Look, everyone wants to go to war in Syria, right? I mean, it’s been seconds since we launched airstrikes to destabilize a Mideast regime and/or butted our noses into a civil war that we kinda sorta indirectly caused with previous bomb-dropping, ground invasion, Fallujah, etc. We all know that war is what has always made America the Greatest Country On Earth™, but the question remains: What’s in it for us if we help turn the tide of the Syrian civil war and topple Bashar Al-Assad?
It cures crow’s feet! This one seems fairly obvious. Want to stave off wrinkles and the effects of aging? Tactical airstrikes are the only way to go.
There are so many ways to win! Hey, whether we oust Assad and the Sunnis take over, impose Sharia Law and continue to hate the U.S. for its unflinching support of Israel or Al Qaeda takes all the arms we’re suddenly giving them because they also happen to be Syrian rebels and turns them on us later, we can’t lose! Plus we piss off Russia and China, our two biggest allies, in a time when the country’s just rebounding from a decade of war that bankrupted us and sapped our moral position on the world stage. So many ways to win!
The good times! What’s better than invading a Middle Eastern country and being greeted as liberators? Did anyone expect that when we went into Iraq they would come out with those leis and sing “Aloha ‘Oe?” And then what a surprise when they did! Of course the exact same thing would happen in Syria. What, they don’t have flowers in countries ravaged by sectarian violence? Don’t be silly.
A whole new generation of friends! They say about half of the two million Syrian war refugees are children. Isn’t that awesome? Whether they’re loving us because we waited two years to intervene in their desperate, doomed conflict or because the cross-country war between Shia and Sunni Muslims was brought on by U.S. and European colonialism having divided the region almost arbitrarily in the 1920s and then continued to exploit its natural resources for nearly a century afterwards, those kids are bound to just support the shit out of the U.S. “let’s spread democracy like the sweet mayonnaise of justice it is” foreign policy and not at all become a next wave of jihadi suicide bombers. They have so much to live for!
Solid investment! If we’ve learned anything over the last decade, it’s that if you want to make money as a country, off to war is the way to be. There’s really nothing quite like putting yourself on the hook to rebuild another nation’s infrastructure even as your own crumbles before your very eyes because of rampant privatization and the impotency of your two-party system. It’s worked well for America before and it will again.
Of course, not that you even needed these reasons because this is all stuff you know, stuff that’s so obvious from the last 10 years that to not learn these lessons you’d have to be willfully blind on a Oedipal, “I just gouged my eyes out,” level. Off to war we go again! What fun.
JJ Koczan
jj@theaquarian.com
