.
Everyone from Clinton to McCain to Joe Scarborough talks about no-fly zones like they’re as simple as pitching a tent in the backyard. My guess is that their conception of this pulls from their memories of the Gulf War aftermath, when the U.S. established no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq. That required very little additional firepower because we had already blown the country up, destroyed its air defenses, its command and control infrastructure, and so on. Syria still has all that stuff, plus the Russian air force.
Sometimes broken stuff stays broken (see Iraq). I don’t condone Russia’s role in Syria, but it seems pretty clear why they intervened: they saw what happened with various other failed states we created through our interventions over the past fifteen years, and they’re determined not to let that happen to one of their client states. They have obviously gone way, way too far, and we are seeing every lick of it. What we’re NOT seeing is what’s happening in Yemen, which we could truly bring to an end with a stern phone call.
Our responsibility as a nation to protect innocent lives is most acute in those areas where we have the most influence. We can rail against abusive foreign leaders until the cows come home to little effect, but when we’re picking up the tab, as in Yemen, it’s incumbent upon us to act. If you’re really worried about human suffering, tell Obama to do so before he packs up and leaves.
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jp
I could sit here an write about the obviously outrageous statements made by Trump over the 90 minute program, but you’ve probably heard enough of that. Suffice to say that the guy proves his unsuitability for the office of the presidency every time he opens his big yap. No one should need additional convincing, but alas … this is America. No, what astonishes me is some of what gets discussed (and what doesn’t get discussed) in the wake of these debates. That in itself is enough to make you want to rip your own head off. Take Syria. On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, it’s pretty much a consensus that the Syrian conflict is a failure of the Obama administration on the scale of Bush’s Iraq invasion. Scarborough himself regularly refers to the conflict with terms like “holocaust” and “genocide”, which is frankly offensive.
It’s hard for me to see how these calls for military action and pulling up the drawbridge aren’t simply appeals to cowardice. Seriously – the vast majority of the loudest hawks and anti-immigrant fanatics are also fierce defenders of an over-broad interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. Given that many, many more Americans are killed by heavily armed family members, neighbors, or strangers than by terrorism, this is an almost astonishing level of hypocrisy. Even more disturbing is the ludicrous background assumption, expressed most consistently on Morning Joe and by career hawks like John McCain, that if we had simply invaded Syria in 2012, all would be sweetness and light in that sorry nation today. Is there any factual basis for that assumption? The question never arises.