US inaction amidst growing Syrian atrocities is disgusting

Thirty-two years of US foreign policy gave us military and paramilitary involvement in El Salvador, Grenada, Iran-Iraq War, Nicaragua, Panama, Kuwait, Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

El Salvador and Grenada are national shames. We armed Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq War, as is well known. In Nicaragua, we funded, trained and armed the Contras, who tore asunder a country that had made progress in education, healthcare, industry, and also supported artistic expression, all while trying to survive beneath a US embargo and counter-revolutionary agitation. More national shame in Panama. Kuwait was one part self-interest and one-part a mission to protect Kuwait’s sovereignty (although we’ve many times ourselves violated another country’s sovereignty). We then pushed Hussein’s forces back into Iraq and dissipated.

In Somalia, we were tasked with peacekeeping. The same with Bosnia and Serbia, where we enforced no-fly zones and undertook bombing campaigns after human rights violations surfaced. We know the story of Afghanistan and Iraq well (one ethical, one not so much), and Libya is still fresh in our minds as another example of a humanitarian mission; although Ghaddafi’s ouster certainly had its strategic importance in the so-called War on Terror.

What this list shows is a mixture of U.S. ideological and strategic intervention (Cold War-related fights), humanitarian or peacekeeping missions, and Islamic terrorist havens. For every Kosovo (Serbia), there is a Nicaragua. For every ethical and just intervention, there is a national shame, a black stain on our reputation. And this list doesn’t even consider the various conflicts and civil wars in which the US has withheld involvement (Sri Lanka, Burma, any number of African nations). Perhaps this inaction is meant to appease a consistently war-weary public, of which I am no doubt a member.

However, some things are worth US involvement, and the current national shame is our inaction in the Syrian revolution, inspired by the large-scale revolutions in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia.

Blood is being spilled in the streets of Aleppo, Homs and Idlib. Tens of thousands are being detained, imprisoned and displaced. President Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian military forces have taken the pro-opposition strikes and bombardments into an 11th day, and all that the US government—both Obama and Congress collectively—can offer up is the threat of sanctions.

The Syrians are experiencing hell on Earth at the hand of a mustachioed tyrant who was given the keys to daddy’s empire despite a lack of any real interest in governing, and who now only desires to save himself from a democratic lynching. The Syrian dictatorship (as if it needs any further elucidation) is the very antithesis of the democratic freedom that the US has tasked itself with upholding (even though it can’t always live up to its grand vision abroad or at home — see: The Patriot Act, constitutional bans on gay marriage, SOPA and H.R. 1981, to name a few).

That our executive and legislative leaders have stood on the sidelines and invoked sanctions proposals, while the Syrian people are detained, imprisoned, displaced and slaughtered like cattle is disgusting. And, yes, maybe it’s an election year and neither the Democrats or Republicans want to risk being swept out of office for supporting another war. And maybe there is a worry that initiating a UN peacekeeping mission in Syria would inflame Islamic sentiment against the West.

But, in the final analysis, this sort of electoral and regional calculus does not obscure the fact that the US is standing by as atrocities are being carried out against civilians and pro-democratic revolutionaries. And, of course, a power vacuum in Syria might easily be filled by the influence of Al Qaeda and other radical Muslims. How is it that we can justify the above humanitarian missions and not Syria?

Indeed, add another national shame to the list.

[Photo: AP]