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Motives and methods

Motives and methods

by digby

Huffington Post:

The [Joint Intelligence Committee] had high confidence in all of its assessments except in relation to the regime’s precise motivation for carrying out an attack of this scale at this time,’ read an unclassified version of a British intelligence report, released last week. A declassified American intelligence summary doesn’t go much further, saying that regime ‘frustration’ with its inability to prevent rebel incursions into Damascus ‘may have contributed’ to the decision.

The lack of clarity on this issue may not ultimately undermine the case against Assad, but it does raise substantial worries about the effectiveness of the strike — and about Assad’s possible response in the aftermath. 

Well, yeah. The fact that nobody can offer up a good reason why the regime would purposefully invite the rest of the world to basically join the other side in its civil war should make you question whether lobbing bombs in response will alter its behavior — or anyone’s behavior. Things that don’t make a lot of sense to begin with aren’t likely to become clearer after you escalate with bombing strikes. After the Iraq fiasco, this lack of a believable motive sets off so many alarm bells that you can’t blame people for just sticking their fingers in their ears and singing “lalalalala.”

And speaking of motives, I just want to comment on David’s post below about telling your congressman to vote against because you think it’s none of our business. He believes that it is a counter productive argument because it will make congress do the opposite since they know that it is immoral to ignore the suffering of 100,000 people. He thinks people should make the pragmatic argument that we shouldn’t intervene because it won’t do any good.

We agree on the pragmatic argument — it won’t do any good and escalating the violence will likely make things worse. (It’s my primary motive for rejecting almost all military action that isn’t in direct self-defense.) But I have to defend the people who believe it’s none of our business. Americans have been shouldering the burden of being the world’s policemen for over half a century now. And that responsibility is always couched in humanitarian terms, even though we consistently find out later that the motives were much more complicated. With some exceptions, the citizens of this country have borne that burden with little complaint, backing our government’s decisions on where to spend blood and treasure over and over again. But this last decade has finally so frayed their trust that people are quite logically questioning whether this is sustainable. They are asking whether or not we can and should continue to play this role in the world.

After all, we have just gone through — are still going through — the most catastrophic economic crisis since the Great Depression. People are still reeling from protracted unemployment and a sense that their futures and their children’s futures will not be what they expected them to be just a short time ago. Americans are tired of crises and they are tired of war and they are tired of having to sign the check for yet another military adventure in a faraway land while everyone else in the world gets to sit it out. And I don’t blame them. This is what comes of empires that starve their people at home in order to spend enormous amounts of money on far flung global responsibilities.

I think it’s very important that congressional representatives understand their constituents’ feelings on this. And if they don’t, they will be punished for it at the ballot box. But I think they know that. In fact, the idea that members of congress truly feel a sense of obligation to the Syrian people that the average American does not, strikes me as unlikely. Members of congress are madly trying to figure out the smart move — and that has little to do with the moral case for war. It hardly ever does.

So,  I think people should just tell their congressional representatives what they really feel. If what they feel is that this is none of our business, that’s what they should say. FWIW, I’ve heard civilians in my own personal life say this more than once over the past week or so. People just do not understand why the US is the only country doing this. It sounds like the same old rhetoric (even down to the “he gassed his own people!”) and they aren’t buying it.  Why would they?

Update: I should add that I agree with David that the US can and should offer a moral alternative. Here’s one: how about we finally  join the ICC and push to have all perpetrators of war crimes atrocities in Syria’s civil war be tried in the Hague?  It won’t stop the bloodshed, but then neither will lobbing bombs.  And since we believe so strongly in international norms, this seems like a good one to add to the mix don’t you think?

Of course we’d have to be willing to deal with our own war crimes (and war criminals) which is why we haven’t done this already.  And which kind of makes a hash out of all of our governement’s humanitarian chest beating, doesn’t it?
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