Obtuse Strategic Thinking about American Intervention in Syria — a Good Example of How We Get Ourselves into the Foolish and often Bloody Situations that We Do

© 2013 Peter Free

 

27 August 2013

 

 

They say that our schools do not teach critical thinking — the accusation appears to be true, right up to the Office of the Commander in Chief

 

It looks as if the United States is going to lurch itself into yet another strategically idiotic intervention in someone else’s mess.  This time in Syria.

 

 

The rationale apparently underlying the justification for intervening is curiously illogical

 

(1) The White House says it does not want to unseat Syrian President al-Assad, who might as well be Saddam Hussein’s twin brother.

 

This is so because the power vacuum, left behind upon Assad’s departure, would be even more difficult to deal with than the current situation.

 

And because Russia is not likely to sit idly by, while “we” mess with Russia’s very substantial interests in that country.

 

(2) Yet, we do want to chastise President Assad for allegedly having nerve gassed many of Syria’s innocent people.

 

(3) And we have to enforce President Obama’s foolishly drawn “no nerve gas” red line.

 

Sounds okay, until you take a fraction of a section to think these elements through.

 

 

If we “chastise” Assad with military force, how is that not going to weaken him?

 

If the strike is going to be punishing, it will necessarily weaken the Assad regime.  Therefore, Element One is contradicted.

 

And we will have further provoked an already irritated Russia, which — despite America’s arrogant contempt — is geopolitically positioned to cause subtle payback trouble in Eastern Europe, as well as the Middle East.

 

 

And why is it that nerve gassing people to death is worse than —

 

artillery blasting their apartments,

 

cutting and shooting them to pieces,

 

running over them with tanks,

 

laying minefields that blow up their children,

 

or — in the United States’ case — firebombing or nuking entire cities

 

and

 

tacitly approving of Iraq’s use of nerve gas during the September 1980 to August 1988  Iran-Iraq War?

 

I have difficulty seeing the supposedly moral basis for Secretary of State Kerry’s sanctimonious posturing about nerve gas yesterday.

 

If we are going to draw a line against the use of nerve agents, we need to justify it in a strategic and ethical sense.

 

Given that the United States supported Iraq’s widespread use of the stuff during the 1980s, it is difficult to make a rational argument that the passage of only a few decades has turned the gas into a dramatically larger atrocity than it used to be.

 

 

Last — what is going to be gained by a necessarily limited American strike on Syria?

 

Other than President Obama’s continued self-serving political run toward the lunatic right in foreign affairs?

 

If we refuse to depose President Assad — and we can’t blow up his nerve and chemical agent reserves without harming the population — just what is it that we’re going to accomplish in a strategic sense?

 

Is this going to be yet another “kill a few of the bastards” for (perennially) vicariously blood thirsty Americans?

 

Does anyone know how to predict how the various groups in Syria and the Middle East are going to react to such a limited demonstration strike?

 

 

And since when should we kill a bunch of people — in a completely unpredictable situation . . .

 

 

Just because our President was an idiot and drew a line that a more thoughtful, experienced, and forward-looking person would never have drawn?

 

 

The moral? — Is anyone over here thinking beyond tomorrow?

 

Or are we doing what politicians and too many noncombatant Americans seem to do best, impulsively acting with our heads up our behinds?