Is Syria Next?

"Yucky?" If you were the one who had been raped and tortured for uttering a vaguely anti-Saddam sentiment, or whose family members had been disappeared, or whose village had been wiped out, or whose brothers, sisters, and children were now being used as human shields, or... or... or... you wouldn't speak so flippantly. For someone who likes to place himself on the side of the world's conscience against the US, that's low hypocrisy of the worst kind, in addition to being a shameless obscenity.

You are also incorrect about the terms of the '91 ceasefire and related UN resolutions. Saddam agreed to cease repressing his own people - and his failure to do so led to the original justification of the "No-Fly Zones" maintained in the north and south of Iraq. It is to our great shame that we did not immediately set about more actively enforcing these and other ceasefire terms, and instead left the matter to the inattention and conflicting agendas of the same international organization, the UN, that proved itself much worse than useless when confronting war and genocide in Yugoslavia and Rwanda, among other places.

It is not just for these reasons that Saddam cannot just be seen as an "Iraqi problem," however. Saddam gained and expanded his power first and primarily as a Soviet client, and later as a Russian client and trading partner. Direct American financial and military aid and contributions to his regime were rather minimal by comparison, and British contributions, though larger, were only a fraction of what was provided by France and Germany. All of us, however, share guilt toward the Iraqi people for supporting Saddam, because our policy of looking away from regimes such as his while they live off the petrodollars we pay them is what has enabled him to retain power, arm his regime, oppress his people, attack his neighbors, and nurture his and his followers' dreams of a pan-Arab, anti-Western empire.

This battle, and the larger war of which it is a part, has been inevitable at least since the fall of the Soviet Union, but probably since the first European power established its first colony in North Africa. The result resembles a war of imperial break-up, similar in this respect to the Yugoslavian wars of the 90s.

Aside from our moral or historical responsibility for the situation - something which alone would be very unlikely to move us to act short of some new Rwanda-like catastrophe - there are two main reasons that we can't afford to let "nature take its course," and for regimes such as Hussein's or the Ayatollahs' to erode, implode, or burn themselves out in wars against each other: Oil and weapons of mass destruction. (Note: Syria shares some features in common with Iraq, but its lack of its own oil wealth is probably the major reason that it is not as great a threat and has not received primary attention.)

Oil gives these regimes unnatural longevity and unearned wealth - it makes them able to survive and to build up their internal power without ever offering their own people (outside of military and security elites) a better way of life. The same accident of geography and economics places these deeply dysfunctional and innately militarist regimes at a critical center of world energy resources.

The existence of weapons of mass destruction means, and may virtually ensure, that the ambitions and conflicts, and even the eventual death throes of such regimes would pose intolerable threats to other nations, either directly or through the provision of such weapons to the terrorist entities that grow up in the region as another direct result of the political conditions that "peace" activists would like us to consider to be other people's business.

Any attempt to define or judge the current conflict apart from this larger historical context is likely to get lost amidst simplism, thinly veiled self-interest, and political prejudices. That Europeans, other international observers, and their domestic counterparts are content to use Iraq as a platform to project anti-Americanism is depressing for many Americans. For the past, present, and potential future victims of Saddam's regime, it's something much worse.

 

Meaningless comparisons, for a number of reasons: The issue is not just what Iraq can do now or was able to do ten years ago. The issues are also, more critically, what Hussein and company could do if left to their own devices, and what would be likely to occur in the region in the wake of a perceived American defeat. If you want to think about geopolitics, think about the world five or ten or twenty-five years or more from now, and remember that Germany was a pathetic economic disaster and totally defeated nation in the 1920s. By the middle 1930s it was already well on the way to imperial aggression. In addition, WMDs mean that Saddam or his sons could within a few years possess more destructive power than Hitler ever possessed. The supposed containment option at best merely delays the eventual reckoning, while sustaining the Iraqi populace in privation and brutal oppression, and requiring an indefinite, expensive, and also destabilizing military presence in the region.

I suppose history might be written this way once the great European Union, under the great neo-Frankish alliance at its center, takes over the globe. Perhaps after a few more years demonstrating the indomitably dynamic economic and military power of Euro-socialism...

 

and they came in through, you guessed it, Syria

Colonel Munir Maqdah, one of the top commanders of the Fatah movement in Lebanon, said his men were already in Baghdad, prepared to launch suicide attacks. Another group of Fatah suicide bombers are due in Iraq shortly, he added. ...

This is the first time that a senior Fatah official announces that his men have decided to join the fighting in Iraq. Palestinian sources said the Fatah volunteers entered Iraq through Syria.

Maqdah told the Nazareth-based as Sennarah weekly that Fatah has decided to "strike at American interests all over the world." He added: "Resisting the American aggression on Iraq supports the Palestinian people and the intifada. What is happening in Iraq is the battle of the Palestinian people first and the Arab and Muslim nation second."

Also mentioned in this article is a thwarted Palestinian Arab plot to blow up an orphanage in Jerusalem:

Last week the security forces announced the capture of a Fatah teenager sent on a suicide mission meant to kill hundreds of people.

Officials said the target was a home for 180 orphans and homeless children in Jerusalem. They said a 17-year-old Palestinian from the Bethlehem area of the West Bank was sent with a suitcase filled with explosives to blow up the school.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satell...Post/A/JPArticle/ShowFull%26cid=1048922662047

 

Yes, the post colonial socio/political unwinding combined with oil wealth and WMD has led to a hornets nest in the Middle East. Does this then lead you to support preemptive-war then re-colonization followed by restructuring of the offending regimes?

