Thursday, May 24, 2012
Who could not despise the tottering Bashar al-Assad
dictatorship in Syria?
The Syrian strongman has killed some 10,000 protestors
over the last year; thousands of Syrians are now refugees.
The autocracy arms and aids the terrorist organization
Hezbollah. It targets democratic Israel with thousands of missiles, and still
does its best to ruin neighboring Lebanon.
Theocratic and terrorist-sponsoring Iran has few allies
-- but Syria remains its staunchest. Almost no country over the last
half-century has proved more hostile to the United States than has Syria.
With sanctions not working, and with the Chinese,
Iranians and Russians not eager to see Assad go, there is lots of talk that the
United States and its allies must intervene to help the outmanned and outgunned
Syrian opposition -- either with arms supplies, training for insurgent groups,
or air cover.
At first glance, such a humanitarian intervention seems a
good idea. A well-armed insurgency might fight its way to Damascus. Or we could
bomb Assad out of power like we did Slobodan Milosevic from Serbia, or Muammar
Gadhafi from Libya -- and without the use of ground troops or loss of American
life.
Would not the spread of the Arab Spring to Damascus be
wonderful -- especially given that it would weaken Iran and Shiite terrorist
groups that have long killed Americans? Would not fewer die from collateral
damage than from Assad's thugs?
But intervention, even if by air or through stealthy
military assistance, requires some sort of strategy, and right now the United
States does not seem to have any coherent one. We expected that post-Gadhafi
Libya, and an Egypt without Hosni Mubarak, would be far better. They might be
some day. But right now, emerging Islamic republics are hardly democratic. Some
seem every bit as anti-American as were the dictatorships they replaced -- and
could be even more intolerant of women, tribal minorities and Christians.
The point is not that we should only support idealists
who promise an Arab version of Santa Monica, but that we do not oust one
monster whom we are not responsible for only to empower one just as bad whom we
would be responsible for.
Our three last interventions in the Middle East offer all
sorts of different lessons, but one common theme predominates -- those whom we
wished to help didn't seem to appreciate it. In Afghanistan, after a
decade-long investment of blood and treasure, America is scheduled to withdraw
in two years without any guarantee that Afghanistan won't be ruled by the
Taliban, as it was in 2001. Our biggest problem seems to be our allied Afghan
friends, who keep rioting and blowing up their American partners.
We successfully removed Saddam Hussein from Iraq. And by
nobly staying on with thousands of troops, we defeated an insurgency and
finally birthed a constitutional system in Iraq that is still viable -- but at
a cost that the American public felt was not worth the eventual outcome.
In Libya, the model was to boast of United Nations
approval, insert no ground troops, bomb Gadhafi, and support the insurgents.
But because we far exceeded the very U.N. resolution we bragged about, we are
not likely to get another such resolution for Syria. A bypassed Congress won't
want to be snubbed again in favor of the U.N. And so far the Libyan air
campaign has reminded us that if we do not send in ground troops and risk
casualties, we have absolutely no influence on what follows.
Since we went into Afghanistan and Iraq, the United
States has borrowed more than $9 trillion and is currently running serial $1
trillion deficits. We no longer pay for our wars, but instead borrow the money
from the Chinese and others who calculate how to profit better than we from the
ensuing chaos.
After lots of interventions, we have learned one thing
about loud Arab reformers, especially those who were educated at Western
universities: They damn us for supporting their dictators; they damn us for
removing them; they damn us for interfering in their affairs when we help
promote democracy; and they damn us as callous when we just let them be.
These cautionary tales do not necessarily mean that we
should not help the Syrian dissidents, only that we must ask ourselves who
exactly are these guys, how much will it cost to see them win, and when it is
over will our new friends rule any more humanely and competently than the
monsters that we remove?
And one final consideration: If intervening in Syria is
to be a humanitarian venture, why would saving lives there be any more
important than saving far more lives from far more dictators in Africa?
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