The Snarks of War

I am a follower of the reliably solid left-wing blog Left Foot Forward on Facebook.

One of the more admirable traits of the blog is its willingness to stand up for human rights in the Middle East and in recent weeks it has featured some good coverage of the escalating slaughter in Syria. However, every time an update is filed on the Facebook page some snarky Chomsky-wannabe appears to offer a ‘commentary’ on the situation.

When a story was posted about an anti-Assad activist calling for a no-fly zone, one follower felt obliged to comment “what about Bahrain, Yemen and Saudi Arabia? Do these countries not exist? Or is Syria the whole Arab world now? Motives for intervening in Syria are wholly selfish and will not benefit the Syrian people, instead the country will just be divided up and more bloodshed will take place between the dozen or so ethnic groups that reside there”.

Why does the fact that there are other abhorrent regimes in the Middle East mean we shouldn’t intervene to stop one that is escalating a war on its own people by the day? What justification is offered for a potential Western intervention being ‘selfish’? Is the opposition to any intervention in Syria by Russia and China (both of whom have significant trade relations with the Assad regime, particularly in arms and oil) a selfless and principled stance? And even if the motives were selfish, what does it matter if lives are saved? What evidence is there that the country will be divided up?

The answer is that there is no evidence for anything offered up by the comments, but they are disdainful of the West and that’s all that counts. No matter if they are also disdainful of the Syrian people being murdered by the army every day. No matter if they offer succour to the fascist dictatorship of Assad, or if they take sides with Russia, a one-party state with rigged elections that assassinates dissidents, and China, a one-party state that doesn’t even bother rigging elections and which tortures its own citizens on a scale to make Guantanamo look insignificant. None of this matters so long as the self-satisfied ‘left-wing’ Westerner can voice their smug negativity. It is not a considered argument but a vacuous and constant oppositionalism with no thought to consequences.

This was repeated a few days later when another story about the escalating mass-killing in Homs was met with the following comment form another ill-informed snark: “Western intervention normally leads to even more slaughter”.

There you have it, Syrian comrades; forget the reality of murder and violence you face every day, ‘Western intervention’ (not withstanding the fact that the Arab League has also called for intervention) will only lead to more slaughter so I’m afraid we can do nothing to help you.

Of course Western non-intervention by contrast has worked so well before to prevent slaughters in Srebrenica and Rwanda. The point is that every situation is different, and if people want to have a proper debate about the pros and cons of intervention in Syria then let’s have it. The situation in Syria is complex and there are no easy answers in the long-term, but to glibly dismiss Western intervention as always leading to more slaughter is foolish and ignorant, one only has to ask a Kosovan to see this.

The priority has to be to end the killing in Syria and to prevent a full-blown civil war. This may well require intervention from NATO and/or The Arab League, and if that is the case then the petty minds that must always blame the West for everything need to start thinking practically or end up cuddling next to Bashar al-Assad, Vladimir Putin and the ruthless bureaucrats of the Chinese Communist Party.