Wasted Opportunity

While the world has spent three years watching a slaughter in Syria and doing nothing, the terrorist groups who seek to do innocents worldwide (most recently in Kenya) harm have gotten stronger. Just today the NYTimes reported that key rebel groups formerly aligned with the political opposition to Assad have disavowed that opposition government in favor of the Islamist movement building among the Syrian rebels.


While the article does not mention the failure of Western powers to intervene to stop the bloodshed, it is undeniable that the group we support is wavering while the Islamist rebels, those with ties to al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, those who want Sharia law, are growing stronger. Not only have we failed to prevent a massacre, but we have wasted a chance to help forge a stronger, more democratic, more stable Syria. Instead we find ourselves looking through a closing window of opportunity at a soon-to-be failed state in which violence and instability are the norm. We may very well laud ourselves for not being drawn into the conflict in Syria, but I maintain that is silly. We were drawn in the moment the fighting started, we have simply failed to accept responsibility, and as a result we are both guilty of being passive bystanders to slaughter and also for undermining our own strategic interests.

This should have been - and was - obvious to some from the outset, but the recent defection of key rebel forces to the Islamist branch from the government in exile only increases the likelihood that whenever Assad falls - and fall he will, there is no way he can ever rule a united Syria again - an Islamic pseudo-state will replace his regime. So instead of intervening to stop a massacre when there was a chance of establishing a legitimate government - I don't pretend this would have been easy - we sat on our hands while innocents were and continue to be slaughtered, and now the tide has turned in favor of the group of rebels we would prefer not to see win.


Doing the right thing is rarely easy. In Syria, the decision to do the right thing, the hard thing, was never made, and so we've never had the chance to take difficult action. Instead we did what was "easy" - which in this scenario also means morally indefensible - and as a result we are now looking at a situation that seems likely to end up far worse than how it started, and potentially far worse than if we had taken action.

This wasted opportunity will probably haunt us. The violence and instability in Syria is detrimental to world peace and security, and particularly to our safety here in the United States. Our short-sighted indifference to the plight of others has already started paying the wrong kinds of dividends.