There has been a facile assumption that the international community, in the pre-digital past, sometimes failed to act during mass atrocities because they lacked information. The war in Syria — the most transparent campaign of mass atrocities in history — proves that excuse a joke. In this case, we were watching all along. Which raises lesson No. 3: Historical lessons are easily overlearned. Following Iraq, Afghanistan and the complicated exertions of the war against terror, politicians (in both parties), pundits (across the spectrum) and voters called for a chastened, passive foreign policy and a focus on domestic concerns. They have generally gotten what they wanted from the Obama administration, at least in Syria. The outcome was a consistent failure to support more responsible forces when support might have mattered, the descent of Syria into a Somalia-like state at the heart of the Middle East, the ceding of regional leadership to determined enemies and unreliable friends and the tolerance of crimes against humanity in the name of realism. But exhaustion and indifference are not the same thing as realism. In this case, the very real outcome is growing regional instability, the use of Syria as a training ground for perhaps 10,000 jihadists (many of whom will, eventually, go elsewhere), and the loss of much of a generation of Syrian children to despair, sectarianism and a desire for revenge. There are limits to U.S. power, which must be factored into policy choices. But a predisposition to passivity has costs — to U.S. interests, to nervous friends and allies and to the victims of ongoing atrocities. And these should be factored in as well.
Posted on: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 15:07:32 +0000
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