{"id":6419,"date":"2013-09-03T15:57:41","date_gmt":"2013-09-03T22:57:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=6419"},"modified":"2013-09-03T15:57:41","modified_gmt":"2013-09-03T22:57:41","slug":"bad-reasons-for-bombing-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/bad-reasons-for-bombing-syria\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad Reasons for Bombing Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0FrontPage Magazine<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

President Obama Saturday laid out the\u00a0case<\/a>\u00a0for a military strike on Syria. He evoked the same rationales Secretary of State\u00a0Kerry<\/a>\u00a0and others, including some conservatives, have been articulating for the last week. We\u2019ve heard of \u201cinternational norms,\u201d \u201ccommon understandings of decency,\u201d the \u201cinternational community\u201d that codified a \u201cnormal prohibition against chemical weapons\u201d in the Chemical Weapons Convention, the need to act to deter other rogue states like Iran, and the imperative to punish \u201ccrimes against humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Almost as an afterthought, the necessity of putting teeth into America\u2019s credibility and prestige in order to defend our interests was mentioned by the President. And he vaguely asserted that the gas attack was a \u201cserious danger to our national security,\u201d though it\u2019s hard to see how \u201cmaking a mockery of the global prohibitions on chemical weapons\u201d endangers our security. Terrorists and their state enablers like Iran and North Korea don\u2019t abide by such \u201cprohibitions.\u201d But that fuzzy national security argument was swamped by the waves of delusional internationalism and dubious psychologizing about the motives and calculations of ruthless dictators and autocrats. The fact is, the only reason to use American military power and risk American lives is to advance our interests and defend our security. Evoking some fantasy \u201cinternational community\u201d complicates and confuses that critical criterion.<\/p>\n

Start with the chimera of \u201cinternational norms\u201d\u00a0 and \u201ccommon understandings of decency.\u201d\u00a0Such statements imply a universal moral standard shared by all peoples, one which international agreements and institutions codify. The proscription of torture, the protection of non-combatants, the humane treatment of the wounded and prisoners of war, and the ban against using certain kinds of weapons are the sort of presumably universal beliefs that are enshrined in international law.<\/p>\n

But where is the evidence that such norms exist in fact rather than in language? Certainly not on the pages of history or your daily newspaper, which are filled with serial violations of such norms, including by signatories to these various conventions and agreements. What\u00a0can<\/i>\u00a0be found is the eternal truth that nations pursue their interests by whatever means they can, and different peoples have different attitudes towards the legitimacy of violence and its acceptable victims, particularly in Muslim Arab lands. Thus nations sign treaties and join transnational institutions because they think doing so will serve their interests, not because they share some \u201cinternational norm.\u201d Their participation is based not so much on shared values, as on treaties signed because of perceived utility.<\/p>\n

Take the Chemical Weapons Convention. The vast majority of nations that signed that treaty did so because it cost them nothing. They did not have such weapons, had no intention of acquiring them, or did not have the money or expertise to acquire them. What difference does it make if Belgium or Burkina Faso signs such a document? Other nations with significant militaries and global responsibilities, like the United States, could afford to honor principle and eschew such weapons because they have plenty of alternative weapons equally or more effective. Then there is the handful of nations that didn\u2019t sign\u2013\u2013including Syria.<\/p>\n

This raises the main problem with such conventions. They are agreements signed by sovereign nations. Being a sovereign nation means choosing which treaties to sign and which to ignore, which to honor and which to violate. Take the Ottawa Treaty, which bans the use of land mines. Almost as many nations have signed that treaty as signed the Chemical Weapons Convention. Landmines have killed and maimed many thousands more people than have chemical weapons. But the United States did not sign the treaty, or the Convention on Cluster Munitions, because our leaders have judged that given our global responsibilities and interests, landmines and cluster munitions are a critical military resource.<\/p>\n

So how consistent or compelling can be the \u201cinternational norms\u201d that presumably create these various agreements, if some nations don\u2019t sign them? And if the convention is a treaty signed by sovereign nations, how can a nation that does not sign be held accountable for violating its provisions? Either we invent \u201ccommon understandings of decency\u201d that override the treaty\u2013\u2013an obvious pretext for perfuming with principle the calculated pursuit of our own interests\u2013\u2013 or we openly punish the non-signatory nation because it serves\u00a0our<\/i>\u00a0interests and security to do so.<\/p>\n

