The news from Syria is unrelievedly grim. The Assad forces are continuing their murderous assault on Homs but the opposition continues to strike back–now, apparently, with two car bombs in Aleppo, a major city that until now had been largely free of violence. President Obama has gone to the UN Security Council and failed to get a resolution. Is this to be an excuse for continued inaction or will Obama summon as much courage as Bill Clinton did in 1999 when he authorized action in combination with NATO in Kosovo despite the lack of a UN mandate? A growing number of voices are suggesting it is time to act.
No one, to be sure, suggests the use of U.S. ground troops but there is much that can be done short of that. In a typically cogent Wall Street Journal article the great Arabist Fouad Ajami writes: “We could, with some moral clarity, recognize the Syrian National Council as the country’s legitimate government, impose a no-fly zone in the many besieged areas, help train and equip the Free Syrian Army, prompt Turkey to give greater support to defectors from Syrian units, and rally the wealthy Arab states to finance the effort.”
Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post further develops the case for arming the Free Syrian Army in this article in which he points out why we should not be paralyzed by memories of how some of the mujahideen we had armed in Afghanistan in the 1980s later turned against us: “That’s a misreading of history,” he argues. “In fact, arming the Afghan opposition in the 1980s succeeded in its aim of driving out the Soviet Union. U.S. responsibility for the subsequent chaos lay in its abandonment of the country after 1989, not the arms it gave the mujahadeen.” Michael Weiss of the Henry Jackson Society in London provides additional details of what could be done here.
Let us hope the administration is paying attention because the death toll is growing every day.
Yeah, let's bomb Syria and Iran. I'm for it only if on every sortie a neocon think-taker rides a bomb down the chute à la Slim Pickens in "Dr. Strangelove."
Syria, Grumps, is already being well-bombed, and rocketed, and strafed by the incompetently brutal Assad, Jr. regime, assisted by Iran, desperate to hold onto its strategic (and non-Sunni sectarian) ally. n nOr did this escape you? n nAs did international recognition that Assad's ally in inflicting systematic pain and suffering on civilians in Syria–the UN has announced it cannot even keep up to tally the dead after the last counted post 5,000 estimation–is itself systematically positioning itself to get the big bomb–while it assists the Syrian ruling class in decimating its own non-Allawite majority. n nCondemning supposed neocon bellicosity can not magically make the day by day demonstrated war by Assad against his own putative national commuinty go away. n nReports are that Meshal of Hamas, not the fiercest of critics of the Iranian theocracy, refused to support Assad's war against the Sunni majority, even in the face of Iranian threats to end all subsidies to the Gazan-based government. n nAnd no, not Israel and not neocon machinations but only his own ineptness drove Assad into his current back-to-the-wall dead end.
Sounds all right, Maybe, except why should we collaborate with a terrorist nation, Turkey, in any way? If anything, overthrowing the terrorist government in Turkey, if possible, would be better. And if Assad gets thrown out and Turkey, under Erdogan, assumes Assad's former role of supplying Hamas and Hezbollah, and terrorists in Iraq, etc., we would have accomplished less than zilch. We should encourage the mutual annihilation of both sides in the civil war in Syria. Sort of like Germany and the USSR murdering each other – although in that case Germany was the more evil foe.
The civilians being killed are not a side, are they? As for WWII, the USSR was critical in winning the war and at a staggering sacrifice. And btw Germany's war against the Soviet Union was an ideological war against a perceived Jewish-Zionist-Bolshevik devil and among the millions of innocent lives killed were the Jewish populations in Poland, Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union who stood in the way of Hitler's ultimate objective of suicide by war.
Air campaigns or throwing surplus munitions off the turnip truck to ad hoc National Councils are the favorite substitute for coordinated military action involving ground troops when a serious, sustained, and well-thought out military intervention is judged to bear exorbitant costs. There is however nothing immediately persuasive about going with the cut-rate cheaper margarine alternative to overcome the very difficulties preventing properly vetted military intervention. Israel's failure to gain traction with progressively futile (and ultimately anarchic) air-based campaigns in Lebanon led to an emphasis on integrating ground troops for Cold Lead. Tripoli is now hostage to competing militias and Libya is in dire straights. Serbs fared very poorly in Bosnia even with UN approved oversight.
To what end though? It seems almost cruel to make an effort to bail them out now in order to set them up to be brutalized by the next fascist where the populace will get to splash around in the Islamic People's Republic of Abattoir.
Bashar will prevail. The masses crave strength.
I agree with Empress_Trudy, why should we help the Syrian resistance when, if they win, (which I think they will), the Syrian people will only have gained themselves a Muslim Brotherhood type govt. Is that really going to be much better?
The US has already mistakenly empowered the Islamist in several countries/areas. The ralleying call in these countries is for “democracy” which lasts for a nanosecond until the Islamists take over. We have seen this same scenario throughout history – where the pro-democracy elements are used by the radical elements to gain power and then they are eliminated.
on the other hand, the U.S. could actually try to distinguish between the AQI and other Islamists and those who would be pro-West. The U.S. had this capability once upon a time. Perhaps it doesn't any longer. If not, Israel certainly has the intel that could inform such decisions. But this will all have to wait for 2013 when there is, hopefully, a new occupant in the White House.
My question is why do we consider this geopolitical fabrication called "Syria" sacred? Like most of the Middle East, the current nation states are a fiction dreamed up by the British after WWII with borders drawn up without regard to tribes, sects, religions, ethnicities. Why not break up Syria, or, rather, allow it to break up on its own. The northeastern corner of Syria, for example, bordering on Turkey and Iraq, is heavily Kurdish and a natural political division. Rather than trying to find a solution in Syria that preserves the current borders, it may make more sense to break it up into its constituent parts. The Middle East, as a whole, might do much better if went the way of the former Yugoslavia and broke up into smaller, more homogenous pieces.