People ask me, “Pre, what should we do about Syria?”
Well, I think that depends on who you mean by “we“.
I don’t think the UK, or the US, or NATO have any actual moral authority or right to intervene. So if the “We” that is considering military action is any of those then I’m afraid it’d be yet more illegal warmongering.
If the “We” is the United Nations, then obviously the proper unambiguous resolutions need to be passed.
Even in that case, I’m not sure that the UN should pass such resolutions to allow millitary action. Destroying infrastructure and killing people with bombs is no kind of solution to any problem I can easily think of. Who do you even support? Those rebels are as evil and undemocratic as the Syrian governemnt as far as I can see. The ones who ain’t used chem weapons? Who’s that? Can we trust the media, or the governments, when they tell us who is and who isn’t using chemical weapons? False-flag operations are commonplace in the warmonger’s arsenal. Even if we could, does blowing up more soldiers actually help de-escalate tensions and violence?
I doubt it.
More bombs and dead babies will not help. I bet ya.
Millitary intervention is expensive. If we’re thinking of spending billions of quids on humanitarian action, I suspect there are cheaper, more efficient, less deadly ways to save the equivalent number of lives with spending on medication, building infrastructure and helping people rather than helping to escalate an already horrible violent situation. How many vaccines and food packages can a billion quid’s worth of bombs buy you?
I don’t particularly think of humanitarian responses to war in particular. It is certainly horrible when people die of chemical attacks, bombs, guns and battle. It’s horrible for the aggressors, the defenders and those caught in the crossfire. But it’s also horrible when people die of preventable disease, starvation and poor sanitation. And it’s cheaper and easier to fix those problems. Perhaps instead of spending money blowing up Syria, we could spend it building sewerage systems, vaccine supply networks, food packages and malaria nets in other areas? Deal with the low-hanging humanitarian fruit before we consider walking into a war-zone. If you’ve got a couple of billion dollars to spend on a humanitarian response, you’ll save more lives at less risk with projects like that than by sending in soldiers to a war-zone, whatever their mission.
We can think about how to deal with war-torn areas after we’ve dealt with simple disease-and-poverty torn areas which kill more people. Only there doesn’t seem to be political will to do that. For some reason people get more exited about the chance to blow things up and kill bad guys than build things and kill disease.
Perhaps that’s because of the oil transport networks heading through Syria? Perhaps?
We have no authority to intervene, we have cheaper better ways to spend humanitarian cash, and no real idea what the hell is going on over there.
So if you think millitary intervention there is a good idea, I think you are insane.