What War Photographs Leave Out
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It is also not ... well, anywhere else. The Syrian war is not, of course, unique, and the desire to learn from past political conflicts and wars is natural and, to a point, intelligent. But the Syrian situation is not simply a replica of other times and other places. Syria is not Spain in 1936, Vietnam, Libya, or Egypt. It is not Iraq (a conflation that many Syrians bitterly resent). Nor is it Sierra Leone, Liberia, East Timor, or Kosovo. An overthrow of the Assad regime by foreign forces would not be akin to Tanzania's deposing of Uganda's Idi Amin or to Vietnam's ousting of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge. Yet all of these false analogies have been made by journalists, analysts, and political commentators. And the frequency with which they are made is a sign of how hard it is to think about Syria as Syria—that is, in specific and original ways.
Of course there is a debate—many debates—about the war. They are as convoluted as the conflict itself; "strange bedfellows" does not begin to describe the landscape. (The Syrian oppositionist Yassin al-Haj Saleh has said in a recent issue of New Politics, "Honestly, I've failed to discern who is right and who is left in the West from a leftist Syrian point of view."
Thus Daniel Pipes, president of the arch-conservative Middle East Forum, shares the position of Slavoj Zizek, currently the world's wackiest Marxist. In 2012, Pipes argued that "the continuing Syrian conflict offers benefits to the West" because the opposing groups' "lethal rivalry lessens their capabilities to trouble the outside world." (Pipes continues to hold a bizarrely cheerful view of the war; an article of his from earlier this year was titled, "Syria's Civil War Could Stabilize Its Region." Slavoj Zizek has loftily dismissed Syria as an "obscure conflict" that is "just a complex network of religious and ethnic alliances overdetermined by the influence of the superpowers"—in short, "nothing really special." Neither man gives a whit for the suffering of the Syrians or the future of the country; a pox on all their houses is the best they can muster. Former interventionists such as David Rieff (in Bosnia) and Thomas Friedman (in Iraq) now urge a stay-out position: Rieff has argued that any intervention, even in the case of chemical weapons attacks, would be "pointless . . . stupidity," while Friedman urges Obama to "have the courage of his own ambivalence."
Conversely, Syria has forced the leftist academic Richard Falk, who for decades has opposed virtually any U.S. use of force, to become "dissatisfied" with his Chomsky-like anti-interventionism: "Human solidarity with the ordeal of the Syrian people was being deeply compromised by the advocacy of passivity," he wrote after attending a 2013 conference on the Syrian crisis. Speaking of Chomsky, the usually well-informed (if often wrong-headed) professor has been led into some magical thinking by the Syrian dilemma. He has argued that Assad remains in power because the U.S. and Israel have failed to depose him—though Chomsky would, of course, be in the very forefront of vitriolic condemnation should such regime-change come to pass. He has been quoted as saying:
The fact of the matter is, that were the United States and Israel interested in bringing down the Syrian regime there is a whole package of measures they could take before they came to the arms-supply option ... including, for example, America encouraging Israel to mobilize its forces along the northern border, a move that would not produce any objections from the international community ... But this has not happened, nor will it, so long as America and Israel remain unwilling to bring down [the] Assad regime.
These statements haven't the faintest relationship to reality, which I take to be a sign of how crazy Syria is making just about everyone.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/123124/what-photographs-syrian-war-do-and-dont-tell-us
Long, gloomy, and very good.
= new reply since forum marked as read
It's good to see some renewed interest in discussing what it going on in our Wars/Interventions in the ME. This article seems to show the hopelessness of failed policy and quaqmire. Obama will put in more troops to try to stave off the inevitable and pass it off to the next President.
We need to examine WHY Obama tried to fulfill his Promise to bring the Troops Home in his first term...but he has now extended troop presence in Afghanistan to Beyond his Second Term and the way things are going after Afghanistan Extension to even moving back into Iraq, Syria with increased troops and who knows where else are now open to "Troop Extensions."
This 2016 Election might be our last chance to stop the "MIC War MACHINE." If we can't find candidates we can push to come up with better solutions then we may be entangled well past our ability to Pay For It ALL!
We need to have this on the Agenda for 2016....because the Wars are Draining us and our Treasury which needs to focus on Infrastructure, Jobs, Climate Change from Floods and Storms and Poverty and lack of Growth in Our Economy...and so much more.
Thanks for Posting this Article which does show the Confusion...about "What do We Do Now!"
