The indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the killing of women and children and innocent bystanders by chemical weapons is a moral obscenity. By any standard, it is inexcusable and — despite the excuses and equivocations that some have manufactured — it is undeniable…. This international norm cannot be violated without consequences.
I’ll freely admit to not being an objective observer when it comes to Syria. I’ve travelled throughout the country, and it’s still one of my favorite places. Damascus is a city I find endlessly fascinating. Dating back to the 2nd millennium B.C., it’s a city simultaneously modern and ancient, with smells and sounds completely unlike anything I know here in Portland. Aleppo and its citadel are breathtaking, a sight mere words can’t do justice to. I could go on, but you probably get the point.
During my travels in Syria, I learned early on that lurking just beneath the surface was a brutality and deadliness an outsider couldn’t hope to fully understand. I knew I could leave; most Syrians didn’t have that luxury. There was nothing even remotely resembling freedom of speech and expression, and the mere act of talking to a foreigner could put a Syrian in grave peril. I learned to appreciate the interactions I had with Syrians from all walks of life…because I came to understand that merely by speaking with me, they could be placing their safety and well-being in grave peril. Syria was then, and remains today, a police state, a place where people can be disappeared for little or no reason. The regime of Bashir Assad (and before that his father, Hafez Assad) is as brutal as it is devoid of conscience or humanity. The events of the past week or so have laid bare Bashir Assad’s desire to maintain power at any and all cause.
It’s also shown the Sophie’s Choice that President Obama faces. No matter what he decides to do, he loses. Even by doing the right thing, he’s wrong. Yet doing nothing simply isn’t an option, not when Assad is responsible for the deaths of over 100,000 Syrians…and especially not when it’s been established that the Syrian Army has employed chemical weapons against his own people.
Assad’s monstrosity is a savage display of inhumanity that fairly cries out for a response from the West. How can a civilized country stand idly by while a tyrant massacres his own people with weapons of mass destruction? They can’t of course, and even though the vast majority of Americans oppose getting involved in Syria, this is a case where the vast majority of Americans are just plain wrong. Of course we’re going to get involved, because we must. We simply can’t allow the indiscriminate slaughter of vast numbers of innocent civilians to continue unchecked. Someone must take action to stop Bashir Assad’s genocide, and, as often happens with these things, it falls to the U.S. as the world’s last remaining superpower to step up and take the lead.
The flip side of this observation, of course, is the question of when we stop being the world’s policeman. When does America stop being the obvious, and in some cases, only choice to step in and stop the killing? I ask this having nothing resembling an answer…because I simply don’t know. There has to be a moral line across which American will not venture, but what happens when something horrific happens that might have previously been defined as being beyond that line? Do we sit out genocide that might be within our power to stop? How could we possibly justify not stepping in when many, many lives can be saved?
The problem with Syria is that it presents a no-win scenario. No one has the stomach for putting boots on the ground, but air power and cruise missiles are unlikely to stop Assad’s butchery. How do we get involved without getting TOO involved? Remember the clear exit strategy that accompanied the war in Iraq? War has a way of expanding in ways no one could anticipate, and going to war in Syria would undoubtedly prove that theory all over again. Syria is an advertisement for “mission creep”…and yet we can’t sit on the sidelines while Assad butchers his countrymen to maintain his grip on power.
We can’t stand by and we shouldn’t get involved. We must act and we shouldn’t act. Either choice is doomed to be mistaken. The lives of millions of innocent Syrian civilians are at stake, which, geopolitical considerations aside, is what should be driving the evaluation of what we should be doing in Syria.
Even when we win, we lose….
