How would a civil war improve Syria's conditions
Jennifer Rubin is unhappy that the Obama administration has refrained from more fully intervening in Syria's insurgency:
'The inaction of this administration is a disgrace. It may have no domestic political repercussions (foreign policy is not uppermost in votersâ?? minds), but it has horrendous ramifications for the Syrian people. And someday, a future president will perhaps go to the U.S. Holocaust museum to decry how â??this evil was allowed to happen.â? The answer: The United States had a president who couldnâ??t be bothered to do more than make self-serving speeches.'
It's odd that U.S. presidents are expected to apologize and feel ashamed for the massacres they had somehow failed to prevent, yet apologizing for bona-fide instances of U.S. atrocities (or U.S.-assisted massacres) is a disgrace.
As for the matter at hand: Turning Syria into a proxy-war theater between the U.S. and Iran would also have horrendous ramifications for the Syrian people. So would a drawn-out civil or sectarian war. You could understand someone coming to the conclusion that aiding Syria's rebels would avoid the worst of these outcomes or that such bloodshed is the price to pay to hem in Iran if they would honestly grapple with these possibilities, but Rubin blithely ignores them altogether. Instead, the only route to salvation for the Syrian people is a period of intense civil war that topples the government, followed by the installation - as if by magic - of a new, more enlightened regime. Easy!
What certainly won't happen, in Rubin's mind, is a replay of Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya, where the U.S. toppled a regime only to watch insurgency, civil war or institutional disarray take hold. I wish I were so optimistic.
(AP Photo)