The piece by Polk was interesting. While I am respectful of the ambivalence towards and disagreement about taking action in connection with the recent chemical weapons incident, I feel that Polk's piece is alarmist and only partly succeeds in casting doubt on the details of the incident in question. He was not privy to the evidence that is at the heart of the case that is being made (and neither are we, I assume), so he can only draw inferences and reach back to earlier personal experiences. Still he raises some good points.
It is clear that although the US and French governments are the only ones considering taking part in an action at this time, there are many people that straddle the fence, and there are many that support doing something, and not just in the US and France. Here is a piece from a former German ambassador to the UK and the US arguing persuasively for intervention: https://ip-journal.dgap.org/en/ip-journal/topics/syrian-hell Personally, I feel that security- and humanitarian-related international treaties, protocols, conventions and resolutions are quite pointless if they are not backed by the credible use of force. When a "red line" is drawn and there is a lack of resolve to back it up, it would be better not to put it up for a vote at the UN in the first place. The hyenas of the world are experts at seeing how far they can take things in order to probe the resolve of onlookers who have not yet become involved. That is their intention -- to test limits and then push them a little further, allowing people to become accustomed to the new level of atrocity. It is unfortunate that the Security Council, the main international body for sorting out these kinds of issues, is largely ineffective at this time. For this reason I see calls for going through the UN as insincere or self-deceptive; they're basically a way for people to find a way to not do anything. There are two lines of reasoning for not doing something that are persuasive in my mind. One is that doing so could potentially precipitate a larger war. Another is that the world has stood by as some very dreadful things have been allowed to happen in Africa and in other parts of the world (including Syria), so there's nothing compelling to distinguish this case. These are good points. But to the first, I think that argument is used too often as an excuse to avoid effective action and is not automatically convincing. I'm quite sure the same arguments were made leading up to Bosnia. To the second, that we have allowed horrible things to happen in recent memory and haven't done anything about them is not an argument for inaction; it's an argument that we need to start taking a larger view of what is in our best interests, from a security standpoint. It was in no country's security interests to allow the genocide in Rawanda to happen. I am not arguing for intervening in everything, regardless of the case (e.g., Iraq, Afghanistan). I'm saying that if we want a world where innocent civilians are safe from being killed by sarin by their own governments, diplomacy will only be effective if it is backed by credible force. Eric On Wed, Sep 4, 2013 at 7:57 AM, a.ashfield <[email protected]> wrote: This piece by William Polk is the most complete summary of the known facts > that I have seen so far. > Certainly more complete than anything we will get from the government. > > http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/your-labor-day-syria-reader-part-2-william-polk/279255/
