why Bomb Syria? Yes, American Interests Are Being Served By Striking Assad

Donald Trump’s order last Friday to launch missile strikes against Syria’s chemical weapons infrastructure has exposed the divisions among Americans over foreign policy. Some Trump supporters think the President has walked back from his America-first nationalism. Globalists of both parties agree that Bashar al Assad needed to be punished for brutally violating international conventions against chemical weapons. And the rabid anti-Trump left views the attack as a “wag-the-dog” diversion from Trump’s legal troubles.

So is there a legitimate reason for bombing Syria and possibly provoking Russian retaliation that risks dragging us deeper into the Middle East quagmire?

Many Americans, sick of a decade-and-a-half of American military presence in the region believe that “we don’t have a dog in that fight,” as the first Bush’s Secretary of State James Baker said of the brutal conflicts in the disintegrating Yugoslavia of the early nineties. Some may remember George W. Bush’s willingness to be the “world’s policeman” ––after he campaigned against “foreign policy as social work” ––when he launched two wars in the region. They voted for Donald Trump in part because he was a critic of the endless war in Iraq and the still active war in Afghanistan and their delusional nation-building aims, and vowed to put “America first.”

The problem with this understandable “pox on both their houses” attitude to foreign conflicts is that American security and interests have long been intimately bound up in a world that for more than century has been growing closer and more interdependent. The terrorist attacks on 9/11 were the gruesome illustration of that reality. The attackers easily travelled by air thousands of miles from their homes, and lived freely in this country as they prepared the attacks. Armed only with box-cutters, they turned commercial airliners into the smartest of smart bombs simply by navigating them into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, killing in a few hours about the same number of Americans who died in the British invasion between 1812 and 1815. At the cost of half a million dollars––less than half the cost of one cruise missile–– they struck devastating blows against history’s greatest military and economic power, onw they knew intimately from globally distributed news and entertainment, and had grown to hate because its very existence challenged orthodox premodern Islamic doctrine.

Given that our economy is inseparable from the global economy, we have no choice but to be concerned about the critical straits and canals through which global commerce travels, and the airports throughout the world through which people can reach our shores in less than a day. We also can’t ignore the numerous illiberal and autocratic regimes whose beliefs and values conflict with those of the West. The global market, as Robert Kagan put it, needs a global sheriff so that this astonishing increase in technological innovation and wealth and their global distribution is free to continue. We may not have chosen this role, we may not like or want the job, but history so far has left the U.S. as the only great power with the military capacity for keeping order, and the political beliefs and principles that ensure we will not abuse that power to oppress others.

Yet that truth does not justify the one-world idealism that believes everybody on the planet wants to live like Westerners, or to embrace Western principles and goods like political freedom, tolerance of minorities, free speech, sex equality, secularist government, an open society, and the preference for discussion, negotiation, and treaties as the way to solve conflict rather than brute force. The great diversity of ways of life and beliefs means that transnational institutions, agreements, covenants, and U.N. Security Council resolutions will always in the end be instruments of diverse and conflicting national interests. They are honored as long as they serve those interests, but abused or subverted when they don’t, especially by the more powerful nations. They are like Jonathon Swift’s laws: “cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.”

The West’s military dominance in the 20th century ensured that other nations would bandwagon with the West and sign such international agreements, with the tacit proviso that they would violate them whenever necessary, even as they paid them lip-service. The history of the last century, which is littered with violated treaties and covenants, proves this obvious truth. Nor is it hard to see why. As Robert Bork pointed out, such international agreements are weak because they do not necessarily reflect a global consensus that violent aggression or wanton oath-breaking is morally beyond the pale, or a violation of common customs, or a betrayal of sincere belief in the principles on which an agreement is founded. They exist by dint of treaties that sovereign nations have the de jure right to leave, or the de facto right to violate. Thus the President’s public reason for bombing Syria, that it violated the Chemical Weapons Convention, is dubious at best, and his plea to Russia not to be tainted by its support of an “animal” like Assad is remarkably naive.

