After weeks of saber-rattling and ego boosting, and statements on Syria from everyone but the Commander-in-Chief himself, President Obama finally speaks to the question everyone is asking. What is our national security interest that necessitates attacking Syria?
And to that question, the President fails to make the case. He said . . .
This kind of attack threatens our national security interests by violating well-established international norms against the use of chemical weapons by further threatening friends and allies of ours in the region, like Israel and Turkey and Jordan, and it increases the risk that chemical weapons will be used in the future and fall into the hands of terrorists who might use them against us.
Might use them against us? There are no national interests of ours where Syria is concerned. They haven’t attacked us. They have telegraphed what they’d do to Israel if they were attacked by the U.S. But predicated on the United States attacking them first. To pin our national security interests on what might or could happen means there are no boundaries or limits to a trigger happy President. President Obama also failed to explain the end-game to his limited “smack in the face” attack on Syria.
The Syrian government is doing bad things, but it is doing them to their own people. Not to the United States. They are involved in a civil war now, and most of Assad’s opposition is coming from the alQaeda and Muslim Brotherhood types. Launching any kind of attack will only improve the chances that alQaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood will take over.
Syria needs to fight their own civil war. It’s as if nothing has been learned from the last 60 years of history in the Middle East. Let’s not repeat history. No one interfered with our civil war. And after it was over, we had a unified country. Their civil war needs to play out to its conclusion. Then, and only then, will the world know what kind of country remains. Friendly to the west, or not. At least, it will be a known entity. Not a mess like the rest of the Middle East.
Bottom line, we’re not the world’s policeman nor are we a civil-war-country’s custodian.
