Syria: History being repeated?
June 17, 2013, 7:01 pmA string of debilitating battlefield setbacks that the Syrian rebels have suffered during the last few weeks has prompted the US to declare that it will arm them. One is intrigued. The US and the EU insist that they have not yet supplied arms to the Syrian Opposition. If so, how on earth have the rebels secured stocks of sophisticated weapons with the help of which they almost marched on the City of Jasmine?
In spite of public opinion against US military interventions overseas, President Barack Obama has come under tremendous pressure from various quarters to back the Syrian rebels. Even former US President Bill Clinton has urged him to take cognisance of 90, 000 people killed in Syria, disregard public opinion at home and support the anti-Assad forces to the hilt the way Ronald Reagan backed the Mujahideen in Afghanistan against the Russians. Interestingly, President Obama, who was given the Nobel Peace Prize even before he had settled down in his new job following his first election, is now about to embark on another hawkish venture to safeguard the US interests!
US invasions have left over one million people dead in Iraq and plunged that country into total anarchy. In Libya, the anti-Gaddafi rebels have admitted that by the time they captured Tripoli over 50,000 lives had been lost. Presumably, an equal number may have died in subsequent battles besides the tribal and turf wars being fought among the victorious rebels. Strangely, these deaths haven’t caused any concern to Clinton!
Clinton’s contention is that the US ought to intervene in Syria without deploying troops to stop the Russians, the Iranians and the Hezbollah in their tracks and ‘rebalance the power’ in the conflict. He is apparently oblivious to the danger of the US opening another front. Although there won’t be an inflow of body bags from Syria in the event of the US arming the Syrian Opposition, Washington will find that exercise a real drain on its coffers. Its war on terror has already cost it an arm and a leg; its external debt has increased manifold with China buying its treasury bonds to the tune of trillions of dollars. American forces may not bleed due to Washington’s involvement in the Syrian conflict, but the US treasury certainly will!
Clinton’s reference to Reagan’s involvement in Afghanistan is replete with irony. Reagan, no doubt, managed to get rid of the Russians with the help of the Mujahideen but sowed the wind in the process and the US is reaping the whirlwind today. The US left its Afghan allies in the lurch after its purpose was served thus creating socio-economic conditions for the emergence of the Taliban who consolidated power vowing to bring order out of chaos, but plunged Afghanistan into the depths of lawlessness and religious fanaticism while harbouring al-Qaeda terrorists.
The US has sought to justify its decision to back the anti-Assad forces on the grounds that they have come under nerve gas attacks. Before the Iraqi invasion, too, the US and the UK said something similar, didn’t they? Looking for a casus belli, they said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but their claim turned out to be a big lie.
What is being fought in Syria is not Syria’s war as we argued the other day. It is being manipulated by external forces to mine a rich seam of bloodletting. Therefore, the onus is on the countries including the US, the UK, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Jordan etc to clear up the mess they have created in Syria. Assad’s tyrannical rule was, no doubt, a problem that had to be dealt with, but, unfortunately, the solution that the US and its allies tried to ram down Syria’s throat has turned out to be equally bad.
British Prime Minister David Cameron vowed the other day to ‘drain the swamp’ that fostered ‘Islamic extremism’ in his country. But, he and Obama are trying to keep the swamp soggy in Syria even at the risk of the conflict snowballing into a full-blown sectarian war. There is the likelihood of a greater US intervention in Syria turning that country into Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan all rolled into one. Besides the economic cost to be borne by Americans, lethal weapons Washington is planning to pour into the conflict are sure to find their way into the hands of extremists like al-Qaeda, whose combatants are mingling with the Syrian rebels the way they did in Libya, which has become as dangerous as Afghanistan to Americans and Europeans though their pet rebels are ensconced in power. Those who do not learn from history, it is said, are doomed to repeat it.