http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-28/fitzpatrick-syria/4918406
If Bashar al-Assad is found to have used poisonous gas on his own population, as almost certainly seems to have been the case, then he must be put on trial for crimes against humanity.
This, however, is a world away from the notion that the international community should militarily intervene in the uncontrolled violence of the Syrian civil war.
The situation is complex, but at its simplest, here are five reasons why military intervention in Syria would be the wrong response to the most recent gas attacks.
1. As the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have demonstrated, the civilian death toll from external military intervention quickly comes to exceed that which prompts the intervention in the first place. Killing more Syrians than the Assad regime itself is no way to pay tribute to those killed by their own government.
2. Within Syria there is no military power that would welcome or support external military intervention, particularly from Europe or the United States. While the beginnings of the 'Arab Spring' phase of the civil war saw some Syrians engaged in a struggle for a democratic Syria, these voices have been drowned out by the sound of the weapons fired from rival militias. Alongside Assad's troops, Hezbollah and Iranian military troops are fighting Lebanese Salafists, Al Qaeda and the ultra-Islamist al-Nusra Front. The only thing that all of these groups have in common is that they would welcome the opportunity to attack Western armies, no matter how altruistic their underlying motivations might be.
3. Internationally, there is no consensus that would offer a risk-free intervention. With Russia's Vladimir Putin still deeply supportive of Assad (although Saudi Arabia is attempting to lure him away with the promise of oil) and China strongly opposed to external intervention, there is virtually no chance of a UN mandate sanctioning military action. Unilateral action by Britain, France or the United States against Syria would risk broadening the conflict into another Cold War, while also inviting regional players such as Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey or even Russia to become even more heavily involved than they currently are. Such a broadening of the conflict is in nobody's interests.
4. Intervention would only make sense in the context of an attempt to achieve concrete political or military objectives. None beyond 'something must be done' or 'there is a need to respond to a provocation' has been offered. There is no plan for stopping the multidirectional violence, much less rebuilding the nation. Simply bombing Damascus or Aleppo to assuage the conscience of the West that they 'did something' seems like the worst form of symbolic politics.
5. Perhaps more abstractly, a civil war is the most fundamental and brutal attempt to answer the question of who exercises the monopoly on the control of violence that underwrites the power of the state. Artificially inflating the power of one favoured but weaker faction to seize control of the state invites later challenges to this power in the not too distant future. Unless an indefinite guarantee of military support for the weaker faction is offered, that weaker faction (no matter how enlightened) cannot realistically be expected to maintain control over the state. The utter lawlessness in many regions of Libya today is the most recent example of what happens when outside powers back weak forces they deem to be on the right side of history in a civil war.
There is something superficially appealing about the notion of the legions of freedom on the march, overthrowing the forces of oppression. Events are rarely that simple.
In the case of Syria, it is certainly not the case that military action will offer a straightforward righting of wrongs. Rather, military action invites a series of unintended knock-on effects which could escalate the Syrian conflict in such a way as to endanger the lives of far more Syrian civilians.
Thursday, August 29, 2013
On violence -- thoughts of Wendell Berry after the Boston marathon bombing
http://progressive.org/commerce-of-violence
[Excerpt]: On the second day after the catastrophe in Boston, Thomas L. Friedman announced in The New York Times that “the right reaction is: Wash the sidewalk, wipe away the blood, and let whoever did it know that . . . they have left no trace on our society or way of life.” We should, said Mr. Friedman, “let there be no reminder whatsoever.” And he asserted, with a shocking indifference to evidence and his own language, that “the benefits—living in an open society—always outweigh the costs.” He is speaking to (among others) people whose loved ones have been killed and people who will never again stand on their own legs. How can he think that all the traces of any violence can be easily wiped away? How would he wipe away the traces of a bombed village or a strip mine or a gullied field or a wrecked forest?
Mr. Friedman, like other journalists, asks us, as he wrote, to “notice how many people came running toward the blast within seconds to help.” And that is very well. To know that people would run to help, perhaps at the risk of their lives, is consoling and reassuring. But we have got to acknowledge that the help that comes after the violence has been done, though it undeniably helps, is not a solution to violence.
The solution, many times more complex and difficult, would be to go beyond our ideas, obviously insane, of war as the way to peace and of permanent damage to the ecosphere as the way to wealth. Actually to help our suffering of one man-made horror after another, we would have to revise radically our understanding of economic life, of community life, of work, and of pleasure. We employ thousands of scientists and spend billions of dollars to reduce matter to its smallest particles and to search for farther stars. How many scientists and how many dollars are devoted to harmony between economy and ecology, or to amity and lenity in the face of conflict?
To learn to meet our needs without continuous violence against one another and our only world would require an immense intellectual and practical effort, requiring the help of every human being perhaps to the end of human time.
This would be work worthy of the name “human.” It would be fascinating and lovely.
[Excerpt]: On the second day after the catastrophe in Boston, Thomas L. Friedman announced in The New York Times that “the right reaction is: Wash the sidewalk, wipe away the blood, and let whoever did it know that . . . they have left no trace on our society or way of life.” We should, said Mr. Friedman, “let there be no reminder whatsoever.” And he asserted, with a shocking indifference to evidence and his own language, that “the benefits—living in an open society—always outweigh the costs.” He is speaking to (among others) people whose loved ones have been killed and people who will never again stand on their own legs. How can he think that all the traces of any violence can be easily wiped away? How would he wipe away the traces of a bombed village or a strip mine or a gullied field or a wrecked forest?
Mr. Friedman, like other journalists, asks us, as he wrote, to “notice how many people came running toward the blast within seconds to help.” And that is very well. To know that people would run to help, perhaps at the risk of their lives, is consoling and reassuring. But we have got to acknowledge that the help that comes after the violence has been done, though it undeniably helps, is not a solution to violence.
The solution, many times more complex and difficult, would be to go beyond our ideas, obviously insane, of war as the way to peace and of permanent damage to the ecosphere as the way to wealth. Actually to help our suffering of one man-made horror after another, we would have to revise radically our understanding of economic life, of community life, of work, and of pleasure. We employ thousands of scientists and spend billions of dollars to reduce matter to its smallest particles and to search for farther stars. How many scientists and how many dollars are devoted to harmony between economy and ecology, or to amity and lenity in the face of conflict?
To learn to meet our needs without continuous violence against one another and our only world would require an immense intellectual and practical effort, requiring the help of every human being perhaps to the end of human time.
This would be work worthy of the name “human.” It would be fascinating and lovely.
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