I would rather the US spend the 75 billion we will spend warring for 3 months on a crash program to develop and deploy the hydrogen engine so we quit sending so much money to these countries in the first place.

 

Congratulations, and I mean no sarcasm here, for setting yourself apart from so many on these threads by actually showing an interest in dialogue.

I prefer to be cautious about going too far with historical parallels. Baathism and Hussein may have much in common with Nazism and Hitler, but the differences are just as critical. I don't think, for instance, that Hitler ever qualified as anyone's "client," and he never had to deal with a superpower, but his willingness to negotiate when relatively weak, then to make non-negotiable demands when he believed himself stronger, might compare. Anyway, I don't think whether Hussein's behavior at any point directly compares with Hitler's necessarily tells us anything very useful.

Similarly, relying on past experience with other WMD-possessing states for guidance may not be helpful or sufficient. Even merely by possessing WMDs, without actually using them, the possessor can alter any power equation crucially. Even if we choose to presume (to my mind unjustifiably) that Hussein or his successors would remain deterrable at some tolerable price (at least for us), we also know that there are other actors in his part of the world who are willing to engage in mass slaughter and destruction for no purpose that makes much practical sense to us. For Islamic extremists, the medium is the message, and we know that they are active in Iraq and throughout the region, and that Hussein has maintained relationships of different types with a wide variety of extremist groups. It's quite possible that even one "exception" to the general rule of deterrence would, in a word, change everything - and also initiate a reaction on our part that makes the current War on Terror look like a beer brawl.

 

Define "re-colonization." I suspect your definition is broader than mine. In some instances, I do believe that pre-emptive war and regime change would be justified and necessary, though I don't believe that the current operation in Iraq is solely pre-emptive.

I support development of alternative energy resources, but I have no reason to believe $75 B or $750 B or $7.5 T would be enough to switch us over to a hydrogen economy anytime soon. Nor do I see much reason to believe that doing so would be the end of problems originating in the Middle East.

 

The following is not neccesarily my opinion. But I thought it interesting enough to quote in this context. This goes against my general policy of avoiding cut and paste, and even more specifically of quoting Bill O' Reilly (my disclaimer).

Bill O’Reilly: “The New Nazis”

It is absolutely eerie how closely the current Iraq situation
parallels the rise of the Third Reich 70 years ago. I consider
Saddam Hussein to be “Hitler lite” because he has the same virulent
anti-Semitism, the same callous disregard for human life, and the
identical lust for power that Adolf possessed. The only difference
between the two villains is the size of the moustache.

Back in the 1930s, millions of people the world over simply did not
want to think about the evil Hitler was brewing up. France and
Russia were the chief appeasers, as they are today on the Iraq
question. Stalin ultimately signed a treaty with Hitler making it
possible for him to use most of his forces to crush Europe, and
France simply allowed Hitler to violate the Treaty of Versailles,
even more than the 17 times Saddam has violated the current U.N.
mandates. Britain went along with France in the ‘30s, but now it
seems the United Kingdom has learned from its historical mistakes.

And then there’s the Pope. John Paul II recently came out and said
that any war against Iraq would be “immoral.” Back in the ‘30s,
Pope Pius XII actually supported Hitler politically, at least in the
beginning of his rise when Pius was stationed in Germany. The Third
Reich was considered a bulwark against Communism, which the Church
greatly feared. Subsequently, Pius kept quiet about the atrocities
of Hitler’s regime because he knew that the Vatican itself could
easily be vanquished by the Huns.

Today, John Paul deplores the violence that comes with any war but
is at a loss to explain how terrorism and the states that enable it
should be dealt with. Remember, the Pope did not approve of the
military action against the Taliban.

Peace, of course, should be the goal of all civilized human beings.
Millions of Americans are against a war in Iraq today, and millions
of us were vehemently opposed to confronting Hitler as well. Back
then the anti-war movement was led by Charles Lindbergh and
Ambassador Joseph Kennedy, who largely dismissed accusations of Nazi
brutality and weapons production as propaganda. In 1937, SS Chief
Heinrich Himmler was even on the cover of Time magazine. I have the
issue. The article criticized Himmler and hinted at barbaric
behavior, but there was no “smoking gun.”

The failure to confront the obvious evil of the Nazis early, of
course, led to the deaths of more than 55,000,000 human beings in
Europe. Millions of Jews were stunned when they were led by German
guards to the gas chambers. How could human beings do this? Even
after evidence of mass executions surfaced, many the world over
refused to believe it. Liberating American soldiers were horrified
at what they found in the concentration camps. Most had no idea of
what they were really fighting against.

Does anyone today believe that Al Qaeda or Saddam would not
slaughter Jews and, indeed, Americans if they had the power to do
so? So what is the difference between a dictator like Saddam and
Adolph Hitler?

It continues to astound me that 37 percent of Americans, according
to the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, do not support the
removal of Saddam Hussein unless other countries which do not share
our danger, sign on. I mean, why allow a dictator who has weapons
that would make Hitler salivate remain a threat to the world? Does
it make sense that Cameroon has to sign on before we neutralize this
threat?

If France, Germany, China and Russia would support the United States
against Saddam, he’d already be out of power. If France, Russia and
Britain had marched into Germany in 1933, there would have been no
World War or Holocaust.

Nobody can predict the outcome and aftermath of any war. But we can
learn from history. Evil has a way of killing people; that’s a
fact. And the only way that evil will be stopped is for just and
courageous people to confront it.

 

Agreed. This should be our new "Manhatten Project". Too bad there is too much conflict of interest about it. Particularly with this administration. Ask Dick Cheney if he thinks it would be a good idea (or Dubya, or........)