Syria in 2013 looks in places like Berlin circa 1945, it's been carved up already by jihadist and Islamist rebels, instituting sharia wherever they command a preponderance of men and arms, the Alawite, Ba'athist "national government" is sustained by Russian and Iranian and Hezbollah intervention, and the body count has hit 70,000 and counting, per the United Nations which is useful for such jobs as counting corpses in the more godforsaken corners of the earth, and not a lot else.
So what's to be done about this Syria business. The short answer is, as of now and beyond the usual humanitarian assistance, nothing. There was a moment when an intervention on a small margin, supporting the rebels without a very direct involvement on our part, would have been advisable, at the outset of this Syrian civil war in '11 when there was a true national rebellion, led by elements of the Syrian armed forces, against the Alawite Ba'athist dictatorship and enemy to the United States and Israel.
But that moment came and went because Obama and his administration prefer to "lead from behind", which is to say, go golfing and hope things somehow work out in the end, or that no-one notices if things don't work out, or that somehow the decision is made for us, or that Britain or France or anyone else at all rides over the crest of the hill and spares us from getting our hands dirty. Plus which, Obama and his administration had committed themselves to the line that Bashar al-Assad was a "reformer", some sort of misunderstood moderate and great man worthy of the praise of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and his Ba'athist dictatorship worthy of the resumption of normal diplomatic relations with the United States. Bush and his administration had recalled the American ambassador to Syria in '05 after Syria's assassination of Rafik Hariri, twice the Prime Minister of Lebanon, so of course Obama and his administration had to go altogether in the contrary direction.
Obama's timing was impeccably awful to boot: he claimed a recess appointment to circumvent Senate confirmation of his nominee for ambassador to Damascus, rewarding Bashar al-Assad with normal diplomatic relations, not three months before the onset of this Syrian civil war, just in time for al-Assad to demonstrate beyond all doubting that he was a dictator and butcher of the first magnitude, with whom the United States ought to be in a state of cold war at the very best. And it was worse than even that: Obama was so loath to come down against the Butcher of Damascus, exposing himself as a fool and vindicating Bush's judgment on the al-Assad regime, that he watched five months of al-Assad's butchery before calling for his resignation, at long last, and even then, Obama couldn't bring himself to speak the words, preferring the medium of the presidential "written statement". So our moment passed, and with it our only good alternative.
Because before long, the national rebellion was hijacked by the international jihad, as in Libya not long before. So that by this point, per a memorable and frank New York Times report, "Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of."
Obviously the United States isn't great guns for getting in the middle of this Alawite-jihadi-Russian-Iranian-Hezbollah melee, although in the abstract, that would be the one unalloyed good alternative, to sort of descend on Syria like some Heavenly host bringing ruin to the wicked on all sides, then institute a democracy for the ordinary Syrians still drawing breath. But that's as comprehensively mooted a point as can be, inasmuch as it'll never happen, which leaves us with the binary choice of keeping clear of Syria, or intervening indirectly as in supporting one side over the other.
But to support one side over another would be to support our principal enemies and threats in the world, and without reason to believe the end would be anything other than awful for us and for the people of Syria both. If I may be forgiven for invoking that most overdone of wars a second time in one piece, this Syrian civil war has gotten to be something like a science-fiction parallel-universe theater of the Second World War, where for various reasons the Germans, the Italians, and the Japanese wound up going at one another hammer-and-tongs, somehow at war against one another and not together against us. We'd have been fools to touch that with a pole, instead of letting it play out and letting the works of them bleed one another dry, while we followed the developments from afar and counted the blood and treasure expended on their side and husbanded on ours.
