This Time It’s Different

As the United States prepares to go to war for the third time in 10 years, it is painstakingly clear that a collective amnesia has set in in Washington. While it is a sad fact that the lessons of history rarely survive a generation, it now seems that history’s teachings are not even remembered by the very leaders who originally learned them. For the benefit of our forgetful friends in Washington, I will recap the recent chronicles of American misadventures abroad, examining helpful parallels to elucidate the comparison.

In Iraq, after deposing Saddam Hussein, the United States simply had no support base, leaving the door open for a sectarian bloodbath that we were helpless to prevent. In Libya (which was hailed as a success after the intervention), the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi has led to the rise of Islamist militias, one of which stormed the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi and murdered four Americans last year. This raises the question—who would fill the vacuum in Syria should we cripple or even topple the Assad regime?

The Free Syrian Army, a moderate, secular rebel group relatively palatable to the West, has received the bulk of American attention and support. However, the FSA is most likely a minority among the rebel forces. The Syrian Liberation Front and the Syrian Islamic Front, both Islamist groups, have grown in strength. Worst of all, the al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda affiliate that has been aggressively fighting the Assad regime, welcomes foreign jihadists by the day. Toppling Assad would open a power vacuum in which such extremists would flourish.

Another point our leaders seem to have forgotten is that war—which is by nature messy, brutal, and chaotic—has a way of expanding beyond the bounds of rhetoric. It was Obama’s initial statement that the use of chemical weapons constituted a “red line” that has forced his hand in planning an American response. Since then, the Obama administration has carefully avoided calling a strike a “humanitarian” intervention, lest it drag the United States deeper into Obama’s rhetorical quagmire. According to officials, this is strictly a “limited military strike” to enforce international norms about how not to kill people in war.

Let’s not forget the initial aim of the invasion of Iraq—to prevent Saddam Hussein from using weapons of mass destruction. Yet the war became a 10-year struggle to prop up a fragile democracy with little popular support against Islamist extremists who had nothing to do with Hussein’s weapons program. Even the Libya intervention, which had the clear, limited objective of preventing civilian casualties, has produced a myriad of unforeseen complications, the worst of which was the Benghazi massacre.

Finally, the lack of international support does not bode well for any intervention. With Russia and its veto power sitting on the UN Security Council, there is no chance of a UN mandate. French President François Hollande has been quietly backing away from his once-bellicose rhetoric. Even Britain, America’s erstwhile “special” partner, has voted to sit this one out.

In the invasion of Iraq, which was excoriated by internationalists as a unilateral intervention, we at least had British support. Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, architect of America’s war in Vietnam, said it best: When asked to reflect on the decision to enter Vietnam alone, McNamara confessed, “None of our allies supported us. Not Japan, not Germany, not Britain or France. If we can't persuade nations with comparable values of the merit of our cause, we'd better re-examine our reasoning.”

As the news media drums for battle and Washington works itself into a war frenzy, it must be difficult for the president and Congress to remember the lessons of the past. But so far, this has only been a war of words, of “red lines” and “international norms,” “heinous crimes” and “unconscionable” violence. Let it end that way, before bombs are dropped and the United States finds itself mired in yet another foreign war.

Oliver W. Kim ’16 is a Crimson editorial writer in Leverett House.