As the civil war in Syria deepens, American war hawks are using recent atrocities to push for direct U.S. military intervention against the Syrian government, according to observers who warn that further escalation will only worsen what has been dubbed “the most dangerous and destructive crisis on the planet.”
At The Nation on Thursday, journalist James Carden wrote that “neoconservative advocacy groups” are citing a new report by the United Nations’ Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in order to craft a narrative that “asserts that the widespread suffering of the Syrian people could have been averted if only the [Obama] administration had intervened in the Syrian conflict sooner; if only President [Barack] Obama simply had not reneged on his ‘red line’ pledge and unleashed a full scale, Iraq-style intervention, surely the situation would be better than it is today.”
The OPCW report, which contains new accusations of chemical-weapons use by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, “provide[s] the war party in the United States with the perfect cudgel with which to beat the administration for backing off of the ‘red line’ policy the president spelled out in 2012,” Carden argued.
He continued:
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Hillary Clinton, given her track record as secretary of state, would seem to agree with this line of criticism. In July, her campaign released a statement promising a “full review” of U.S. policy regarding Syria, raising the hopes of Beltway hawks that, in the words of one former high-ranking Pentagon official, “a Clinton administration will not shrink from making clear to the world exactly what the Assad regime is.” Clinton and her running mate, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, have repeatedly endorsed the idea of implementing a no-fly zone over northern Syria. Experience should tell us that no-fly zones serve as a prelude to wider war, as they did in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, and Libya.
Indeed, FAIR contributor Adam Johnson wrote last week:
Rarely mentioned is the fact that establishing these zones would require U.S. bombing of Syria’s air capacity, including infrastructure, planes, buildings, possibly troops. That would, in effect, be a declaration of war. How Russia would respond is anyone’s guess, but it would certainly heighten tensions between Washington and Syria’s longtime ally (which also happens to have the world’s largest nuclear arsenal). One 2012 Pentagon estimate found that enforcing a no-fly zone would involve at least “70,000 American servicemen”; another estimate insisted such an effort would involve “hundreds of aircraft, ships, submarines, and other enablers.” These messy details are hardly ever mentioned when the do-something crowd calls for “action” in Syria.
Furthermore, Johnson argued,
almost no one calling for a ramped-up war in Syria has offered a clear indication of what it would entail. What are the risks? What is the endgame? Is there a realistic alternative to jihadi extremists seizing power, or—perhaps even worse—continued brutal warfare between rival militias after Assad is gone? We should be wary of pundits who use the horrors of Aleppo to rush Washington into bombing, just as they did with Iraq’s alleged WMDs and Gadhafi’s hypothetical massacres.