The peculiarities of this Syrian civil war have conspired to assemble our principal enemies and threats in the world, on opposing sides. Al-Qaeda, or the international jihad more generally, and Iran are more or less equivalent as menaces to the United States, and this Syrian business has set them one against the other, to the point where the reports are that Iran has expelled some of the al-Qaeda-ists it had made welcome before Syria made things awkward between them. Then Hezbollah which menaces Israel has come into it, and the Russians who are our geopolitical rivals and general ne'er-do-wells have been on the ground in support of the al-Assad regime as well, for reasons best known to themselves. And the Syrian regime, or rather whatever's left of the Alawite Ba'athist dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad, is an enemy of longstanding to the United States and to Israel, and has been at the very least an enabler and ally to those people trying to blow us up. So given that those are the parties to this Syrian civil war, as of now, what justice may be claimed in helping any faction over any other, and what good may be expected, for us or for the people of Syria?
Of course the trouble with this is that in the meantime those people of Syria are dying by the tens of thousands, and indeed the last man standing in Syria, holding or inheriting whatever assets and armaments are left by that time, will be no friend to us. But that's the price of not intervening at the outset, when there were still white hats against the black hats, and when indirect intervention might have helped those white hats to victory inasmuch as the outside forces propping up the al-Assad regime had not yet come into it with both feet.
So there is no good alternative left to us, but there is one least bad alternative, namely, to keep our powder dry, do nothing for the time being apart from putting up some innocuous humanitarian assistance. But of course Barack Obama has just now commenced thumping his chest on Syria, days after being reduced to impotent observer while Israel acted in Syria boldly and deftly, Obama's chest-thumping coming complete with a gratuitous and unjust slight against President Bush and a declaration of "moral obligation" which Obama discovered only after two years and 70,000 dead bodies. And Obama's interventionism is of course to take the form of some unquantified new support for the rebels who are by now al-Qaeda-ists and Islamists and assorted jihadists. How we or the people of Syria would be better off for al-Qaeda's being propped up by the United States, so as to carry on the civil war with the aim ultimately of rendering Syria a terrorist squat and a colony of the new caliphate, is unknown to me, but that is the course set for us by our occasional Commander-in-Chief.
He does nothing at the moment when supporting the rebels might conceivably have tipped the balance, and when it'd have meant supporting worthy men against a common enemy and conceivably helping to replace a tyrant and a menace with friends and allies in a decent and democratic successor government; then when it's far too late for that and supporting the rebels amounts to aiding al-Qaeda and Islamists and the international jihad, Obama gives the order to support the rebels. The worst of all worlds, as ever.
So what's to be done about this Syria business. The short answer is, as of now and beyond the usual humanitarian assistance, nothing. There was a moment when an intervention on a small margin, supporting the rebels without a very direct involvement on our part, would have been advisable, at the outset of this Syrian civil war in '11 when there was a true national rebellion, led by elements of the Syrian armed forces, against the Alawite Ba'athist dictatorship and enemy to the United States and Israel.
But that moment came and went because Obama and his administration prefer to "lead from behind", which is to say, go golfing and hope things somehow work out in the end, or that no-one notices if things don't work out, or that somehow the decision is made for us, or that Britain or France or anyone else at all rides over the crest of the hill and spares us from getting our hands dirty. Plus which, Obama and his administration had committed themselves to the line that Bashar al-Assad was a "reformer", some sort of misunderstood moderate and great man worthy of the praise of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and his Ba'athist dictatorship worthy of the resumption of normal diplomatic relations with the United States. Bush and his administration had recalled the American ambassador to Syria in '05 after Syria's assassination of Rafik Hariri, twice the Prime Minister of Lebanon, so of course Obama and his administration had to go altogether in the contrary direction.
Obama's timing was impeccably awful to boot: he claimed a recess appointment to circumvent Senate confirmation of his nominee for ambassador to Damascus, rewarding Bashar al-Assad with normal diplomatic relations, not three months before the onset of this Syrian civil war, just in time for al-Assad to demonstrate beyond all doubting that he was a dictator and butcher of the first magnitude, with whom the United States ought to be in a state of cold war at the very best. And it was worse than even that: Obama was so loath to come down against the Butcher of Damascus, exposing himself as a fool and vindicating Bush's judgment on the al-Assad regime, that he watched five months of al-Assad's butchery before calling for his resignation, at long last, and even then, Obama couldn't bring himself to speak the words, preferring the medium of the presidential "written statement". So our moment passed, and with it our only good alternative.
