Obsessive compulsive disorders often leads sufferers into repetitive behaviors to reduce associated anxiety. The fixated, unthinking, irrational or harmful behaviors can threaten the well-being of an individual. America has obsessions. Nearly forty years ago we became obsessed with Iran. That ungrateful nation had the audacity to depose the US-installed puppet (and his Pahlavi Peacock throne) whom we had imposed on the Iranians decades earlier. The dumping of our man angered us deeply. Then they underscored our powerlessness by prospering and thumbing their nose at us for the next three plus decades. Ten years ago, we obsessed over Iraq and its supposed weapons of mass destruction. We bombed that nation back into the stone age, lost thousands of our troops, and killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, then left the smouldering hulk of that nation to the radicalized survivors and their Iranian friends and neighbors. Nearly eleven years ago, after the 9-11 attack by a group consisting of 19 Saudi Arabian suicide terrorists (out of 20), we ignored the Saudis and obsessed over Afghanistan harboring of a few hundred al Qaida. We also fumed over their fundamentalist theology and misogyny...and fussed desperately about getting their young girls into schools. We invaded Afghanistan and imposed on them our form of government and installed our own man Karzai. After a decade we remain stuck militarily in that sorry nation, unable to leave. Today, most of us are unwilling to stay there, even as our weary, multiple-deployed troops go bonkers, some tossing copies of the Moslem sacred Koran into town garbage pits to burn, arousing the ire of a whole nation, as others go out on private and unauthorized revenge-missions killing innocent women and children. While this happens, our government works secretly to inveigle the Taliban, the same group we kicked out of power ten years ago, to return to the political fold, so perhaps we could leave with dignity. When Libya erupted into civil war, just like any obsessive-compulsive who must to go back and make sure the house door is really locked for the tenth time, we felt compelled to bomb and strafe Gadaffi's forces in Libya--just to satisfy our interventionist compulsion.
Most recently, the unfortunate civil unrest in Syria, has our callused and tense trigger fingers trembling in anticipation. The sorry events in Syria, have gown over this year from peaceful demonstrations into armed insurrection with the help of outsiders. One of our white-haired, battle-scarred, war-monger Senators, recently limped up to the Senate microphone to propose a new war with Syria. This individual, joined by other irresponsible, irrational types, all elder long term residents of the Senate, all perhaps suffering from arterial stenosis of the cranial arteries seem compelled to send young men and women into senseless conflicts. "Attack Syria!" They call. This group, some simply misguided, others with tribal interests in that part of the world, would love to stir up another "real" war in the Middle East. But beneath their irrational rhetoric there lurks a bit of twisted logic and consistency...they remain fixated on ancient enemy Iran and would still like to get their final revenge. Knocking down Syria (an Iranian ally) would be a back-door thrust at Iran, and perhaps an opening for a hot war with the Islamic Republic. But let us not fail to recall these Senators are the prevaricators and blockheads who led the charge behind George Bush into Iraq, ostensibly going after non-existent weapons of mass destruction. They apparently have learned nothing from the past obsessions and disasters they contributed to. It reminds me of the two pack-a-day cancer patient who just had his smokey-grey, tumorous lung removed, steps out of his hospital ward and crosses the street to purchase a carton of unfiltered Camels cigarettes. To some, ramming their heads repeatedly into a brick wall seems to feel good to them.
Thomas Walkom, journalist at "National Affairs" in Canada, states wisely and incisively that there are three words that explain why Canada (and others) should stay our of Syria: "Afghanistan, Libya, and Iraq". Were we to honestly evaluate the results of these three wars of choice, we must conclude we and those nations would all have been much better off if we had just stayed home.
We have not learned to curb our obsessive behaviors yet.
Though our secret, under the table, cloak and dagger actions against the Assad regime remain ignored by our press, reading between the lines we can be sure that the CIA and other such groups are attempting to encourage, financially support, and unify the Sunni opposition. But this place is not Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya. Syria is a modern nation with up-to-date weapons, a well disciplined Allawhite core elite, a fractured opposition which controls no territory, and a nation with powerful and near-by friends and allies.
Our stated US policy of attempting to reach out to the fractured Sunni opposition is a cynical action on our part, with no hope of helping the oppressed Syrians. I wish our government policies would more often be guided by the Hippocratic ideal when we so big-heartedly claim to offer "humanitarian" aid. Hippocrates of Kos would have insisted that all such attempts to help others also follow the requirement:"never do harm".
If we were truly concerned about the Syrian people we would keep our hands off, since our intervention can only make things wore for the mass of Syrians. We can not help them militarily, our own Pentagon, has made that abundantly clear many times. Our half-hearted attempts at help--such as suggestions by our Secretary of State Clinton that we will try to make contact with the opposition to unite the fractured elements, sound like crumbs offered the starving. Such forms of help, including the increasingly common anti tank and aircraft weapons, which are apparently being smuggled into Syria (through allies Turkey and Jordan) can only prolong and intensity the conflict.
Our irrational national compulsions have led us into harmful and threatening situations. Does it serve the greater Middle East to have a wider war, another basket case nation, more unrest and terrorism? Will our obsession with military interventionism just lead us into another disaster intervention, another military quagmire?
Kofi Anan's mode rational approach, using political pressure and diplomacy, has the best chance of success and avoids intensifying the conflict and sacrificing more lives needlessly.
Get the picture?
rjk
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