Thoughts on Syria

          So, according to our government, a government who I tend to believe more often than disbelieve, says that there was a chemical attack in Syria last week that killed hundreds of people. It is thought to have been done by the Syrian government, which is controlled by Bashar al-Assad.  Last year we drew the line at chemical weapons. Obama said that if Syria used its chemical weapons against the rebel forces, we the United States would rethink our position of staying out of their civil war. 

            We were not going to attack the Assad government when he ordered his troops to snipe out peaceful protestors, or when the fighting escalated to a fully fledged war. We were not going to send the rebels guns or ammunition in case it fell into the wrong hands. We were staying out of it.

            And I get that.

            This conflict is not nearly as easy and clear cut as the Libyan uprising. Muammar Gaddafi was essentially a terrorist dictator who agreed to play nicely after Nine-Eleven in exchange for George W. Bush to not blow him up, too. But once Gaddafi started to gun down his people, and he hired a bunch of African mercenaries to slaughter the eastern part of his county, we stepped in to stop genocide and get rid of a known bad guy. 

            I didn’t mind our involvement in Libya. Maybe it was because we “led from behind.” And it was sold as a mainly “no fly zone” operation taken on by countries other than us. But Syria is a lot different. There are a lot of different factions: Alawites, Shi’a, Sunni, and Christians. And it seems like each faction wants the others to die. It’s messy.

            Not only is it messy, it’s too messy for us to even clean up. 

            When we use military power against Syria, we need to figure out what the end game is. I am a product of a generation who grew up during the longest wars in American history. As these wars dragged on, the question was only “when can we leave?” not “how do we win?” essentially because there was no winning to be had. The closest thing to winning, aside from the fact that we left, was we killed one of the men who was most responsible for the wars in the first place: Usama bin Laden. Aside from that one man’s death, nothing was achieved. The Afghan government is one of the most corrupt in the world, the president we put in place, Hamid Karzai, hates us, we give billions of dollars every year to the country that was harboring bin Laden, and after the Iraq debacle, China is the one who moved in and bought up most of the oil. 

           Obama says that his goal in this is not to take Assad from power. But then what the hell is the goal? Stop him from using chemical weapons, but to allow him to keep killing his people? Is it to set a standard for not allowing governments to use weapons of mass destruction on large populations of people? Why draw the line at chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons? Why not attack anyone who attacks somebody else?  This is all high minded bullshit. And I don't think that setting a global standard against chemical weapons justifies spending my tax dollars or risking the lives of my countrymen. The globe doesn't really care what our standards are anyway.

           I know I'm sounding like a pacifist who is trying to make that old point that was made by Einstein that "there is no way to peace, peace is the way." I am not a pacifist. I just don't think we should be getting into fights unnecessarily. And maybe that sounds nuts coming from an ex-boxer who's only been in fights unnecessarily. 

            However there has been such a double standard in our history when it comes to foreign governments, and that is especially obvious in the Middle East. Our friends aren’t democratic governments. Whether a country is a democracy or not has no bearing. The CIA has overthrown plenty of democratically elected leaders. We supported Saddam Hussein over democratic Iran despite Saddam gassing his own people. We support Saudi Arabia, but not their people’s Arab Spring. And of course these double standards have to do a lot with OPEC and oil, and Israel, let’s not forget about them. 

            And as for the conspiracy theorists: I really don’t think this will spark a third Word War involving the western powers against the likes of China, Russia, Iran, Syria, and the rest. On the other hand, we have eliminated Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi, two men who bought a lot of weapons from Russia. The last thing Russia wants is for us to clip Syria from their books as well. Maybe we should just attack China, they buy a lot of weapons from Russia. Or perhaps, India, they import more weapons than anyone. Hell, let’s just attack Russia, they’re the number two weapons exporter in the world. Well fuck, you know what? If we’re going to attack the number two weapons exporter, why not go after number one? Who’s number one? Oh yeah, the United States.

            I guess I’m just tired of fighting everyone’s battles. I wish we could go back to a foreign policy that looked like the one pre-1941, before the military industrial complex. I know as the world’s most powerful military we have a certain obligation to keeping a certain standard of humanity in the world, but we only seem to enforce that ideal when it benefits us. I wish there was a clear end in sight for us in Syria. Despite my wishes, bombing will probably begin in the next week or so, and I’ll keep wondering what we hope to achieve in the end aside from high minded double standards.