DIARIST MARCH 12, 2013
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"One could never have supposed that, after passing through so many trials, after being schooled by the skepticism of our times, we had so much left in our souls to be destroyed.” Alexander Herzen wrote those words in 1848, after he witnessed the savage crackdown on the workers’ rebellion in Paris. Having been disabused by history of any illusions about the probabilities of justice, the great man was surprised to discover that he had not yet been completely disabused—that his belief in the betterment of human affairs, however mutilated by experience, was still intact; and what apprised him of his irreducible idealism was his broken heart. In 1995, I cited Herzen’s pessimistic optimism, or optimistic pessimism, in an angry article about Bosnia and the Western failure there, and glossed the lacerating sentence this way: “They did not suppose that they had so much left in their souls to be destroyed! What basis for bitterness do those words leave us, who have witnessed atrocities of which the nineteenth century only dreamed, who have watched totalitarian slaughter give way to post-totalitarian slaughter, and the racial and tribal wars of empire give way to the racial and tribal wars of empire’s aftermath? But bitterness is regularly refreshed . . . ” Forgive my quotation of myself, but I have been reading in the old Bosnian materials, in the writings of the reporters and the intellectuals who campaigned for American action to stop a genocide. I have been doing so because my Bosnian bitterness has been refreshed by Syria.
I am finding crushing parallels: a president who is satisfied to be a bystander, and ornaments his prevarications with high moral pronouncements; an extenuation of American passivity by appeals to insurmountable complexities and obscurities on the ground, and to ethnic and religious divisions too deep and too old to be modified by statecraft, and to ominous warnings of unanticipated consequences, as if consequences are ever all anticipated; an arms embargo against the people who require arms most, who are the victims of state power; the use of rape and torture and murder against civilians as open instruments of war; the universal knowledge of crimes against humanity and the failure of that knowledge to affect the policy-making will; the dailiness of the atrocity, its unimpeded progress, the long duration of our shame in doing nothing about it. The parallels are not perfect, of course. Only 70,000 people have been killed in Syria, so what’s the rush? Strategically speaking, moreover, the imperative to intervene in Syria is far more considerable than the imperative to intervene in Bosnia was. Assad is the client of Iran and the patron of Hezbollah: his destruction is an American dream. But his replacement by an Al Qaeda regime is an American nightmare, and our incomprehensible refusal to arm the Syrian rebels who oppose Al Qaeda even as they oppose Assad will have the effect of bringing the nightmare to pass. Secretary of State Kerry seems to desire a new Syrian policy, but he is busily giving our side in the conflict—if we are to have a side by the time this is over—everything but what it really needs.
We must mark an anniversary. It has been two years since fifteen teenagers in the town of Dara’a scrawled “the people want the regime to fall” on the wall of a school, and were arrested and then tortured for their temerity. The protest that erupted in Dara’a, in the area in front of a mosque that was dubbed “Dignity Square,” was a democratic rebellion, and it swiftly spread. In Dara’a it was met by a crackdown whose brutalities were documented in an unforgettably chilling report by Human Rights Watch a few months later. Dissolve now to Aleppo in ruins, where the dictator is hurling ballistic missiles at his own population. Two years. The Obama administration may as well not have existed. Though two years into the Bosnian genocide Bill Clinton was still more than a year away from bestirring himself morally and militarily, so what’s the rush? Clinton acted after the massacre at Srebrenica. But Syria has already had its Srebrenicas, and Obama is still elaborate and unmoved. He also worries about a Russian response to American action, when Putin’s obstructionism in fact perfectly suits Obama’s preference for American inaction. People around the White House tell me that Syria is agonizing for him. So what? It is hard to admire the agony of the bystander, especially if the bystander has the capability to act against the horror. Obama likes to drape himself in Lincoln’s language, so he should ponder these words, from the Annual Message to Congress in 1862: “We—even we here—hold the power, and bear the responsibility.” Obama wants the power but not the responsibility. Unfortunately for him, the one brings the other.
