Monday, September 02, 2013

No to US intervention in Syria

I don't claim to be an expert on the current civil war in Syria, but I see no advantage accruing to either the US or the majority of Syrians in the proposed military intervention against the Assad regime. If the Assad regime falls it could very well be replaced by something much worse. Indeed one thing that distinguished Syria under the current Assad and his father from some other Middle Eastern regimes was its secular nature. In terms of personal freedom Syria has been considerably more liberal than places like Saudi Arabia despite the dictatorial nature of the Ba'ath Party. So while the regime has been brutal I am by no means convinced that what ever replaces it will be an improvement and it could well be far worse than what existed before the start of the civil war. The main thing US military intervention will do is add to the death toll through "collateral damage" due to bombings and missile strikes. It could very well end up that the US and whatever allies we get to support us end up killing a lot of people in Syria and an Islamic regime that makes us nostalgic for the secular Arab nationalist dictatorship of old man Assad takes power. I am sure such a scenario has its own beneficiaries, but I am failing to see how either the majority of Americans or Syrians are among them.

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