http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/08/opinion/sunday/friedman-same-war-different-country.html?_r=0
Mr. Friedman's column brings up many of the doubts I have about our involvement in Syria. His arguments are carefully thought out, intelligently presented and, in them, I believe I've found my answer to the Syria question.
But, more importantly for me, he has managed to make me think about where world power will reside in the next century. In his Arab world arguments, I see a warning for America."I keep reading about how Iraq was the bad war and Libya was the good war and Afghanistan was the necessary war and Bosnia was the moral war and Syria is now another necessary war. Guess what! They are all the same war.
They are all the story of what happens when multisectarian societies, most of them Muslim or Arab, are held together for decades by dictators ruling vertically, from the top down, with iron fists and then have their dictators toppled, either by internal or external forces. And they are all the story of how the people in these countries respond to the fact that with the dictator gone they can only be governed horizontally--by the constituent communities themselves writing their own social contracts for how to live together as equal citizens, without an iron fist from above. And, as I've said before, they are all the story of how difficult it is to go from Saddam to Jefferson--from vertical rule to horizontal rule--without falling into Hobbes or Khomeini."
I had to look this up: Hobbes was a 17th century English philosopher who believed people are essentially selfish and democracies could easily degenerate into chaos and civil war. He believed people were better governed by monarchies, benevolent dictators or enlightened despots.
Khomeini is--well, you know."In Bosnia, after much ethnic cleansing between warring communities, NATO came in and stabilized and codified what is in effect a partition. We acted on the ground as 'the army of the center.' In Iraq, we toppled the dictator and then, after making every mistake in the book, we got the parties to write a new social contract. To make that possible, we policed the lines between sects and eliminated a lot of the worst jihadists in the Shiite and Sunni ranks. We acted on the ground as the 'army of the center.' But then we left before anything could take root. Ditto Afghanistan."
And tribal warfare and jihdaism are back in vogue, highlighting the waste of American lives and resources."The Obama team wanted to be smarter in Libya: No boots on the ground, so we decapitated that dictator from the air. But then our ambassador got murdered, because, without boots on the ground to referee, and act as the army of the center, Hobbes took over before Jefferson.
If we were to decapitate the Syrian regime from the air, the same thing would likely happen there. For any chance of a multisectarian democratic outcome in Syria, you need to win two wars on the ground: one against the ruling Assad-Allawite-Iranian-Hezbollah-Shiite alliance; and, once that one is over, you'd have to defeat the Sunni Islamists and pro-Al Qaeda jihadists. Without an army of the center (which no one will provide) to back up the few decent Free Syrian Army units, both will be uphill fights.
The center exists in these countries, but it is weak and unorganized. It's because these are pluralistic societies--mixtures of tribes and religious sects...(and) they lack any sense of citizenship or deep ethic pluralism. That is, tolerance, cooperation and compromise."
At this point, I started to think of that old axiom about advanced civilizations peaking at 200 years and then beginning the long slide into dissolution and I began wondering if maybe Mr. Hobbes was right. After all, our modern American government is the poster child for intolerance, lack of cooperation and rejection of compromise.
But back to Syria and the Middle East..."They could hold together as long as there was a dictator to 'protect' (and divide) everyone from everyone else. But when the dictator goes, and you are a pluralistic society but lack pluralism, you can't build anything because there is never enough trust for one community to cede power to another--not without an army of the center to protect everyone from everyone. In short, the problem now across the Arab East is not just poison gas, but poisoned hearts. Each tribe or sect believes it is in a rule-or-die struggle against the next, and when everyone believes this, it becomes self-fulfilling.
That means Syria and Iraq will both likely devolve into self-governing, largely homogeneous, ethnic and religious units, like Kurdistan. And, if we are lucky, these units will find a modus vivendi, as happend in Lebanon after 14 years of civil war. And then maybe, over time, these smaller units will voluntarily come together into larger, more functional states."
And will their coming together coincide with weakened or failing Western democracies like the one in this country? Will the Arab world be the center of world power in the next century? Of course, it won't effect me; but my ego likes to picture America going on as before, ad infinitum."(And) please do spare me the lecture that America's credibility is at stake here. Really? Sunnis and Shiites have been fighting since the 7th century over who is the rightful heir to the Prophet Muhammad's spiritual and political leadership, and our credibility is on the line?...Their civilization has missed every big modern global trend--religious Reformation, democratization, feminism and entrepreneurial and innovative capitalism--and our credibility is on the line? I don't think so.
We've struggled for a long time, and still are, learning to tolerate 'the other.' That struggle has to happen in the Arab/Muslim world, otherwise nothing we do matters. What is the difference between the Arab awakening in 2011 and South Africa's transition to democracy in the 1990s?America? No. The quality of local leadership and the degree of tolerance."
Mr. Friedman's last paragraph finally gave me the answer to where I stand on the Syrian do-we-or-don't-we question. We don't
But it is his last sentence that really reverberated for me. It should serve as a warning. It's not the name "United States of America" that makes us great, it is our leadership--and BOTH American parties need to agree to reverse the ebb of tolerance if we are to disprove the 200 year axiom.
Dear Republican Party: A new interest in the art of compromise wouldn't hurt either.
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