So it was that Obama--who entangled the United States in seven wars and kept sending American soldiers back into wars he "ended"--predicted that the intervention would trap Russia in a " quagmire." Except it hasn't. The relatively small Russian contingent has acted effectively and with remarkable restraint in the face of severe provocation. Things can always go haywire, but so far, whether anyone likes it or not, the Russian intervention has been successful. Russia has even turned Turkey into an ally, for the moment at least.
The fatal flaw of "the Russians are getting into another quagmire like Afghanistan" argument is"Afghanistan. And Iraq. And Libya, etc. The Russians and the rest of the world now know how foolish and counterproductive it would be to send tens of thousands of troops to save Syria. The Russians and the rest of the world also now know how destructive the American project of regime change via jihadi proxies is, having seen its results in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. Only deluded and arrogant American exceptionalists--conservative militarists and liberal humanitarian interventionists alike--haven't learned that lesson.
There is no revolutionary skin in this game, and leftists should be the last to rationalize away the principles of state sovereignty and non-intervention, as well as the prohibition against aggressive and "preventive" war. As Jean Bricmont has pointed out, these principles became the bedrock of international law, and their violation the greatest war crime, not because of abstract bourgeois theorizing, but because of the experience of the Second World War (where Germany claimed to intervene in defense of beleaguered minorities in Czechoslovakia and Poland), and of colonialism--a system in which stronger states justified the plunder of weaker ones under the guise of a civilizing mission. As Bricmont remarks: "The last thing the newly decolonized countries wanted was intervention from the old colonial powers."
As Bricmont also points out, "just about everything that the United States is doing everywhere in the world" violates these principles, and therefore the fundamental structure of international law. Now, much of that is cheered on by liberals and some leftists as "humanitarian intervention" and the "responsibility to protect." As used by American liberals, and by "anti-Assadist" leftists who present Assad as an arch-fiend for whose elimination the world is responsible, these concern-saturated phrases are nothing but new-fangled slogans for missionary imperialism. Within the "rules-based" world order as conceived by American politicians and ideologists today, as Bricmont observes: "It is obvious that such 'interventions' are only possible on the part of strong States against weak States," and that "even all strong states are not equal among each other."
Really: Can Russia, China, Iran and their friendly states call themselves "the international community," declare that the undemocratic, misogynist, head-chopping regime of Saudi Arabia just "has to go," put their favored armed factions of Saudi dissidents and international jihadi brigades on their payroll, set up bases for them in Yemen where they are supplied with advanced tactical weapons, and demand that the Saudi government withdraw itself from, and turn over to these "rebels," whatever territory they'd like to occupy? Is that the way the "rules-based" international order works now? Or is this prerogative reserved for the US and its favored allies?
It is amazing how blithely the entire American political and media elite--with liberals in the lead--have constructed this alternate-reality version of the rules of international law, and become legends of righteousness in their own minds. The American left should have no truck with this.
Lion King
A good historical analogy can clarify a present situation. In this case, it's best to avoid the temptation of associating Syria today with a precedent loaded with progressive internationalism. I find nothing more ridiculous than attempts to make the jihadis in Syria reincarnation of the international brigades in Spain. And the Russians are not Cuba in Angola. We need a case that involves nothing more than widely-accepted and good-enough principles of national sovereignty, non-interference, and anti-colonialism--in which there is no good guy for the left.
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