8/27/13
Secretary of State John Kerry’s speech yesterday calling
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s chemical attack on Syrian civilians a “moral
obscenity” left little doubt that we are going to take military action, in some
form, against Mr. Assad’s regime. My
opposition to such military action, or to any kind of meddling in the affairs
of other states in which our interests are non-existent or indefinable, is well
known to my readers. See, for example,
6/17/13’s
SYRIA AND THE WAR PARTY: “AFTER YOU GET WHAT YOU WANT YOU DON’T WANT IT…”, only my
latest post on
Syria.
The ultimate irony, and idiocy, of intervention in Syria is
that after spending billions of American treasure and incalculable quantities
of irreplaceable American blood supposedly fighting Al-Qaeda and terrorism in
Iraq, Afghanistan, and other venues in the Middle East and in Africa, we are
now intervening, with more American treasure and, nearly inevitably, more
American blood on behalf of terrorism
and Al Qaeda in Syria.
Oh, yes, we comfort ourselves in our pure motives. After all, Mr. Assad is a thug of major
league proportions and we aren’t supporting the more radical, Al-Qaeda linked
elements in Syria;
we are supporting the “moderate” opposition to Mr. Assad. By supporting these “moderate” elements, we
are, indeed, thwarting Al-Qaeda’s evil designs in Syria. One of these arguments is true but flawed;
the other is a pile of horse excrement.
Mr. Assad is a thug; no one can argue with that. But the Middle East,
and much of the world, is peppered with thugs, and their thuggery never seems
to bother us until they oppose our imagined interests and/or provide an excuse
for War Party members in this country to enrich the “defense” contractors who
sustain the lifelong sinecures those pols call careers. Mr. Assad is no more of a thug than the likes
of Shah Reza Pahlavi in Iran,
Saddam Hussein in Iraq,
or maybe even Hosni Mubarak in Egypt,
with whom we did business quite happily until it became more profitable for
some pols in this country to cease such business. The consequences in all cases have been
disastrous. The consequences will be at
least equally horrific in Syria
as well because, just as in Iran,
Iraq, Egypt,
and countless other places, we don’t consider the alternatives before we go off
on our neocon adventures of vainly attempting to make the whole world think
just like us.
The second argument, that we are supporting the “moderate”
elements in the Syrian opposition, reeks like the equine fecal matter that it
is. While there are plenty of people
who will proclaim that they are “moderate” if doing so results in getting
American cash and sponsorship, there probably are no “moderate” elements in Syria. And if there are a few such types there,
they are overwhelmed, in numbers, influence, and ferocity, by the radical
elements we claim to oppose. A victory
by such imagined “moderates,” therefore, will be a victory by Al Qaeda and its
wannabes, the very people we supposedly went to Iraq
and Afghanistan
to oppose. Those like former President
Bush, Senators McCain and Graham, and now President Obama, ought to get their
stories straight before embarking on their missions to make the world
comfortable for the arms merchants.
The Russians seem to understand what is happening in Syria. They like Mr. Assad because he is their only
friend in the Arab world and because they seem to be predisposed, perhaps
because of certain affinities of their leadership, toward sponsorship of
thugs. But even if they had a clearer
picture of the genuine evil of Mr. Assad, their sense of realpolitik would lead them to support his regime, and not only
because Syria contains their only military base in the Arab world and on the
Mediterranean Sea. The Russians know that
if Mr. Assad falls, Syria
becomes a terrorist haven. Russia
not only has a huge problem with terrorists in its southern Republics but sits
in far close proximity to Syria
than we do. Further, the Russians
actually believed us when we said we opposed Al Qaeda and worldwide
terrorism. Silly Russians.