Not even the advent of Barack Obama can abrogate what was learned in Bosnia in the antiquity of the twentieth century: that in the case of moral emergencies, those with the ability to act have the duty to act; that even justified action is attended by uncertainty; that military force can do good as well as evil, and that war is not the only, or the worst, evil; that the withdrawal of the United States from global leadership is an invitation to tyranny and inhumanity; that American foreign policy must be animated by principle as well by prudence, though there is nothing historically imprudent about setting oneself resolutely on the side of decency and democracy. “How do I weigh tens of thousands who’ve been killed in Syria versus the tens of thousands who are currently being killed in the Congo?” Obama recently told this magazine, as an example of how he “wrestle[s]” with the problem. Do not be fooled. It is not wrestling. It is casuistry. He has no intention of coming to the assistance of Congo, either. Obama is a strong cosmopolitan but a weak internationalist. And he is, with his inclination to disinvolvement, and his almost clinical confidence in his own sagacity, implicating us in a disgrace, even we here.
7 comments
How about not launching into another war where we don't even know what victory can look like? I supported war in Libya for the reasons I don't in Syria. In Libya there was a clear demarcation between rebels and Gadhafi forces, we knew the leadership in the opposition fairly well as most had come from the previous regime but weren't irrevocably tainted by it, and prospects for regime change were certain (though it took a little longer than I expected), and most importantly required no US ground troops. Even with the great success in the war there was still some blowback as in Benghazi and in Mali. Leon imagines he could have easily distinguished between the Salafis and ordinary Sunnis and armed the ordinary ones accordingly imagining somehow the radicals won't win out. Nor do I imagine how intervention would play out, the rebels are plenty well armed already, does he want a no fly zone imposed by America and what would be America alone at far greater cost (this is in the age of Republican parsimony, they even cut defense in a time of war because cutting is virtuous....or something) I am not being a blind Obama defender, leading up to the intervention in Libya I was one of his fiercest critics myself but in this case since I myself don't have an idea what to do it is probably best to do nothing. Assad's regime is slowly crumbling, at best for him he will be a regional warlord controlling a small portion of Syria. I know it sounds cruel but let them bleed each other out, pressing our thumb on the scale will make any future reconciliation impossible. What I envision is a fractured and weak Syria with Assad in exile or assassinated, held together like Lebanon, with a Sunni President, a Shia VP, a Christian PM. All sides will be so spent that they will coexist.
- blackton
March 12, 2013 at 9:42am
Because the "insurmountable complexities and obscurities on the ground, and to ethnic and religious divisions too deep and too old to be modified by statecraft, and to ominous warnings of unanticipated consequences, as if consequences are ever all anticipated; an arms embargo against the people who require arms most, who are the victims of state power", Leon in his wisdom would have America intervene in every conflict involving dignity and self-determination except when it comes to Israel/Palestinian conflict for which he declares America 'persona non grata' when brokering a two-sided agreement between two peoples, whose ethnic and religious divisions really are too deep and too old to be modified by state-craft considering three generations have lived through "peace accords, cease fires, Camp David, Road Map to Peace, etcetera, etcetera.____ I bring this up as an example of a chasm that exists within the confines of the 20th century. Comparing the Sunni-Shia sectarian rifts within the Muslim world that have existed since 632, one wonders how long the statecraft process would take before those two sides would allow peaceful coexistence amongst themselves.____The only thing that kept those factions from mutual destruction of one another was the fall of the Ottoman empire and subsequent carving up of the Middle East by the British Empire and the subsequent strong-arm tactics of State-power leaders like Assad, Gaddafi, Mubarak, the Saudi emmirates, al-Bashir._____And while the US can act as facilitator, our goals should be, not the pre-emptive statecraft practiced by the Neo-Cons, but through the mutual self-determination of those actors. We can't force a solution to the table like we were capable of doing after WWII. We also need to broker support from the BRICs that would otherwise under mind statecraft to their economic advantages. China and Russia being the two biggest actors in that regard. That Obama hasn't rushed in where angels fear to tread only shows a much needed counterpoint to the boot-stomping of the Bush Doctrine and the unintended consequences of THAT kind of warcraft pretending to be statecraft.