Because before long, the national rebellion was hijacked by the international jihad, as in Libya not long before. So that by this point, per a memorable and frank New York Times report, "Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of."
Obviously the United States isn't great guns for getting in the middle of this Alawite-jihadi-Russian-Iranian-Hezbollah melee, although in the abstract, that would be the one unalloyed good alternative, to sort of descend on Syria like some Heavenly host bringing ruin to the wicked on all sides, then institute a democracy for the ordinary Syrians still drawing breath. But that's as comprehensively mooted a point as can be, inasmuch as it'll never happen, which leaves us with the binary choice of keeping clear of Syria, or intervening indirectly as in supporting one side over the other.
But to support one side over another would be to support our principal enemies and threats in the world, and without reason to believe the end would be anything other than awful for us and for the people of Syria both. If I may be forgiven for invoking that most overdone of wars a second time in one piece, this Syrian civil war has gotten to be something like a science-fiction parallel-universe theater of the Second World War, where for various reasons the Germans, the Italians, and the Japanese wound up going at one another hammer-and-tongs, somehow at war against one another and not together against us. We'd have been fools to touch that with a pole, instead of letting it play out and letting the works of them bleed one another dry, while we followed the developments from afar and counted the blood and treasure expended on their side and husbanded on ours.
The peculiarities of this Syrian civil war have conspired to assemble our principal enemies and threats in the world, on opposing sides. Al-Qaeda, or the international jihad more generally, and Iran are more or less equivalent as menaces to the United States, and this Syrian business has set them one against the other, to the point where the reports are that Iran has expelled some of the al-Qaeda-ists it had made welcome before Syria made things awkward between them. Then Hezbollah which menaces Israel has come into it, and the Russians who are our geopolitical rivals and general ne'er-do-wells have been on the ground in support of the al-Assad regime as well, for reasons best known to themselves. And the Syrian regime, or rather whatever's left of the Alawite Ba'athist dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad, is an enemy of longstanding to the United States and to Israel, and has been at the very least an enabler and ally to those people trying to blow us up. So given that those are the parties to this Syrian civil war, as of now, what justice may be claimed in helping any faction over any other, and what good may be expected, for us or for the people of Syria?
Of course the trouble with this is that in the meantime those people of Syria are dying by the tens of thousands, and indeed the last man standing in Syria, holding or inheriting whatever assets and armaments are left by that time, will be no friend to us. But that's the price of not intervening at the outset, when there were still white hats against the black hats, and when indirect intervention might have helped those white hats to victory inasmuch as the outside forces propping up the al-Assad regime had not yet come into it with both feet.
So there is no good alternative left to us, but there is one least bad alternative, namely, to keep our powder dry, do nothing for the time being apart from putting up some innocuous humanitarian assistance. But of course Barack Obama has just now commenced thumping his chest on Syria, days after being reduced to impotent observer while Israel acted in Syria boldly and deftly, Obama's chest-thumping coming complete with a gratuitous and unjust slight against President Bush and a declaration of "moral obligation" which Obama discovered only after two years and 70,000 dead bodies. And Obama's interventionism is of course to take the form of some unquantified new support for the rebels who are by now al-Qaeda-ists and Islamists and assorted jihadists. How we or the people of Syria would be better off for al-Qaeda's being propped up by the United States, so as to carry on the civil war with the aim ultimately of rendering Syria a terrorist squat and a colony of the new caliphate, is unknown to me, but that is the course set for us by our occasional Commander-in-Chief.
He does nothing at the moment when supporting the rebels might conceivably have tipped the balance, and when it'd have meant supporting worthy men against a common enemy and conceivably helping to replace a tyrant and a menace with friends and allies in a decent and democratic successor government; then when it's far too late for that and supporting the rebels amounts to aiding al-Qaeda and Islamists and the international jihad, Obama gives the order to support the rebels. The worst of all worlds, as ever.