And then there are the nations that sign with the full intention of violating the terms of the convention if necessary. Does anyone think that signatory nations like Russia, China, and Iran won\u2019t use these weapons if they think they need to? Let\u2019s not forget that the 3 axis powers of World War II, Germany, Italy, and Japan, were members of the League of Nations and signatories of the 1928 Kellogg-Briand pact that bound the parties to \u201ccondemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it, as an instrument of national policy.\u201d How did that work out?<\/p>\n

As for Syria\u2019s use of chemical weapons, if there is some \u201cinternational norm,\u201d\u00a0why are signatories to the CWC Russia and China blocking a Security Council resolution to punish the violators of \u201cnorms\u201d Russia and China presumably endorse? We know the answer. It\u2019s not in their national interests to do so, just as it wasn\u2019t in France\u2019s national interests in 2002 to endorse punishing a much more egregious violator of \u201cinternational norms,\u201d Saddam Hussein.<\/p>\n

Hussein brings us to the other spurious rationale for acting against Syria: that doing so will serve as a deterrent to other nations (read Iran) contemplating the development or use of proscribed weapons. In March 1988, towards the end of the Iraq-Iran war Hussein poisoned between 3,500 and 5,000 Kurds, injuring many thousands more. Does anyone remember any sort of international outcry and calls for action similar to those that we are hearing now, or when he used chemical weapons against the Iranians? Indeed, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office officially stated, \u201cWe believe it better to maintain a dialogue with others if we want to influence their actions. Punitive measures such as unilateral sanctions would not be effective in changing Iraq\u2019s behaviour over chemical weapons, and would damage British interests to no avail.\u201d Did the British take that attitude because the Chemical Weapons Convention hadn\u2019t been signed yet? But surely the \u201cnorms\u201d that lead to the convention were already in existence.<\/p>\n

In fact, when in 2003 Congress authorized the Iraq War, the resolution twice referenced Hussein\u2019s chemical attacks on his own people as a basis for invading. So punishing a regime that had violated \u201cinternational norms\u201d concerning chemical weapons was one of the reasons the U.S. destroyed Hussein\u2019s regime and executed Hussein. But at the time, the need to punish violators of \u201cinternational norms\u201d and send a deterrent message to future violators was ignored by those protesting the war, including our current President. The French, now so noisily encouraging the U.S. to take action, vigorously opposed a U.N. resolution authorizing the war\u2013\u2013the same U.N. Obama is now not even trying to get on board. So where then were all the imperatives to punish and deter violators of \u201cinternational norms\u201d we keep hearing today?<\/p>\n

And if destroying Hussein\u2019s regime and killing him and his sons has not deterred Bashar al Assad from using chemical weapons, what makes us think anything short of destroying his regime and killing him will do so? He\u2019s more likely to remember the fate of Libya\u2019s Ghaddafi, who gave up his nuclear program and ended up sodomized with an iron rod then shot down in the street. Nor is it likely that any future violator like Iran is going to stop its criminal behavior even if Bashar al Assad does end up dead. The Iranians will weigh the risks and benefits, calculate our levels of resolve, and trust in Allah. At this late stage, even killing Assad is unlikely to alter the mullahs\u2019 estimation of our lack of nerve, hypocrisy, and propensity for empty bluster.<\/p>\n

Finally, all this rhetoric about \u201ccrimes against humanity\u201d\u00a0and the \u201cresponsibility to protect\u201d\u00a0reeks of hypocrisy and moral preening. The President said, \u201cWe cannot accept a world where women and children and innocent civilians are gassed on a terrible scale.\u201d Who\u2019s he kidding? We already have, in Hussein\u2019s Iraq. Change \u201cgassed\u201d to \u201cbombed,\u201d \u201cfire-bombed,\u201d \u201chacked to death,\u201d \u201cmachine-gunned,\u201d and \u201cstarved\u201d and you can cover the globe with the victims whose deaths on a \u201cterrible scale\u201d we have \u201caccepted.\u201d We have stood by and watched millions of women, children, and innocent civilians murdered in all sorts of ways equally as, or more gruesome and painful than, dying by poison gas.<\/p>\n

In Rwanda anywhere from 500,000 to 1,000,000 men, women, and children were slaughtered in 1994, many by being hacked to death with machetes, not to mention the women raped, purposely infected with HIV, and sexually mutilated. We did nothing to stop the killing not because we militarily couldn\u2019t, but because it was not in our national interests and security to do so. Hence we sent in a toothless U.N. to salve our consciences and deflect the charge of callous inactivity.<\/p>\n

