War against Assad will happen, no matter what. It’s ineluctable. Hopefully. Why? Because Assad is a monster. He is nothing else. Monsters don’t stop: such is their nature, that of the scorpion carried by the frog. It will sting, no matter what. Sting, and then sink: what real monsters do.
According to official United Nations statistics, Assad caused the death of at least 110,000 of the citizens he rules over. Already. And millions of refugees, just to stay in power, with the complicity of the world’s richest man, Putin, president for life of the USSR Russia.
An entire fourth branch of Assad’s army exists: the chemical army. It has struck with gas at least 34 times. To believe Assad will surrender it is silly. Instead, he will wait for indignation to settle down, before using it again more discreetly, while milking the West’s public opinion with his great will to peace and moderation, the tactic Adolf Hitler used so well in the 1930s, when he found majorities of eager fools to believe him in Anglo-Saxon countries.
It does not matter how much Putin pays pundits in the USA to claim that the universe is the exact opposite to what it is. At some point, Assad, should he be left to his own inclinations, will kill millions. Striking Assad will then become the obvious solution, be it only to help children, and even cowards, and even those who know little, and have no inclination to learn more, will have to assent to the inevitable.
Assad threatened many countries in the past, including France and the USA. He also had Hariri, who was Lebanon most prominent politician (PM ten years, overall) assassinated. Why? Assad said himself! Because Hariri wanted Assad’s army out of Lebanon.
Assad is an angry man. Why? because he knows he is a piece of garbage, and he is desperate about proving the opposite. In a similar fashion, Hitler, another piece of garbage, spoke about setting minorities free, and saving peace. Hitler was desperate about proving he was not the garbage he truly was. Political cover-ups are bad, psychological ones worse, but the latter often impacts the former.
France, could well use Assad’s threats as a casus belli (something that the UN Charter allows).
Another thing: United Nations Chapter VII allows for intervention for humanitarian reasons. France used that override many times (Bosnia, Libya, Ivory Coast). Ultimately, even if the USA chickens out as it did in 1939-1940, the French Republic will go ahead, make her own coalition, and strike. So, in the long run, a strategy as in Libya, with the French air Force doing most of the work while getting some targeting information from the Pentagon, may well happen.
Even The Economist exposed the fiasco of values of “The Weakened West”. It opines that “The deal over Syria’s chemical weapons marks a low for those who cherish freedom“. But it’s not just about freedom.
If France had not attacked Hitler in September 1939, it would be a different world. We would have a world where human rights would be viewed as secondary.
Certainly it’s doubtful that Human Rights would have progressed in the USA, if Nazism reigned over much of the world. (Maybe the USA, following the Nazis, would have reintroduced full slavery? Please tell me why not).
(And for those who don’t realize that the French Republic basically fought alone the Nazi-Soviet-Mussolini-Japanese coalition: it took one month for the first British soldier to cross the Channel. A lot of the defeat of France in May-June 1940 had to do not just to the unbelievably small size of the British army, but also to the late arrival of British armor, and the lack of commitment of British reserves, say in the Royal Air Force; that, in turn prevented the arrival of French reserves, say in the Air Force, some of which was as far as. Syria!)
France attacked in 1939 because of Human Rights, and Human Rights triumphed by 1945. And you know what? Human Rights are primary. Well worth fighting for. Even democracy is secondary to Human Rights.
When the Athenian democracy forgot that with the Melians, Athens lost the Peloponnesian War. At least, philosophically speaking.
The genocide in Melos endangered Athens’ own survival. There were more than 1,000 Greek Poleis, and when they saw what Athens did to Melos, and the reasoning the Athenian National Assembly held, something about self-interest being more important than Human Rights, a mood was generated. A mood willing to destroy Athens. (After losing the war, Athens was, paradoxically, saved by her main enemy. Sparta!)
Thucydides wrote the Melian Dialogue to exemplify what he deemed the cause of the defeat: realism. Instead, it should be viewed as unreal to try to make Human Rights secondary. One cannot be of the essence, while denying one’s essence.
Patrice Ayme
