Damascus Calling: Why We Must Intervene in Syria
When the sordid Sergey Lavrov demanded to know “the endgame” of the Security Council’s attempt to interfere with Bashar Assad’s atrocities against his people, Hillary Clinton replied that “the endgame in the absence of us acting together as the international community, I fear, is civil war.” According to many press accounts, there is already a civil war in Syria. Lavrov later remarked about the Security Council resolution that he and his Chinese colleague had villainously gutted and then scuttled that it would have meant “taking sides in a civil war.” In Washington, “Syria experts” told The New York Times that the absence of unified international action at the United Nations might “provid[e] a recipe for all-out civil war,” and that the arming of the Syrian opposition “could lead to civil war.” It is important to note, in the light of all this, that there are things more dire than civil war—the massacre of a population by a government, for example. If a civil war is taking place in Syria, then a substantial part of the Syrian population is opposed to the Syrian regime, and Assad’s interpretation of the freedom movement as a terrorist conspiracy hatched by Syria’s enemies is exposed as a lie. And if a civil war is taking place in Syria, it is a sign of the moral and psychological soundness of the Syrian resistance, which has recognized that there are types of violence against which non-violence will avail nothing. Their peaceful demonstrations were met by wanton force, and it is proper that they should defend themselves and their better conception of their country. Civil wars are regular crucibles in the formation of nations, which sooner or later must decide how they wish to be governed and why. (Our civil war was the deferred war of our constitution.) Of course the civil war in Syria is also a tribal war, but the blame for the ethnic explosiveness of Syria rests with its dictator, who rules tribally. As for Lavrov’s warning about taking sides in a civil war, it is a vile hypocrisy. His government has already taken sides in this civil war, along with the government of Iran. Outside powers have already intervened in Syria, and on the side of the killers. It is only the civilians in the streets who are friendless.