A Missed Opportunity in Syria

In opening the “stats” for this blog today and looking at the “all-time” list covering four years, I was surprised to find that No. 3 of the most-read posts – and the only one listed for 2012 – concerned Syria, It was “Send a Message to Assad,” posted in March, and to spare you reading it, the blog suggested that if the West took out just one Syrian tank or one piece of heavy artillery, perhaps with a drone strike, the Syrian president would get the message that the free world disapproved of what he was doing -- that we didn’t want to go to war with him, only that he should stop using a mechanized army to slaughter civilians.


But the talking heads were already on the air, listing all the reasons why the U.S., or any group outside of the U.N. framework, shouldn’t get involved militarily in Syria. We provided the Syrian rebels with communications equipment, etc., but were reluctant to supply them with heavy weapons, because they might fall into the wrong hands, meaning Al Qaida.

Well, that was 20,000 lives ago, and this week we hear that the Syrian forces are now using old Russian cluster bombs against the population. Cluster bombs are typically dropped from the air and open up to release “bomblets” that spread out and are effective at killing large numbers of people on the ground. They are banned by international agreement, which the U.S. has not signed. (One of the reasons given, I read today, is that modern cluster bomblets are smarter and can be individually programmed to hit the right targets. Great...!) I wonder what the regime will use next, when it's really cornered.

The general in charge of the Free Syrian Army was on “60 Minutes” Sunday and said that when the Assad regime is removed, the Syrians who come to power will never forgive the West for standing by while people were being slaughtered. As for Al Qaida, well, he said, they’d accept help from anyone willing to give it to them. So whose hands do we think Syria is going to fall into, exactly, thanks to our having done virtually nothing?

Former Secretary of State Zbigniew Brzezinski said on NPR that we’d be nuts to get involved militarily in this situation, that the region was like a huge pool of gasoline, into which we’d be tossing a match. Well, the pool is still there, and unless something changes, there’s going to be a bigger fire, whether or not it’s our match that sets it off.

It's way too late for us to get involved now. But history, I guess, is going to have to tell us whether we were wise to stay out of Syria, or whether we blew a significant opportunity. As for President Assad, it’s ironic that someone trained as an ophthalmologist could be so blind.