Bashar al-Assad has been directing the use of chemical weapons against his own country's people, in violation of "international norms" - and of an agreement to which Syria is not a signatory.
The "international community" is outraged. Let me point out that there really is no such thing as the international community outside of works of fiction. There is an organization called the United Nations. It is ineffectual and often ignored, but it actually exists, unlike the "international community."
So what about that outrage? If the outrage is international, what sort of international action is planned based on the outrage? Right. None. The UN is doing nothing. There is no "coalition of the willing." The French support action by the United States. That's worth something, I suppose, given the Franco-American friendship that goes back to the 18th century. But it's hardly tangible.
So what are we going to do? The president is talking about using Tomahawk cruise missiles, perhaps 200 of them, at a cost of about $1M apiece. That is a $200M Stamp of Disapproval. At what will we target them? Chemical weapons stockpiles? Obviously a bad idea, the notion of blowing them up and dispersing sarin gas across the countryside. How about the manufacturing facilities? Well, they're buried underground, where cruise missiles don't reach, and they're probably buried well enough that our supply of "bunker buster" bombs, which haven't been upgraded in the last decade, won't be effective. We could disrupt "command and control" - for a few weeks, maybe. Not exactly a well-chosen objective.
We're not aiming for regime change, which is just as well. What we'd like in Syria is a secular democracy, such as one finds in any number of other countries in the region. That number happens to be one, and it's Israel. The idea of secular democracy is about as likely to catch on in the Arab Middle East as Miley Cyrus is to be invited to put on a "twerking" demonstration at the Saudi Royal Palace in Riyadh.
So just what is the objective? Two days from now, on the eve of the twelfth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Obama will address the nation on prime time television. Presumably he will answer that question. Until then, I am left to speculate. And, as my daughters and other young adults might say, "I got nothin'." At least nothing that makes any sense or seems achievable.
We certainly cannot look to the examples of Afghanistan, Iraq, or Libya to find good results, but then when you are presuming to choose among various groups who all despise the Judeo-Christian West and its values, you really cannot expect to accomplish good things (from our perspective) by replacing one with another.
Why do we care about the ghastly happenings in Syria enough to risk initiating a large-scale regional war? In 1994 in Rwanda, half a million people were killed in a genocide of shocking proportions over a period of one hundred days. And we did ... nothing. The "international community" also sat on the sidelines. Oh, that's right, it created the International Criminal Court, which has been marvelously effective. In the decade since its creation, it has yielded one conviction (now being appealed). President Clinton has described US inaction as one of his administration's major foreign policy failures. Hello, Captain Obvious!
But we don't really care about Africa, do we? It's the Dark Continent. That makes it easy for us to pretend we don't see what happens there. There isn't any oil (except in Nigeria). Geopolitical instability there doesn't seem to affect US interests. The Mideast is another story altogether. Lots of US interests there. The world's economy is very directly affected by the stability (or lack thereof) of the region. So, if anyone tells you that our interest in stopping the killing in Syria is humanitarian, repeat after me: "Yeah, right."
So the president may be able to convince us that important US national security interests are at stake in the region and that intervening in some fashion in the Syrian government's appalling attacks on the country's own population will serve American purposes. I've been trying to connect those dots since this became the lead story in every day's news reporting, and I'm still not seeing it.
I don't see how we will do anything to stop Assad's war crimes. I don't see any prospects for starting Syria on a path to becoming a secular democracy. And I think those are the only two goals worth pursuing. The president has not made his case yet. Most surveys of public opinion show that his style of "leading from behind," as it is derisively called by Republicans, has convinced very few Americans that his plans for intervention make any sense at all. I'll be working Tuesday evening, but I expect to watch him later, courtesy of my DVR, or at least read his speech online. I'm openminded.
Mr. President, you got some 'splainin' to do.
"What we'd like in Syria is a secular democracy, such as one finds in any number of other countries in the region. That number happens to be one, and it's Israel."
ReplyDeleteOnly if you torture the notion of secular democracy until it gives you the answer that you want.
Israel defines itself as a "Jewish state," not a secular state. Non-Jewish political parties campaigning for Israel to become "a state of all its citizens" are actually banned from elections by law. Really. It is AGAINST THE LAW to argue, before the voters, that those not of the Jewish faith are equally important in the state of Israel.
And that's leaving aside Shas and the other religious parties, which sit in government despite openly arguing for a theocratic government.
Turkey is also a democracy. They also have religious and secular parties. They also have a secular constitution. So how is Israel a secular democracy and not Turkey?
Iraq is a democracy. Fragile, and not long established, but they have elections which seem to count for something. Again, religious parties are very important, but again, they are also important in Israel.
