The cry for military intervention in Syria is rising to a fierce
crescendo. Ivory tower warriors are demanding action. But the U.S.
needs peace, not more wars.
Bashar al-Assad should go. Despite his Western education, he
obviously inherited his father’s repressive genes. Indeed, the
regime is a family enterprise, with relatives holding other key
positions. Far from being an agent of “reform,” as Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton once declared, he is willing to destroy his
nation to retain power.
So far he is succeeding, despite global condemnation.
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney declared
that “it is far past time for the United States to begin to lead
and put an end to the Assad regime.” Naturally, he offered no
credible means of doing so. Unfortunately, additional United
Nations observers, diplomatic negotiations, and economic sanctions
are unlikely to trigger a voluntary departure.
Assad’s brutality does not set him apart in the world today.
America’s Saudi Arabian allies are no less committed to preserving
their rule. North Korea has established a murderous system of
monarchical communism. Central Asia is filled with despots of one
sort or another. Until recently Burma fell into the same
category.
While the death toll in Syria is horrid, on an international
score it remains modest. The casualties from North Korea’s labor
camps and Burma’s ethnic wars are orders of magnitude higher. So
were the number of dead in Sudan. The slaughter in Iraq —while
America was there — was much worse. Millions died as a result of
Congo’s agony, and fighting there still flares. Victor David Hanson
of the Hoover Institution unkindly
asked: “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?”
The crisis in Syria unsettles its neighbors, but that, too, is
no change. America’s invasion of Iraq blew up one of the region’s
most important countries, sending geopolitical shock waves
throughout the Middle East. Washington’s threat of war against Iran
also is unsettling, as is the Iran-Saudi cold war. Tremors from the
Arab Spring have been felt around the Gulf, fostering revolt in
Bahrain. U.S. expansion of the conflict in Syria also would be
highly destabilizing.
Nor do war advocates have any idea what would follow allied
intervention. We’ve seen this story before. NATO intervenes in
Bosnia, leaving an artificial country riven by conflict among three
hostile groups little inclined to work together two decades later.
NATO intervenes in Kosovo, then stands by as its allies ethnically
cleanse a quarter of a million members of the now disempowered
minority. NATO intervenes in Afghanistan, where the war continues a
decade later. The U.S. intervenes in Iraq, setting off a
fratricidal civil war which kills a couple hundred thousand
civilians and drives millions of people from their homes. NATO
intervenes in Libya, extending the conflict and leaving the country
in uncertain transition.
Unfortunately, the region routinely features cataclysmic social
breakdowns. Washington’s ouster of Saddam Hussein turned Iraq into
a sectarian cauldron. Lebanon went through about 15 years of civil
war starting in 1975. Yemen has suffered varying degrees of
conflict for years. Islamist, ethnic, and other factions have risen
in varying degrees in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia. Only Saudi-backed
repression holds Bahrain together.
While most of those seeking to overthrow the regime might be
moderate in temperament, they may win but not gain power. Jackson
Diehl of the Washington Post
observed: “The problem, as both administration officials and
Syrian opposition leaders acknowledge, is that as the fighting goes
on — and gets bloodier — democratic liberals in the opposition
tend to get pushed aside by Sunni Islamists who are more willing to
die for their cause.”
Indeed, the armed rebels already are surpassing the civilian
opposition in importance. The United Nations reports that rebels
torture and execute captured soldiers and government supporters, as
well as kidnap civilians to use for prisoner exchanges or ransom.
Al Qaeda or other jihadists likely were responsible for recent
bombings in Syria — Director of National Intelligence James R.
Clapper warned the Senate Armed Services Committee that al-Qaeda
operatives “have infiltrated” the opposition.
