Violence in Syria defies quick or cost-free answers
In the week since the massacre of 108 people, including 49 children, in the Syrian villages of Houla last week shocked the world, pressure has dramatically increased on President Obama and other Western leaders to oust Syrian leader Bashar Assad.
The outrage is depressingly familiar. It’s the same sort of anger that followed months of previous atrocities by Syrian military forces and Assad loyalists. Each time, Syrian rebels
Military intervention poses major risks
thought the world would be spurred to action.
The world has acted, but with sanctions, diplomatic pressure and mostly non-lethal aid to rebels that have not come close to stopping the bloodshed. China and Russia have repeatedly blunted stronger responses in the U.N. Security Council. The Arab League and the U.N. have proved powerless.
Unarmed U.N. monitors — a pathetically inadequate force of 300 in a nation of 23 million — have been unable to stop the violence, and a cease-fire that began in early April appears to be crumbling. Following the standard rogue-state script, Assad buys time and parries pressure by promising to restrain his forces, but never does.
Given Assad’s barbarity, and the growing regional instability caused by Syria’s violence, many in and out of Congress have demanded air strikes, militarily protected safe zones for Syrian refugees or, at the very least, arming the Syrian rebels.
But just as many, including President Obama, have been cautious, and for good reason. Just because a situation is awful doesn’t mean there’s a good way to fix it.
Many of Syria’s robust, Russian-supplied air defenses are in heavily populated areas, which would make an air war far more complicated and bloody than the one that helped topple Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi in eight months. Safe zones would require military defenses, and almost certainly ground troops. The Syrian rebels lack cohesion and include some al-Qaeda elements. Arming them could trigger an even bloodier civil war and more civilian casualties.
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has attacked Obama for a “policy of paralysis,” but tellingly, Obama’s policies and Romney’s proposals aren’t far apart. Both want Russia to do more, neither wants direct U.S. military action, and both now advocate (or at least accept) efforts by other countries to arm the rebels.
These similarities underscore the fact that there are no quick or cost-free ways to end the violence in Syria. Is there some acceptable middle ground between what analyst Fouad Ajami calls “boots on the ground or head in the sand”? The best hope is that a combination of international sanctions, diplomatic pressure and limited help for the non-terrorist opposition will eventually topple Assad.
In the meantime, the bar for direct U.S. military intervention should remain very high. After a decade of costly and inconclusive combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, and misguided missions such as the one in Somalia in the early 1990s, the U.S. should be deeply wary of committing itself to yet another conflict. Getting in, without a plan to win and get out, doesn’t work.