Indeed, Syria offers a perfect example of this dynamic of a superficial adherence to international covenants that facilitates violations of them. After Barack Obama issued his empty “red line” threat about Assad’s use of chemical weapons, Secretary of State John Kerry negotiated an empty “solution” to the problem by making Russia the authority overseeing the elimination of Assad’s stockpiles, even though it was and still is not in Russia’s geostrategic interests to disarm Assad. So we got a theatrical compliance that left Assad his weapons, and even worse, gave Russia a sanctioned entrée into the Syrian civil war. The pretense of adhering to international law gave cover to Russia’s strategic aims in the region, one of which was the continuation of Assad’s murderous regime.

Equally troubling, there is a strange incoherence in seeing an imperative to respond to the deaths of a few score civilians during a conflict that has killed several hundred thousand by means of “conventional” weapons like bombs and bullets. If we have an “obligation to protect” those brutalized by aggression, as the moralizing internationalists believe, then it’s hard to see why one kind of death is more outrageous than other kinds. This selectivity has been the fundamental weakness of international laws or obligations to prevent aggression: since we can’t intervene in every brutal conflict, the only coherent rationale for interventions is that the conflict harms or threatens our national interests and security.

If virtual isolationism is not a practical policy, and moralizing internationalism a chimera, what could justify the raids against Syria? Deterrence is frequently invoked, but it obviously didn’t work last year after the President destroyed some of Assad’s jets. Over the past year, Assad has continued to use chemical weapons on civilians. Indeed, within hours of our latest attack Assad was using high explosives and barrel-bombs to slaughter people who are just as dead or mangled as the victims of his chemical attack. Further consequences may follow. Russia and Iran for now may be blustering to save face, but there still may be some retaliation that we will then have to answer. For once a nation goes down the road of deterring a bad actor by force, it has to continue indefinitely in order to maintain its prestige. It can’t announce publicly that it is a “one-off.”

Americans traditionally do not like constant war or military interventions, particularly “humanitarian” ones. We prefer to intervene when necessary, kill the bad guys, then come back home, what Walter Russell Meade calls a “Jacksonian” foreign policy. Unfortunately, in today’s interconnected world, such conflicts are not as rare as we’d like. But we must make it clear that we will not intervene when necessary just to rush home as though the work is done, nor will we engage in conflicts and occupation of the defeated enemy in order to create liberal democracy.

Rather, we need a foreign policy similar to the “butcher and bolt” policy of the British Empire, or what Israel calls “mowing the grass.” This means when an adversary or enemy challenges our power and interests, or those of our close allies, we should use force to send a message, usually by destroying some of its military assets. We should not rationalize this action by appealing to international law, the U.N., or some fantastical common vales or principles of the mythic “international community.” We should make it clear that there is no time-certain for when we stop, rather that we will return whenever we judge it necessary. And we should do it on the principle that a sovereign nation has a right to defend itself as it sees fit, and owes accountability only to its citizens.

In the near future, bombing Syria will likely still be necessary, not just to deter Assad or change the regime into a liberal democracy, but to let all the players in the region know that the greatest military power in history is watching events in a region we deem vital to our interests, and that we will use force to remind them of our unprecedented ability to project devastating power across the globe. Such a policy will strengthen our prestige, and concentrate wonderfully the minds of our adversaries.

The only remaining question is, Will we the people of the United States be willing to pay the costs and accept the risks of such a policy?

Congratulations, dude. You just happened to find a Freeper on this thread who was one of the "other" 10%.

I've been here since 2000 and I have almost 75,000 posts to my name. And I'm one of the few of us who survived the post-2003 purge and self-exiles here at FreeRepublic among skeptics who predicted that the Iraq invasion would be a disaster.

Just a random thread I came across:

Click Here

It's easy for me to remember where I stood on this because I've been consistent about it for years -- dating back to the FIRST Gulf War in 1990. I severed any and all connections with the Republican Party after that disgrace. It will be a cold day in hell before I'll support any elected official who puts Americans in harm's way to restore one Islamic royal family in Kuwait and protect another one in Saudi Arabia.

Here I am ... still sitting on my high horse.

