Syria: Unjustifiable Military Involvement

Yesterday, during a meeting with European Union representatives, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that his country’s government could not promise to wait for the results of the U.N. inquiry into the sarin gas attack that took place on Aug. 21 in the outskirts of Damascus, for which Washington has blamed the Syrian regime.

The announcement is a just another example of the United States’ stubborn determination to launch a military offensive against the Arab nation, set against a backdrop of widespread disapproval of interventionist policies both inside and outside U.S. borders. Indeed, various polls and surveys have shown that the majority of American citizens oppose U.S. intervention in Syria, likely with the disastrous results of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan still fresh in their memory. Another important part of the story is the CNN broadcast of a series of videos about the chemical weapon attacks in Syria, in which they inevitably return to playing the unfortunate role of building public approval of the policy, just as the news media bolstered support in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq.

While Washington was able to obtain an EU declaration in favor of a strong and decisive response to the events of Aug. 21 in Syria, the international organization appeared reluctant to expressly support the possibility of a military incursion into the Arab nation. Even the French government, which had been showing strong support for the White House’s plans, was only willing to begin military action in Syria once the results of the U.N. inquiry were released. A growing atmosphere of tension between the two geopolitical sides has formed in the face of the Syrian conflict: While Paris and Washington have deployed warships in the Mediterranean in preparation for the inevitable combat in favor of the Syrian insurgents, Moscow has followed suit by restating their support of the regime in Damascus, creating a situation reminiscent of gunboat diplomacy.

These factors demonstrate the unjustifiable nature of military involvement in Syria. Intervention is certainly unjustifiable from the humanitarian perspective; it would not only add to the deaths but multiply them. Intervention is equally unjustifiable from the diplomatic perspective because it would stir up complex and undesirable tension from the perspective of U.S. domestic policy. Not only could harsh military intervention end up being electorally counterproductive for the Democratic Party, but, more importantly, it could emphasize the leadership crisis that the party is facing.

The solidification of Barack Obama’s military plans for Syria, as far as we can tell, would only end up favoring the warmongering private interests that always benefit from the superpower’s recurrent warring: the American arms industry, defense contractors and Washington’s war hawks. It would be best to put the issue to a vote. Domestic and international pressure might convince the American legislators not to take part in an attack on Syria that would mean disastrous consequences for the institution they represent. And maybe the process of a vote would manage to stop the country from carrying out the aggression that their leader has proposed.