The Wrongologist

What’s
Wrong Today:

What’s
the difference between Iraq today and Syria today? In each country, their own
citizens are killing other citizens.  These
folks are killing one another primarily over religious/political disputes. And today,
no American young men and women are
part of those fights.

Steve
Hynd: If the civil war in Syria does in fact spill over its borders in a
big way and become a wider sectarian conflict across the region, what – if
anything – should the US do about it:

Our experience in Iraq and Afghanistan shows that we will lose no matter which side wins.
The “leaders” we back, because they are the lesser of evils, are still guys you wouldn’t trust to
babysit your family pets, much less an entire country. Seriously, we
trusted Karzai, and he needed weekly deliveries of bags of US dollars from the
CIA to be merely semi-reliable.

In Iraq, Shiites are wasting no time getting even with
Saddam Hussein’s tribe, the Sunni, who ruled Iraq before we decided on regime
change. Now, the Shiites are in, and the Sunni are out. But, the losers are not
amused and have decided to use bullets instead of ballots.

We left the two sides to get back to their 1,000-year
sectarian war against each other. DC seems to ignore that, whether we are
talking Iraq or Afghanistan or Syria or Lebanon, we are really talking one very
large thing: Shia v. Sunni.

It is an irreconcilable feud. Christian v. Jew, Jew v.
Muslim, Buddhist v. Muslim, do not come close to the Shia/Sunni split. There
has been blood and there will be blood.

So, what should the West do? A look at the map above
shows that for most Middle East countries, there is a significant religious divide.
Most of these countries have problems with their minority populations,
including one, Kurds, which are not even shown on the above.  

The New York Times has reported that Syria
is moving from revolution against a despot to a sectarian-driven fight of Sunni
against Shiite and their Alawite cousins which is now “inciting Sunnis and
Shiites in other countries to attack one another”.

The
BBC reports: A call to arms was made by influential Sunni cleric Sheikh
Qaradawi, an Egyptian based in Qatar who has a huge media and online presence. He
urged Sunnis to flock to Syria to fight against Assad, Iran and Hezbollah
saying that “They want continued massacres to kill Sunnis”.

Hatred of
“the other” has helped drive a resurgence of sectarian attacks in Iraq,too,
where 1,000 died in sectarian attacks last month, making it the
single deadliest month since 2008.

Another country must be mentioned: Iran.

Iranians are 89% Shia and they are ever so grateful
that we spent more than $1 Trillion and more than 4,000 US lives returning Iraq
to the Shia fold. Now all they need is a nuclear arsenal to make life complete.

The
problem across the Middle East is that taking sides – even trying to take both
sides to bring about a balance of power – is dangerous meddling with unforeseen
consequences.

What
should we do?

First, “do
no harm” might be a decent beginning principle to observe. That principle indicates
that we should stay the hell out of the Levant. While the Sunni/Shia feud is
certainly the main power struggle going on, there’s also a feud for Sunni leadership between the Saudis and Qatar.

Unfortunately,
the Beltway conventional wisdom has the US on a glide path to intervention on the Sunni side. That’s the religion of al-Qaeda, folks. Anybody
see an issue here?

According
to a recent Gallup
Poll, an overwhelming majority of citizens opposes any United States
military involvement in Syria: 68% of all Americans opposed involvement; 77%
of those over 65 years and 76% of college graduates represent the highest
subgroups opposed to military involvement of any kind.

When 68%
of the people oppose military involvement while Congress supports it, you are
right to ask what type of democracy these folks want to bring to other parts of
the world. 

So, what should the we do in Syria? As
little as possible.

There
seems to be little consensus in the US about a national strategy for such an
eventuality, perhaps because no-one really wants to talk about it.

President
Obama surveys the scene and sees no good option. Having repeatedly called for
regime change, there is no way Washington could claim to be an honest broker,
imposing a no-fly zone and safe havens, or even putting US boots on the ground,
purely for humanitarian reasons.

Gallup
shows that a majority of Americans agree with Obama. They lived through one
long and messy Middle East war, and don’t want another. They no longer believe
in cakewalks. They’re starting to grasp that countries don’t like being
invaded, even by Americans.

In May, Andrew Cordesman examined
the growing US security partnership with Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi
Arabia, and the UAE – established as the predominantly Sunni Gulf Cooperation
Council (GCC). He analyzes the steady growth in this partnership that has led
to over $64 billion in new US arms transfer agreements during 2008-2011.

That was clearly
aimed at an alignment of allies to deter Iran, which could backfire badly if that policy now means the US
will be seen as supporting Sunnis in a religious war. US policymakers should be
thinking carefully about the corner they are being painted into by Mr. McCain
and others.

In a
region-wide conflict this security partnership may force our military
intervention on the Sunni side.

In the meantime, we need to stay out of these Muslim
sectarian skirmishes. One more thing: Don’t fall prey to the humanitarian ploy
that we have to get involved because civilians are dying. It’s laudable in
theory, but would fail in practice.

Here is a question for the humanitarian
interventionists:
24% of Americans lack food security. The American U-6 unemployment rate (% of
people unemployed and looking for work, plus the underemployed) is 13.9%. The
US poverty rate is nearly 16%, or 50 million people. If you feel all
humanitarian, how about helping some Americans??

The idea that a Christian-Judeo West should mediate or
police this fight is pure folly. It will only bleed us: Militarily, monetarily and
morally.