Letter 2 America for April 30, 2013

Dear America,

The war in Syria is full blown now, and as it proceeds, the pressure to intervene builds in this country.  The presumption behind that pressure is that the emerging nation that will replace the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad will be moderate and benign, and most importantly, tractable when it comes to American ideals regarding political and religious freedom, but I find myself asking, what are the odds.  We have had little success backing incipient national movements in any part of the world, and in the Mid-East in particular.  We supported the Shah of Iran for decades despite the fact that he was a brutal dictator and a human rights abuser.  At least partially as a consequence, the regime that overthrew him was religiously intolerant and anti-American.  In Nicaragua we propped up the regime of Anastasio Somoza despite his dismal record regarding political freedom and human rights, and when he was deposed, the successor regime was communist and anti-American.  And since communism was a dirty word in the American political lexicon even though the Sandinista revolutionary government pledged to redistribte much of the land in that country from the connected rich to the agrarian poor, we were not satisfied with the new status quo for which we had lain the groundwork, so we attempted to overthrow that regime covertly with an insurgency comprising the same people whom the Nicaraguan people had just cast out.  Not only did our effort fail but it did so publicly and served to sully American politics and foreign policy for a decade thereafter.  And then of course there is Iraq: George W. Bush's elective war that cost five thousand American lives and a trillion dollars with the end result that the internecine conflict between two Muslim sects that have been wracked by mutual enmity for over a millenium are still wracked with mutual enmity.  Now they don't just hate each other, they are killing each other with bombs in the market place rather than submitting to dictatorship that, while brutal, at least kept the peace.  I still don't understand why The Shah and Somoza were alright but Saddam Hussein wasn't, not that I would like to see any of them in power.  Even Lybia is an exercise in political officiousness that may turn out wrong.  The insurgency was fragmented and now is fractious, leaving in doubt what will emerge as the national identity.  Fortunately we just participated with others in that one rather than making whatever mess eventuates all by ourselves.

Isolating the discussion to the "Arab Spring," our level of prescience has been a match for our understanding of the peoples involved.  Neither our political nor our intelligence communities bothered to educate itself about those peoples before presuming to intervene on the assumption that we could anticipate the outcome because, after all, we are the United States...the only remaining superpower.  In short, just as in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, we are the helping hand that sometimes does more harm than good, and now we are contemplating more of the same in Syria.  John McCain appeared on "Meet the Press" to trumpet his ill-considered position on the subject and despite the consensus against him, he wants to take an active, leadership role in Syria...with or without international countenance his demeanor suggests, though he says otherwise.  But he ignores the consensus opinion on all three of the measures he wants to take: establishing a "safe zone," otherwise known as a no-fly zone, selectively helping the rebels with ordinance and providing humanitarian aid.  The problem with the first is that Syria isn't Lybia, and its air defenses are apparently formidable.  Grounding Assad's air force will be no easy task, and McCain's plan to do it with Cruise missiles seems far fetched in light of the fact that we couldn't do it without manned flights in the face of the less formidable air defenses of Muammar Gaddafi.  And then there is trying to pick the winner by arming him.  Not too long ago, we tried to pick the winner in Afghanistan.  Remember "Charlie Wilson's War?"  As the Russians tried to subdue a country that hadn't been subdued despite repeated foreign conquest attempts over the course of two thousand years, we decided that the Afghans needed help, so we armed their internal insurgency, known as the Mujahidin, which can be spelled in several ways but it all comes to the same thing: the Taliban, jihadism, Anti-American fervor, and last but not least, Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden not to mention the cadre of followers and acolytes that plague us still.  I can only say that I am thankful that we don't have a conservative president.

If George W. Bush were in office, we might well have another war to pay for in blood and treasure for the next ten years, not to mention hectoring movements that snap at our heels for decades.  If it were Dick Cheney, it might be a nuclear war.  But we have a president who is a Democrat, which is no guaranty of sagacity in such matters, but he is a progressive as well.  In the case of Lybia, President Obama insisted that the United States provide what was necessary, but only to an international force led internationally.  We did not overthrow Gaddafi; an alliance expedited the process, but even they didn't overthrow the tyrant.  The deposing and murder of a brutal dictator was effected by an indigenous insurgency, and if our support turns out to be a mistake, at least it wasn't ours alone.  And we will be out of Afghanistan at the end of next year, so our most recent virtually unilateral mistake will be behind us.  With regard to Syria, The President seems to have learned the lessons of history, and if we are to participate in an effort to liberate the Syrian people, it will be only as a part of a larger effort owned and controlled by an international partnership, not just in name but in nature.  President Obama is the first president of the twenty first century to have proceeded this way, and he may thus be the author of some new historical lessons that his successors can heed to our universal benefit.  As a nation, we can choose to be part of the international community or we can control it...but we cannot do both.  It seems to me that the former is the choice to make.  We may not be right in every case just because we participate with other nations by consensus, but it's better than being wrong alone.

Your friend,

Mike