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OK, so now we’re going to help arm the rebels in Syria — just small arms and just enough help to hopefully bring its president, Bashar al-Assad, to the peace table. The administration assured us we won’t really get into a war in Syria — no boots on the ground as they say. Even John McCain and Lindsey Graham, the Senate’s version of Marvel Comics superheroes, don’t want boots on the ground. Somehow we found a “moderate” general that is not an al-Qaeda crazy who we hope will emerge from this mess and lead a new Syria.
Balderdash (that’s a polite word for the American BS). It won’t work. Our enemies know it won’t work. The rebels know it won’t work. And maybe worst of all, the president must know it won’t work. We might as well forget about wasting the small arms that will inevitably wind up in the hands of al-Qaida. Just say a novena, Mr. President, you’ve got better odds of it working.
Here’s why our latest policy in Syria won’t work. It’s too little and too late. It’s token gesture like dipping your toe into the Atlantic Ocean in the middle of February and hoping for warm water. The administration has been goaded into getting involved. I’m not sure it even believes a rebel government that is any better than what the Syrians have now would emerge. We’ve all heard the myth before of the “moderates” whom we arm, but turn out to be corrupt tinhorn dictators like the shah in Iran or worse a terrorist who turns on us like Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.
Nevertheless, there is this clamor from those who still believe America can work its will on the Middle East. Yes, these are the same folks who thought we could turn Iraq into a beacon of democracy that would transform the Middle East. Last time I paid any attention to Iraq, the Sunnis and Shiites were beating the crap out of one another there. There is this phenomenon in American political life that no matter how many times you are wrong, like Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard, you are still treated as someone to whom we should listen. It’s sort of like “Love Story,” Kristol and his neo-conservatives never have to say they are sorry.
To be fair, established Democrats alsohave been imploring Obama to get involved in helping the Syrian rebels. Recently even former President Bill Clinton jumped into the debate with both wingtips. Clinton joined those folks on the right, who like to challenge Obama’s manhood, implying the president is a “wussie.” Clinton received little or no criticism for publicly calling out an incumbent president. So let me be the first. Clinton was out of line, way out of line. If a former president has some advice for the current president, you tell him privately.
Obama doesn’t have to prove his bona fides against Middle-East crazies. His administration took out bin Laden. Obama’s use of drones has demolished much of al-Qaida’s leadership. But he made a huge mistake when it came to Syria — not by being reluctant to get involved, but by publicly drawing the infamous red line regarding Assad’s use of chemical weapons. Obama publicly backed himself into a corner. Assad has already killed 93,000 of his own people, mostly by ways not involving the use of chemical weapons. I just don’t get the moral difference. Dead is dead. Killing your own is killing your own. Our involvement in Syria should be based on having an opposition to Assad that promises a good outcome for the Syrian people and the interests of the United States, and has a reasonable chance to be successful. But that’s not what we have in Syria where most of the rebels are al-Qaida types.
Obama is being told he depends too much on polls, that it is up to him to lead the American people and not pay attention to their opposition to getting involved. Sometimes that works like when Roosevelt took us into war to fight the Nazis. The stakes were clear. The interests of the U.S. involvement in Syria are anything but clear. One thing history has shown us is that we don’t succeed in intervening in wars without the support of the American people.
Just because Russia and Iran are helping Assad is not a reason for us to get involved. All our involvement does is raise the stakes of the outcome. It turns Syria into a proxy war between us and the Russians. Russia is not a democracy. President Vladimir Putin is not former leader Mikhail Gorbachev, but neither is Russia the Soviet Union. We don’t need a resumption of the Cold War. It made for some great John le Carré novels, but its return is in no one’s interest. We need to be able to fix our economy and focus on Americans who are out of work.
I don’t believe all of the wars we have gotten ourselves into since World War II have been for sinister reasons — that we want empire or, as in Iraq, oil (actually it is the Chinese not the United States that is getting most of the benefit from Iraqi oil). But good intentions or not, we have paved our own personal road to hell with them.
Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.
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