It didn’t take long for the universal and entirely justified outrage over a photograph of a dead three-year-old to be hijacked by the “do something” pundits.
The “something” that’s supposed to be “done” about the refugee crisis, to “solve the bigger problem,” of course involves regime change in Syria. To create a sense of moral urgency, war advocates have to insist the US has “done nothing” in that country. Here’s a Guardian editorial (9/3/15):
The optimism of the Arab spring is spent. Colonel Gaddafi was a tyrant, yet Libya has unravelled violently in the aftermath of his removal. The refusal to intervene against Bashar al-Assad gave the Syrian president permission to continue murdering his people.
Here’s London Mayor Boris Johnson in the Telegraph (9/3/15):
I perfectly accept that intervention has not often worked. It has been a disaster in Iraq; it has been a disaster in Libya. But can you honestly say that non-intervention in Syria has been a success? If we keep doing nothing about the nightmare in Syria, then frankly we must brace ourselves for an eternity of refugees.
And columnist Michael Gerson in the Washington Post (9/3/15):
At many points during the past four years, even relatively small actions might have reduced the pace of civilian casualties in Syria. How hard would it have been to destroy the helicopters dropping barrel bombs on neighborhoods? A number of options well short of major intervention might have reduced the regime’s destructive power and/or strengthened the capabilities of more responsible forces. All were untaken.
But this is all a fantasy. The US has been “intervening” in the Syrian civil war, in measurable and significant ways, since at least 2012—most notably by arming, funding and training anti-Assad forces. According to a report earlier this year in the Washington Post (6/12/15):
At $1 billion, Syria-related operations account for about $1 of every $15 in the CIA’s overall budget, judging by spending levels revealed in documents the Washington Post obtained from former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.
US officials said the CIA has trained and equipped nearly 10,000 fighters sent into Syria over the past several years—meaning that the agency is spending roughly $100,000 per year for every anti-Assad rebel who has gone through the program.
Photo of Syrian refugees coming ashore on the Greek island of Lesbos that accompanied the Guardian‘s editorial (9/3/15) condemning “the refusal to intervene against Bashar al-Assad.”
In addition to this, the Obama administration has engaged in crippling sanctions against the Assad government, provided air support for those looking to depose him, incidentally funneled arms to ISIS, and not incidentally aligned the CIA-backed Free Syrian Army with Al Qaeda. Regardless of one’s position on Syria, one thing cannot be said: that the US has “done nothing.” This is historically false.
But can’t the US “do more”? One idea being advanced, for instance in the Guardian editorial above, is the creation of a no-fly zone to help stem the tide of refugees:
To begin restoring that hope will inevitably mean international intervention of some kind. The establishment of credible safe havens and the implementation of a no-fly zone must be on the table for serious consideration.
Though it’s being sold as a simple humanitarian stopgap, literally every no-fly zone in history has eventually led to regime change. Those pushing for one should at least be honest about what it means: the active removal of Assad by foreign forces. (A no-fly zone would only be applied to Assad, because anti-Assad forces don’t have an air force.)
Indeed, if one recalls, the NATO intervention in Libya was originally sold as a no-fly zone to prevent a potential genocide, but within a matter of weeks, NATO leaders had pivoted to full-on regime change. The subsequent four-way civil war is still ongoing.
But calling for a no-fly zone as a response to the Syrian refugee crisis involves some serious fudging. While there’s no doubt many of the refugees are escaping Assad’s bombing of cities, the most iconic victim, three-year-old Aylan Kurdi, wasn’t: After “increasing strains in Damascus” prompted his family to relocate to his father’s hometown of Kobani—far from anything the Assad government was doing—they fled to Turkey because the “Islamic State [was] increasingly attacking the area,” father Mohammad Kurdi told the New York Times (9/3/15). (Kobani was also the location in Syria most intensely targeted by US airstrikes—Mother Jones, 1/23/15.)
A no-fly zone would not have saved his hometown. An absence of fueling jihadists by the United States, and the subsequent bombing of said jihadists by the United States? Perhaps.
The US funded, armed and fueled the very crisis its partisan media are now calling for it to swoop in and save. The moral ADD required by those pushing further US involvement in the Syrian civil war in the face of this fact is severe. That some in the media, eager to settle old scores, would so blatantly ignore history to indulge this fantasy is as pernicious as it is predictable.
Adam Johnson is an associate editor at AlterNet and writes frequently for FAIR.org. You can follow him on Twitter @adamjohnsonnyc.