humanitarian internationalists urge caution

Obama’s National-Security Argument for Striking Syria Is Terrible by Jonathan Chait

An oft-repeated liberal critique of the Bush administration, formulated by Daniel Davies, was that “Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance.” I don’t actually agree with that as a hard and fast rule. Sometimes Americans oppose good ideas. (That’s why, for instance, Democrats prefer to defend climate policy as a self-interested stimulus for “green jobs” rather than as a benevolent contribution to the future of humanity.) But the administration’s willingness to stoop to demagogic national-security rationales certainly makes me more suspicious, on the margins, of the merits of the policy itself. Syria may not be Iraq, but the spectacle of administration figures peddling dubious rationales for war is a discomfiting throwback to a decade ago.

Arm and Shame by Tom Friedman

That’s why I think the best response to the use of poison gas by President Bashar al-Assad is not a cruise missile attack on Assad’s forces, but an increase in the training and arming of the Free Syrian Army — including the antitank and antiaircraft weapons it’s long sought. This has three virtues: 1) Better arming responsible rebels units, and they do exist, can really hurt the Assad regime in a sustained way — that is the whole point of deterrence — without exposing America to global opprobrium for bombing Syria; 2) Better arming the rebels actually enables them to protect themselves more effectively from this regime; 3) Better arming the rebels might increase the influence on the ground of the more moderate opposition groups over the jihadist ones — and eventually may put more pressure on Assad, or his allies, to negotiate a political solution. 

By contrast, just limited bombing of Syria from the air makes us look weak at best, even if we hit targets. And if we kill lots of Syrians, it enables Assad to divert attention from the 1,400 he has gassed to death to those we harmed. Also, who knows what else our bombing of Syria could set in motion. (Would Iran decide it must now rush through a nuclear bomb?)