Forum Post: Letter to a Syrian Friend Who Said: ‘Your Opposition to the US Attack on Syria Means You Support the Asad Regime’

Dear Friend:

You are in Syria, somewhere in Damascus. You have been involved in various protests to fight for more democratic space in Syria, and then, after the early months of 2011, to overthrow the regime of Bashar al-Asad. I have learned a great deal from people like you, about your country and about the nature of the struggles that confront you. You have seen the tide go out in your disfavor on two fronts: first, an international environment that seemed to be in harmony with your goals, but then turned out to be as conflicted about “regime change” as you are certain about it; second, an internal opposition that seemed to mimic the early wellsprings of the Arab uprisings in North Africa in its multivalent diversity, but then turned out to be hijacked by imperialist interests and by radical jihadis that you find intolerant and dangerous. As the politics goes against your more secular nationalism and democratic liberalism, and as you feel isolated in every which way, the advent of a US bombing raid seemed to be a deus ex machine—a thundercloud from Zeus himself. Such a clap of lightening on the hardened bases of military power would perhaps knock the wind out of the Asad regime, making it possible for people like you to clamber to the top of a revolutionary dynamic.

History offers you no hope of success along this path. On the wings of empire can come only grief. Recent interventions, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Libya, have not ended well for its people. In the month of August 2013, 804 people died in Iraq—numbers that rival the death rates of the worst period of sectarian violence. Libya’s security situation is torturous for its people, with assassinations and random violence the order of the day. The people of Afghanistan, and their twin in Yemen, face untold misery through night raids and drone strikes, and with few of the main human obstacles undone by the occupation.

The United States and its North Atlantic partners make extraordinary rhetorical pledges on behalf of human rights and for humanitarian relief, but these rarely translate into reality. Set aside the human rights record of the North Atlantic itself, whether in its colonial phase but equally in the present moment when it has been known to block routinely international regulations on arms sales and on the use of dangerous weapons. Set aside as well the internal human rights problems in the North Atlantic, whether against immigrants or against workers. Such things shall not detain us here. We should look only at the way the North Atlantic has used “human rights” in its military adventures.

First, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) states use “human rights” as pretext for war-making, but care little for the regime of human rights which would include reconciliation of the parties and investigation of the manner in which wars are conducted. NATO went to war in Libya based on a UN Security Council resolution. When asked if it would allow an investigation of its bombing campaign by a UN commission, NATO’s legal counsel Peter Olsen wrote in a letter dated 15 February 2012, “We would accordingly request that, in the event that the commission elects to include a discussion of NATO actions in Libya, its report clearly state that NATO did not deliberately target civilians and did not commit war crimes in Libya.” NATO states used an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant to go to war in Libya, but they have since been stubborn in their refusal to allow the ICC to execute these warrants against Saif al-Islam al-Qaddafi (held in Zintan, Libya). The regime of human rights has been trampled by NATO states, whose interests are to use the language of human rights for its sectional interests rather than fight to create a robust human rights system to benefit the wellbeing of the people of the planet.

If the North Atlantic states are cynical with their use of the language of human rights, they are equally limited in their appropriation of the idea of humanitarian relief. The most recent Syria Humanitarian Assistance Response Plan (SHARP) from June 2013 shows that there are now 6.8 million Syrians under UN care, including 4.25 million internally displaced people. Of these, three million are children, a million of whom have been edged out of Syria. The UN has criticized governments for being “slow to commit funds” and even slower to deliver the money. Pledges of financial support to the crucial UN agencies are made at the frequent conferences. Little more than a third of the SHARP request has been committed. Only one percent of the eleven million dollars requested for food and nutrition for the Syrian refugees has been delivered, and only 3.7 percent of the 343 million dollars of the emergency non-food aid has been transferred. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says that almost sixty-five percent of the needs of Syrian refugees are unmet. If the North Atlantic states were truly humanitarian, they would open their vast coffers to take care of the immediate needs of the Syrian refugees, and if the Gulf Arab states were equally humanitarian, they would finance the removal of these refugees from dangerous zones to safe havens. If the North Atlantic states were truly interested in humanitarianism, they would increase the actual financial resources given to the refugees. Bombing Syria will simply displace more people into penury.

The United States says that it wants to bomb Syria to punish the Asad regime for its use of chemical weapons. But keep in mind that it will likely use Tomahawk missiles, whose warheads might or might not be tipped with depleted uranium (DU). In other words, the United States will punish the Asad regime’s alleged use of chemical weapons by bombing Syria with a weapon that the UN General Assembly has four times asked to be sanctioned (but cannot because of the votes against these resolutions from France, Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States). One hundred and fifty-five countries worry that depleted uranium will contaminate groundwater and produce environmental and health hazards for generations. The United States used such weapons in Iraq, where a 2010 study (Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005-2009) found that the rate of heart defects was thirteen times that in Europe, the nervous system abnormalities at birth were thirty-three times that in Europe, and the childhood cancer rate was twelve times greater than those before the use of DU in Fallujah in 2004. These are the consequences of an imperialist bombardment. It will violate law in order to pretend to uphold law. It will use dangerous chemicals to protest the use of dangerous chemicals. It will get self-righteous about chemical weapons, such as nerve gas, that it sold to the Assad government within the past three years.

You are part of the Syrian rebellion, sandwiched between the expatriate leadership of the Free Syrian Army and the heinous fractions of jihadis. Your claim is that the US bombardment is to overthrow Assad, but this is precisely not the war aim of the United States. It threatened to act in late August only because the US President Barack Obama had the previous year fallen into the trap of the “red-lines.” Unable to act in any way in 2012, he threatened that he would act if the Asad regime used chemical weapons. His words came back to bite him (although we do not know yet with any certainty about those chemical weapons). To respond, Obama had chosen, before he was blocked by the UK parliament, to fire a barrage of Tomahawk missiles. The US military says that the Tomahawks have “limited tactical effect”–which means they would create random destruction in Syria, but would be unlikely to degrade the military capacity of the regime.

Why has the United States been unwilling to conduct a Libyan-style air war on behalf of the rebels in Syria? For one, the Libyan engagement did not work out as well as the NATO states assumed: chaos reigns supreme in the country, and the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi has made the US political class skittish of full action on behalf of rebels whose political views spank of anti-Americanism. Second, chaos in Libya is a price that the NATO states are willing to pay as long as the oil continues to flow and the migrants do not. With Syria, chaos that threatens Israel and that allows Hezbollah to continue to get logistical support from Iran is unacceptable. It is far better to allow Syria to bleed and to let a maelstrom of internecine warfare blind Hezbollah and the jihadis than to allow any kind of Islamist regime in power in Damascus. Asad is preferable to Israel than a Syrian Muslim Brotherhood leader (the Syrian Brotherhood is far more radical than the Egyptian Ikhwan, and even that was too much for Tel Aviv). The commitment of the NATO states to the fall of Asad is shallow. They are committed to a weakened Iran and Hezbollah, which is what motivates their cynical policy. Asad is neither here nor there.

All this is well and good, you say to me. What alternatives do you have? Do you expect us to have to tuck our dreams to sleep and return to the status quo ante?

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