- singlspeed
March 12, 2013 at 11:09am
Even under Millsian principles (whose default position is non-intervention) there is a point in a civil war where humanitarian concerns support intervention. Has Syria reached that point? I don't know. The problem with LW is that he has supported intervention all along. I continue to have concerns about intervention: would intervention convert this civil war into a sectarian regional war, with atrocities and carnage unimaginable. For some interventionists, that's the point, to go ahead and trigger a regional war that's likely to come anyway, as national boundaries finally reflect sectarian boundaries. Of course, Assad cannot win the Syrian civil war, not with Shia (Alawites are Shia) comprising less than 15% of the population; coincidentally, that percentage, 15%, is the same as the percentage of Shia Muslims worldwide, Sunni Muslims comprising about 85%. Is it any wonder that Shia Iran is insecure, with their natural enemies, Sunni Muslims, far outnumbering them. That the US has chosen Shia Iran as our "enemy" and the Sunni dominated nations in the regions as our "friends" continues to baffle me, inasmuch as it was Sunni Muslims from Saudi Arabia who attacked America on 9/11 and Sunni insurgents in Iraq who killed and maimed thousands of American soldiers. If we intervene in Syria, who do we support?
- rayward
March 12, 2013 at 11:35am
Ray, you bring up a valid point and one that often is glossed over and misunderstood, that it wasn't Iran that "attacked" us as it was our "allies" that provided the means and wherewithal for terrorist organizations to organize and attack US troops and embassy installations. Perhaps the reason Iran is and continues to be an 'enemy of the state' is the over-reaching mistrust of our security apparatus that is still smarting over the failed coup which instigated the first Arab uprising. I wonder what limitations Leon would have to his advocation of endless military intervention and invasions in the name of statehood.
- singlspeed
March 12, 2013 at 2:48pm
SHOW 1 RESPONSE
Obama may as well not have existed? Good. Shows he knows what he is doing, unlike some who know no end to the wars that other Americans' children should fight. We are not the cops of the world, truly. Send Wieseltier to Iraq, the Sudan, the Congo, as an army of one.
- roidubouloi
March 12, 2013 at 12:14pm
The Syrian and Bosnian situations are so different Mr. Wieseltier that to bring them shows a callous disregard for the specific. I will enumerate: In Syria we have a civil war, the fighting is between different sectors of what we call the Syrian people. In Bosnia we had a war between two distinct nations, the Bosnian Muslims and the Serbs. In Bosnia we also had genocide being perpetrated by Bosnian Serbs against Bosnian Muslims aided by Milosevic's Serbia. We knew what was at stake, we had good guys and bad guys. In Syria who the combatants are and what they stand for isn't clear. Yes Assad has the Support of Hezbollah in Iran and Lebanon but some of the Syrian Sunni fighters are said to be linked to al Qaeda. These groups are boasting on online videos that they "will invade Israel.' There is also a fear that if the chemical weapons fall into their hands they will deploy them not only against the Assad government but against Israel. This is just the tip of the iceberg of complexities in Syria. Fighting for human rights is all well and good if you know who is (or in this case is not) violating human rights. Right now we are between a rock and a hard place and to intervene just so we can tell ourselves we "did the right" thing is very stupid and dangerously stupid, Mr. Wieseltier. At times, doing nothing is the best option.
- arnon1
March 12, 2013 at 4:59pm
This piece is pretty much the standard shtick we have come to expect from Wieseltier on the Obama Administration foreign policy, though I suppose it could be worse. At least with this piece, unlike many others, there are affecting parts that aren’t just bombast and sophistry. That is, when reading Wieseltier recount the grim realities on the ground in Syria and feeling his animating passion and outrage, you do genuinely get a sense of palpable righteousness that is almost enough to succumb to lure of his totalising, binary sense of moral clarity. But, as is his want to overburden his argument, this siren song is punctured at various times by the gratuitous snarky asides, by how poorly Wieseltier’s airy evasions about unknown costs and his prescription for taking responsibility comport with his cheerleading for the clusterf**k in Iraq, and how he absurdly claims secret insights into the president’s revealed preferences. So we wake from the spell and remember that Wieseltier seems incapable of a nuanced critique though he does feel things deeply. The harsh truth for Wieseltier is that we cannot talk about his views on Syria or anywhere else without acknowledging the utter failure of his normative framework (legal and moral) and basic judgement in regard to Iraq. It was this basic failure to understand that war in proper context, and his failure to apply elementary scrutiny to the crude vanity of the neo-conservative project that more than anything else discredited humanitarian intervention and democracy promotion for the forseeable future. So, by his own contributory responsibility, Syria is just the latest casualty.
- Willf
March 12, 2013 at 10:23pm