The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not reflect in any way those of the Tiger Media Network, its staff or Fort Hays State University.
BY DANIEL SAENZ
One seriously has to wonder what on Earth was going through Syria’s Bashar Al-Assad’s mind this week. Because of the growing trends of isolationism beginning with the foreign policy of the Obama administration, Assad honestly had a rather easy path ahead of him. There was no better example of this than in the peak of the civil war in 2013. During the bloody siege in a rebel held area, Assad, as is the case with most bloodthirsty despots, simply could not restrain himself. He decided to use bombs filled with Sarin gas, killing thousands of civilians of the process. As what should have been the case, there was a great deal of pressure on the Obama administration to intervene as Assad had broken international law, thus meriting collective action from the rest of the world.
Alas, the United States, and the rest of the UN and NATO, did absolutely nothing. Obama hyped up his red line policy which he “warned” Assad not to cross. However, the much better option would have been to establish a no-fly zone, which would have meant that any Syrian aircraft carrying these deadly weapons would have been shot down immediately. And of course, there was also a potentially democratic Syria on the line at the time. The Free Syrian Army, Kurdish YPG (people’s protection units), SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces), and TEVDEM (Movement for a More Democratic Society) were all moderate forces that were at the height of their prime at this point.
Unfortunately, we did not intervene when this golden opportunity to truly improve Syria arose. Instead, we let Assad stay in power and funded jihadist groups such as Al Nusra to fight Syria via proxy instead of doing the easier task and overthrowing him fairly quickly with the FSA, PYD (Democratic Union Party), SDF, TEVDEM, and YPG to fill the vacuum. Turkey infiltrated the FSA and eventually turned it into a murderous jihadist group (who just recently released a viral video of them stripping and mutilating dead Kurdish bodies.)
The famous argument that we hear from isolationist voices such as Rand Paul and Tulsi Gabbard is that if we remove Assad, ISIS will take over and we will basically have a similar situation to that of Iraq. And in fact, the United States announced that it would succumb to these isolationist fantasies and pull out of Syria. However, times have changed significantly since the Obama administration. Syria has become a puppet state for the Iranian government. And, with the heavy lifting of some of these democratically minded groups, the Islamist factions have growing weaker and weaker.
However, the Turkish government is back in full force supporting the now Islamist FSA as it committing mass atrocities in Syria. And, Assad is back to gassing his civilians, this time with chlorine, with the help of Iran. We must learn from our mistakes and actually do something on behalf of people who want a better Syria or not only will it continue to be fascist dictatorship under Assad, but will also give Iran (already a massive security threat in the region) more leverage in the region than ever.