Daily Times

Thankfully some sense prevailed when Prime Minister Cameron of UK went to his lawmakers for an intervention in Syria. The narrow lead of the lawmakers who rejected his bidding was encouraging. It showed that the people of the UK are tired of playing second fiddle to the US and rubber stamping every move of the US on the international scene, though it almost seems like the Obama administration despite suffering a diplomatic setback from its longtime ally UK is still moving ahead with plans of very specific strikes against Syria. There lies the rub. If you don’t take action, more lives of civilians are in danger and if you do take action, you will have an unknown amount of casualties. Which way do you go?

No, I am not going to bore the readers with detailed comparisons of prior conflicts in the region or cite figures of casualties to make a point. To me a single casualty is still too much and I often thank God for not putting me through the test of being in that hot seat where a decision of yours, no matter for or against, brings fatal destruction for someone.

The Obama administration showed very tepid attention to the Syrian issue in the past. The reason for this lag begs a strong debate in Congress. Even the president, in his recent address, has stated that he will take his case of intervention in Syria to the people’s representatives, and Congress will examine the evidence and weigh the options. Based on the subsequent statements from Secretary John Kerry, and most recently from Senator McCain, it is becoming glaringly obvious that President Obama will intervene in Syria.

It is quite disheartening to see a president who was elected in 2008 based on the campaign promises of bringing US troops back home, and who at that point criticised the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq as a major burden on US taxpayers. As limited and precise as these proposed strikes may be, they will come with some serious costs. Needless to say, the US taxpayers will have to foot the bill for this campaign as well and the backlash from the world community for going solo will be felt. No wonder why each day a bit or piece of critical information is being presented in the media to build the case against the Syrian regime.

What is sort of surprising and a bit counter-intuitive is this sudden and immediate urgency. The civil war has been raging for quite some time in Syria. President Bashar al-Assad has been ignoring calls for resignation from his people and has mounted a brutal crackdown. Yes, he is also ignoring the fate of let’s say the late Saddam Hussein of Iraq or Moammar Gaddafi of Libya. I certainly am not ignoring the gifted analysts who provide detailed and cautionary analyses drawing sharp contrasts between Syria and Libya and for that matter Syria and Iraq for various reasons. They call Syria a hornet’s nest. As stated earlier, I am not as gifted as these people so I would save the inordinate details and save myself from getting entangled into this horrific nest.

What is worth a question is why call yourself the president? After all, President Assad succeeded his late father’s throne. Why not call yourself the King? But why people in these regions are so egotistical is what often perplexes me. Why can’t the president read the writing on the wall and go into exile? This gives him the ability to make a comeback at a future date and perhaps provide his people a renewed vision with a better direction. Why be so hard headed that you only choose the path of conflict and end up becoming the villain in the pages of history?

To the Commander-in-Chief, President Obama, with all humility and utmost respect, your argument of ‘red line’ is a bit flawed. So thousands and thousands were killed and you, Sir, along with the rest of the Americans (including this scribe) were watching the atrocities from the sidelines as silent spectators. Now why has, all of a sudden, the report of a chemical weapon attack sparked such urgency? The use of Sarin is considered an absolutely unacceptable transgression. The case can be built for a multitude of reasons but to limit it solely on chemical weapon usage is very, and I repeat very questionable. Why, Sir, when in all these months people were dying on the streets of Syria, your administration was not building another ‘coalition of the willing’ around the globe? Why were the stakeholders in and around the Middle East not engaged at the onset to avoid the brutalities from get-go? To the monarchs, despots, generals and the ruling elites of the Middle East, why is it that countries from the west have to intervene to settle your internal scores?

I am afraid the answers to the above listed questions are either very simple or very complex. It all depends on your point of view and the vantage point. In either case, the world is headed towards another conflict. No, I will not make the case of either for or against the action, because either way, it spells more and more disaster for an extremely volatile region.

The writer is a Pakistani-American mortgage banker. He blogs at http://dasghar.blogspot.com and can be reached at dasghar@aol.com He tweets at http://twitter.com/dasghar