Alex Yarde insists that our time and resources would be better spent focusing on supporting Jordan during the influx of refugees from Syria.
The despicable Assad Regime has, to date, killed thousands of his own people, used chemical weapons, including sarin gas, and choked rivers with bodies of innocent men, women and children. Despite this tragedy, in my opinion, the United States going to war in Syria is at best foolhardy and worst calamitous. At the heart of the Syrian Civil War is the thousand-year-old Sunni vs. Shia religious divide among Muslims.
We don’t need to get dragged into another Sectarian War in the Middle East. President Obama told Charlie Rose on Monday night, and assured the American people, that “Syria is not Iraq.” We aren’t starting a war with the intent of transforming a country. In the months after 9/11, however, I recall those same words being said before we found ourselves “Nation Building” in Iraq and Afghanistan decades later. President Obama is no Neo-Con. During his 08′ campaign he famously declared, “I’m not against wars, I’m against stupid wars”. I believe this was true. I pray this is true. I believe President Obama still wishes to remain on the periphery of the conflict. He didn’t announce a change in strategy, an aide made the announcement. This signals to me President Obama wants daylight between him and re-arming the rebels. However, our arming the rebels at all is a slippery slope that will likely lead to more intervention, which could lead us to a familiar place that we, as a nation, do not want to go.
George Keenan, in his book American Diplomacy, brilliantly breaks down America’s tendency to overreach and the hazards of “mission creep”. In it, he crystallizes perfectly the dangers lurking in our response to the September 11th terrorist attacks and for that matter our military interventions to date since World War 2. Keenan says,
“I sometimes wonder whether in this respect a democracy is not uncomfortably similar to one of those prehistoric monsters with a body as long as this room and a brain the size of a pin: he lies there in his comfortable primeval mud and pays little attention to his environment; he is slow to wrath—in fact, you practically have to whack his tail off to make him aware that his interests are being disturbed; but, once he grasps this, he lays about him with such blind determination that he not only destroys his adversary but largely wrecks his native habitat.”
Declaring war on the current Syrian regime, the Shiites who support him and by proxy any outside actors supporting Assad is an extraordinarily bad idea for several reasons. This country does not need to find itself in yet another country training and arming future enemies, as we did in Afghanistan in the 80s. We supported the Mujahideen “freedom fighters” that opposed the then Soviet Union. This group was lead by a wealthy Saudi named Osama Bin Laden.
This country also does not need the responsibility to rebuild another country. As Gen. Colin Powell said before the Iraq War, “You break it you bought it”. We are picking sides that will inevitably create more enemies then friends. The Tony Blair policy which President Obama, British Prime Minister Cameron and then French President Sarkozy followed implementing – the overthrow of Gaddafi in August 2011 – created a condition where we worked directly with Al Qaeda militias all throughout Benghazi and other parts of Libya, Gaddafi is gone along with any legitimate governing body in Libya. Black Al Queda flags fly in Libya today.
We should first and foremost continue to help the refugees fleeing the violence. Neighboring Jordan is being crushed under the influx of thousands of Syrian refuges. There is a humanitarian crisis on the border. King Abdullah, the steadfast, Harvard-educated ruler of Jordan, who is a far better friend to the United States than any of the rebel leadership, deserves support. Aiding a stable, secular, benevolent monarch in a region which is desperately short of leaders with these qualities, is a much better focus of our energy, time and resources.
In Syria, we have no clear idea who we are arming and empowering to fill the vacuum of Assad’s regime, if he is indeed opposed. Its hard to tell who the actors are, as Sen. McCain found out recently at an embarrassing photo op with a group of Syrian rebels, who were later reported as possibly having been part of a terrorist kidnapping case. So much for “going with your gut” as the Senator claimed when asked if the rebels were on our side. Historically, more mutually-beneficial outcomes have been gained from diplomatic leadership from Washington and a consensus from our allies. It worked in Kosovo, East Timor and Northern Ireland. Arming people and unilateralism in lieu of diplomacy gets us into situations like Nicaragua, Somalia & Guatemala.
Perhaps we won’t escalate. But as I read the news today, the rebels are losing, mainly because they are a loose confederation of various factions already vying for control, and Assad is propped up by hardened Hezbollah fighters paid for by Iran and a huge supply of Russian weaponry—war is a great money generator.
History can be instructive. In Vietnam, our support of the failing Nationalist Government started slowly, small arms, then more and more advanced anti aircraft and weapons systems were sent, followed by military “observers” to train our allies in their use. We then declared a no-fly zone, or as in the Gulf of Tonkin, a naval blockade, and were in a position to shoot down enemy aircraft or torpedo ships that inevitably breech the zone. Before you know it, thousands of boots are on the ground. The end of the Vietnam conflict left us left with tens of thousands of flag-draped coffins and a generation of veterans struggling with PTSD horrific injuries, dissolution and disrespect.
At this moment, the US is moving on from small weapons to more powerful ones. The Syrian Rebels have announced they have heavy weapons, including anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles from “brotherly nations that support the Syrian Revolution.” This comes as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is scheduled as of today to attend a “Friends of Syria” meeting in Doha, Qatar next Saturday. You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce who these “brotherly nations” are. It seems that mission creep is on and, unfortunately, we know how this story ends.
Photo: AP