By Jim Geraghty
Wednesday, December 14, 2016
Look, we get it. There don’t seem to be many good guys in
Syria. The American people are exhausted from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and
feel like enormous sums of blood and treasure were wasted. We don’t do
nation-building well. The countries we save never seem particularly grateful.
When we descend into the world’s hellholes with the best of intentions, we
mostly make ourselves a target for asymmetrical warfare. Most of the rest of
the world has grown lazy, waiting for Americans to show up and pay the price
for stopping the globe’s horrors and restoring order.
But how many people have to die in a particular far-off
Godforsaken land before we as a country think, “we should have done something
about that?”
We may never get a firm number on the death toll from the
war in Syria. In February, one group estimated it at 470,000 people. Another 93
people killed in yet another gas attack, this time in Palmyra. Chlorine,
mustard gas, sarin, perhaps Agent 15 – chemical weapons are back with a
vengeance, used so often it’s hard to keep track. ISIS has used chemical
weapons at least 52 times in Iraq and Syria. The “red line” is a long-forgotten
joke.
Our government is full of some really harsh words for
those engaged in slaughter.
Syrian regime forces were on the
brink of taking eastern Aleppo on Tuesday as the UN said pro-regime forces had
reportedly carried out executions of at least 82 civilians.
The UN said it had received reports
that some civilians had been shot in their homes and on sight.
Speaking at a UN Security Council
Emergency Briefing on Syria on Tuesday, US ambassador Samantha Power had some
scathing words for her Syrian, Iranian and Russian counterparts.
“You bear responsibility for these
atrocities,” she said of the plight of eastern Aleppo residents amid reports of
widespread summary executions, including of women and children, by Syrian
forces in formerly rebel-held areas.
“When one day there is a full
accounting of the horrors committed in this assault of Aleppo — and that day
will come, sooner or later — you will not be able to say you did not know what
was happening.”
She said the actions of the three
players “should shame” them.
“Three Member States of the UN
contributing to a noose around civilians. It should shame you. Instead, by all
appearances, it is emboldening you… Are you truly incapable of shame?”
No, they aren’t. Samantha Power literally wrote the book
on genocide, one that denounced previous administrations for apathy and inertia
as thousands of innocent people were slaughtered. Why does she seem so
surprised that the Syrian, Iranian and Russian regimes have absolutely no
concerns about civilian casualties?
We keep saying “Never again.” And then Cambodia happens,
and Rwanda happens, and the Balkans happen, and North Korea continues to be a
giant maniacal homicidal prison camp. And then the Taliban rises, al-Qaeda
rises, and ISIS rises. And then Syria.
The world can have messy American military interventions,
or the world can have massacres. Those are the options. Pick one.
Back in 2013, I wrote: Dear world . . . do you remember
how you greeted the invasion of Iraq?
The invasion of Iraq was treated as the greatest crime
against humanity in the history of the world, denounced far more frequently and
loudly than any act by Saddam Hussein, Bashar Assad, the Iranian regime, or
North Korea.
Giant protests in lots of American cities. Giant protests
in every foreign capital. The 2004 Guinness
Book of Records described the anti-war movement around the globe as the
largest mass protest movement in history — eclipsing any popular opposition to
any act of the Soviet Union or any other totalitarian regime around the globe,
ever. Among the elites in Paris, Berlin, and most corners of London, the Iraq
War was the single-most important issue, and denouncing the evil of George W.
Bush was the most important goal, not building a stable and peaceful Iraq. You
recall Kofi Annan denouncing it, and the United Nations delegates scoffing when
Hugo Chavez called our president the devil.
You recall the cries of “Bushitler,” the ubiquitous Code
Pink interrupting every event in Washington, as if some ninny shouting during a
press conference ever spurred sudden reversals in U.S. national security
policy. You recall Hollywood’s relentless cavalcade of movies demonizing the
war and those fighting it: In the Valley
of Elah, Stop Loss, Green Zone, Redacted, Grace is Gone, Fahrenheit 9/11.
Hey, my Turkish friends so upset by a bloody civil war
across the border and a flood of refugees, remember Valley of the Wolves: Iraq? Remember when that film suggested that
Jewish U.S. army doctors in Iraq were harvesting organs from Iraqi civilians to
be sold in Israel, and that U.S. soldiers use Iraqi children as human shields?
Yeah, remember that? Well, go solve your #*%&^ border problems yourself.
The Davos set is horrified to learn that after spending
the better part of a decade screaming at the top of their lungs that an
American intervention to topple a bloodthirsty Arab dictator is the absolute
worst thing imaginable, suddenly Americans are no longer interested in toppling
bloodthirsty Arab dictators.
(Slap, slap) Wake up, anti-war movement! You’ve got what
you wanted! The United States is out of the armed intervention business,
besides the occasional “leading from behind” in Libya, or the occasional covert
mission in Pakistan.
And this is what you get.
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