Sometimes your worst enemies aid you unintentionally–and in ways you could never help yourself. That’s what America’s Islamic enemies are now doing throughout the Middle East.
Contrary to the propaganda of Republican militarists and Democratic do-gooders, Americans should be thrilled at the mutual destruction of their most dedicated enemies.
In the first installment of this series, three reasons were given for why the United States should not intervene in the Syrian conflict. This will offer the remaining seven.
Fourth: Since 1979, Syria has been listed by the U.S. State Department as a sponsor of terrorism.
Among the terrorist groups it supports: Hizbollah and Hamas. For many years, Syria provided a safe-house in Damascus for Illich Ramirez Sanchez–the notorious international terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal.
Ilich Ramírez Sánchez–“Carlos the Jackal”
Fifth: The United States had no part in creating or supporting the decades-long dictatorship of the Assad regime–which has long been hostile to America.
After a long series of political maneuverings, Hafez al-Assad seized power in 1970 and was proclaimed “president” next year. With aid from the Soviet Union, he built up the Syrian army. Using arrest, torture and execution, he ruled Syria as a dictator until he died in 2000.
His son, Bashar, then took command of Syria. Like his father, he has supported Palestinian and Lebanese militant groups. And, like his father, he continues to receive financial and military support from the successor to the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation.
Thus, America has no moral obligation of any kind to Syria–or Syrians.
Sixth: Intervening in Syria could lead to Syrian attacks against Israel.
An American military strike on Syrian government forces could lead the country’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad, to attack Israel–perhaps even with chemical weapons. Assad could do this simply because he hates Jews–or to lure Israel into attacking Syria.
If that happened, the Islamic world–which lusts to destroy Israelis even more than “apostate” Muslims–would rally to Syria against the United States, Israel’s chief ally.
Seventh: Committing American ground forces to Syria or just continuing to bomb targets there could lead to Islamic terrorism against the United States–at home or abroad.
This has already happened with Russia, which, on September 30, 2015, began bombing airstrikes on forces trying to overthrow Assad.
On October 31, Airbus A321, a Russian airliner, broke up in mid-air, then crashed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 people on board.
In Egypt, a militant group affiliated to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) claimed it had brought down the plane “in response to Russian airstrikes that killed hundreds of Muslims on Syrian land.”
The same fate could well befall American civilians and/or soldiers.
Eighth: China and Russia are supporting the Assad dictatorship–and the brutalities it commits against its own citizens.
This reflects badly on them–not the United States. And any move by the United States to directly attack the Assad regime could ignite an all-out war with Russia and/or China.
What happens if Russian and American forces start trading salvos? Or if Russian President Vladimir Putin orders an attack on America’s ally, Israel, in return for America’s attack on Russia’s ally, Syria?
It was exactly that scenario–Great Powers going to war over conflicts between their small-state allies–that triggered World War I.
Ninth: The United States cannot defeat ISIS through air power alone–thus making commitment of ground troops inevitable.
President Barack Obama authorized airstrikes against ISIS in September, 2014. The United States Air Force has since dropped thousands of bombs on ISIS convoys.
This has not destroyed ISIS. And its failure to do so has only led to demands by hawkish Republicans and Democrats for “boots on the ground.”
Tenth–and most importantly: While Islamic nations like Syria, Iraq and Egypt wage war within their own borders, they will lack the resources–and incentive–to attack the United States.
Every dead Hizbollah and Al-Qaeda and ISIS member makes the United States that much safer. So does the death of every sympathizer of Hizbollah, Al-Qaeda and ISIS.
The peoples of the Middle East have long memories for those who commit brutalities against them. In their veins, the cult of the blood feud runs deep.
When Al-Qaeda blows up civilians in Beirut, their relatives will urge Hizbollah to take brutal revenge. And Hizbollah will do so. Similarly, when Hizbollah does, those who support Al-Qaeda will demand even more brutal reprisals against Hizbollah.
Al-Qaeda terrorists–now taking aim at Hezbollah terrorists
No American could instill such hatred in Al-Qaeda for Hizbollah–or vice versa. This is entirely a war of religious and sectarian hatred.
In fact, this conflict could easily become the Islamic equivalent of “the Hundred Years War” that raged from 1337 to 1453 between England and France.
When Adolf Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, then-Senator Harry S. Truman said: “I hope the Russians kill lots of Nazis–and vice versa.”
That should be America’s position whenever its sworn enemies start killing off each other. Americans should welcome such self-slaughters, not become entrapped in them.
