The Revolution Armed Itself

Robin Yassin-Kassab

 "Lynch is right that direct foreign military intervention is inadvisable. It would fulfill the expectations of those in and beyond the Middle East who believe the Syrian revolution is all about Iran and that the revolutionaries are pawns in the hands of dastardly foreign powers. There’s too much bad history, particularly as far as the United States is concerned. Moreover, Syria would be an infinitely more difficult conflict than Libya: Western forces would find themselves fighting several wars at once — against Iran, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, perhaps even against Kurdish insurgents. Their presence might well exacerbate the sectarian element of the conflict.

 But direct military intervention has always been highly unlikely. It’s a red herring (the most persistent red herring of the conflict) — and one that misjudges the West’s mood, its economy, and its current capabilities in the Middle East. The only useful intervention that can be hoped for is not a land or air invasion but a coordinated effort between the West, the Arabs, and Turkey to fund and arm the Syrian National Coalition, which is now recognized by over 130 countries as the “sole” or “legitimate” representative of the Syrian people."

 Mostly though, those who oppose intervention without any proposals for what should be done by Syrians instead, those telling us the enemy is at home and not Assad, that Syria is another Iraq, are doing nothing to help the Syrian people and will be hated by them. These non-interventionists are the ones rehabilitating Tony Blair's cult of liberal intervention, as their alternative is the continuing massacre of the Syrian people. There is a better way, of pressuring governments to allow the arming of the FSA so that Syrian can achieve their freedom, and unrepresentative jihadi groups can be left to make their unrepresentative little plans while the world moves on, but there is no point whining about the rain if you don't bring an umbrella.

 If the Americans drop some cruise missiles on Assad's forces, I'm not going to lose any sleep. They have a bad record of killing civilians by accident, and imperial bombing is often a good propaganda weapon for whoever is fighting them. But to say "we are against intervention" without proposals of how the fight against Assad can be taken to victory, is to invite the murder of Syrians by their government. 
Many of those simplistic anti-interventionists repeat the word Iraq like a magic formula. The magic doesn't really work on those who opposed the war for oil from the start, but can spot the difference when a revolution takes place. The liberal interventionists used to ask at the time, "What would you do about Saddam?" and I think the answer was quite clear, when there is a full-scale imperialist war going on against Iraq you cannot fight both at once, but at any other time it's a great idea. And when Saddam really does use chemical weapons, as he did at Halabja in 1988, you don't pretend that it is a fiction dreamt up by the neo-cons. And there is no prospect of a full-scale imperialist war in Syria, a few bombs or a No Fly Zone do not change the fact that the struggle is between the régime and the rebels, and if you haven't expressed any sympathy for the rebels but have written them off as God-Know-What or liver-eating maniacs, just calling any action against Assad a disaster is to miss the point.