REALPOLITIK RE: SYRIA

Comments by U.S. Government officials and within the media seem to assume that the U.S. can lob a few Tomahawks at Assad and walk away without consequences here at home. So far the discussion has centered around what the U.S. can do to Syria, ignoring the other side of the coin, what Syria can do to the U.S.. Policymakers and pundits seem to be under the impression that in attacking Syria the U.S. would be engaging in traditional state-to-state warfare in which the U.S. conventional forces hold an overwhelming advantage over the Syrian military, and could, therefore, attack Syria with impunity. They fail to give full weight to the reality of asymmetrical warfare today in which even puny adversaries can wreak havoc on U.S. soil.

Does it not occur to anyone that poking a hornet’s nest loaded with chemical weapons could result in counterattacks by jihadis smuggling poison gas bombs into the U.S. and detonating them in subways, air-vents of important buildings, tunnels and other enclosed spaces like sports arenas and convention centers? A coordinated attack in the subways of New York, Washington, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Miami, Baltimore and Cleveland, would not only produce panic and mass casualties, but could also effectively cause the American economy to grind to a halt, creating calamitous civil disorder. This is just one scenario among many of blowback resulting from the unintended consequences of an American attack on Syria. Do we really think that yet another American escalation will end the longstanding cycle of provocation and retaliation emanating from the Middle East and prevent future chemical attacks? Given the endless cycle of provocation and retaliation for which the Middle East is famous, a retaliatory Syrian gas attack on U.S. soil would doubtlessly be more, rather than less likely, if the U.S. broadens its aggression in the Middle East to include Syria. Does no one understand the longstanding mortal animus between Muslims and Christians dating back 13 centuries, and therefore the likelihood that escalation will result in yet more escalation, violence begetting violence, likely leading to all-out religious war and unimaginable global death and destruction? Have we failed to learn the lessons of irreversible escalation to all-out war demonstrated by Word Wars I and II? Have we considered what all-out war would mean in today's world of weapons of mass destruction?

Attacking Syria on the basis of moral outrage without due weight given to potential blowback would represent an extension of the amateur hour characterizing American foreign policy for the past decade, driven by the “undue influence” and “misplaced power” of the military-industrial complex rather than by the genuine interests of the American people.

As I state in my book, The Predicament, the West needs to begin a process of disengagement and de-escalation, ending the ever-increasing provocation inherent in Western armed intervention in the Middle East, and seek a modus vivendi with Islam, just as we did successfully to end the Cold War with the Soviet Union and Communist China, and as Britain did to end The Troubles in Northern Ireland. The U.S. cannot hope to foresee and prevent every attack by Islamist extremists, whose numbers swell with every bomb dropped and every bullet fired in the Middle East by Americans and their Western Allies. The only sane way to forestall such attacks lies in dampening the rage  provoking them by disengaging militarily from the Middle East and limiting Western intervention to providing humanitarian aid.

Muslims proclaim Islam to be a religion engendering peace, moral behavior and good order among its believers. It’s time the West stepped back and let them demonstrate it.