To Interfere Or Not To Interfere - Syria?

To Interfere Or Not To Interfere - Syria?

12 years after starting the invasion of Afghanistan and 10 years after the invasion of Iraq we are once again poised at the brink of interfering in foreign politics with major force. As I write the US government is seeking backing from its legislative assemblies on the use of force against Syrian sites. This is in response to the government of Syria using chemical weapons on it's own citizens in it's ongoing civil war. Allegedly.

So far the international community, with the exception of some of the Gulf states, have been content to sit back and let the country kill itself for the last couple years.

For the most part only France and the US want to wade in. For their own reason's (and they are probably nefarious ones) China and Russia are not interested. The rest of Europe is a little more cautious.

It is easy to see why. From a British perspective we have watched the coffins return from abroad for many years now. A town had had it's name changed in homage to the respect they showed the returning personnel. We are still not out of that conflict and another one rears it's head. The pretext for Iraq was false (A paper produced to back up the campaign was shown to be largely a work of fiction at the time). 

Once bitten twice shy.

Iraq and Afghanistan were marked by almost immediate military success but then it became more complicated. 

A part of the Islamic world saw all this activity as a smite at Islam itself. They signed up in droves to fight the western forces.

It has taken so long for the international community to step in with Syria and in the resulting vacuum it appears radical Islamists are moving in. The civil war in Syria has gone from a localised revolution in the Arab spring. It has polarised into a fight between two variations of Islam. 

With the exception of France and the US western powers appear not to relish the thought of going through all of that again. 

During the Iraq period I entered into an argument with some Americans about whether we shouldn't just pull out all together. It was a mess and needless young lives were being thrown away unnecessarily. Which was true but it was too late at that stage. We had brought it on ourselves and to walk out would have been immoral because it had only happened by our own actions.

 I guess this is what Britain is afraid of. A short military strike followed by a decade of "peace work" fighting off Islamists who are only there because we are.

The blood for this falls squarely on the shoulders of Assad's regime. It fiddled whilst Damascus burned. The regime could have brought the movement into government but instead chose to fight with military might and the whole of the Arab world is now paying.