What the U.S. should do to help Syria

United Nations special envoy Kofi Annan decried Friday the massacre of more than 200 people in Tremseh, Syria, thought to be the worst single incident since the demonstrations began in the spring of 2011. But what else will be done? Many arguments have been advanced against a more robust U.S. response to the crisis, including:

 

●We do not know enough about the Syrian opposition and military insurgency;

 

●What follows might be worse;

 

● Past interventions didn’t go well; and

 

●We can’t intervene everywhere.

 

Not one of these arguments stands up to moral or geopolitical scrutiny.

 

So far, more than 17,000 people have been killed, many of them in indiscriminate attacks on towns by the Syrian army or in massacres of civilians by Syrian security forces and their allied “shabiha” militias. Syria is rapidly descending into a civil war that could lead to ethnic cleansing along the lines of Iraq in 2006. That would have serious consequences for regional stability. Iran and Russia are already militarily involved, whether through boots on the ground (Iran) or major arms sales (Russia). China, worried about interference in human rights abusers’ internal affairs, has joined Russia in protecting Damascus in the U.N. Security Council.

 

On the other side, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are arming and financing the military opposition, primarily to eliminate another Shiite regime allied with Tehran and help shape a Sunni fundamentalist follow-on government. Syria’s military opposition is increasingly gaining ground, the Institute for the Study of War has found. The Annan plan for Syria’s future — which advocates, among other things, a “national unity government” that neither side will accept — was dead even before it was not adopted at recent international meetings. Both sides know their survival is at stake and will not yield.

 

With Syria’s future already taking shape, the question is: Will the United States play a role in shaping it? Or will it stand aside and let those less committed to democratic principles do it?

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