War is a bloody game of numbers and strategy played with the lives of soldiers as game pieces.
However, those playing the game never consider that these pieces are living beings who give their lives so that a pretentious few can attempt to force their ideas across the line once negotiations and peace talks fall apart. War is a game that shouldn’t be played at all, in my opinion. And yet, there are always those that find enjoyment out of playing it or attempting to initiate it.
During the presidency of George W. Bush, we received a blow to our nation from a terrorist sector of extremists that resulted in the existence of 2,993 people suddenly coming to an end. We watched on Sept. 11, 2001 as two buildings in our nation fell to the ground before our eyes, and we knew we had to take action.
The deadly game of war began on that day for a good reason – innocent blood had been shed by those that were true enemies of our nation. In that moment, we stood together and felt that war was our only option. War was in the public interest, and it began to defend those that created this nation.
We now have a situation which is similar, though the specific circumstances vary. In the last week, President Obama pushed forward the concept of initiating war against the Syrian regime in power right now. However, this time there is not a unanimous consensus that we should invade a nation that has done nothing to harm us. There is no reason to go to war against Syria. And yet, our President desires to push us into the very thing that he criticized the President before him for. Is that not hypocrisy?
They claim that Syria has chemical weapons, but we can solve that with a firm authoritative policy with political backing from the United Nations, without stepping in and sacrificing American blood in the process. There is no imminent threat upon our people that requires us to take action – in fact, taking action would lead to a much bigger war than the war on terror. There is too much tension regarding the handling of this situation with China and Russia to even consider stepping into the muck of their violent revolution.
Our current ally, Russia, who we are on a very thin line with since the Cold War, has made it clear that they support the Assad regime. That alone is a reason this issue shouldn’t be on the table. America should have learned a lesson when we gave Osama Bin Laden weapons to fight the Soviet Union that was repressing them. Look where that got us.
The thing that bothers me the most is that the protest of this situation has not escalated to the point to which it should. We elected a Democratic president because we wanted to avoid the issue that most Americans were concerned about with the election of a Republican president. And look at the hypocrisy that this has created as a result of electing a president who has yet to solve anything. There have been too many similar incidents like this, with his lackluster foreign policy, to say that this doesn’t require any action. Benghazi should have caused at least this much outrage alone, yet it was rarely covered by the left-wing media and ultimately ignored.
I feel that this is not a good decision for our nation. Our hypocrisy is slanderous – it makes us look weak and foolish. In the words of Vladimir Putin, “We really aren’t to be considered exceptional if we can’t begin to prevent this form of failure before it happens.”
We can’t leave a good image if we continue to show that the only domestic policy we are effective at is military force.
And thus, I believe we need to prevent this conflict in order to recover from the fitting title of “brutal hypocrites who always turn towards war when things start going south” that we have earned from the rest of the world.
Cory Witt is correct when he says that the Syrian regime has done nothing to directly harm the United States, but that’s hardly relevant. Assad’s regime has killed thousands of innocent civilians and used weapons directly prohibited by the United Nations. The UN and US have the ability to stop his despotic rule and therefore have the responsibility to try and do so. The UN resolution that occurred this past week is impotent. Destroying Assad’s chemical weapons will neither end his rule of bloodshed nor greatly reduce body counts. The most persuasive reason to avoid military intervention in Syria is the possibility that Islamist groups will fill the power vacuum Assad leaves behind, yet Witt fails to mention this.
Why does Witt say that, because Putin is allied with Assad, we shouldn’t even consider military action? Dictators often support each other and the above alliance gives us all the more reason to suspect Putin’s motives behind his proposed diplomatic solution. He’s at the very least trying to extend his fellow dictator’s time in office and probably has other, more sinister motives.
Witt also seems to be suggesting that United States’ foreign policy is so tainted by our support of despots like Osama Bin Laden that we should shy away from further intervention. If anything, the assertion that we’ve supported foreign despots in the past should encourage us to intervene on the right side and try and undo the damage we’ve done.
Witt accuses Obama of hypocrisy for entertaining a pro-intervention foreign policy when he formerly criticized Bush’s invasion of Iraq. However, he fails to acknowledge that Obama favored little more than a surgical strike aimed at the destruction of chemical weapons—a policy that led to Assad’s sudden willingness to hand over his stockpile. Not all interventionist policies are the same. Obama doesn’t merit the charge of hypocrisy leveled by Witt.
The UN and the US should have intervened two years ago in Syria—before Islamist groups became a significant part of the rebellion—in order to facilitate the creation of democracy. Our failure to act soon enough is what got us here, with a pathetic diplomatic solution in place that only slightly contains the violence and allows the unholy alliance between the Ayatollah Khomeini (and Hezbollah along with him), Putin, and Bashar al Assad to continue. We find ourselves in a very difficult foreign policy situation at this point, but Witt’s arguments against intervention (a tenable position in and of itself) are empty.
Ryan Liebl is a Poop