The Real Soution for the Sticky Syria Issue

Looks like we're going to war in Syria.

The Very Serious People will tell us in solemn tones how we have to send a message to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and how since there will be no American boots on the grounds it would not really be a war anyway.

But footwear aside, it would be a war, and we'd just be following through on our death threats, with no good outcome really expected other than saving face.

Before I get to my solution, better read this.  It's from The Onion, a satirical web site, but it tells you better than the conventional media everything you need to know about the state of current affairs with respect to the whole Syrian issue.  Go ahead and click over, I'll wait.

Done?  Well, President Obama seems caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place, with no good options on the table.

But there is one option, in fact a very good one, so here's my advice to President Obama, in the form of the short address he should use to the world when he announces his course of action:

Pressident Bashar al-Assad is batshit crazy.  So crazy, in fact, that sending him any sort of military message would probably be futile.  It might make some of us feel better--you know, that whole eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth Old Testament stuff--but in point of fact any leader who would use weapons of mass destruction on his own people is already around the bend and immune to ordinary lesson-teaching.

Plus, no matter how well we'd target our weapons there would be more dead civilians.

So, we are not going to make a military response.  The hawks here in this country and around the world will get their panties all in a bunch, but what I've decided the United States will do instead is this. 

Our military strategists have figured out their recommended "proper response."  That is, just enough blown-up stuff to try to teach a lesson to al-Assad and for us to save face with the world, but not enough blown-up stuff to upset the balance in the ongoing Syrian civil war.

But rather than launch those munitions, we will instead take the $_____ billion that would have been expended on bombs and missiles and use it for humanitarian aid for the millions of Syrian civilians displaced or affected by this war.  We will fund doctors, nurses, medical supplies, food, safe drinking water, schools, and rebuild homes, villages, and infrastructure.  We invite our allies and others to join us in that effort.

That will send the correct message to al-Assad and the rest of the world, better than any missile could: that of beating our swords into plowshares, and our spears into pruning hooks.

Syria is a Mess...and Ultrarunning

Some pretty good analysis below about why we should be careful in dealing with Syria.

Also, my particular question is why should we--meaning the United States--be the one to get all concerned about Syria?  This should be a conundrum for the United Nations, of which we are a member, not a unilateral response by one country.

Anyway, an excerpt via Hullabaloo.  You should go read the whole thing, it's short:

You see he gassed his own people with WMD and they might get into the hands of terrorists. We can't let the smoking gun come in the form of a mushroom cloud. We must disarm the tyrant because if we don't the terrorists will win. You know the drill. Very well. Too well.

 --SNIP--

The world is an ugly place full of injustice. If it were up to me, and I could pick countries to liberate, I can think of a half dozen off the top of my head, starting with Burma. But sometime in the last half century I learned that war is very rarely a good way to "help" people and that the motivations for waging it are always far more complicated than that. Moreover, I just don't think the US is a very good "humanitarian" empire. Even if you assume we have the best of intentions, the US just doesn't have the right political structure to be a benevolent hegemon. I'm not sure any nation state does.

--SNIP--

It's a horrible, bloody mess in Syria and it's terrible to feel impotent in the face of horrible bloody messes. But considering the huge risk we take of making things even worse, there is no doubt that we must be extremely skeptical of calls for intervention. The US has a bad hubris habit and considering our hot war success rate of the past 50 years or so, we really should take a good look in the mirror before we act.
 

And, of course the (however tenuous) link to Ultrarunning?  Just a recognition or acknowledgement that we too often take our running freedom for granted here.  We can run any public trail we want and we don't have to be afraid of land mines or armed militias or regular troops or drones or Scud missiles.  We have rules and laws and a functional government, and by and large, things work rather well here.

Not so in Syria or any number of other places on the planet.