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HOW AMERICA BECAME “DEATH, THE SHATTERER OF WORLDS”
In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on February 19, 2016 at 12:01 amThe 1989 movie, Fat Man and Little Boy, provides useful insights into the real-life workings of bureaucracies.
In it, the brilliant and ambitious physicist, J. Robert Oppenheimer (played by Dwight Schultz) comes–too late–to realize he’s made a deal with the devil.
The same proved true for the J. Robert Oppenhemer of history.
Paul Newman as General Leslie Groves and Dwight Schultz as J. Robert Oppenheimer
Hired by Army General Leslie Groves (played by Paul Newman) to ramrod construction of an atomic bomb, Oppenheimer has no qualms about using it against Nazi Germany.
It’s believed, after all, that German scientists are furiously pursuing work on such a weapon. The full horror of the extermination camps has not yet been revealed.
But “Oppie” and many other Jewish scientists working on the Manhattan Project can easily imagine the fate of Jews trapped within the borders of the Third Reich.
Then something unforeseen happens.
On May 8, 1945, the Third Reich collapses and signs unconditional surrender terms. Almost at the same time, the U.S. military learns that although German physicists had tried to make an atomic bomb, they never even got close to producing one.
So Oppenheimer finds himself still working to build the most devastating weapon in history–but now lacking the enemy he had originally signed on to destroy.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Government has invested nearly $2 billion in the Manhattan Project–at a time when $2 billion truly meant the equivalent of $1 trillion today. Is all that money to go for nothing?
What to do?
Oppenheimer doesn’t have to make that decision. It’s made for him—by Groves, by Groves’ superiors in the Army, and ultimately by the new President, Harry S. Truman. The bomb will be used, after all.
It will just be turned against the Japanese, who are even more hated by most Americans than the Germans. It doesn’t matter that:
What matters is that Pearl Harbor is still fresh in the minds of Americans generally and of the American military in particular. And that now that the Japanese are being pushed back into their home islands, they are fighting ever more fanatically to hold off certain defeat.
General Douglas MacArthur, who is scheduled to command the invasion of Japan, has estimated a million American casualties if this goes forward.
Oppenheimer, who has taught physics at the University of California at Berkeley, now finds himself being taught a lesson: That, once set in motion, bureaucracies–like objects–continue to move forward unless something intervenes to stop them.
And, in this case, there is no one willing to say: Stop.
So, on July 16, 1945, the first atomic bomb in history is detonated at Los Alamos, New Mexico.
Atomic bomb test at Los Alamos: July 16, 1945
Then, on August 6, 1945, an American B-29 bomber drops “Little Boy” on Hiroshima. An estimated 80,000 people die instantly.
By the end of the year, injury and radiation bring total casualties to 90,000-140,000.
On August 9, it’s the turn of Nagasaki. Casualty estimates for the dropping of “Fat Man” range from 40,000 to 73,884, with another 74,909 injured, and another several hundred thousand diseased and dying due to fallout and other illness caused by radiation.
For Oppenheimer, the three years he has devoted to creating an atomic bomb will prove the pivotal event of his life.
He will be praised and damned as an “American Prometheus,” who brought atomic fire to man. Countless Americans–especially those who would have been ordered to invade Japan–will revere him as the man who brought the war to a quick end.
And countless Americans–and non-Americans–will condemn him as a man whose arrogance and ambition led him to arm mankind with the means of its own destruction.
Witnessing the first successful atomic explosion, Oppenheimer had been stunned by the sheer magnitude of destructiveness he had helped unleash. Quoting the Hindu holy book, the Bhagavad Gita, he murmured: “Now I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds.”
Faced with the massive toll of lives taken by the device he had created, Oppenheimer became convinced that the only hope for humanity lay in abolishing nuclear weapons.
He vigorously opposed the creation of a “super” hydrogen bomb. His advice was overruled, however, and construction of this went forward at the same pace that Oppenheimer had once driven others to create the atomic bomb.
The first test of this even more terrifying weapon occurred on November 1, 1952. By 1953, just as Oppenheimer had predicted, the Soviet Union had launched its own H-bomb test.
In a famous meeting with President Truman, Oppenheimer reportedly said, “Mr. President, I have blood on my hands.” Truman later claimed that he had offered Oppenheimer a handkerchief, saying, “Here, this will wash it off.”
It didn’t.
During the hysteria of the Joseph McCarthy witch-hunts, Oppenheimer found himself accused of being a Communist traitor. In 1954, he was stripped of his government security clearance.
Unable to prevent the military bureaucracy from moving relentlessly to use the atomic bomb, he could not halt the political bureaucracy from its own rush into cowardice and the wrecking of others’ lives.
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