I only say this because Richard Cohen seems to think that America is responsible for the huge body count being racked up:
Obama’s policy regarding Syria has been a strategic failure. More perplexing and more alarming, it has also been a moral failure. It has permitted — or at least not impeded — the deaths of upward of 70,000 people and created a humanitarian calamity with more than 1 million refugees. The region is being destabilized. People are living in misery. I can assure them that Washington is studying the problem.
We are not involved in the war in any meaningful way and bear no responsibility for the deaths. Moslems are simply killing other Moslems (and assorted non-Moslems, too) in a fight to control Syria.
While I have no problem in saying that our Syria policy has been ineffective, as Cohen does, failure to intervene has a lot to do with people like Cohen who thought that Iraqis were living in misery and we should do something about Saddam Hussein--then changed their minds when doing something became difficult. They're always looking for Mister Good War.
For the people like Cohen, "leadership" so easily turns to talks of war crimes and whether the president lied us into war. Can you blame President Obama for not wanting to rely on the steadfast support of his base in a Middle East War? The president didn't even want to risk asking for Congressional authorization for the Libya War!
I do believe the "Already Against the Next War" bumper stickers that so many on the left sported during the Iraq War telegraphed their intentions, no? Although they were pretty quiet during the undeclared Libya War. But Libya is messy enough. Syria would be really ugly.
Cohen even trots out the immaculate conception dream solution of some high-ranking military officer taking over in a coup--much as some hoped in Iraq as an alternative to invasion. Sadly, Saddam kept his generals in fear of joining "sting" plots so nobody was willing to act against Saddam. So far, despite the military taking a pounding in Syria, Assad seems firmly in control of his military. Some generals have escaped and defected, but nobody has stayed to put a bullet in Assad and seize control.
As I said, I won't argue against Cohen's assessment that the Obama administration's policy has been bad. He said of the president, "He gives the appearance of prudence, but looks can be deceiving. It’s actually an abject failure of leadership."
I always thought it was a no-brainer that we should have funneled weapons to those trying to overthrow an enemy of ours who has the blood of thousands of American troops on his hands as well as even more Iraqis, both uniformed and civilian. And supporting rebels early in their resistance could have interrupted the growth of radical jihadis in the rebel ranks, as Cohen notes has happened.
I was not and am not eager to send in troops to fight in Syria. I haven't even bothered to think about how we should intervene since I know there is no way our public would support a tough fight there after the Syrian military is swept aside. And if intervention is needed, Turkey has the capability of doing it. Jordan is capable of helping. And we can support both of these allies in their actions with logistics help and with help in smashing up the jihadis in the post-Assad round two fight between the rebel factions when the jihadis try to take over the whole place.
But even if our hands-off policy in Syria has not prevented the dispute from being militarized, as Secretary of State Clinton famously warned us, that is a far cry from saying the deaths are our fault. But that's the way it is for lots of Moslems around the world and lots of the left around the world--it's our fault if we do something and Moslems die; and it's our fault if we don't do something and Moslems die.