Jordan, of course, is a monarchy. But that is hardly exclusively Jordanians' fault. We like them that way -- more pliable -- and we prop them up.
This is a very troubled area of the world, Israel not excepted. For our part, we have contributed to making it more troubled, for example by forcibly settling European Jews in the middle of it, colonists who proceeded to ethnically cleanse the native inhabitants and then repeatedly attacked their neighbors. (Fun fact: can you think of a nation sharing a border with Israel that Israel has not invaded and occupied the land of on at least two occasions? Or that they have not bombed at least a half a dozen times outside of declared wars?)
It would probably be fair to say that Israel's deeply flawed democracy is in many ways the most successful government in the middle east -- it is very stable, with no coups, a strong-ish rule of law (at least as far as Jews interacting with Jews are concerned), and a free press.
What Israel is not is evidence that democracy isn't going to catch on in "the Arab middle east." The Arab Spring and the Green Revolution in Iran have demonstrated a great hunger for freedom and democracy in the Arab world. If the effort to get there is severely marred by extremism and both revolutionary and counterrevolutionary tyranny and terror, is that any different than how democracy took root in France, or in the English Civil War and Cromwell's tyranny?
I don't believe Arab culture is unfitted for democracy any more than any culture attempting democratic reforms. They are all more likely to fail and lapse into old habits than succeed -- look at Russia.
As to whether bombing Syria will help make it into a democracy, I wouldn't think so. But Assad's position is very delicately balanced. He's opposed by tens of thousands of rebels, many with heavy arms. He has lost control of large areas of the country. In that situation -- more like Libya than pre-war Iraq -- airstrikes might be enough to tip the balance against Assad. Whoever comes after may be no better. But as an object lesson to dictators and terrorists contemplating the use of weapons of mass destruction, the damage to Assad is the relevant thing.
I am not suggesting the Arab Middle East is unfit for democratic forms of government, but I am not counting Turkey among the nations of the "Arab Middle East." Israel's democracy is not perfect, but neither Arabs nor non-Jews are excluded from full participation, as one may see by observing the composition of the Knesset (Israeli parliament). I would like nothing more than to see democratic ideals and forms of government spread throughout the region. I am just not persuaded that there is much the US can do to foster that. Certainly there is nothing we have done so far that seems to have helped, and our ability to teach "an object lesson to dictators" seems quite limited, if it exists at all.
ReplyDeleteTurkey is not an Arab country, but it is certainly in the neighborhood of Syria, with whom it shares a border.
ReplyDeleteI do not dispute that all of our options, including force, are limited and bad. I do think that we have a responsibility, as the most powerful nation in the world, to try and uphold the taboo against the use of sarin gas and other weapons of mass destruction. This is also in our own interest: having rules of some kind serves the successful more than the powerless.
I do not agree that the Palestinian citizen of Israel enjoy "full participation" in Israel's democracy. Neither are they completely without rights or representation. I would compare their status to that of African Americans in the era of segregation. When you get into the details of land allocation, social spending, the rules on participation in elections, the discriminatory polices as to marriage, travel, etc., the extent of the discrimination is startling (I recommend "Sleeping on a Wire," a series of essays by David Grossman, about the status of Arab Israelis or Palestinian citizens of Israel).
Further, there is another large group of people in the West Bank and Gaza, overwhelmingly born under Israeli rule, and seemingly likely to die under Israeli rule. Given the presence of hundreds of settlements and the annexation of the West Bank's largest city, these Palestinians are a part of the Israeli population de facto, if not (quite deliberately) de jure. Hence these millions of people living under Israeli rule for decades without citizenship or the vote must also be considered when assessing the degree of participation allowed to non-Jews in the Israeli political system.
Every Jew born in the West Bank is a citizen of Israel and allowed to vote; the vast majority of Palestinians born in the West Bank have neither one of those rights recognized. (Gaza is a more complicated case; Israel has removed its settlements but still claims the right to control the boarders and the population registry. Legal experts disagree as to whether this constitutes a continuation of occupation or not; it is certainly not freedom.)
I do not think there is a lot we can do, positively, to spread democracy. But there are some things we can refrain from doing, such as military aid to a junta (Egypt), billions of dollar of year in aid and diplomatic protection of a state practicing a form of apartheid (Israel), or propping up monarchies thought to be friendly to our interests (many.)
But that is a separate question from discouraging the murder of civilians with nerve gas. I think military force is an appropriate tool in these circumstances, but I am biased by my horror of these weapons and their deliberate use on a civilian population; I could certainly be wrong.