Saturday 7 September 2013

What to do about Syria?

Get out and protest unilateral military action!  Twitter, facebook and phone congressmen, MPs, and the Whitehouse!  Take on Prime Minister Harper.

It doesn't work, you say? 

Peaceful protest ended the Vietnam war, segregation in the United States and apartheid in South Africa.  The Danes turned back Hitler in World War II by non-cooperation and protesting.  Regimes have been changed and dictators brought down by non-violent protest.

The “Arab Spring” in Syria was brutally squashed, apparently by President Assad's security forces, making room for multi-faceted sectarian violence, so-called revolutionary forces that come from a multitude of backgrounds.  Not even the government opposition supports their actions!

A gas attack on civilians is egregious but bombing the government or Assad's own fortress will not accomplish any good.  It could unleash a cascade of harm.

Obama knows that it could spiral out of control.  The United States is evacuating its embassy in Lebanon “as a safety measure”.  President Putin of Russia says that Russia would regard a military strike as an aggression against Russia.  Harper is saying that Russia shouldn't have a veto in the UN – but this isn't going to the UN.  Obama says he'll wait only for Congress to support him – and it is not clear whether he'll order an attack if he doesn't have their support.

Just a minute.  The United States and Russia both have enough nuclear weapons to plunge this world into a “nuclear winter” - in fact less than 1/10 of either countries arsenal would do it.  Volcanoes have done it in the past – the 1815 “year without summer” in Europe was the result of an eruption in Indonesia.

Who would press the button first?  Russia is dependent upon North American wheat so a failure of agriculture on this side of the Atlantic would have enormous “blowback” consequences for them.  The United States through President Bush has threatened the use of nuclear weapons “if necessary”.  But the end result would be roughly the same for the entire world.

Let's step back from military action while we can!

No comments:

Post a Comment