Syria: Living and Dying in Iraq's Shaddow

***The author is "cleaning house" and publishing posts from 2013; these have not been updated to reflect changes. Views on newer develops will follow.***

For the clear-minded among us, the second Iraq war harkens sentiments sympathetic to those of John to Abigail Adams in a 1974 letter:

"Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war"; and

"Guilt as the war commenced. Guilt as the war continues in new and ever-changing forms."

The current era is plagued with guilt. It is the era that witnessed and routinely despairs at the atrocities that happened (and many continue) in Cambodia, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bosnia, Sudan, and Kosovo. It is an era of missing countless opportunities to halt human suffering and head-hanging at the memory. It is the same era that failed so many times to protect the most vulnerable and made mistakes that cost too many lives. It is the one whose resolve came too late to stop atrocities, too late to champion oppression, and too late even to demonstrate compassion for the oppressed.

In Syria the world is embarking on another path to inevitable embarrassment. But there is a reason for countries' reluctance to intervene. It is rooted in the lead up to the Iraq war, which featured the same (though false) accusations, in the same region, in a similar time, with quite similar (and many of the same) players. Both promise democracy and humanitarian relief.

Engagement in such a conflict is an inherently difficult sell. But there are distinct and crucial differences between the war in Iraq and the resignation of the international community to the situation in Syria. The second war in Iraq pulled the wool over the international community's eyes. It's time to shed the blind fold.

But before I go further I want to pre-empt any suggestion that I am making a call for another war in the Middle East by stating now that my intention here is not to advocate for further militarization, but to beg the international community not to base its decisions regarding Syria on its experience in Iraq.

When we hear about chemical weapons, of WMDs, we are not talking about suspicions of possession. We are not talking about states (or corporations) poising themselves to drain the oil wealth of one country into the coffers of another. There is no powerpoint illustrating a trumped-up theory to the UN security council. Rather, we have indisputable knowledge of an increasingly aggressive and despicable regime that is (using our own premises for aggression (terrorism) to justify) murdering its people. This time we have footage of bombings, leveled cities, corpses, and the contorted and convulsing bodies of civilians infused with toxic nerve agents. These accounts are not suspicions. They are humanity's greatest fears realized.

A decade after the invasion of Iraq, we are surely not a decade wiser; but let's at least show an increased capacity to discern truth from fiction. Only a spade is a spade.