The Tragedy of Syria Will Linger
Mike Walker, Col USMC (retired)
All,
It is clear and understandable that there is no will to reverse an Assad victory in Syria.
What is also abundantly clear is that the destruction of the non-violent movement to change Syria for the better that began in March 2011 led to a savage war resulting in over one hundred thousand deaths and counting.
Assad will win and lead a radicalized regime ruling over an embittered people. Internally, the regime has been and will continue to be a brutal police state. That, as the international community has long acknowledged, will be “too bad, so sad” for the Syrians but acceptable to the rest of us.
If that is the worse thing to happen then most will be pleased. Alas, that is improbable as this uprising was never a neatly discrete internal Syrian matter and cannot be contained through inaction.
More importantly, there is no going back to the status quo of 2011.
Assad’s continued survival will rely on Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia as all are far more committed to victory than anyone in the West or elsewhere in the Middle East.
For the Islamic Republic of Iran and Hezbollah, an Assad victory is a critical objective designed to destabilize the region.
Both are revolutionary entities that have no interest in maintaining the status quo. To the contrary, their goal is to radically reshape the region to their liking.
A revolutionary Shi’a crescent stretching from Afghanistan to Egypt is the vision of many expansionist extremists in Iran and, fortunately, a minority position amongst the ruling Ayatollahs. But all of them accept some form of a revolutionary crescent and a vision shared by a large majority of Iran’s ruling clerics is a bloc containing Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.
This is the scenario Iran is following.
A progressive Syria interested in integrating into the larger world was an anathema.
If the March 2011 protests had led to a peaceful transition of power away from Assad then it would have given a tremendous boost to similar progressive movements in Lebanon and Iraq, steering the Middle East into a brighter future while shattering Iran’s revolutionary dream of a Shi’a crescent.
Conversely, if Assad becomes a dependency of Iran, an outcome that is almost certain now, then the combined pressure of Iran and Syria will drive Iraq into the bloc. Concurrently, or in sequence, Lebanon – under unrestrained pressure from Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran – will have no choice but to accept Shi’a rule directed from Tehran.
Once that is accomplished, Iran will finally have (1) a long border with Israel, some 150 km in length running along the Lebanese and Syrian frontiers, and (2) a direct overland route to deploy Iranian forces in combination with the Assad and Hezbollah armies.
We have to start looking at a much larger future war in the Middle East. Faced with that reality, the need to take WMD off the table is critical.
That is why we need to act now, in the full knowledge that such action will be painful, imperfect, and costly.
If the Shi’a bloc is comfortable in using WMD during a war of annihilation to destroy Israel then there will be millions of fatalities in the region.
If that war can be contained to a conventional conflict then the feasibility of victory by Iran and its allies is greatly diminished and the likely cost may deter the war entirely.
If employing WMD remains an acceptable option, then an unspeakably horrific war will become virtually inevitable within a decade or so – and if victorious, these people will not stop with Israel.
Inaction today will guarantee a dark tomorrow.
So if you must, go ahead and politically skewer an apparently confused President Obama for making a bad situation all the worse but in the end, support action.
Mike
