Most Americans couldn’t find Yemen on a map, and they certainly can’t be worried that the US government is selling arms and supporting state sponsor of terrorism Saudi Arabia and its war there. From Lucy Steigerwald at antiwar.com:
Earlier this week, a young Syrian boy made the news in the worst, most captivating fashion. It often takes one photo of an atrocity to get the attention of the world for even a news cycle. Be it a tween naked and napalmed in Vietnam, a starving Sudanese child next to a leering vulture, or last year, the delicate, tossed-aside body of a Syrian toddler who drowned as his parents tried to make it to Europe, photos are the easiest, fastest way to remind comfy Westerners that there is always some kind of abject misery happening in the world outside of their vision.
This time the boy lived. A dazed five-year-old whose home was hit by an airstrike sits in a chair seemingly unaware of the photographer, or anything around him. The boy and his family were all trapped in their home in Aleppo, but survived; making the disturbing photo at least have a somewhat happy ending. On the other hand, that boy looks far too old. No little kid should have to look like that, but thousands of them do every day. We just don’t see it.
It’s a compelling image, but it’s from Syria, and there might just be a reason that you’ve been made sure to see it. The war there is catastrophic for life, property, and stability. The five-year-conflict has made millions of refugees, and killed up to half a million people.
Anyone with empathy wants to do something, and people who either have no empathy, or have too long been getting high off of their own imperialist supply would just love to do something.
Former Antiwar columnist Kelley Vlahos wrote last week over at The American Conservative that Hillary Clinton promised not to send ground troops to Syria. Vlahos is understandably skeptical because, well, when does Clinton ever want to take something off the foreign policy table? In the piece, Vlahos writes that Clinton may say no ground troops, but her record, her people, and her backers suggest that that will be a flimsy technicality at best. After all, are any of the 4500-plus Americans currently in Iraq “boots on the ground”? Not officially!
President Obama has often felt like a warmonger, considering his drone assassination program, the Libyan invasion, and the slow trickle back to Iraq. However, his Secretary of State Clinton was always champing at the bit to get more aggressive. She, as Vlahos noted, wanted Syrian strongman Bashar Al-Assad out, and most likely still does. Furthermore, in the most hawkish circles, Obama is still seen as the wuss who failed to follow through on his “red line,” thereby embarrassing America (I mean, leaving Syrians to die).
Getting Assad out sounds swell, provided that you have the magic touch necessary to find and aid only the rebels who aren’t the terrorists you thought you were fighting, and that you can somehow prevent a disastrous power vacuum from destroying the country even further. A devoted hawk might claim that it couldn’t get any worse over there, but when the US government intervenes, it always can.
So we’re talking about Syria because it’s dreadful, it’s caused a refugee crisis, and because two disturbing photos of boys not old enough to go to first grade have made us discuss it. But also because it’s the kind of conflict that the US always feels like it can fix. It’s itching to fix, to do something about before it’s too late.
To continue reading: The Hunger To Fix Syria, and the Indifference Towards Yemen
