Our Political Divide on Syria – What Diplomatic Tact Do We Take Now?

Well, the media seems to be bombarding us with Super Tuesday News, but that is hardly all that is going on in the world. Perhaps, the results of Super Tuesday will affect other major events around the globe too, as the US is at crunch time to make a decision what to do in Syria, and that will effect what happens in the future with Iran, especially considering they just had their election, and Russia too, both involved in Syria’s civil war and bloodshed. How we play this will determine human history in the Middle East for the remainder of this century.

Senator McCain recently stated and it became a headline in Government Executive News; reprinted from the National Journal; “McCain calls for air strikes on Syria,” by Sara Sorcher,” on 3-5-2012. Is John McCain’s comment a valid argument, is he right, is that what we should do? Is there case precedent for this level of intervention? Well, actually there is, remember Libya when Gaddafi only “threatened” air strikes on the people; we intervened with NATO and instituted a “no fly zone” and eventually, this allowed the rebels to defeat, with a lot of help, the Gaddafi regime.

Of course, in Syria, Assad’s regime has bombarded whole sections of various cities going after its dissenters for instance in the City of Homs, but it wasn’t done with airstrikes, it was done with artillery, but now Syria is going to use air power against its own people, so now there is a historical case precedent for intervention. Indeed, there is another problem, Syria has a Russian military base in Syria, and Iran has brought over a warship, weapons, military advisers, and Qod forces also.

Okay so, here is where our political divide is, and we are sending mixed messages. In Government Executive News on February 27, 2012, also reprinted from the National Journal, “Clinton pledges $10 million to ‘scale up’ humanitarian efforts in Syria,” by S. Sorcher. So, is the question; Do we give aid or do we give war? Well, Syria, unlike Libya, has some allies which could take a small regional war like this to a much higher level, as in hell on Earth, with repercussions world-wide, perhaps even here at home retaliations.

Still, Syrians are being slaughtered as we speak and it has been going on for months now, and we are still deciding what to do perhaps, conflicted with the game plan, and apparently diplomatic efforts haven’t worked, and the world waits to see what we will do, and so we talk about it a lot – interesting. Regardless, of what the US does the battle is heating up in Syria, as the anti-government forces are now using IEDs etc, but will that be enough to allow them to hold ground or continue? Probably not.

There is however another interesting power play here, there was an Op Ed in the WSj on 3-6-2012 titled; “The Case for Arming the Syrian Opposition,” by Mark Palmer and Paul Wolfowitz and it is quite compelling, after all that’s what was done in Libya in addition to the “no fly zone” and that’s how the US assisted in holding the Russians back against the “Freedom Fighters” in Afghanistan. It’s also what our enemies have done to us by providing weapons to those who oppose our military actions (plausibly denying it in the global media) and unfortunately often it’s worked effectively too.