So all those calling for intervention in Syria or anywhere else to prevent \u201ccrimes against humanity\u201d\u00a0should be required to explain just how this unfortunately common slaughter is different from all those others we did not intervene to stop. The fact is, given that we cannot expend our citizens\u2019 lives to protect all the millions of global victims of violence, we must make the decision based not on \u201cinternational norms\u201d but on the national interests and security of the United States, as these are determined by the citizens of the United States through their elected representatives. In the event, frequently pursuing those interests will end up punishing egregious violators like Saddam Hussein and the Taliban. But the definitive criterion must be how the action concretely protects our citizens and our interests.<\/p>\n

Specifically answering that question\u2013\u2013not appealing to delusional \u201cinternational norms,\u201d\u00a0or assertions of deterring future malefactors on behalf of some imagined \u201cglobal community\u201d\u2013\u2013should be the focus of the upcoming Congressional debate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0FrontPage Magazine President Obama Saturday laid out the\u00a0case\u00a0for a military strike on Syria. He evoked the same rationales Secretary of State\u00a0Kerry\u00a0and others, including some conservatives, have been articulating for the last week. We\u2019ve heard of \u201cinternational norms,\u201d \u201ccommon understandings of decency,\u201d the \u201cinternational community\u201d that codified a \u201cnormal prohibition against chemical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[127,22,393],"tags":[12,1055,1080,1041,76],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1Fx","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6079,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/john-mccains-syria-delusions\/","url_meta":{"origin":6419,"position":0},"title":"John McCain’s Syria Delusions","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 18, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine Following the president\u2019s announcement that we will provide small arms and ammunition to the rebels fighting Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Senator John McCain has intensified his drumbeat for war and demanded even more extensive U.S. involvement, particularly a no-fly zone. But McCain has not\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Syria"","block_context":{"text":"Syria","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/syria\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6594,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/prestige-and-power-in-statecraft\/","url_meta":{"origin":6419,"position":1},"title":"Prestige and Power in Statecraft","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 4, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"History teaches us that nations must always respond vigorously to an enemy's challenge, a lesson the U.S. should remember in Syria. by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0Defining Ideas President Obama, responding to widespread criticisms that his handling of the Syrian chemical weapons crisis was clumsy and ad hoc, said, \u201cI\u2019m less\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Syria"","block_context":{"text":"Syria","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/syria\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6445,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/putin-puts-obama-in-hot-seat-what-will-you-do-if-rebels-are-ones-using-chemical-weapons\/","url_meta":{"origin":6419,"position":2},"title":"Putin Puts Obama in Hot Seat: ‘What Will You Do If Rebels Are Ones Using Chemical Weapons?’","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 4, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim \/\/\u00a0RaymondIbrahim.com \u00a0 Russian President Vladimir Putin has a strange way of speaking straightforwardly, without all the artificial and \u201cmorally superior\u201d airs one expects from Western politicians. Earlier, for example, he\u00a0wondered why Western leaders were supporting\u00a0cannibals\u00a0in Syria: You will not deny that one does not really need to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Syria"","block_context":{"text":"Syria","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/syria\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/efw_0-300x205.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7014,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-foreign-policy-enemy-action\/","url_meta":{"origin":6419,"position":3},"title":"Obama’s Foreign Policy: Enemy Action","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 18, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0FrontPage Magazine\u00a0 It\u2019s often hard to determine whether a series of bad policies results from stupidity or malicious intent. Occam\u2019s razor suggests that the former is the more likely explanation, as conspiracies assume a high degree of intelligence, complex organization, and secrecy among a large number\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10151,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/angry-reader-12\/","url_meta":{"origin":6419,"position":4},"title":"Angry Reader","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 5, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"From an Angry Reader: Mr. Hanson, I don\u2019t know anything about Stanley Baldwin, but I\u2019ll assume your description of him is accurate. In that case, you have to stretch quite a bit to make Obama into Baldwin. For instance: You call Baldwin a pacifist. 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So it is in Syria, as Obama prepares to plunge America in a war with that nation, and,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egypt"","block_context":{"text":"Egypt","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/egypt\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6419"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6419"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6420,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6419\/revisions\/6420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}