Hey, I was downtown at the Senate Forum last night, but didn’t get to share my view on what action we should take in Syria to counter the abominable response by the worst candidate I have met for election to the Senate this cycle, Sue Lines (LAB).
See, the Labor government is now ready to rush to support military intervention in Syria, and Sue attempted to pull our heart strings with ‘I am not sure the children of Syria can wait for the UN or the Australian Parliament to deliberate’.
Once again, a government with no real answers is ready to dance to the tune of the US or Britain with respect to military strikes that will do more damage, be indiscriminate in their effect (surgical strikes, my arse). Like the Coalition before them, then aren’t willing to do the hard work for years, then rush to some populist travesty in order to prove they are doing something.
Now I care as much about human beings as the the next guy, but we didn’t get here in a couple months in Syria, lots of people are already dead or dying, and unfortunately many more are to come, regardless if military action is taken now or not. If you want to do something about genocide, you need to support a change in the definition of the term by the UN, and to put fast action triggers in the UN plan for addressing it when it raises its ugly head. Addressing issues like this with violence in the short term is virtually never effective, doesn’t really save that many lives in the overall scheme of things, and leads to problems of regime change and occupation (who do you support amongst the dozens of rebel groups? Sunni, Shia, Alawite, Druze, Christian, etc?). You can only grow a representative democracy, not impose it, and this is a country that has had more than 40 years of dictatorship, since Assad’s old man Hafez used to compete with the Shah over the title of Most Evil Motherfucker on the Planet.
You want real short term action. How about the NSA using its powers for good instead of evil for a change? How about the NSA publish all it knows on Syria in as transparent a fashion as possible, and keep at it worldwide through all its available propaganda organs? Frankly, that will scare the shit out of all of us, including the Assad regime if they know that they will get no safe harbour anywhere unless they immediately surrender to the International Court of Justice. We can also continue to press the General Council and the Security Council to take joint action as and when we can get it through. Prepare for humanitarian assistance to refugees in neighbouring countries, and do what we can to ameliorate the worst of the negative effects.
That’s reality, and what we should be pursuing.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not a complete pacifist wuss, and I have a long history here of appropriate use of the dogs of war, but we ain’t there yet.