The Crisis Group reported that the growing separation between
armed insurgents and popular opposition “could produce an even more
scattered armed opposition (in the absence of a clear collective
project) with a more pronounced religious ideological underpinning
(for lack of an alternative overarching narrative) and resorting to
more extreme forms of violence (in light of the failure of all
other options and as the image of a peaceful popular uprising gives
way to the reality of a ruthless struggle to the bitter end).” In
fact, history is filled with examples of moderate revolutionaries
displaced by tougher cadres who possessed more guns — France,
Russia, Iran, and Nicaragua come to mind.
No wonder Assad retains genuine popular support. It is driven
more by fear of the future than affection for the past, but it is
real. Indeed, the atrocious killings in Houla most likely were
committed by a pro-regime militia following an earlier rebel attack
on a nearby Alawite village. Alawites have been known to wear
Christian crosses for protection when going through Sunni
villages. With both the regime and opposition increasingly using
sectarianism for their respective ends, the situation is likely to
worsen. Thus, minorities — Alawites, Christians, Kurds, and others
— who make up about a third of the population have good reason to
worry about their status in a new Syria. And they have no reason to
expect that the allies would or even could protect them from
hostile revolutionaries.
Yet Washington elites continue to campaign for war. Gen. Martin
E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, observed: “There
is always a military option, but that military option should always
be wielded carefully.” But why should there be a military option in
Syria? Why go to war when the likely result is more harm than
good?
There is no military intervention-lite. The Syrian government
deploys a competent military. Providing more arms to the rebels,
who already are receiving weapons through Qatar and Saudi Arabia,
probably wouldn’t make much difference. No one knows how many
civilians want to fight — the majority of army defectors have gone
home, not joined the “Free Syrian Army” — and the allies would
have to train and sustain any large, organized rebel force.
“Humanitarian corridors” and “buffer zones” are all the rage,
but would not be self-enforcing. They could be sustained only
through military intervention. Nor would this approach resolve the
conflict. The Syrian people don’t want to leave their homes. They
want a new government.
Aerial “shock and awe” isn’t likely to work, at least at
acceptable cost. It would have to be a “no drive” rather than “no
fly” policy, which would be hard to enforce since the fighting in
Syria is taking place in cities, not in deserts, as in Libya.
Syria’s air defenses are good enough take a toll on attacking
aircraft.
If the allies didn’t want to simply lengthen any conflict, they
would have to invade. Although not all Syrian soldiers are loyal to
the regime, enough are to guarantee genuine resistance to any
ground invasion. The regime likely would use its chemical weapons
against foreign invaders.
After unleashing the unpredictable dogs of war, the U.S. would
be stuck with another occupation, since the allies could not easily
just pack up and go home, irrespective of consequences. With
wondrous naïveté Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen
declared that “one way to avoid a disastrous outcome is for the
United States to help organize the opposition and show that America
is on the side of the protesters.” Yes, that worked so well in Iraq
and Afghanistan. Washington should learn the lesson of our previous
Middle Eastern interventions: “Those whom we wished to help didn’t
seem to appreciate it,”
noted Victor Davis Hanson.
Of course, there always are those who see war as a glamorous
opportunity to do good. Or, more precisely, for others to do good.
However, the U.S. government places Americans in uniform for
“defense,” that is, to protect American security, not conduct
global crusades.
The lives of Americans should not be sacrificed for reasons
other than safeguarding their own society. People once talked about
making an exception to combat genocide. Now any nation in which
some people are killed — so long as their deaths receive media
coverage — is treated as a potential U.S. military target.
Washington elites routinely urge intervention in foreign conflicts
of only minimal strategic and modest humanitarian interest to
America. There no longer is any serious standard for deploying the
troops. The default position is war.
Washington’s policy should be peace. America always should be
prepared if war is forced upon it. But, as John Quincy Adams warned
nearly two centuries ago, the U.S. should not go abroad “in search
of monsters to destroy.” The U.S. government’s principal
responsibility is to safeguard the American people — their lives,
constitutional liberties, and country. Washington should stay out
of the looming Syrian catastrophe.
