Guns Out: The Serious Business of Syrian Bloodshed

I’ve been writing this column for the whole of this school year. During that entire time there has been one conflict of major international importance which somehow has never been quite topical enough for me to discuss in depth. I refer, of course, to the civil conflict in the Syrian Arab Republic. Since the height of the Arab Spring (or awakening if you must) in 2011, President Bashar al-Assad – who used to work as an optician in London not too far from where I live – has been resisting a popular uprising that seeks to overturn his regime and replace it with a more democratic alternative. His resistance has been brutal: air strikes and mass bombardments are often used against his own citizens. Scary recent accounts even mention his deployment of chemical weapons. The dynamic behind the power struggle is far more complex than in many of the other countries in that region. The majority of Syria’s population is Sunni whereas the leading family and the rest of the elite are Shi’ite. The Shi’ite are backed by Iran. The Sunni are backed by the Saudis and, by proxy, the United States.

Calls for intervention are not new, but the haunting rumor of chemical warfare – the usage of a certain Sarin element – make them extremely audible right now. Going to war in other lands and fighting for the causes of others has been the bane of U.S. and other western forces in recent military history (Think Vietnam and Iraq). Therefore, it is understandable why the Obama administration has been reluctant to engage thus far. They keep hinting at ultimatums but each and every time Assad & Co. go too far — for example by using weapons of mass destruction against his own people, innocent human beings — the U.S. announces that it needs to reconsider further. The embarrassing double standards that have been displayed by NATO by defeating Gaddafi but perversely standing idly by Assad’s massacres demonstrate not only moral hypocrisy but genuine cowardice. Why lie to ourselves that we intervene on humanitarian grounds? We intervene only when power can be displayed, military muscles flexed; “guns out” in all respects.

It will be very curious, but unsurprising, if Syria is attacked, but a recent air-strike suggests Israel may already have started. Iran, it is presumed, will hover with possibly semi-developed nuclear weapons defending their only true ally’s interest. Russia, although it has pretty adamantly defended Syria’s sovereignty up to this point, would most probably stand aside in the event of any real conflict. Although the standard moral assumption that the “little people” are being slaughtered by the crazy, all-powerful despot paints a pretty clear picture of right or wrong, it is unclear as to who exactly the West would be helping. It is widely known that al-Qaeda has allied to the cause of the rebels. Another strange phenomenon has been the flight of many Europeans to join the cause and fight for the rebels. This supra-national cause has echoes of the Spanish Civil War, although the underlying tension here seems to be religious not political. We would be supporting Sunnis, some radical, versus Shi’ites.

If the United States and its allies don’t want to risk another failed intervention and avoid another potential radical Islamic state, then they must support a tyrant. If as a democracy the U.S. want to be moral and righteous, then should support the rebels at great military cost as well as potentially supporting even greater enemies. It’s the definition of a lose-lose situation. To justify the first they need only recall the disastrous venture into Iraq although the pressure for this one is far greater. And as a reminder to the dangers of supporting militants who share a common enemy but no common goals, cue Afghanistan circa 1985 when the U.S. funded Al-Qaeda predecessors in war against the Soviets.

As a solution to this gruesome dilemma I suggest the West risk it. We know for sure that Assad massacres and will continue to massacre his citizens. We do not know how costly intervention will be, either in terms of short-term cost or long-term outcome. Let us focus on what we do know, not on hypotheticals; let us do what we know to be right and save lives. At least 70,000 have died thus far, and many, many more have been displaced. This won’t be another Afghanistan or Libya; Syria is a capable military power. And in the long-run this would only be a first step towards the inevitable showdown with Iran that has been brewing ever since the revolution of 1979.