RSSShould We Intervene In Syria?
October 15, 2012
Martin Kelly - See all 164 of my articles
I have written several articles on the various activities in the middle east that are general associated as the Arab spring. There have been calls for intervention in every location that has had violence. The United States chose not to intervene in Egypt. The choice was to provide air cover for the rebels in Libya. There has apparently been no decision to intervene in Syria, at least not yet. I have taken the stance that the United States should not intervene in any of these conflicts.
Yes, innocent people are being injured and killed. Yes, the existing governments are cruel and corrupt. No, it is not the responsibility of the United States to beat sense into every country in the world.
I did support intervention in Iraq and in Afghanistan. In Iraq, a sovereign nation, Kuwait, was invaded and asked for assistance. Saudi Arabia felt threatened by Iraq and also asked for assistance. A lot of people forget that the Iraq war was started by Iraq and that Iraq violated every article of the cease fire that they begged for. People also forget that President Bush went back to the United Nations and asked permission to enforce those articles. He did not need to but he did. Instead, the political left claimed he was going in to steal the oil or take revenge for an attempt on the life of former President Bush, his father. Unfortunately, the reason for fighting was confused by the declaration of the presence of weapons of mass destruction. Again, this claim was presented by Iraq, then denied. At least one of the issues that drove the second phase of the Iraq war could easily have been deflated by the Iraqi government simply stating that they had used all of their chemical weapons when they put down protests from their own people. An the evidence of the weapons was found, just downplayed by the political opponents of the president. Now there are birth defects in record numbers in Iraq near the various military bases, and the same people who claimed there were no Iraqi weapons are now trying to claim that the birth defects are the result of the United States using depleted uranium.
In Afghanistan, we had active supporters of a group that attacked the United States. I am not a hawk in general, I feel we should support out friends and defend ourselves. It is also not a point of who is president. I felt that President G.H.W Bush was completely wrong in sending our troops into Somalia, and set President Clinton up for failure. I thought that President Clinton was wrong to get involved in the Balkans, that was a European problem and the Europeans should have taken care of it. I praised President Obama for not taking action in Egypt. We may not like the group in charge, but it is not our problem. I criticized President Obama for intervening in Libya. Sure the guy we hated is gone, but what of the groups now competing for power? We have a dead ambassador, possibly killed with weapons that the United States provided.
The biggest problem with civil wars is that as an outsider, we do not know who the good guys are, or even if there are any good guys. We can generally identify the innocent victims by seeing who is dead and who has guns. We do not want other countries to tell us what government or leader we have, and I think that we should have the same stance for others. The original call for action in Syria was from the national press. The second wave came from the “internation community” basically people who wanted the United States to spend its blood and treasure on their fight. Now we have calls from Senator McCain and other in congress. In my opinion, they are just plain wrong and I hope that President Obama does not buckle under the pressure to act.