by: MJ Rosenberg on June 18th, 2013 |
President Obama’s decision to provide military aid to the Syrian
opposition is incredible. The United States is barely out of Iraq. It’s
still bogged down in Afghanistan. Obama insists on keeping the Iran war
option “on the table.” Yet suddenly we are taking sides in a civil war
in Syria. How many Middle Eastern wars can one superpower handle?
The most amazing thing is that the president has the audacity to even
propose involvement in Syria to the American people. (Not that he is
asking, just telling. If he asked,
he’d know that 70% of American oppose aiding the rebels).
Since 1964, when President Lyndon Johnson came up with a phony
pretext to gain passage of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution authorizing the
Vietnam war, it has been one presidentially-initiated intervention
after another: Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama, Lebanon, Persian
Gulf, Yugoslavia, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq , Libya. (This list does
not even include the delivery of arms to the mujahideenin Afghanistan
which brought us the Taliban, Osama Bin Laden, 9/11 and the endless War
on Terrorism).
I won’t argue that all the results of those interventions and wars
were bad, although most of them were. I will however elaborate on just
one, because it seems most comparable. It is in the immediate
neighborhood of Obama’s current initiative and involves many of the same
players: Lebanon in 1983.
In June 1982, the Israeli government invaded Lebanon to drive the
Palestine Liberation Organization and its fighters out of the country it
had been using as a base for operations against Israel. (This was 11
years before the Oslo agreement in which the PLO recognized Israel).
The invasion led to a series of humanitarian disasters, most notably
the slaughter
by Christian forces allied with Israel of 800 civilians (almost all
women, children and the elderly) in the Palestinian refugee camps called
Sabra and Shatila. When the Israelis insisted that they would not stop
the war until the Palestinians left the country, President Ronald Reagan
dispatched 1800 Marines
to serve as peacekeepers, along with French and Italian forces, until
the Palestinians were forced to board ships (to Tunisia!) and the
Lebanese government reestablished some semblance of control over the
country.
Reagan’s stated intentions were good. He said that the Marines were
going in solely as peacekeepers, not fighters, and that they would stay
for a maximum of 30 days. He said that his goal was freeing Lebanon from
domination by Palestinians and Syrians and enabling Israel to get out.
(Not surprisingly, he described Israel as more the victim of the Lebanon
war than as its instigator).
Of course, it didn’t turn out as Reagan hoped. In the
words
of Lawrence Korb, who was Assistant Secretary of Defense at the time,
the peacekeeper force soon became “entangled in Lebanon’s sectarian
conflict.” Its presence resulted “only in exacerbating the problems it
was supposed to resolve.” Other than achieving Israel’s goal of
expelling the PLO, the U.S. intervention succeeded only in infuriating
all sides while accomplishing nothing.
And then, on October 23, 1983, 14 months after Reagan pledged that the Marines would stay only one,
241 Marines
were blown up while asleep in their barracks at the Beirut airport by
Hizbullah terrorists. It was the worst Marine loss of life since Iwo
Jima. Five months later President Reagan pulled all U.S. forces out:
Lebanon was no better off than before. It’s not necessary to elaborate
on the families of the 241 lost Marines.
There is no need to expend many words on the most destructive of U.S.
interventions in the Middle East, the Iraq war, because it is so
recent.
It was built on lies told by a president, his advisers and a claque
of neoconservatives who are always eager to get America to fight Arabs
or Muslims whenever and wherever they can. Right now,
their primary goal
is to ensure that the Obama administration does not relax its hostility
toward Iran despite the election of a moderate new president. But that
won’t stop them from cheerleading for U.S. action in Syria which they
have been
clamoring for
since the Syrian civil war began. And then, of course there are
Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham who think Obama’s moves in Syria
are not nearly warlike enough.
Obama’s proposal to take sides in the Syrian war is wrong. It is
arrogant. It ignores our destructive history in the Middle East and the
perception by all parties in the region that everything we do there is
motivated by our blatant bias toward Israel. And it opens up the now
unforeseen possibility of an expanded war, perhaps even with John
McCain’s favorite solution: “boots on the ground.” After all, Reagan
never intended Marines to even fight in Lebanon, let alone be killed in
their beds.
The role of the United States should be to support unconditional
negotiations involving all sides with no stated goal other than to end
the killing. (Expecting the Assad regime to negotiate when we say the
goal of negotiations is its removal is absurd).
Helping to end the slaughter of innocents (by both sides) through
diplomacy is the only appropriate role for this country. It is also an
essential role. Dictating solutions to any other country’s civil war is
nothing but 19
th century imperialism, no different than President McKinley’s war to “liberate Cuba.”
What is Obama thinking?
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