In the days of my youth, I grew up reading about heroes who brought the villains down and dispensed justice with their fists or guns. While not all of us buy into the American heroic mythology, I suspect that many of us had our views shaped as mine were shaped.
One part of the American heroic mythology is that tyrants are not to be tolerated. It matters not if the tyrant is great or petty, an evil sheriff or wicked king—they are all to be brought to justice (preferably cruel justice) by the hero. Because of the shaping heroes of my youth, I certainly favor taking down tyrants. Ride in. Bang! Bang! Save the day. Hi, ho Silver and away!
Of course, many years have passed since those early days of comic books and silver screens and my view of heroics has been tempered by some measure of wisdom and a larger measure of time. While I do find tyrants morally appalling, I have learned that the world is a complicated place and that attempts to save the day rarely work out as it does in fiction.
In the case of Syria, the Assad government is clearly an evil government—the state is oppressive and has been rather busy killing people to stay in power. As such, this is a classic bad-guy situation, seemingly begging for a bang-bang solution. The same was, of course, supposed to be true of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
In Iraq, the United States and a few allies rode in, shot things up and ousted Saddam Hussein. Unfortunately, that movie spawned a seemingly endless series of sequels, each turning out rather badly and having a high body count. We did not ride off into the sunset—we were stuck there for years and, in many ways, are still stuck.
In the case of Afghanistan, we rode in, shot things up, and then stayed. And stayed. And stayed. The sequels, as in Iraq, featured plenty of violence and high body counts. We are still there, despite many sunsets.
Now the United States is considering military action against Syria. On the one hand, it is clear that the regime has done and is doing bad things. As such, it makes sense to consider that there is a moral obligation to prevent the Syrian government from continuing to engage in the killing and perhaps even a moral obligation to oust the current regime. In an action movie, a rag-tag band of diverse heroes would ride in, defeat Assad (saying something like it “looks like we kicked Ass…ad”) and ride out with some suitable pop rock song jamming in the background. However, this is not an action movie.
So, on the other hand, there is the rather important moral and practical concern about what impact our military actions would have. If our involvement is predicated on a moral imperative, then we would seem morally obligated to consider the ethics of our actions in terms of the consequences. As I have noted before, while the Assad regime is rather bad, it might be the least worst of the practical options. If our attacks have a significant impact and Assad is toppled, then it seems that the likely results would either be continued chaos as the various factions settle who will be the new tyrant or the emergence of a radical state. The chances of having a stable, pro-West (or even neutral), effective state result from United States intervention seem to be incredibly low. While tyranny is bad, one could follow Hobbes and contend that a tyrant is better than chaos.
Also of moral concern is the matter of self-determination. In our own civil war, the United States made it clear that the matter was an internal one—despite the fact that we were rather busy slaughtering each other and destroying our cities. Moral consistency would seem to require that the same policy be adopted for Syria. It could be noted that the Syria government is behaving in a morally relevant difference. That is, the American civil war was a legitimate military struggle that did not morally warrant external intervention while the Syrian civil war does warrant external intervention. Part of the case for the distinction could be the alleged use of chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war. Another part of the case could be the fact that the Syrian conflict is more indiscriminate than the American civil war.
While tyrants should be brought down, the matter is a rather complicated one. Which is rather unfortunate.
You’re missing the big picture. The situation in Syria is a replay of the situation in Libya: a stable, governmental order was attacked and disrupted by US, Saudi, Qatari, Israeli, NATO funded, armed, trained, and paid mercenaries, and our government-media has told us a big lie: that the peoples of Libya and Syria had risen up against these governments and that these governments were killing those who had non-violently risen up against them.
You need to get your facts straight in order to properly understand and critique what is happening.
William Engdahl is an award-winning geopolitical analyst, strategic risk consultant, author, professor and lecturer. He has been researching and writing about the world political scene for more than thirty years. His various books on geopolitics – the interaction between international power politics, economics and geography – have been translated into 14 foreign languages. Born in Minnesota, William Engdahl grew up in Texas. After earning a degree in politics from Princeton University, and graduate study in comparative economics at Stockholm University, he worked as an economist and investigative freelance journalist in New York and Europe. William will discuss the serious situation in Syria and the underlying reasons behind the expansion of the empire into yet another Middle Eastern country. He explains how a radicalized version of Islam has been created and used to manage the war on terror. Engdahl describes the dire situation in Europe, with mass immigration and radicalized Islam, causing much conflict and internal struggle. Finally, he outlines the bigger geopolitical chessboard and where he sees the pieces moving if a greater strike on Syria is initiated.
AUDIO – William Engdahl – War in Syria & Manufactured Conflicts – http://www.redicecreations.com/radio/2013/09/RIR-130902.php
Professor Chenoweth admits that “the success of the Libyan uprising will, no doubt, be remembered as a successful case of violent insurgency.” However, as she argues, a nonviolent resistance never had time to take hold.
See: The Libyan uprising: a successful case of violent insurgency – http://wp.me/pPnn7-1gE
“This is an ambitious, meticulous examination of how U.S. foreign policy since the 1960s has led to partial or total cover-ups of past domestic criminal acts, including, perhaps, the catastrophe of 9/11. Professor Peter Dale Scott, whose previous books have investigated CIA involvement in southeast Asia, the drug wars, and the Kennedy assassination, here probes how the policies of presidents since Nixon have augmented the tangled bases for the 2001 terrorist attack. Scott shows how America’s expansion into the world since World War II has led to momentous secret decision making at high levels. He demonstrates how these decisions by small cliques are responsive to the agendas of private wealth at the expense of the public, of the democratic state, and of civil society. He shows how, in implementing these agendas, U.S. intelligence agencies have become involved with terrorist groups they once backed and helped create, including al Qaeda.”
See: The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America, by Peter Dale Scott (Author) – http://wp.me/Pnn7
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