The Arabs are the New Jews
By Alan Caruba
So long as
it was Jews doing the dying, the world just didn’t care that much and now, so
long as it is Arabs—over 100,000 Syrians—the world still doesn’t care.
Moreover,
the Arabs of the Middle East have given the West little reason to be concerned
for their lives. Who has killed more Arabs than any other group? Arabs. The
jihadists have bombed and murdered their fellow Muslims with abandon and
continue to do so.
Poison gas
was used by Saddam Hussein and is being likely used by both Assad and the
rebels seeking to overthrow him.
It is the poison gas the West fears, not the
fate of the Syrians or other Arabs.
The
nightmare that the West refuses to confront is a nuclear-armed Iran. If and
when the Israelis—Jews—take action to disable the Iranian nuclear operations,
they will have saved themselves and the West.
Congress
will likely approve some kind of authorization for the President to take some
action. The draft that the White House sent was deemed too broadly written so
the lawyers in Congress will fret it about with limits. That’s a good thing because
whatever Obama does will be an act of war and a rather futile one at that.
An article
in the September 2 World Tribune reported that “President Barack Obama has
encountered vigorous resistance from the military to his plans to attack
Syria.”
Assad will
have plenty of time to continue waging war on the Syrian rebels. He’s too busy
killing Syrians who, true to the tribal nature of the region, will remain busy
killing Alawites, Christians, Druze, and others. Neither the Russians, nor the
Iranians want a bigger war. They want a seaport and a pipeline respectively.
Congress
will also have to find a billion dollars with which to pay for the missiles we
use and to replace them. A nation that is $17 trillion in debt doesn’t have the
money to wage a war. A short, symbolic slap will have to suffice.
There will
be no “boots on the ground.” Our army is worn out by more than a decade of
fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. Our air force is flying a lot of old planes.
Our navy has been reduced to less vessels than are needed in a dangerous world.
Mostly, though, Americans are understandably just tired of fighting in the
Middle East and achieving nothing.
If we
could find and kill Osama bin Laden, there is no reason why we could not have
done the same with Saddam Hussein and now Bashar al-Assad. It’s cheaper and
just as effective.
For a
while, Bashar was the darling of the liberals in Congress. Nancy Pelosi visited
him. In 2007, despite White House objections, she traveled to Damascus to meet
with Assad. At the time she said she had “expressed our concern about Syria’s
connections to Hezbollah and Hamas” and raised the issue of the sanctuary that
Syria was providing those fighting U.S. troops in neighboring Iraq.
Then-President Bush said, “A lot of people have gone to see President Assad…and
yet we haven’t seen action. He hasn’t responded.”
Ironically, it is now Pelosi who is urging Obama to take military action
against Assad.
In 2011 on
Face the Nation then-Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, was asked why the
U.S. was not intervening in Syria as it had in Libya. When CBS newsman Bob
Schieffer remarked that Assad’s father had killed 25,000 Syrians in Hama in
1982, Clinton replied that Syria had a different leader and one that recent
visitors regarded as “a reformer.”
Among
those who had visited Assad was then-Sen. John Kerry, the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee chairman, who had been there at least six times; most
recently in November 2010. He pushed hard to re-engage the Assad regime and
notably without any success.
Assuming
Congress lets President Obama wipe the egg from his face over his “red line”
comment, Assad will respond with the usual threats and go back to killing
Syrians. Having seen the U.S. response to the use of poison gas, it will likely
be removed and transported to Iran. It is likely that it originated in Iraq.
So long as
it is Arabs dying, the West and the rest of the world is unlikely to intervene.
The U.S. tried that. It did not work out well.
© Alan
Caruba
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Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" and shared on dozens
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