No Syrian Intervention

No Syrian Intervention September 3, 2013

Syrian intervention is wrong. God help me I cannot support it.

Our President sets our foreign policy and has information citizens do not have. Constitutional government has evolved to give the President broad powers to strike militarily. As a result, patriotic Christians tend to support the President when he requests military action.

I have done so with this President.

Why?

Most Christians are not pacifists. We do not like war, but we know war and violence sometimes are necessary in a broken world. From Saint Duke Wenceslas to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christians with the power have chosen to fight.

If the President strikes Syria, as a loyal American I will support our troops and their Commander in Chief, but if asked I would beg the President and Congress not to go into Syria. The President has told us why we must go, the use of chemical weapons, but not what will happen if we do go.

The government of Syria is bad, but there is no evidence that it is worse than what will follow and some evidence that, God help the Syrians, it might be better. In Egypt, we let the government go and now chaos reigns.

If Assad falls due to United States force, what do we know will happen?

Christians will die in Syria.

Christians feed and help all religious groups in Syria. The Assad regime protects religious minorities, surely for selfish reasons, but when this protection is lifted the “rebels” will kill. They already are.

Terrorists will get safe havens in Syria beyond what they have already. The opposition to Assad is divided and history demonstrates that the most extreme will triumph in a chaotic, revolutionary situation.

Can’t we learn that overthrowing an inept tyrant without any further intervention leads to a worse tyrant?

The opposition in Syria contains good people, but those people are unlikely to triumph in Damascus when Assad falls. Those parties willing to tell the biggest lies will triumph as Syrians learn to doubt all the old verities.

The simple platform of the extremists will appeal in chaos. There is a great danger that we will act as Al Quaeda’s air force. Americans should not precipitate the horrors of ethnic cleansing to prevent the use of chemical weapons. Will we let “our” rebels kill Christians, Druze, and Alawites so that Assad cannot use chemical weapons?

The death of a thousand by chemical weapons makes a horrific YouTube, but will the quiet death of entire communities one bullet or beheading at a time bring any outcry?

We know it will not.

And we do not intervene in every crisis, even horrific tragedies. Thousands die or are enslaved in the Sudan, but nobody cares or intervenes.

We will kill Syrians, but have no plan to help Syria. At least George W. Bush invaded Iraq and attempted to rebuild what we destroyed. Billions were spent to help Iraq. In Syria, in the best case, we will bring instability to Syria with no plan to help the Syrians.

We will not kill Assad or those who ordered the chemical attacks, but Syrians who support the regime. Religious minorities in Syria support Assad, because they are being murdered by the opposition.

Chemical weapons should never be used and the evidence is sufficient that Assad has used chemical weapons, but the opponents of Assad have used torture, terror, and murdered religious leaders. These things should never been done either. Why punish the one and not the other?

Will we bomb the terrorists that killed or kidnapped Christian bishops in Syria?

We are going to contribute to Syrian instability, but have no idea what will happen next. I have lost faith in the competence and capacity of this President having a coherent and rational foreign policy.

This is not a good war. God help save this Republic and God save the President of the United States.


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