The guy who said this knew exactly what kind of disaster awaited the U.S. if we invaded Iraq (note the line I highlighted):

"Once you got to Iraq and took it over and took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world. And if you take down the central government in Iraq, you could easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off. Part of it the Syrians would like to have, the west. Part of eastern Iraq the Iranians would like to claim. Fought over for eight years. In the north, you've got the Kurds. And if the Kurds spin loose and join with Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey. *** It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq. *** The other thing is casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact that we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had, but for the 146 Americans killed in action and for the families it wasn't a cheap war. And the question for the president in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad and took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein was, how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? And our judgment was not very many, and I think we got it right."

In case you're wondering, that was former U.S. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, explaining in a 1994 interview on C-SPAN why it would have been catastrophic for the U.S. to invade Iraq.

Nothing changed between 1994 and 2003 except Dick Cheney's title. It was still a bad idea in 2003, and I can't wait for the day when principled Americans like me can piss on that crooked globalist's grave.

Syria is a deep state wet dream. Given what I have seen with the transition of political power while we attempt to fight wars, is that war is a pointless and expensive exercise. As the whims of the American people shift, all the investment of a previous admin can be completely invalidated, or at least partially invalidated.

So why do it? We have a large enough landmass to accomplish anything we need. As AI spins up we won’t need 3rd world manufacturing capacity, we will have infinite capacity here, and we surely win the resource race, if we carefully manage them, using the market, not government.

We should sell Israel any weapon they desire, and get our soldiers back home.

I really believe the quagmires we are in prove the founding father’s assertions that a standing army is a total disaster. The military is abused at every turn by the current politcal winds, we are stuck in gobs of treaties that we would never be able to call in marks on if we needed their support. And really what that boils too, is foreign entanglements. We should trade, and only trade, with the world. Outside of that narrow interaction, we should isolate. Or we will continue to be further broke at light speed, entangled in all sorts of things we have no interest in as a people, and spending money we don’t have.

Right now I am not convinced anything in the news is true. Even here in FReepland. All I see is endless projection of power, and nothing gained for USA. Some will say, “more stable world”, but no, the world is getting worse. Wait to we lay Syria to waste, the world will go nuts.

So no, we should isolate, and let the world taste our AI powered manufacturing might. Let them deal with their own problems, we don’t need them.

And yes, I think we should sell every weapon to every country. Just make sure we can defend ourselves from them (we keep the top end stuff for ourselves).

But alas, this is a pipe dream of mine, instead, I see my stepson and now daughter probably fighting stupid wars that gain my country absolutely nothing, except bragging rights about how many Americans died, and how heart broke our people were after. Yes, our soldiers will fight and die honorably, but that in and of itself is not a honorable REASON to die.

Now someone will ask what about WW2? Yes, it played to our advantage. It put our electronics industry into high gear, weapons development to the forefront, and gave us space technology. But my guess is that info tech would have done the same thing with or without a war. Once you have info tech, you can build any weapon you want.

But what external advantage did it give us? Lots of nations that we have to defend, that we probably don’t like. Islamic terrorism, which randomly kills loved ones, luckily in small numbers, but that is the point. Where is my advantage other than 69$ tablets at Walmart? We are on the cusp of doing the same thing without a single human in the production chain, which will obsolete third world labor.

So again, what does wiping Syria off the face of the earth accomplish?

Guard our borders, screw the world. If my son and/or daughter die defending this nation’s true borders (not our projected borders), I will feel better than if they die in the M.E. for no comprehensible advantage.

We just train the hell out of our soldiers and make sure they can stop the stuff that comes in our borders meant to harm us. To repel invasions, to protect American people. Somewhere along the line, corporate interest became the interests of the United States of America, and it currently leading us to ruin.

But its all a pipe dream, we will continue to folow the path we are on to dissolution. I would guess either the deep state is aware of this and don’t care, or just too stupid to realize it.

Final note: again, I am not besmmirching the honor of our soldiers. I am besmirching the honor of the morons that make our soldiers do stuff that has nothing to do with protecting the American people, but instead projecting power, which is essentially a penis length demo contest among nations.

And if Trump fits into the moron category, so be it. I know Hillary was already there. Not like I can do a damned thing about it anyway. This place will be my home until they take our right to bear arms, then see-ya, wouldn’t want to be-ya, as then the distinct disadvantages of having to have my children die at the whims of morons will greatly outweigh any other good left.

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