Americans are keen to want to go out and save the world. The problem is that we can’t. Lofty goals and ideologies must be tempered by reality. Not only are there obvious financial limits to these kind of interventionist policies, but these policies have historically shown a near zero success rate. In fact, in nearly every case of US intervention, we made the situation far worse. Not only are more people often killed, but the suffering is made to last sometimes for decades. So now President Obama is faced with somehow selling a war with Syria, which is a necessary pretext for a war with Iran, neither of which are in America’s best interests, and the best he can do is recycle the humanitarian argument for intervention and Iraq War era chemical weapons propaganda.
This would be a laughable justification if US Special Forces and CIA paramilitary officers weren’t already on the ground in Syria leading the proxy armies they trained and setting the groundwork for coming air strikes. Unfortunately, the reality is that the US has been lobbied into fighting what will prove to be a disastrous war that is neither in America’s interests nor necessary. The case currently being put before the American people is that President Assad has allegedly used chemical weapons against the rebel forces. It would be worth noting that nothing about the actual validity of this chemical attack claim has been verified by independent and reputable sources or that it may actually be in our interests to allow Assad to kill what we know to be Al Qaeda avowed terrorists; however, it would side track the primary argument that our idea of “help” means we will kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
Just as our “help” in Iraq led to the death of over a million Iraqis in order to “liberate” them from oppression, I have the strong feeling that our “help” in Syria will lead to the deaths of over one hundred thousand Syrians. Considering this, it is hard to square the logic of how killing a hundred thousand more Syrians equates in any way to improving their life. In fact, one would have to use the insane Iraq logic that destroying the nation’s infrastructure and killing a million people was the right thing to do to “help” the Iraqis. Now I am pretty sure that most Iraqis would disagree that the US helped them, but then that wouldn’t make for good propaganda being generated by the White House, which its zombie mass media outlets parrot without so much as a thought.
Understanding that our “help” is anything but actual help allows one to understand the real mechanisms at work. Supporting Syria to “stop the bloodshed” will turn out to be the exact opposite, but that’s okay because most Americans have proved to be mindless lemmings and will believe whatever the savior Obama tells them. In the end, this will lead to a costly war that will bankrupt the US and kill untold numbers of people across the Middle East all while bringing about no peace. Only the bankers that financed the war and the military-industrial complex that supplied it will profit from this foolish endeavor. Even Israel, which has demanded this war with all of its lobbying might, will find that it will not like what it ordered. If you are dumb enough to actually believe this looming war with Syria and Iran (and perhaps Russia and China) is in our best interests, please do everyone a favor and volunteer for service with the infantry on the front lines and remain far from policy work.
By Guiles Hendrik
August 26, 2013
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