Doubletap
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- Dec 28, 2012
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Nick Gillespie & Meredith Bragg | August 30, 2013 Reason.com
1. Its not our fight
U.S. foreign policy - especially military actions - should proceed from clear and compelling national interests. But neither the president nor anyone in his administration has clarified what Americas security stake is in Syrias civil war.
Humanitarian interventions are notoriously ineffective in practice. If the president wants to reduce the violence thats already claimed over 100,000 lives, lobbing cruise missiles or putting boots on the ground is no way to accomplish that.
2. Chemical weapons shouldnt be a red line
President Obama has said that chemical weapons are a red line that no country should be allowed to cross. But even assuming such weapons were used by the murderous Assad regime, the case for treating poison gas as qualitatively different than far more deadly conventional weapons is hardly clear.
Why should weapons that have at most killed a tiny fraction of people in a war be a trigger for action?
3. What constitutes victory?
Obama hasnt just failed to articulate a cause for action, he hasnt even bothered to explain what might constitute victory in Syria. The inherent risks are compounded massively by regional and global politics involving Iran, Jordan, Russia, Israel, and European countries.
The U.S. doesnt even have a clear sense of who the Syrian rebels are and what their agenda is.
For gods sake, if the past dozen years have taught us anything about foreign policy, its that military interventions shouldnt be done in a half-assed fashion, without clear and widely shared goals.
If the Obama administration cant be bothered to articulate why we should fight, who were helping, and how we would know that we succeeded, its got no business getting involved in Syria.
1. Its not our fight
U.S. foreign policy - especially military actions - should proceed from clear and compelling national interests. But neither the president nor anyone in his administration has clarified what Americas security stake is in Syrias civil war.
Humanitarian interventions are notoriously ineffective in practice. If the president wants to reduce the violence thats already claimed over 100,000 lives, lobbing cruise missiles or putting boots on the ground is no way to accomplish that.
2. Chemical weapons shouldnt be a red line
President Obama has said that chemical weapons are a red line that no country should be allowed to cross. But even assuming such weapons were used by the murderous Assad regime, the case for treating poison gas as qualitatively different than far more deadly conventional weapons is hardly clear.
Why should weapons that have at most killed a tiny fraction of people in a war be a trigger for action?
3. What constitutes victory?
Obama hasnt just failed to articulate a cause for action, he hasnt even bothered to explain what might constitute victory in Syria. The inherent risks are compounded massively by regional and global politics involving Iran, Jordan, Russia, Israel, and European countries.
The U.S. doesnt even have a clear sense of who the Syrian rebels are and what their agenda is.
For gods sake, if the past dozen years have taught us anything about foreign policy, its that military interventions shouldnt be done in a half-assed fashion, without clear and widely shared goals.
If the Obama administration cant be bothered to articulate why we should fight, who were helping, and how we would know that we succeeded, its got no business getting involved in Syria.
