Foreign intervention or domestic massacre

The crisis in Syria arose from within the country and has increasingly come to concern the whole world.

The source of the crisis, and its transformation into an international problem, is not that there is an opposition in the country and that this opposition is in dispute with the government. Such a thing happens in every country, and moreover the internal disputes of a country only rarely require other countries to become involved. However, when the opposition is treated like an enemy and a war is launched against it, an internal problem quickly becomes wide open to use by other countries.

Even in this case, for the intervention of other countries to rest on a legitimate basis, the matter must have an aspect that concerns them directly as well. Yet if the state, against an opposition that is treated with hostility inside the country, has also chosen a method of struggle that may fall within the scope of crimes against humanity, this ceases to be a matter of meddlesomeness or arbitrary intervention for the entire international community and becomes a matter of grave responsibility.

The event unfolding in Egypt today is such an event. A legitimate and elected President was overthrown by a military coup. The massacres carried out by deliberately targeting and opening fire on people demonstrating in a completely peaceful manner to oppose the coup fall within the scope of crimes against humanity.

International law defines sanctions that are set in motion against such crimes against humanity, and determines their limits. The world's superpowers are considered super because they assume the enforcement responsibilities of this law, and in a sense they represent the authority from which all other states expect law.

For crimes committed within national borders, justice is expected from the state, however much one opposes it. Likewise, the powers at the center of today's world order are expected to assume responsibility in the face of problems that must be resolved at the international level, however much one opposes them. The international order reaches a generally accepted resolve through this claim of hegemony by the superpowers and, when the time comes, through such expectations of peoples and countries.

Since the early nineties the US has stood out as the unipolar follower of international law. It found the opportunity to display this privilege or claim in examples such as Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, though the results were ultimately controversial. But in the cases of Afghanistan and Iraq it clearly showed that it abused the role of patron of law for imperialist ends. In addition, it stood by as the values it says it upholds were openly trampled in many places, to the point of risking its claim to hegemony, as we have witnessed in Syria for two years and in Egypt these days...

Although the drama in Syria today came from within the country, it has now reached a point where it cannot be resolved without an appropriate intervention from outside.

A country's ruler is killing his own people every day, by conventional or chemical methods, in every way. Yet there is a strange indifference toward these massacres. Faced with the astonishment and curiosity aroused by the inaction in the face of the deaths of a hundred thousand people, Obama had set as a condition for intervention that a "red line" pointing to the use of chemical weapons be crossed. Presumably because of excessive confidence that Assad would not go that far, when this line was crossed too, a great reaction was shown at first and signals of intervention began to be given.

However, after the excitement shown at first, signs began to emerge that this line too could become something one gets used to. That is, after people's first reactions and outrage in the face of the gravity of the event had subsided somewhat, it was seen that the state of stalling had returned.

To recall the strategic policy of the US that has returned in the face of this event:

Despite all statements to the contrary, the US has no essential problem with Assad and his regime. That is why, even as intervention options are being discussed in this event, what is spoken of is not toppling the regime but only punishing Assad for this latest incident.

In Syria, including today's Free Syrian Army or the National Council, there is no alternative to Assad that the US accepts. This in itself should be warning enough about what kind of deception is contained in Syria's quality as Iran's line of defense against Israel or Zionism.

The US's stirring in the wake of the latest event, despite everything, is not a movement for the sake of the children dying in agony from chemical weapons in Syria; it is a movement aimed at saving appearances, and it is very likely to remain at that level. That is, even if the US intervenes in Syria, it will do so at a level that will not topple Assad, will not rid the Syrian people of Assad, and will bring no benefit to the Syrian people. If it does so at all, of course...

Even so, acting against the state massacre in Syria is a human duty, and this requires international humanitarian intervention. Unfortunately, on this matter no option appears to remain other than pressing the international powers, including the US, to act and to intervene with a more suitable option.

Foreign intervention is bad in principle, but this principle must be considered together with the principle that standing by while dictators massacre their own peoples and commit crimes against humanity is even worse.

Discourses against foreign intervention or war mean today nothing other than encouraging dictators who massacre their own peoples en masse and, when necessary, with chemical weapons, and prolonging the lives of their dictatorships. Is there not something strange in this?

Yet those who oppose American or any other foreign intervention need to sincerely set out, in the Syrian case, what kind of solution they propose against the massacre of civilians by the regime. Of course, provided this opposition to intervention is not based on an organic or ideological bond with bloody-handed dictators...