The Syrian mess – Obama’s foreign policy folly…
If you haven’t already realized it, President Obama is a lot better at winning elections than he is at foreign policy. There’s a huge cow-pie out there called Syria and he’s about to put both feet into it—possibly even trying to take a swim. Maybe he already has by the time I make this post. If so, take this as a plea to get the hell out of Syria. If not, let’s make sure he doesn’t jump into the fray. Syria is different. I hope to show you why, but frankly the issues are about as clear as that cow-pie.
I’ll start with the bottom line: An attack, any attack, on Syria will have unpredictable consequences. Moreover, given that Mr. Obama has disavowed Mr. Bush’s policy of a pre-emptive strike—we should defend ourselves only when attacked or in imminent danger of attack. The situation in Syria doesn’t meet either of those conditions. As messy and violent as the Syrian civil war might seem, the fighting there doesn’t threaten the U.S. or any of its interests in the region. Mr. Obama himself has said this. One should ask: what the hell is he doing?
Yes, I care that chemical weapons were used in Syria and innocents died. I also care that nuns were savagely raped and/or murdered in Africa and that the woman denouncing life under the Taliban was just murdered in Afghanistan. There are many problems in the world to care about. The U.S. can’t unilaterally jump in every time this happens, like Don Quijote tilting at windmills, especially in the Syrian situation where both sides have engineered atrocities (see the video released by the NY Times last Friday, for example, showing rebels executing Assad’s soldiers). The Syrian civil war is just as violent and bloody as ours was. I deplore it. But we shouldn’t intervene. We cannot police the world.
We intervened in Libya and Tunisia. We stayed out of Egypt. What’s the difference? These three countries, along with Syria, were ruled by despots who murdered their own people and otherwise made their lives miserable. In the three cases, we can say after the fact that the despots received what they deserved, but is it our place to be judges and executioners? Syria is similar to Libya—both promoted terrorism. Over the years, Syria has just about supported anyone that goes after Israel. In that sense, Egypt is the odd guy out—they even signed a peace treaty with the Israelis.
It’s always dangerous to be the cop on the block that steps in to stop a fight—he can become a casualty. Call that intervention noble or call it stupid, it’s undeniably dangerous to try to break up a fight between lethal combatants. In that sense, we were lucky in Libya and Tunisia. In both cases, the opposition was more homogeneous and more clearly at risk from a better-armed foe, including the foe’s primitive but effective air power. We simply evened the odds a bit and were repaid for our troubles in Benghazi because, in many of these civil wars, there are always radical elements just itching to take advantage of the chaos.
Syria and Egypt are worse in the sense that the opposition is very heterogeneous. This is clear in Syria with its wide spectrum of “freedom fighters” from secular to al Qaeda rebel combatants—the latter in spite of Putin’s claim (who trusts Putin anyway?)—while Egypt has many secular groups as well as the Muslim Brotherhood that is heterogeneous itself, covering a wide spectrum from radical jihadists to peaceful members. As we saw in Iraq, al Qaeda can enter a conflict like moths drawn to a flame—only these are moths who maim and kill in their pursuit of Islamic jihad.
We should have never intervened in Tunisia or Libya either. It was taking a big chance. We should have used the same caution we are now using with Egypt, all the more so because neither Libya nor Tunisia were “friendly to the U.S.” That’s no argument for intervening in Egypt either—after Mubarak’s fall, it’s not clear that Egypt is still friendly to the U.S., although those billions in military aid might still buy something resembling friendship. The reasoned hesitation of the Obama administration with respect to Egypt seems to be lost with respect to Syria. Mr. Obama, the Nobel peace prize winner, seems to be out to show that he also deserves to be taken to the Hague for crimes against humanity (that would be a first the U.S. doesn’t need).
Like Tunisia and Libya, Syria never was friendly to the U.S. Quite the contrary. But that is no reason to attack, especially considering that the other side in the Syrian skirmish might not have any love for the U.S. either. Let’s face it, folks. The biggest problem we have in the Middle East is the perceived notion that we will support Israel at all costs. Whether this is real or just perceived, it makes no difference. As McLuhan said, perception is reality. Even though Mr. Obama has also had his problems with Israeli leadership, the Islamic world still sees us in Israel’s camp. Our history in the region offers ample evidence for this. This is the fundamental reason we shouldn’t intervene in Syria.
Going back to that cop-on-the-block metaphor, the two dueling gangs are Israel and the rest of the Middle Eastern Islamic world, the latter complicated by a little appreciated variety of governments, from despots to theocracies to monarchies. And Syria is right on Israel’s border. Lebanon is unstable and the Jordanian royal family still has to contend with hardliners and Palestinian refugees even though Jordan is considered friendly to the U.S. Israel’s hard-line government is also bristling. The entire area there is a powder keg waiting to blow. Although I say the consequences of U.S. intervention are unpredictable, one possible result is to strike a match to the powder.
Would we lose face if we don’t intervene? Credibility? Stature? Yes, to all three. But it’s already happened—Obama’s red line (and it is mostly his) was crossed the moment we saw those innocents writhing in pain from the effects of sarin gas. Americans have to learn to live with this. The cop who walks away from a gang skirmish will live to police the streets another day after the feud has been settled—or after he builds consensus among his fellow. In the case of Syria, other Arab nations don’t want intervention, all of Europe except France is against intervention, and the American public is against intervention. It might seem cold to say, “Let the gangs duke it out.” Moreover, one of the gangs in this case, Israel, has never done its fair share of self-defense, just like Europe never did its fair share in the Cold War against the bellicose Soviet Union. But we will lose more face, credibility, and stature because the Islamists, especially Iran, will crow that they made the mighty U.S. back down. Live with it, Mr. Obama!
Do I care about losing face, etc? No, and the U.S. government shouldn’t either. Losing face is not an argument for intervention, or even continuing to fight. We should have learned that lesson in Vietnam. After self-defense, humanitarian concerns are the only justification. But let’s suppose that we go after Assad and his minions, raining hellfire down on him and his troops and supplies. We’ll just be killing more innocents. Moreover, we can’t go after the chemical weapons. They will be left over for the victors to claim. They can then be used against Israel and U.S. installations. The U.S. is between a rock and a hard place with nowhere to go. Any choice is bad, but non-intervention is the best choice.
That’s how I came to the bottom line. Because there is no good choice, none whatsoever, we shouldn’t intervene. There are no self-defense issues here. We will intervene only because of our tradition of sticking our nose into battles where we don’t belong. We can continue to supply the Syrian rebels, but run the risk even there of repeating what happened in Afghanistan as our own Stinger missiles were turned on us after the Russians left. It’s a volatile region where the enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend type of foreign policy just doesn’t work. It never has and never will. You’d think we’d learn this lesson, but we never seem to.
On a propaganda level, non-intervention can be spun as our national desire for peaceful coexistence. We can set a good example. We can lose a bit of face but come out strong for peace. The rest of the world will respect that. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama’s desire to intervene sends just the opposite message. Moreover, he seems to be floundering, unable to act, unable to make a move for peace. In short, he doesn’t know what to do. That isn’t the kind of leadership we need. Be decisive and take your lumps like a man when Congress shoots your plan down. Don’t over-think this, Mr. Obama. It’s time to be decisive. I just hope you decide for peace.
And so it goes….
[If you enjoyed this post, please support this blog: buy, read, and review some of my books.]
