Beware Of People Who Know Exactly What To Do About Syria (And Be Glad You're Not Obama)
The acknowledgement that Syrian President Assad’s regime has apparently used chemical weapons has sparked renewed calls in Israel and in the United States for President Barack Obama to intervene in Syria’s ongoing civil war. The proposed modi operandi range from arming the Syrian rebels, declaring save havens and no-fly zones, bombing Syrian chemical weapons installations and even sending in US troops to secure sensitive installations on the ground.
One can only envy people who have such an unambiguous and clear-sighted view of what should or shouldn’t be done. But the envy should be tempered by wariness. Just as no one predicted the Arab Spring, the upheaval in Egypt or the uprising in Syria itself, no one can tell what kind of an effect an American military operation in Syria might have on Syria, on Iran, on Israel and on the Middle East in particular.
After all, it doesn’t take long to prove that in the Middle East, the Law of Unintended Consequences reins supreme, and usually for the worse. It was Israel, you will recall, who built up Hamas in the 1980’s so that it would serve as a counterweight to the PLO; Israel who viewed the Shiites as an ally in the Lebanon War; America which imposed its “freedom agenda” on Israel in Gaza; America that built up Iran by invading Iraq; and Israel, when it comes to it, that subjugated itself to 47 years of debilitating occupation in its miraculous victory in the Six Day War.
So before calling in the U.S. cavalry, perhaps one should take stock of the things one knows that one doesn’t know, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, ever mindful that there are countless other things - usually bad things - that one doesn’t know that one doesn’t know. Among these:
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