Just Say No

The Turks have a saying: Do not get involved in the affairs of Arabs. We should listen to them.

The Sunni Arabs always found the Shia (Assad) dictatorship in Syria offensive. But the founder of that dynasty, Hafez Assad, took advantage of factionalism among the Sunni majority and formed a ruling coalition that got a boost in the 1980s when the Assads, who had many political disputes with Saddam Hussein, decided to become a client-state of Iran. The Assads cynically supported Sunni Arab terrorists in Iraq after Saddam fell to Western invaders in 2003, even [though] those Sunni fanatics were mainly killing Shia. Iran was technically against this but was so eager to kill Americans that they were willing to let 20 Iraqi Shia get murdered for each American soldier killed. The Iraqi dead were, after all, only Arabs and not ethnic Iranians. It’s that sort of thinking that has enraged the Arab world in the last decade and created an increasingly brutal conflict between the Iran led Shia and the Saudi led Sunnis. Neither side wants to fight each other directly, at least not yet. In the meantime these proxy wars will do and the West (especially the voters) is not interested.

No, we are not. Those of us with a grasp of reality, at any rate.

The failure of the West to deliver the promised post-chemical weapons use attacks has been declared a victory by the Assads. Two weeks have passed since the nerve gas killed 1,400 Syrian civilians, about a third of them children.

Read those two sentences in reverse order: the Syrians killed a bunch of Syrians and declared victory over America. Think about that and tell me again why we should be involved in Syria.

China has joined with Russia to oppose any use of foreign military force against Syria, especially in the UN. This was prompted by the recent Syrian use of chemical weapons against pro-rebel civilians. The U.S. and other NATO countries had earlier told Syria that such use of chemical weapons would bring military intervention. China and Russia have long been supporters of the Assad dictatorship and similar tyrants around the world. China and Russia are also bitter about what happened to their old friend Kaddafi, who lost his life clinging to power in Libya two years ago. Kaddafi was largely done in by NATO providing air support. NATO is reluctant to do that for Syria because the post-Kaddafi government (and post Arab Spring governments in general) tend to be tolerant of Islamic terror groups. But the Syrian civil war is dragging on and that is becoming embarrassing for the West. Assad losing power would be an even bigger embarrassment for China and Russia.

Which just sums up why we have no business there: it's LOSE-LOSE for the Western powers. If we intervene and "win," we're stuck with another Arab client state, this one dead broke with no resources worth the name -- and we've pissed off Russia and China in the process. A war in Syria provides us with no advantages and an entire host of liabilities. Which is why I'm getting really tired of these armchair hawks in the right wing press, many of whom have never worn a uniform, talking about how it is our "responsibility" to invade Syria. Their arguments are invariably couched within indignant stammering about moral righteousness and our credibility -- as if Obama had any credibility with world leaders in the first place.

Wars are fought for three reasons: 1) Gain economic and/or political advantage; 2) Punish those who have wronged you in order to set an example; 3) Defense of territory and citizens. Explain to me which of those applies here, please? I'm just a dumb jarhead and don't understand such things.